Wyrmworks Publishing How can we use tabletop games to improve education? Welcome to Gaining Advantage. Wyrmworks Publishing Welcome to Gaining Advantage. We are using tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons to help you make lives better. We have some really huge news. This isn't quite out yet. We've got some finishing touches on it, waiting, talking to my team that is looking at it and making sure everything is just right. But we are changing history and this should be ready within about a week of this launching hopefully less than that. This year, as Dungeons & Dragons celebrates its 50th year and thus also 50 years of tabletop roleplaying games. In that entire time, I've looked, and I have not been able to find a single roleplaying game book, rule set, anything that has been produced in braille. In 50 years! No more. We are spearheading that to change the industry, and we're starting out by making the System Reference Document for Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition, or just simply 5e, available in braille for free. Alright, for those not familiar, the System Reference Document is pretty similar, not exactly, but close enough, to what you may know as the Basic Rules. It's kind of an abridged version of the Player's Handbook, the Monster Manual, little bit from the Dungeon Masters Guide. It's a set of character classes, spells, magic items, and monsters and the core rules of fifth edition. Alright, we've converted that all to braille. I've got a team of braille users that are looking it over to make sure that all the formatting is done accurately and the way it needs to be, and as soon as I get the go ahead from them, we will have it available for free on DriveThruRPG. And I'm just I'm so excited about this, because number one, this is the first time in Dungeons & Dragons history, in tabletop roleplaying game history, that the braille has been available. I mean, we've had braille dice, which are awesome, and I'm so thankful to groups like DOTS RPG for making those available, but not rulesets, and so we finally will have that available. We at Wyrmworks Publishing, are in the process of converting all of our published content to Braille, and are committed to every release going forward will have a braille version included with the release. Now this is digital braille. And as we launched this, we are also including tutorial videos, so that other publishers can get their stuff converted, too. It's actually really easy. There's some fantastic free software out there, that is multi-platform. I'm using a Mac. You know, if you're using Windows, Linux, it's available for your system, whatever you're using, so that you can convert it, so that this will just make the entire industry more accessible and more welcoming to people with print disabilities. And so that is going to be available very soon. Just go to our website WyrmworksPublishing.com for a link, or look us up. Just search on DriveThruRPG for "braille," because you're not gonna find a whole lot else on there with that keyword, and you'll find it. And so I'm just super excited about this, and and I hope that you are too, even if you're not a braille user. I hope that you recognize the fantastic potential that this has just in raising awareness of the needs in the industry. I also have a few other publishers that I've worked with to convert some of their stuff to braille, and we're even going to be launching a bundle of that includes the stuff that we've converted to braille for them. Not everything is braille in that bundle, because some of it, it's just, it's gonna take some more work to make those conversions, and it's just not ready for that yet. But we just want to make this available. And, and, you know, this is just in so many ways, it's a huge step. But it's gonna make a huge difference in just helping people to understand what the various needs are so that everyone can play games with us. And, and so we want to just make that as easy as possible. You know, if you haven't yet speaking of launches, we are getting ready to launch our Ready-to-Roll: Feyweather Friends adventure, that is going to be only $1. And you can find a link in the show notes to follow it on Kickstarter so that you get notified when it launches. That's going to have braille, too, because we're committed to making that available, which means that it will be the first ever tabletop roleplaying game Kickstarter launch that includes braille at launch. And so we also include audio and ePub and other formats. So that to make it as widely accessible as possible. Now if you're wondering about physical braille, we're working on that. It is something that we're working on, and we are hoping soon within the next couple of years probably as we work out all the logistical details of making physical braille books also widespread, available through the industry. We've got some obstacles to overcome but we've got ideas how to overcome them. And it's just a matter of only so many hours in the day to work on it. And so we're working on that. Wyrmworks Publishing And so now with all of that go grab those pause right now go get those links, and those products and or follow us on subscribe to the Dragon's Hoard, our weekly email, and and watch for those announcements there. And let's get on with our interview! Wyrmworks Publishing Today, we have Dr. Dave Eng, an expert in using games for education. Dave's passion lies in using games for education and learning. With his expertise in applied games and commitment to community development, Dave brings a unique perspective to our discussion on the power of gaming and education. Welcome, Dave. Dr. Dave Eng Thank you Dale for having me. I appreciate it. Wyrmworks Publishing So what would you like us to know about you personally, specifically speaking to the tabletop gaming crowd? Dr. Dave Eng Sure, so the way I like to identify myself is an intellectual person who's also a creative. I'm also an educator. I design games. I also design learning content and instructional design. I'm also a researcher focusing on games theory and technology and kind of the intersection between all those when it comes to tabletop gaming. The one thing I want everyone to know is that, if given the choice, first choice is blue. When I don't have blue, next choice is yellow, and not yellow, next choice is green. And just a fun fact about myself and we can get into this later if you're still interested. Whenever I am in a icebreaker scenario, and I'd like to share a fun fact about myself. I usually tell people, I have been seasick in every time zone in the planet. Wyrmworks Publishing Well, I haven't traveled that much but otherwise I can completely resonate with that. Dr. Dave Eng Nice. Wyrmworks Publishing So tell us about your work in gaming and education. Dr. Dave Eng So I am what you would say like a lifelong gamer. I've been playing games for most of my life, a lot of different mediums too, so tabletop games, video games, computer games, mobile games, car games, everything else like that. Way back when, when I was working in higher education administration, I had a goal to become a like an Executive Administrator in higher ed kind of like a dean of students or vice president. And in order to do that, my boss at the time said I would have to get a terminal degree, to get a doctorate and go back to graduate school, and I knew that, getting a doctorate, I would have to write an original piece of research. And my advisor at the time told me that you're free to choose mostly any topic that you want for your research. However, just know that whatever topic you choose, you're gonna have to be reading a lot about it, you know, 10s of 1000s of words and just consuming a lot of content over the next few years. So I said, "Okay, I want to do gaming, but I want to do gaming in a way that I can apply it for, like, education or something." I didn't really know about games-based learning or using like games for teaching and learning before. I kind of knew a little bit about it, but didn't know there's there was this entire field. So afterwards, I finished my graduate work in applied games. At the time, I was calling it a dissertation in games-based learning. I had multiple different options I could do. One of the things I didn't want to do was start a career as exclusively as an academic, so publishing in academic journals, because I didn't really find it very fun or lucrative. So what I did do was start universityxp.com, which is where I continue to write about using games for teaching and learning. And I like it because it's a platform that allows me to just write whatever I want, whenever I want, and share it out to the community. Sometimes writing resonates with the community. Sometimes it doesn't. But I like the platform because it's free in order to do so. Wyrmworks Publishing Sure, yeah. Absolutely. There's really something to be said for being able to make those choices for yourself and write about things that are interesting. And if it's… because chances are, if it's just you, it's going to interest other people as well. Yeah, so give us some examples of how that works. Dr. Dave Eng So I when I originally went back to graduate school, I was working at a small liberal arts college at the time called St. Thomas Aquinas College. And in that role, I was also the Director of Student Activities. So I was going to school full time and also working full time. And I was exploring this whole realm of using games for for teaching and learning and I supervised several different staffs of students. So one of them was an orientation team. So these are the students that welcome new potential new freshmen on campus at the in the summer preceding the start of their college career. So I wanted to know, could I use tabletop games for teaching and learning in various different capacities? And this is kind of what informed my my whole doctoral study so what I use, I chose a certain slew of games from my own collection to use for this. I had my students play these games, and then I interviewed them afterwards to try to determine if there were any any connection made to the specific learning outcomes I had for them. So the games that we played over the entire course of the study and some of them that I played with my my students, half the time were Codenames, Hanabi, King of Tokyo, Coup: Reformation, Flash Point: fire resistance, uh, Fire Rescue, and The Resistance: Avalon. And all of them had a lot of different outcomes. I think that I started out at the at the very beginning before the study with like Pandemic but also use games like Magic Maze or focusing on cooperative games. And they all kind of had varying degrees of success depending on what I was trying to communicate or what the specific learning outcome was. Sometimes, teams work better together. Sometimes they didn't. But really, I think the critical aspect here is focusing on the game as an activity that meets those specific outcomes rather than just the game to play the game, and I've kind of developed and refined my approach since then. Wyrmworks Publishing Okay, so obviously with playing games, you're gonna get more engagement, usually than, like, say, a lecture. And so what other benefits do you find from that format of teaching as opposed to say, like, you know, small group discussion or something like that? Dr. Dave Eng It's a good question and something that a lot of other people have asked me in the past, and I'd say that games are a form of experiential learning. And learning is… experiential learning is really part of this cycle where individuals will experience some sort of activity or some sort of event, or really any any sort of activity, and then they review that activity, incorporate some of their own conclusions from that activity, and then experiment again, or experience again. And that's really kind of informed my whole philosophy of learning we tried to find, as learning is the transformation of experience into knowledge. So what I've told other people is that you can use other forms of instruction, like you brought up some good points, like why not just use reading, or why not just use discussions or like essays or writing or anything else like that? Because a lot of other classes do that right now. But what I really like about games is, is that it's something that needs to be participated in actively. So for most of these games, and for most games, overall, I would say that it's not a game that you can participate in passively. You need to… there has to be some sort of level of interaction. 2. I think that in order to get better games and in order to meet the specific outcome that you've set out as a player, you need to try different things. You need to experiment. And then three, I think games as an activity are important, because especially when I've used them for learning in the past, I've told students, "I don't really care whether or not you win or lose at this game or win or lose against other players. What I really care about is that you take place/ take part in this activity. You give it your best, because afterwards, we're going to talk about it. And I think that this process called debriefing after the game is really important, because it allows players to reflect on their experience playing the game, and potentially reflect it back to whatever the specific outcomes we're looking for. So in summary, I think that games are really great because you have to interact. You can't do so passively. It's… games provide that structure for interaction and that debriefing process the the reflection process is incredibly important. No matter what kind of learning you're doing. Wyrmworks Publishing So you talked about using kind of existing sort of-off-the-shelf games. And so I'm thinking about that and thinking about you know, if you have specific educational goals for a class that where I can see I can definitely see how for like a specific lesson, a game may convey that information in a way that you can interact with it and really kind of process it and take it to heart. But, you know, I sort of wonder, okay, this when I think about you know, all the different things that a class has to cover over the course of semester. You know, do you find that you have to create your own games, can you sort of build on existing games or how does that work? Dr. Dave Eng It's a fair question and something that I've gotten from other educators, and I think that when you're when you first start exploring this whole field of, you know, games-based learning, gamification, serious games, applied games, etc., a lot of educators who may have like subject matter expertise in their particular discipline, they will want to look for that game, and I call like, I call this the the silver bullet approach. Like I'm looking for a game that will meet all of the specific learning outcomes for my you know, like modern history class, I'm teaching the high schoolers, that's exactly, you know, like 16 weeks or so. And for the most parts, and for most games, you're not going to be able to find a game that meets all of your specific learning outcomes for your specific student population for the amount of time that you're looking for. So one of the very first things I tell almost every educator is stop looking for a specific Silver Bullet project, particularly if it's like a commercial off the shelf game, to meet all of the needs for your class, because it's most likely that you will not be able to find a game like that. Instead, what I tell educators is focus on one particular learning outcome for your class or one particular unit, or even just one particular chapter, just one particular module and start small. If there is a game or if there is anything available that is interactive, that you can then adapt for your class to use to meet that specific outcome, that's a really good first step. I think looking for a game that meets all of those outcomes and all of your objectives is going to be incredibly difficult and hard to find and you're kind of setting yourself up for failure there. But if you can just get very, very granular and very, very specific on what on what you want to target. There are plenty of games that can meet those specific needs, and it really determined It's determined by you as an educator, what you're teaching and specifically what's available right now. You can often adapt the game that's commercially available for your class. Or if you'd like and you you have the time and resources to do so, you can create a game from the ground up, which is a serious game. Wyrmworks Publishing That makes sense. I mean, have a hard time imagining a class where you're just playing Ticket to Ride for for a semester and teaches you everything Dr. Dave Eng Yeah, it's hard to it's hard to find a game that specifically meets that all those criteria and then like whenever it comes to those serious games, you're going to need to find, for one, via an expert in your subject matter but two, also, you know, find individuals like me that have played a lot of different games they can recommend, different avenues or options for you. Wyrmworks Publishing Sure, so, um, so how do you deal with different people learn in different ways and a game is gonna resonate with some students more than others? How do you manage that? Dr. Dave Eng One of them. One of the things I like to do, and I brought this up before, is I like to set expectations with the students ahead of time. So one of the the earliest expectations that I set up with them is that we're gonna play a game. This is part of the learning activity for this class or course or for this staff training. The expectation here is that you participate in the game wholeheartedly. I call this the Magic Circle promise and that, you know, when we play games, we're in the Magic Circle. Everything that is in the Magic Circle matters for the playing of the game. Everything outside of the Magic Circle does not count. So that when you're in the Magic Circle, I just want you to commit fully. However, there is an out of Magic Circle outcome which is winning or losing the game, and that really doesn't matter. I just ask that people participate wholeheartedly that participate in the game, because afterwards, we're going to discuss the entire activity, and we're going to take it from there. But you know, depending on people's backgrounds and experience and I like to say game literacy, the different games that they played over time, some are more hesitant than others. Some are more active. Some are more passive than others. Some really don't really know how to interpret the situation. And I've kind of had students from all over the spectrum, from many different and diverse backgrounds that have, you know, fulfilled their roles in games to different success and abilities. And I think it just really relies on the experience of the educator to try to determine how to best use this game for their teaching and learning. And I will tell a lot of people who are listening right now that the first time you do it, it's probably not going to go completely according to plan, and I think you have to be okay with that. Like I talked about experiential learning before. It's about the cycle of playing the game, playtesting it in your class, trying to get some feedback from that and just kind of try to iterate from there. Wyrmworks Publishing Right, so do you have some examples of where how that's been applied in different places, people you've worked with or anything like that? Dr. Dave Eng So I'll bring up two examples. One of them is an older game at this point called Two Rooms and a Boom. Have you heard about that game before? Wyrmworks Publishing No, not familiar with that one. Dr. Dave Eng So Two Rooms and a Boom was on Kickstarter a few years ago. It's, I don't want to call it a social deduction game, but it's a highly social game, essentially, where there are just a large group of people, and they're divided up into two quote unquote rooms, but they could potentially still exist in the same room. And there's like a lot of other social deduction games. There's a red team, and there's a blue team. As the red team, you want a player whose secret identity is the president to be in the same room at the end of the game with another player whose secret identity is the bomber, because you want the bomb to go off and assassinate the president. And if you are on the blue team, you want the opposite — you want the bomber to be in one room and the president to be on the other in the other room at the end of the game. So the entire game is played out with this and other different roles, and students and the participants have to just communicate with each other while keeping the roles private, who they want to send into the next room at the beginning of each phase. So I think there's three phases where you can do trades, and each trade has increasingly fewer and fewer students. And we played this in my public speaking class when I was… we're covering influential speech or any type of speech where you need to convince people to your specific point of view. I told them, I gave them the same spiel at the beginning. We're going to be playing this game. You may not have heard about it before. This is how it's played. And again, I don't really care if you win or lose, but it's part of the activity, and we'll we'll conduct the debriefing afterwards. And in the debriefing, we talked about were which was like, "What did you find were really effective means of convincing other people?" Because in this game, they they just get the objective and what they have to do, and that their role is secret, but they don't really know how to get it so that their team will win at the end of the game. And you know, I got a lot of good feedback here. Some, some students really relied on their interpersonal relationships that they had built with each other before the game, or their students tried to take a more logical approach. And I said that all of these different approaches were legitimate. And one of the things I want you to talk about in a public speaking communications class is that speech is is just one form of communication. And trying to convince people and trying to sway people towards your side of an argument is also another skill that I want to build in this class. And as we played the game, I wanted you to note that there's many different ways in which you can approach this. And I want you to keep that in mind. We left the game for a while, we covered some of the class material, but we came back to play it later on in a tournament. A lot of the students were able to apply a lot of the content we had covered in a class to that particular game. So I thought that was useful. So that's one example. And the other example I'm reading about right now in theory, but I have not used it in practice yet. It's it's a concept called Matrix Games. Have you heard of those, Dale? Wyrmworks Publishing Sounds familiar? Dr. Dave Eng Okay, well, Matrix Games are originally deployed for a like military simulations and scenarios, but the entire premise I think, is unique here and that many of the games that we play are based…specifically tabletop games are based on some sort of like mathematical outcome or calculation, you know, have the most number of points, bringing the game to an end before this happens, etc. The entire premise of Matrix Games is instead of using points to determine the winner or loser, or you know, standing of a player during a game, can instead, can you use words? So that was the entire premise: can you use words instead of numbers to try to resolve the end of the game? And Matrix Games have been usually usually used again for military scenarios, but the whole premise is that individual actors will represent different like nation states during like a scenario this is when it's used in a military simulation. And then one, you know, party like say like attacking army or defending army will propose a particular course of action like they want to rally troops within their country. They want to invade a neighboring territory, they want to rally their own population, etc. And then it's up to all of the players in the game, not just the actor, the one that's taking the act of turn right now all of the players in the game, then hear the argument from the active player why this particular action would be even feasible or would it occur in the actual scenario, and people make pros and cons arguments. And if you have a really strong pro argument, and someone has a really strong or if you have a really strong pro argument, but there are three really strong con arguments against the action you want to take, well then when it actually comes to resolving whether or not this takes place, you're gonna roll some dice in this case, and the pros and the cons are act as modifiers. So you would have a plus one positive modifier and a negative three modifier to this action failing. And I think this is a really unique approach because you don't have to use this for military simulations. You can use this for any sort of simulation, but the crux of the argument here is really based on the fact that you're using words primarily as the way to resolve a particular game action rather than points, which I think is a really interesting and novel approach to this. Wyrmworks Publishing That's fantastic. I mean, just both of these examples. You Yeah, I think what so often, with high school, college courses and that, you have, you have like your final essay, you know, and so much of that is just for one, it's sort of, okay, well, really an essay is, is usually in my experience, at least just sort of regurgitating a handful of points and putting it together in a in a cohesive series of paragraphs and and but really, it comes down to make sure you hit all of the points that you're supposed to hit. And so it's just it's a recall exercise and, and any sort of application they use beyond that ends up being pretty theoretical. And, and so like, "Well, okay, that sounds good on paper. But, you know, how does that actually play out?" And, and so when you have any kind of a simulation where you're actually implementing it and playing it out, you're gonna learn a lot more about it, you're gonna have a chance to look at it. You know, at least in the simulated experience, how does it actually work and, and you get to take those memories with you. I have sat through a lot more hours of lectures than I have hours of of playing, say role-playing games. And I can tell you a lot more about the role-playing games that I've played than the lectures that I've sat through. Dr. Dave Eng Right. And it's because roleplaying games again, it's a game you need to, it's something that you have to actively participate in, whereas lectures, you can, you know, passively consume. It's like It's like consuming a lot of other media, like, you know, podcast or videos or anything else like that. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, that's, I just love it. And, you know, just, I have a lot of friends who are teachers, family members and things that have, you know, look for ways to, to use games, gamification, and all of that in their teaching and just found it to be incredibly effective. And, I mean, it just, even in teaching that I've done having the students act out a narrative, where even it's like, it's a written narrative. I'm just reading the story and each of you plays a role, you just act out whatever you hear, you know, and, and that they remember so much better. But even that is like it's active, but it's not interactive as much, because you're just you're still sort of following orders. And, and whereas with a game, you're also making decisions. So you really have to process this information in order to make a decision about what comes next or how do you respond to whatever it happens to be going on. Yeah. All right. Um, other other ways that you've seen this applied or, or ways other questions that people ask you… Dr. Dave Eng about using games for teaching and learning? Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, Dr. Dave Eng Really, Dale, you asked the, I think the some of the most common ones. So I'm glad that you know people are asking these questions how to use games for teaching and learning, but it's, it's worth it to start small and start with games that you're familiar with. And then try to connect it to what your your you ultimately want your learners to achieve. Wyrmworks Publishing Is there anything that you've discovered through your research or, or through applying your research that surprised you? Dr. Dave Eng I'd say that it is that not everyone has the same level of gaming literacy that you may expect. And it's because, like for me, I run in a lot of circles where we're different people playing a lot of different games over a course of time so that we're very familiar with the vernacular, how certain games work, specific mechanics, dynamics, etc. But other people, even if they do game a lot, maybe gaming on a different platform, you know, so console games, PC games, mobile games, or anything else like that. So they may have a very different interpretation for how games operate and how they function and how they should interact with it. And that's one of the things that surprised me is that there's a very, very wide variety of of game literacy out there from the very highly literate ones who have played many different games in many different formats and modalities that those that just exclusively focus on one type of game to those that really just haven't played any games at all. So I remember one particular time I had to explain like the actual mechanics behind Tic Tac Toe because the student had just never played Tic Tac Toe, and then realize that like on a grid that you know, once you make a mark in one of those nine spaces, that space is eliminated. And there's strategy involved in where you want to place your next mark. So I take a lot of those things for granted, because I've played a lot different games. I don't think other people should take that for granted either. Wyrmworks Publishing Wow, yeah, no, that's that's a really great point. All right. So you have just rescued a genie from the hands of an efreeti, and it offers you three wishes to achieve your goals to make the world better. What do you wish for? Dr. Dave Eng So this is a really interesting question. Now, I'm glad that you shared this with me ahead of time, because I had to come up with some a good response, but my first one would be I really wish everyone knew the difference between data, information, knowledge and wisdom. Because I feel like a lot of people conflate the fact that, you know, when we get good data, that's something that can be applied. If they have knowledge, it's immediate. It's something that is works in all different contexts, which is different from wisdom, which is a combination of data and information. And knowledge that is filtered through the bias of our own experiences and interactions and me as someone who works in all four of those different things at different times. kind of knows a difference in that you may have really good data but it has doesn't have a lot of context and you need to apply context to get information. But just because you have your you have information does not mean it's going to be incredibly useful. That can be knowledge. Just because you have knowledge does not mean you're going to be have a lot of wisdom in all circumstances. I think knowing the difference between those helps in a lot of different disciplines and avenues when it comes to just teaching writing, education and everything else like that. My second wish was I really hope everyone has access to one at least one like motivating experiential moment in their life. And like I said this at the top of the show, Dale, I think that all learning is the transformation of experience and knowledge. And I feel that when people have access to that type of experiential activity, I think you can really change their lives, and that's something that I wish for everyone. And then the last one, and this is something I do some speaking engagements, but I always try to close on the same note, which I think really embodies my philosophy about using applied games, and I tell people — I challenge them — I say that after you've attended this particular presentation today, I challenge you to play well, play together, play critically, and also play in peace with one another. Wyrmworks Publishing Yeah, that's great. And your first point it reminds me of when I was in sixth grade, and we're learning about the definition of technology. And I remember my teacher saying, it's tools and the knowledge how to use it. And and I thought about that and I thought, "There is no part of that definition that has the wisdom of how to use it." And, and especially just with the rate that technology is advancing nowadays, that it's really hard to keep up with, okay, what are wise uses of this technology? :ike the technology is not good or bad. It's just a tool, but you know, how can we use it in a way that's beneficial? And I think it's something that we really struggle with, you know, as a as a global culture, you know, nowadays, so yeah, absolutely. All right. So what what message would you like to give educators who are interested in using gaming? Dr. Dave Eng I talked a little bit about it before, but it's okay to start small. You don't need to try to gamify your entire course. You don't need to find one game that meets all your specific learning outcomes. So it's entirely okay to just gamify or apply a game for one particular module one particular week of your course. And start there; see how it works. Will students adapt to it? Will they like it? Will it specifically meet your outcomes? And then I guess it's related to that point, you don't really know what you want to apply unless you experience a lot of different games. So talking about gaming literacy, I would just say play a lot of different games. You know, like I've never gotten LARPing before, but if you have the opportunity to do so, I would do that, because I've never participated in that. I've played tabletop games, console games, mobile games, I played mega games, I've instituted a mega or coordinated a mega game before. I'd never participated in that. So I would just tell people, before you start applying games or teaching learning, start small, but also increase your gaming vocabulary and getting gaming literacy by playing many different types of games. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, so what one message would you like to give gamers who want to see more gaming opportunities in their school or community? Dr. Dave Eng So I would tell people to share your passion by inviting them to do what you do. I think that most of the successful initiatives I've seen with other educators using games is to take advantage of any already organized like club or organization that are playing games on a regular basis. If you if that doesn't exist, I recommend starting one. I also run a nonprofit called Banditos Gaming. We are a local tabletop gaming group that games for purpose. So we donate the majority of our revenue to other game-based nonprofits. And one of the things that we really focus on is that we will always have gaming on a regular basis. You always know where to find us on Wednesdays at a particular date at a particular time. And if you're going to get gaming momentum going in your community, I highly recommend that people just work on their momentum, which is just having a regular time and place for people to meet, play games connect and engage with each other. Wyrmworks Publishing Cool. Alright, so what projects are you working on, you can talk about? Dr. Dave Eng One particular book I'm working on, and I'm going into my second year right now since I started it is a book called 50 Games and 50 Lands. And my inspiration for it was to try to find games that did not that did not have a very popular following, mostly like tabletop games. And then just trying to do some research on them, actually go to the country that they originated from or currently has a current active player base, and kind of telling the story behind that game, because I feel like a lot of those games that have survived hundreds of years or sometimes millennia have a story about why they've persisted. So right now I'm conducting my research on many different games, hundreds of different games right now to see which will make it into the book, because I'm trying to cover those 50 different games, but it's more of a labor of love than anything else. And I'm going to just continue working on it incrementally for as long as it takes. Wyrmworks Publishing That sounds fantastic, really ties in nicely with what you were talking about before about new experiences and perspectives and things that you can learn from it. Dr. Dave Eng Right. Right. Wyrmworks Publishing Alright, and so we'll have all your contact information in our show notes. But where is the one best place that you'd like people to start to learn more about you or to contact you? Dr. Dave Eng Sure. good place to start is with My website is DavEngDesign.com. That's D A V E N G design dot com. Wyrmworks Publishing All right, so they think so much for coming on the show! Everyone, check out those links in the show notes. Dr. Dave Eng Great. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Wyrmworks Publishing Huge thanks to Dave for coming on the show and and for talking about his work and I'm so excited. I have so many friends and family members that are educators that are interested in new ways to bring to improve the way they teach and and to make their teaching more effective, more enjoyable, and all that, and I think there's so much potential here, and so I really appreciate Dave for coming on. Wyrmworks Publishing And you may notice that, if you're a longtime viewer, that we are expanding our coverage on the show into other forms of gaming, not just talking about roleplaying games. We're still mainly focused on roleplaying games, but you know, there's a lot of overlap, and I'll bet as you were listening to the interview, you may have thought, "Wow, a lot of these concepts of interaction, and, and things like that, they're gonna apply to any kind of game." And so I hope you recognize how easy it is to apply these concepts to roleplaying games even when we're talking about board games or some other kind of game Wyrmworks Publishing If you haven't figured out already, I like to dream big. Alright, but we're changing the world here, one throw of the dice after another. And while there is definitely a very critical voice inside my head trying to downplay this, I know for a fact that it's true. From one conversation after another with players, designers, publishers, and gaming marketplaces, we're making incremental steps to change the hobby as we know it to be more accessible and inclusive. And it's really hard not to get excited about that. And our patrons are on the front lines of this battle and making a huge difference. You patrons will be able to say, "Yeah, I was there. I was in the adventuring party that took down the Big Bad Ableist Guy that had plagued the tabletop roleplaying game hobby for 50 years." 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