Wonderful news, I just received an email today confirming they wish for me to proceed with writing the entire chapter on using role-playing games as a facilitation technique for therapeutic recreation!
Late last night I returned home from speaking at the 2016 Pacific Northwest American Therapeutic Recreation Association conference...
A few months ago I tried out a number of computer-based RPGs. I've dabbled with different ones over the decades and always felt they were flat, 2-dimensional, boring, hack-n-slash and quickly uninteresting. I thought I would get a more up to date view of the most popular ones. Here are some of my initial experiences. I plan to spend more time over coming months digging deeper of course...
This is an excerpt from the RPG Handbook of Practice book I have been working on. This section is for clients with significant to complete visual impairment due to traumatic brain injury to the occipital lobe. It can be extrapolated for the whole range of visual impairments. The client wants to participate in a non-therapy-setting leisure activity of tabletop role-playing gaming. The Recreation Therapist will need to evaluate and write up the potential challenges and modifications that may be necessary for the client to participate in this activity with as little difficulty as possible....
Here is a summary of many observations I have made through various experiments in trying to optimize the RPG experience. These are based both on observations (most of which include thousands of hours of recorded RPG sessions), verbal feedback, and formal assessment forms from participants. Scores of variables were taken into consideration and repeatedly tweaked to try to find some level of causal changes, but at this stage are probably only at best correlative, in the enjoyment levels of participants. There are plenty of potential confounds here, and so every statement should have that taken into consideration that these should be further researched with more rigorous techniques. However, implementation of these observations does seem to have lead to consistently higher assessment & observation scores. I hope others find this useful for trying to optimize your own RPG setting. This was a non-therapeutic and non-educational setting, it was only for standard leisure activity of tabletop role-playing games.
This sample was taken at The Gamers' Haven in Spokane Valley, Washington. I will be adding the results to this page as I work out the calculations. Here is some initial data (I will be updating this specific page), I will comment on this page when it is updated....
Now that the 73rd WorldCon / Sasquan is over, the data entry from phase 2 of the surveys of gaming / gamers begins. This project originally began in 2013...
Is it nearly June, and here is a quick overview of what is already scheduled for this summer...
The RPG Therapeutics LLC website has updated the section of the site listing training options for "Introduction to RPG Training Series", "Role-Playing Game Advocate", "RPG Facilitator", "Game Master in Education", and "Game Master in Therapy" and "Introduction" series of training and certification programs.
In the past 10 years I have been receiving increasingly frequent inquiries about using RPGs in therapeutic settings for older adults. Here is a summary of information to help you get started with this population...
I originally started with a trial, and then purchased the retail versions. Now my keys are scattered across two accounts under one email address, and the website self help I was unable to find directions to make this work, and the normal "merge" function won't allow it to merge. So I have had to contact Blizzard's tech support.
Founder of RPG Therapeutics LLC, W. A. Hawkes-Robinson, will be presenting at the 16th Annual Washington State Therapeutic Recreation Association - WSTRA Conference, Saturday, April 11th.
I first tried out WoW out near the beginning of the year (2011), spent a couple hours, then moved on to the other MMORPGs I am studying, spending about 1-2 hours each. Now I am going to spend about a month or so on each game to get a more in depth understanding of each, beginning with the market share giant, World of Warcraft. So far, my initial impressions are not very favorable....
I am in the middle of finals right now, but will be looking into trying to test out Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) TRPG & LARP using a combination of items...
Colleen Lachowicz, Democrat for Maine state senate, won despite attacks claiming concern over her "fitness for office" due to her online "disturbing alter ego". These attacks from her opposition were targeting her online gaming in World of Warcraft...
I did not play DDO for several months. The characters that I had advanced some levels are now all completely gone (free account). Irritating.
According to reports from vendors, sales of Video Games were actually down 8% during the first 7 months of 2010, while Hobby games, including Role Playing Games, sales were all up across the board...
It has been a VERY busy 10 months. we have spoken at many conventions/conferences, sat on panels, provided presentations, been in live Q&A chat session, and had many interviews. All about the effects of role-playing games, and their use to achieve therapeutic and educational goals for many different populations. Here is a listing of all these in one location for your convenience...
As Mike Rugnetta, host of the PBS Idea Channel, said to the writers of Big Bang Theory, that keep perpetuating all the negative stereotypes about role-playing gamers, "Knock it off." A challenge to writers to try something different.
