Professional Tabletop Roleplaying Games for Kids
What is a roleplaying game?
All table sessions are essentially storytelling games that use dice rolls as a chance-based method of determining success or failure in the story. The better your character's skills are and the better the die roll, the better the chances of success.
The Story Guide is your lead storyteller who describes to you what your character sees and roleplays all the other, non-player, characters in the world. You can interact with these other characters and your surroundings just as you would in a rpg video game, but through speaking and improvising. Using a human Story Guide instead of a computer script allows for infinitely varied actions, outcomes, and possibilities.
Benefits of roleplaying Games
Social/Emotional
Build social skills and emotional resilience by roleplaying out complex situations.
Teamwork and holding space for others are a core part of the gameplay in "Isles of Mist" which is the roleplaying game system for Story Tables. Unlike video games, players gain experience points through teamwork and learning points.
By roleplaying a character youths can explore their identities by interacting with other children and making big decisions in a safe and structured environment.
Studies have shown evidence that fantasy roleplaying games increase empathy.
Problem solving
Find creative solutions using discussion, teamwork, logic, and imagination
Dice rolling is only one of the components of tabletop roleplaying games. The real core of a the game is decision making. Players must explore their world and learn to ask the right questions in order to make decisions.
Not every choice will be the right one, and that's okay! What better way to explore resiliency and problem solving than by making mistakes and learning from them?
Luckily, youths function as part of a team, and sometimes the right solution is to ask for help.
Literacy
Practice reading, writing, statistics and math
When you're a part of the story, it becomes much easier to recognise things such as plot structure and foreshadowing. Roleplaying games teach without one feeling like they are being taught. Roleplaying also helps youths develop emotional and media literacy through narrative. It develops habits like interviewing and the exploration of human motivations.
Not to mention addition and subtraction of stats and dice rolls! Even adult Story Guides come out of gaming better at adding and subtracting.
Scholarly Sources
Empathic Features and Absorption in Fantasy Role-Playing.
American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 58(3), 286–294.
Rivers, A., Wickramasekera, I. E., Pekala, R. J., & Rivers, J. A. (2015).
Imaginative Role-Playing as a Medium for Moral Development: Dungeons & Dragons Provides Moral Training. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 60(1), 99-129. (Original work published 2020)
Wright, J. C., Weissglass, D. E., & Casey, V. (2017).
Dungeons and Dragons as a Tool for Developing Student Self-reflection Skills. Games and Learning Alliance. GALA 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11385. Springer, Cham. Clarke, S., Arnab, S., Morini, L., Heywood, L. (2019). In: Gentile, M., Allegra, M., Söbke, H. (eds)
roleplaying Games and Therapy
While Story Tables is not currently being used as a therapeutic program, there are many psychologists and researchers who have found that playing roleplaying games can be an effective tool to treat mental health conditions. For more information, check the sources below!
Tabletop Role-playing therapy: A guide for the clinician game master
by Dr. Megan A. Connell
" Dr. Megan Connell has masterfully crafted on of the best books for anyone who wants to know about applied tabletop gaming. Her ability to easily explain the nuances and complexities into digestible nuggests is fantastic (and well-needed) for new and old Game Masters alike."
- Dr. Anthony Bean
Role-playing games in psychotherapy: A practitioner's guide
by Daniel Hand
Tabletop role-playing games, RPGs, have long been associated with various unique emotional, cognitive, and social benefits, but only recently has the term 'RPG Therapy' entered into the mental-health lexicon. This supportive guide explores every step of the implementation process, from underlying therapeutic principle to initial creative exercises, to actual in-session play, and encourages reader to have confidence in their own imaginative abilities.
Dungeons & Dragons: The Game that changed the world
Time Magazine Special Edition
Chapter: "Healing Words"
Time Magazine did an excellent retrospective of the cultural impact of Dungeons and Dragons. In the section titles "Healing Words," TIME interviews several therapists about using the roleplaying game in their approaches to mental health.
"Something mystical happens when you give yourself permission to play pretend. You must trust and be trusted with what feels like subjective foolishness."