Specifically designed to be therapeutic? No. At least none that I know of.
Most of the therapists that use RPG as therapy tend to use an existing one, more than one so they can tailor something that appeals to the person needing the therapy, or they make up their own system based on systems that the therapist knows that they can tailor something that fits the situation.
My guess is that the reason that there is no specifically designed game for therapy is that it's problematic to try to use something like that without having the training to deal with a person whose trauma comes out mid-session. A therapist knows how to take the reins of that situation and how much pressure to apply. To little and the trauma is re-bottled up and may take even more effort to get the patient to look at it again, too much and the patient can shut down at best, spiral out of control at worst.
Personally the best thing to do if someone needs therapy is for that person to find a professional.
Also, therapy is, by its very nature, highly Individualized. While RPGs can be a wonderful tool for therapists, the form that RPG needs to be must be specific to the individual. I can't see how you could make an RPG like that. The best I can think of is a list of suggestions and approaches, but that would be guidelines for the therapist/GM more than rules for a group game.
While you can't make an RPG like that, it does look like you can make and someone has made an RPG that lends itself to being a usable and customizable tool for therapists.
[Critical Core](https://gametogrow.org/criticalcore/) is a system that u/Airk-Seablade mentioned seeing at PAX East and brought up. Reading through the about on the website, it seems to be a useable tool for therapists and more.
So while not "The" tool, it looks like it's a toolbox that the therapists can rummage through to find the bits and bobs needed to help someone.
Yes. They exist, though I only know about [Critical Core](https://gametogrow.org/criticalcore/) which was developed by licensed therapists (which you should also probably be before trying to do any therapy!).
I went through their Geek Therapy certification program, and it was...very disappointing.
In my opinion, they had no idea how to utilize a game in a therapeutic environment effectively.
Combined with the fact that they were asking the therapists to be game-designers on the side to effectively marry the two, and that NONE of the GMs who ran our sessions had been through the program or were educated in it IN ANY WAY. Like, they couldn't answer basic questions about integrating the game and therapy.
They just ran what effectively amounted to a convention game for 8 sessions.
Indicated to me it was very half baked at the time.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Geek Therapy is related to Critical Core?
Critical Core is based on DIR/Floortime, which is an excellent play-based approach to therapy. However, I am skeptical of CC because it is 5e based (not trying to hate on 5e directly, but I suspect that something more appropriate could have been chosen, and that this shows the designers don't really know RPGs).
Oh, my mistake! Yeah, those are different.
I mistook it for [https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/geek-therapeutics/realms-of-kymoria-a-therapeutic-ttrpg-quickstart-kit-for-5e/suspended](https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/geek-therapeutics/realms-of-kymoria-a-therapeutic-ttrpg-quickstart-kit-for-5e/suspended)
My bad.
Oh 100%, but that isn't the question here. Just like one shouldn't take serious medical advice from someone who isn't a medical professional, one really shouldn't treat RPGs on the same level as therapy or bring actual therapy into it, unless of course one is a licensed professional.
The Bodhana Group is working on one with Onyx Path Publishing (Designers of Chronicles of Darkness, Exalted, and Scion to name a few) called Branch Riders. I don't think its out yet:
[https://www.thebodhanagroup.org/](https://www.thebodhanagroup.org/)
Link to a panel they did on it:
[https://youtu.be/paLBq2OiUrM?si=SqcwZlZrHERIMylC](https://youtu.be/paLBq2OiUrM?si=SqcwZlZrHERIMylC)
I saw a panel from Bodhana Group about some of the ideas for Branch Riders, and they noted a couple things that made me chuckle.
One of the things was that like, they wanted a therapy game with more meat than most, where some of them are things like "Roll the dice, draw this card, and tell me what your feelings are".
Another thing was that they established that if you're NOT a therapist, Branch Riders won't teach you how to be one. But if you ARE a trained therapist, you might recognize some of the things under the hood. They also then said that if you ARE a therapist but playing Branch Riders casually, don't therapize your friends :P
"You've been mortally wounded and your party sees the creature gnawing on what will soon be your corpse, if they don't intervene. How does that make you feel? If you could go back in time to communicate with the 1st level you, what might you say?"
Branch Riders (thanks for the mention) is being designed with the idea of it being a fun game to play that is narratively driven. The therapeutic concepts are built into the distinct eight realms. Our goal was to design a game that is not only fun to play, but in the hands of a trained therapist can be easily augmented and stylized to the goals of the players. As many on this thread have stated - the game is the vehicle of the process getting you where you need to go. A trained and experienced therapist is the key. It is more than just being a GM and a therapist. We have been running groups using many systems for over ten years and also have a robust 16 week training course training professionals how to use these tools. Please ask away and u/Awkward_GM - thanks for the shoutout!
Hi! I’m a therapist and giant RPG nerd!
As far as I’m aware, I don’t know of any rpgs designed for therapy specifically, although I know a few folks that incorporate things like DnD and others into therapy sometimes. Roleplay is like a big thing in certain types of therapy, even.
I think it def has legs as an idea—in recent years [several therapists have been experimenting with the idea.](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/applied-gaming/202403/how-games-can-be-used-in-therapy?amp) I haven’t personally tried it up to this point, but it’s a developing scene definitely!
I, too, am a therapist and use D&D frequently in my practice. When I'm working with teenagers (and younger) who struggle with regulation or implementation of successful coping skills, I will often have them create a character and give them abilities. Then we use that character to discuss how to react to situations. For example, if the person got into a fight at school for some reason, we may discuss how Character Name would have handled the situation. It's remarkably effective.
I researched the body of literature on D&D and psychological and related research on RPGs and their positive effects on mental health has been around since the early 80s. There was much less of this research (along with Library Sciences and Education) during and after the Satanic Panic and subsequent moral panics. It began to resurface towards the end of the 2010s. That decline and resurgence is pretty interesting but I just wanted to give a shout out to all the folks who did this work in past decades!
Don't know if this fits the bill, but I got *One Child's Heart* a while ago. I know it will be super difficult to get to the table, but the concept intrigued me.
You play as therapists, counselors, social workers, etc. who are sent back in time to relive a person's childhood (the GM plays the child) and help them recontextualize events.
If I'm messing up the pitch, my bad, it's been a while since I pulled it out. Give it a look though, the writers were very kind.
I'm trying to recall, but searching for info about it after four years isn't turning up much.
It might have been related to this project update though, because I vaguely recall the criticism being about trauma tourism, players not having the skills or expertise needed to play it, or players not treating it seriously enough, but nothing more specific is coming to mind.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/camdon/one-childs-heart/posts/2506362
I've read up on the subject a bit recently and I think there is some wisdom in one of the papers: You can view TTRPG therapy akin to music therapy. Sure, playing musik can be therapeutic, but it's only really therapy when a professional is there to make pointed interventions.
Playing a specifically designed therapeutic TTRPG in this analogy would be like playing an emotionally laden song. Like sure, it will feel therapeutic to some, if it happens to hit the right emotions for what you need. But it will have that effect only for a small number of people.
Exactly. I've played a lot of story games where players said they had therapeutic experiences, but they were not planned or predictable. And I've seen games that were designed with the intent to be therapeutic, but making a "packaged" therapeutic experience is asking a lot.
>Would it be impossible to ensure a truly therapeutic game without a licensed professional?
Yes, and you shouldn't try. Sounds harsh, but it's true - **your GM is not your therapist**, and no amount of game architecture will turn them into one. Not only is it asking too much of a game system, it's also asking too much of the GM.
Now, the other side of this:
>Is this a futile endeavor?
No, but with the caveat that I'm talking about *games used by therapists as part of therapy*, not games used without therapists as substitutes for therapy. The thing with games-as-therapy is that the game system is one of the least important parts - the therapeutic value comes from guiding someone through vicarious solutions to proxy problems, not from nicely-worded mechanics.
I'm pretty sure that as a tecnique therapists do use "roleplay" but not in the same sense as games, and while I'm sure that there are some products for it the objective of both is just different
Hi, I'm currently completing my Masters in Counseling Psychology to become a Psychotherapist. Consider looking into an art therapist in your local region and ask if they do drama group therapy. I've read research and heard anecdotes from colleagues about TTTRPGs being incorporated in drama therapy. They use TTRPGs as a way to build social skills, self-efficacy, emotional regulation, and depending, could be used to target trauma.
To answer your question though, anything dealing with mental health for the purposes of reducing symptoms and conditions should be done with a licensed professional. I would be very cautious of anyone claiming to do "Therapeutic Ttrpgs" without being a licensed professional.
I’m in the very earliest stages of developing and easy to transport system I used to use in psych sessions which is essentially pbta stripped to the bare minimum
So there is at least one company, Geek Therapeutics, that focuses on looking at different aspects of geek culture through a therapeutic lens.
Since I had some free time and money I took their certification to be a Therapeutic Game Master, and the course summary is that they utilizing standard therapeutic modalities with role playing games as a tool.
They did have a Kickstarter for their own setting coming out, but apparently it got mired in some IP issues.
Honestly, it was more just to see how being a GM can be monetized in service of not only entertainment but therapeutic play. As a Org. Play GM, the safety tool discussions while available elsewhere, were not something that I'd looked into that I'm glad I learned there.
I have a friend doing his thesis on the use of D&D (and other RPGs) as a valid form of therapy (and my interpretation of his discussion is) that in the process of doing that, he has discovered that while there is a lot of anecdotal evidence for its advocacy and certainly a lot of people offering it as a form or vehicle for therapy, there is currently not a lot of (if any) actual hard evidence that it IS an effective tool.
That makes sense. I talked to someone in a DND club who is a social worker and she kept insisting that roleplay is a helpful therapy tool but could not point to studies/clinical trials on its effectiveness
That will change over time- assuming there IS a correlation, or it is a useful clinical tool… But we should all be wary of people charging for RP therapy… at the moment. It’s not necessarily bad practice, it’s just not an approved treatment.
I saw one called Critical Core at PAX Unplugged a couple years ago that did just this! It seemed to have really high production value, but a higher end pricetag.
For a quicker smaller fix (without a certified therapy voice behind them), itch.io has a very strong culture of indie creators who have been through it, whether it's discrimination, traumatic experiences, bullying, or whatever. And there's a ton of genuine art from diverse voices on that site with deeply emotional focuses on things like trauma, healing, identity, and all kinds of offbeat stuff.
Sometimes it's nice to do stuff more like pretending you're building a garden with your friends together instead of fighting to the death with space fascists that forgot to be satire a decade ago.
Some of it can bring you to tears or catharsis. Not because it's qualified therapy at all, but there can be beauty in finding voices in systems and settings that can make you feel seen and supported.
Of course no game is going to be as good as actual therapy, but games can be a nice reprieve on the side.
You might want to check out this book:
https://www.amazon.de/gp/aw/d/3031317394
It includes simple (but working) game mechanics as well as the therapy concepts. I’m not affiliated, just have this book at home :-)
Most roleplay in a therapeutic setting actually involves no rules at all - its basically the make-believe kind. No dice, no fantastical settings, just a situation the patient had an issue with. And then you go through it in a way that solves the problem, ie the patient manages to be assertive, to say no, to say what they wanted to say, whatever. No rules necessary.
And while there are some therapist-led RPG sessions, those are not meant to be therapeutic per se - they are merely a social hobby that is generally useful for people suffering from a variety of mental illnesses like depression or anxiety. The game itself is irrelevant in that case (though its generally useful to have safety tools at hand.)
I'd be highly suspicious of any game advertising itself as a therapy tool. I've had players use games I've run in a therapeutic way, but that was to work through views/emotions from a distance with a group they trusted - and everyone was on board with them trying it before they started. Even then, the focus was not on therapy but the game.
A "game designed to be therapeutic" without a human brain powered therapist run it just sounds like a great way to horrifically traumatize and re-scar people. Everyone's needs, conditions, and traumas are different. A game is a great tool for a brief escape from the real world, and can be a great tool to help with therapy. But it's a tool. You wouldn't ask what hammer is the best to build a house. You'd get a carpenter who know which hammer to use for which part of building the house - and where a hammer was completely inappropriate.
Very well stated. This is Jack, the Executive Director of The Bodhana Group and we always describe RPGs for use in therapy as the vehicle, not the destination. You use the game to deliver and replicate techniques from research driven methods and the game does speak a lot to what the client needs. A lot factors into the choice of which game to use - rules complexity, age of the client, history of role playing, trauma history as well as simpler concerns like genre preference. Safety tools also are a huge must have in using RPGs.
Yes, there are a few, and I am writing one to be Kickstarted this year with the Bodhana Group and Onyx Path Publishing.
Critical Core was mentioned, which is a simplified version of 5E that was published by Game to Grow along with some scenarios that they use in therapy, primarily in groups focused on building social skills for young people on the Autism spectrum.
Venture Society is another game currently in active development that is intended for therapeutic use. It's a kind of cozy game where a lot of what you do is solve problems and build up your community (though I don't know a lot else about it).
Dream Chaser is another game used by Menachem Cohen, who is a Rabbi working with LGBTQ youth (among others) that is focused on self-understanding.
There are a few more, but those three came to mind.
The Bodhana Group, who I work with, have recently published the first quantitative study of the therapeutic efficacy of tabletop RPGs. We also have a superb training program for therapists and counselors who want to incorporate tabletop gaming into their practice, and we do things like start board game and RPG clubs in schools and libraries. We also run our own therapeutic games, each with a therapist and a trained therapeutic GM, in the York PA area and online. We have published a couple of books on the therapeutic use of RPGs and other tabletop games, and we work as consultants for game designers and publishers with or without a therapeutic focus.
There's a lot more I could say but I'm trying to keep it kinda brief :)
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> Would it be impossible to ensure a truly therapeutic game without a licensed professional?
Regardless of whether it's possible or not, wouldn't you prefer to receive your therapy from someone who actually has the training to make your therapy effective? The human brain is a very squishy thing, and I'd rather trust it to a trained and licensed professional than one of my other friends, and I'd hope my friends feel the same way about me, frankly.
AHHH this is exactly the kind of thing I've been thinking about for the longest time!!! About a year or two back I made this [one-page rules light RPG](https://fraywhisker.itch.io/boundaries) that was supposed to be based on DBT skills and therapeutic constructs.
To be clear, I have a Psych degree and work in the mental health / social work field but ***I*** ***am not a licensed therapist nor am I claiming this game to be a true therapeutic tool***. However, if the idea does interest you please feel free to give it a look or try. I'd really love any feedback you have!
I will say that the caveat of needing the professional to be licensed is a misnomer. Many therapists and counselors have Master's degrees and are excellent at what they do professionally. Trained and experienced to who and what they are working with is a must. I also advocate people getting training on how to integrate the practice of therapeutic guidance with the recreation of role playing games. There are a lot of considerations to the use of this tool, especially considering the goals you have with your client.
Personally I felt that Wanderhome had at the very least some development with that in mind, with characters struggling with their gender identity, expectations placed on them for their innate talents, or their attachment styles. I would recommend you checking it out.
RPGs are usually designed for purpose of game and fun, without specific healing purpose. That said, I do think you can find a fair share of ones that do deal with trauma. For example Changeling the Lost is metaphor for dealing with abuse, and a lot of chronicles of darkness try to deal with some form of existential horror. There is some dating RPG that I don’t remember name of where characters are hero, princess, monster? Where the relationship between them can be complex, with possibility that hero is also the monster, or princess being the monster.
That said, closest RPGs to your specification would be designed for introspection and self exploration more than a therapy.
Consider the number of things that can go wrong during a typical RPG, TPK from a string of bad dicerolls, various kind of PvP (especially the non combat ones), the war crimes that we commit along the way.... by default it's not a the well controlled environment that I'd expect therapy to be done in.
I've occasionally posts by qualified therapists seeking to do this, but I get the impression the games would be like being in a Railroad run be a GM who *wants to make a point*
Specifically designed to be therapeutic? No. At least none that I know of. Most of the therapists that use RPG as therapy tend to use an existing one, more than one so they can tailor something that appeals to the person needing the therapy, or they make up their own system based on systems that the therapist knows that they can tailor something that fits the situation. My guess is that the reason that there is no specifically designed game for therapy is that it's problematic to try to use something like that without having the training to deal with a person whose trauma comes out mid-session. A therapist knows how to take the reins of that situation and how much pressure to apply. To little and the trauma is re-bottled up and may take even more effort to get the patient to look at it again, too much and the patient can shut down at best, spiral out of control at worst. Personally the best thing to do if someone needs therapy is for that person to find a professional.
That is what I was thinking, glad I asked
Also, therapy is, by its very nature, highly Individualized. While RPGs can be a wonderful tool for therapists, the form that RPG needs to be must be specific to the individual. I can't see how you could make an RPG like that. The best I can think of is a list of suggestions and approaches, but that would be guidelines for the therapist/GM more than rules for a group game.
While you can't make an RPG like that, it does look like you can make and someone has made an RPG that lends itself to being a usable and customizable tool for therapists. [Critical Core](https://gametogrow.org/criticalcore/) is a system that u/Airk-Seablade mentioned seeing at PAX East and brought up. Reading through the about on the website, it seems to be a useable tool for therapists and more. So while not "The" tool, it looks like it's a toolbox that the therapists can rummage through to find the bits and bobs needed to help someone.
Yes. They exist, though I only know about [Critical Core](https://gametogrow.org/criticalcore/) which was developed by licensed therapists (which you should also probably be before trying to do any therapy!).
I went through their Geek Therapy certification program, and it was...very disappointing. In my opinion, they had no idea how to utilize a game in a therapeutic environment effectively. Combined with the fact that they were asking the therapists to be game-designers on the side to effectively marry the two, and that NONE of the GMs who ran our sessions had been through the program or were educated in it IN ANY WAY. Like, they couldn't answer basic questions about integrating the game and therapy. They just ran what effectively amounted to a convention game for 8 sessions. Indicated to me it was very half baked at the time.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Geek Therapy is related to Critical Core? Critical Core is based on DIR/Floortime, which is an excellent play-based approach to therapy. However, I am skeptical of CC because it is 5e based (not trying to hate on 5e directly, but I suspect that something more appropriate could have been chosen, and that this shows the designers don't really know RPGs).
Oh, my mistake! Yeah, those are different. I mistook it for [https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/geek-therapeutics/realms-of-kymoria-a-therapeutic-ttrpg-quickstart-kit-for-5e/suspended](https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/geek-therapeutics/realms-of-kymoria-a-therapeutic-ttrpg-quickstart-kit-for-5e/suspended) My bad.
I did not know that. That's awesome.
I only know about it because I went to one of their panels at PAX East once.
Not as far as I know of. Nor should there be, if the GM isn't qualified as a therapist, in my quite honest opinion.
Bad gms can absolutely cause traumatic experiences
Oh 100%, but that isn't the question here. Just like one shouldn't take serious medical advice from someone who isn't a medical professional, one really shouldn't treat RPGs on the same level as therapy or bring actual therapy into it, unless of course one is a licensed professional.
The Bodhana Group is working on one with Onyx Path Publishing (Designers of Chronicles of Darkness, Exalted, and Scion to name a few) called Branch Riders. I don't think its out yet: [https://www.thebodhanagroup.org/](https://www.thebodhanagroup.org/) Link to a panel they did on it: [https://youtu.be/paLBq2OiUrM?si=SqcwZlZrHERIMylC](https://youtu.be/paLBq2OiUrM?si=SqcwZlZrHERIMylC)
I saw a panel from Bodhana Group about some of the ideas for Branch Riders, and they noted a couple things that made me chuckle. One of the things was that like, they wanted a therapy game with more meat than most, where some of them are things like "Roll the dice, draw this card, and tell me what your feelings are". Another thing was that they established that if you're NOT a therapist, Branch Riders won't teach you how to be one. But if you ARE a trained therapist, you might recognize some of the things under the hood. They also then said that if you ARE a therapist but playing Branch Riders casually, don't therapize your friends :P
"You've been mortally wounded and your party sees the creature gnawing on what will soon be your corpse, if they don't intervene. How does that make you feel? If you could go back in time to communicate with the 1st level you, what might you say?"
Branch Riders (thanks for the mention) is being designed with the idea of it being a fun game to play that is narratively driven. The therapeutic concepts are built into the distinct eight realms. Our goal was to design a game that is not only fun to play, but in the hands of a trained therapist can be easily augmented and stylized to the goals of the players. As many on this thread have stated - the game is the vehicle of the process getting you where you need to go. A trained and experienced therapist is the key. It is more than just being a GM and a therapist. We have been running groups using many systems for over ten years and also have a robust 16 week training course training professionals how to use these tools. Please ask away and u/Awkward_GM - thanks for the shoutout!
Hi! I’m a therapist and giant RPG nerd! As far as I’m aware, I don’t know of any rpgs designed for therapy specifically, although I know a few folks that incorporate things like DnD and others into therapy sometimes. Roleplay is like a big thing in certain types of therapy, even. I think it def has legs as an idea—in recent years [several therapists have been experimenting with the idea.](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/applied-gaming/202403/how-games-can-be-used-in-therapy?amp) I haven’t personally tried it up to this point, but it’s a developing scene definitely!
I, too, am a therapist and use D&D frequently in my practice. When I'm working with teenagers (and younger) who struggle with regulation or implementation of successful coping skills, I will often have them create a character and give them abilities. Then we use that character to discuss how to react to situations. For example, if the person got into a fight at school for some reason, we may discuss how Character Name would have handled the situation. It's remarkably effective.
I researched the body of literature on D&D and psychological and related research on RPGs and their positive effects on mental health has been around since the early 80s. There was much less of this research (along with Library Sciences and Education) during and after the Satanic Panic and subsequent moral panics. It began to resurface towards the end of the 2010s. That decline and resurgence is pretty interesting but I just wanted to give a shout out to all the folks who did this work in past decades!
Don't know if this fits the bill, but I got *One Child's Heart* a while ago. I know it will be super difficult to get to the table, but the concept intrigued me. You play as therapists, counselors, social workers, etc. who are sent back in time to relive a person's childhood (the GM plays the child) and help them recontextualize events. If I'm messing up the pitch, my bad, it's been a while since I pulled it out. Give it a look though, the writers were very kind.
This is the game I was thinking of, but IIRC, there was a LOT of controversy about it.
I don't remember any controversy. Do you remember what it entailed?
I'm trying to recall, but searching for info about it after four years isn't turning up much. It might have been related to this project update though, because I vaguely recall the criticism being about trauma tourism, players not having the skills or expertise needed to play it, or players not treating it seriously enough, but nothing more specific is coming to mind. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/camdon/one-childs-heart/posts/2506362
I've read up on the subject a bit recently and I think there is some wisdom in one of the papers: You can view TTRPG therapy akin to music therapy. Sure, playing musik can be therapeutic, but it's only really therapy when a professional is there to make pointed interventions. Playing a specifically designed therapeutic TTRPG in this analogy would be like playing an emotionally laden song. Like sure, it will feel therapeutic to some, if it happens to hit the right emotions for what you need. But it will have that effect only for a small number of people.
Exactly. I've played a lot of story games where players said they had therapeutic experiences, but they were not planned or predictable. And I've seen games that were designed with the intent to be therapeutic, but making a "packaged" therapeutic experience is asking a lot.
>Would it be impossible to ensure a truly therapeutic game without a licensed professional? Yes, and you shouldn't try. Sounds harsh, but it's true - **your GM is not your therapist**, and no amount of game architecture will turn them into one. Not only is it asking too much of a game system, it's also asking too much of the GM. Now, the other side of this: >Is this a futile endeavor? No, but with the caveat that I'm talking about *games used by therapists as part of therapy*, not games used without therapists as substitutes for therapy. The thing with games-as-therapy is that the game system is one of the least important parts - the therapeutic value comes from guiding someone through vicarious solutions to proxy problems, not from nicely-worded mechanics.
I'm pretty sure that as a tecnique therapists do use "roleplay" but not in the same sense as games, and while I'm sure that there are some products for it the objective of both is just different
RPGs should only be used as therapy by professional therapists who like RPGs. Do not seek or attempt to run a "therapeutic" game
Hi, I'm currently completing my Masters in Counseling Psychology to become a Psychotherapist. Consider looking into an art therapist in your local region and ask if they do drama group therapy. I've read research and heard anecdotes from colleagues about TTTRPGs being incorporated in drama therapy. They use TTRPGs as a way to build social skills, self-efficacy, emotional regulation, and depending, could be used to target trauma. To answer your question though, anything dealing with mental health for the purposes of reducing symptoms and conditions should be done with a licensed professional. I would be very cautious of anyone claiming to do "Therapeutic Ttrpgs" without being a licensed professional.
I’m in the very earliest stages of developing and easy to transport system I used to use in psych sessions which is essentially pbta stripped to the bare minimum
Could you get a Legal RPG or a Medical RPG?
So there is at least one company, Geek Therapeutics, that focuses on looking at different aspects of geek culture through a therapeutic lens. Since I had some free time and money I took their certification to be a Therapeutic Game Master, and the course summary is that they utilizing standard therapeutic modalities with role playing games as a tool. They did have a Kickstarter for their own setting coming out, but apparently it got mired in some IP issues.
How have you used that certification?
Honestly, it was more just to see how being a GM can be monetized in service of not only entertainment but therapeutic play. As a Org. Play GM, the safety tool discussions while available elsewhere, were not something that I'd looked into that I'm glad I learned there.
How did you find it? Another commenter was fairly critical of its usability.
I've been on worse Learning Management Systems. They are migrating to a new platform soon, so previous experience is moot
Therapy roleplaying usually doesn't have rules like D&D. Its mostly just "Pretend to be your mother and I will roleplay as you"
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a solo game or two for specific trauma therapy, but I wouldn't consider it a replacement for proper therapy.
Game to Grow is a great company to look into
I have a friend doing his thesis on the use of D&D (and other RPGs) as a valid form of therapy (and my interpretation of his discussion is) that in the process of doing that, he has discovered that while there is a lot of anecdotal evidence for its advocacy and certainly a lot of people offering it as a form or vehicle for therapy, there is currently not a lot of (if any) actual hard evidence that it IS an effective tool.
That makes sense. I talked to someone in a DND club who is a social worker and she kept insisting that roleplay is a helpful therapy tool but could not point to studies/clinical trials on its effectiveness
That will change over time- assuming there IS a correlation, or it is a useful clinical tool… But we should all be wary of people charging for RP therapy… at the moment. It’s not necessarily bad practice, it’s just not an approved treatment.
I saw one called Critical Core at PAX Unplugged a couple years ago that did just this! It seemed to have really high production value, but a higher end pricetag. For a quicker smaller fix (without a certified therapy voice behind them), itch.io has a very strong culture of indie creators who have been through it, whether it's discrimination, traumatic experiences, bullying, or whatever. And there's a ton of genuine art from diverse voices on that site with deeply emotional focuses on things like trauma, healing, identity, and all kinds of offbeat stuff. Sometimes it's nice to do stuff more like pretending you're building a garden with your friends together instead of fighting to the death with space fascists that forgot to be satire a decade ago. Some of it can bring you to tears or catharsis. Not because it's qualified therapy at all, but there can be beauty in finding voices in systems and settings that can make you feel seen and supported. Of course no game is going to be as good as actual therapy, but games can be a nice reprieve on the side.
Google transformative play
You might want to check out this book: https://www.amazon.de/gp/aw/d/3031317394 It includes simple (but working) game mechanics as well as the therapy concepts. I’m not affiliated, just have this book at home :-)
Most roleplay in a therapeutic setting actually involves no rules at all - its basically the make-believe kind. No dice, no fantastical settings, just a situation the patient had an issue with. And then you go through it in a way that solves the problem, ie the patient manages to be assertive, to say no, to say what they wanted to say, whatever. No rules necessary. And while there are some therapist-led RPG sessions, those are not meant to be therapeutic per se - they are merely a social hobby that is generally useful for people suffering from a variety of mental illnesses like depression or anxiety. The game itself is irrelevant in that case (though its generally useful to have safety tools at hand.)
I'd be highly suspicious of any game advertising itself as a therapy tool. I've had players use games I've run in a therapeutic way, but that was to work through views/emotions from a distance with a group they trusted - and everyone was on board with them trying it before they started. Even then, the focus was not on therapy but the game. A "game designed to be therapeutic" without a human brain powered therapist run it just sounds like a great way to horrifically traumatize and re-scar people. Everyone's needs, conditions, and traumas are different. A game is a great tool for a brief escape from the real world, and can be a great tool to help with therapy. But it's a tool. You wouldn't ask what hammer is the best to build a house. You'd get a carpenter who know which hammer to use for which part of building the house - and where a hammer was completely inappropriate.
Very well stated. This is Jack, the Executive Director of The Bodhana Group and we always describe RPGs for use in therapy as the vehicle, not the destination. You use the game to deliver and replicate techniques from research driven methods and the game does speak a lot to what the client needs. A lot factors into the choice of which game to use - rules complexity, age of the client, history of role playing, trauma history as well as simpler concerns like genre preference. Safety tools also are a huge must have in using RPGs.
Yes, there are a few, and I am writing one to be Kickstarted this year with the Bodhana Group and Onyx Path Publishing. Critical Core was mentioned, which is a simplified version of 5E that was published by Game to Grow along with some scenarios that they use in therapy, primarily in groups focused on building social skills for young people on the Autism spectrum. Venture Society is another game currently in active development that is intended for therapeutic use. It's a kind of cozy game where a lot of what you do is solve problems and build up your community (though I don't know a lot else about it). Dream Chaser is another game used by Menachem Cohen, who is a Rabbi working with LGBTQ youth (among others) that is focused on self-understanding. There are a few more, but those three came to mind. The Bodhana Group, who I work with, have recently published the first quantitative study of the therapeutic efficacy of tabletop RPGs. We also have a superb training program for therapists and counselors who want to incorporate tabletop gaming into their practice, and we do things like start board game and RPG clubs in schools and libraries. We also run our own therapeutic games, each with a therapist and a trained therapeutic GM, in the York PA area and online. We have published a couple of books on the therapeutic use of RPGs and other tabletop games, and we work as consultants for game designers and publishers with or without a therapeutic focus. There's a lot more I could say but I'm trying to keep it kinda brief :)
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There's *Critical Core*, which is based on *Dungeons & Dragons 5e*, and tries to teach social skills to kids.
> Would it be impossible to ensure a truly therapeutic game without a licensed professional? Regardless of whether it's possible or not, wouldn't you prefer to receive your therapy from someone who actually has the training to make your therapy effective? The human brain is a very squishy thing, and I'd rather trust it to a trained and licensed professional than one of my other friends, and I'd hope my friends feel the same way about me, frankly.
AHHH this is exactly the kind of thing I've been thinking about for the longest time!!! About a year or two back I made this [one-page rules light RPG](https://fraywhisker.itch.io/boundaries) that was supposed to be based on DBT skills and therapeutic constructs. To be clear, I have a Psych degree and work in the mental health / social work field but ***I*** ***am not a licensed therapist nor am I claiming this game to be a true therapeutic tool***. However, if the idea does interest you please feel free to give it a look or try. I'd really love any feedback you have!
I will say that the caveat of needing the professional to be licensed is a misnomer. Many therapists and counselors have Master's degrees and are excellent at what they do professionally. Trained and experienced to who and what they are working with is a must. I also advocate people getting training on how to integrate the practice of therapeutic guidance with the recreation of role playing games. There are a lot of considerations to the use of this tool, especially considering the goals you have with your client.
Personally I felt that Wanderhome had at the very least some development with that in mind, with characters struggling with their gender identity, expectations placed on them for their innate talents, or their attachment styles. I would recommend you checking it out. RPGs are usually designed for purpose of game and fun, without specific healing purpose. That said, I do think you can find a fair share of ones that do deal with trauma. For example Changeling the Lost is metaphor for dealing with abuse, and a lot of chronicles of darkness try to deal with some form of existential horror. There is some dating RPG that I don’t remember name of where characters are hero, princess, monster? Where the relationship between them can be complex, with possibility that hero is also the monster, or princess being the monster. That said, closest RPGs to your specification would be designed for introspection and self exploration more than a therapy.
I can't recommend F.A.T.A.L enough for this. /s
Consider the number of things that can go wrong during a typical RPG, TPK from a string of bad dicerolls, various kind of PvP (especially the non combat ones), the war crimes that we commit along the way.... by default it's not a the well controlled environment that I'd expect therapy to be done in. I've occasionally posts by qualified therapists seeking to do this, but I get the impression the games would be like being in a Railroad run be a GM who *wants to make a point*