← ABA Inside Track
Loading summary
Transcript256 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:14]
B
Hey, Everybody. Welcome to ABA InsideTrack, the podcast that's like reading in your car but safer. I'm your host, Robert Perry Crews, and with me, as always, are my fabulous co hosts.
- [00:24]
A
Hi, Rob. It's me, Jackie McDowell.
- [00:29]
B
What a high.
- [00:30]
C
And hello, it's me, Diana Perry Cruz, joining you from the game room here in our house, which usually we call the recording studio, but just so everybody knows, it does double as our game room.
- [00:43]
B
It's got, let's name some games. It's got Everdell. It's got the Jaws board game.
- [00:48]
C
It's got Wingspan. It's got Catan.
- [00:51]
B
Yep.
- [00:52]
C
It's got a lot of games in here.
- [00:53]
B
It is, too. Got parks, two rock band guitars, but they're in a guitar stand so they look real fancy. And then behind us, we have shelves of role playing game products.
- [01:04]
C
Yep.
- [01:04]
B
And I'm going to write them off on my taxes because this is our podcast about behavior analysis and behavior analytic research where every week we pick a topic and you know what? It's tax time. I got to write these things off. They're real expensive. So, I don't know, you guys want to talk about tabletop role playing games and behavior analysis or something, all of.
- [01:23]
C
A sudden this is an ethics episode.
- [01:28]
B
Jk, I didn't really write these off my taxes because I bought them too long ago. But yes, it is February when this is coming out, my birthday month. And one of the topics I was very interested in learning more about was the intersection of behavior analysis and social skilled training with role playing games, which seems to be gaining in popularity. However, is it a well researched design methodology? Well, well, let's talk about it. And because it's not something that Jackie really cares about because she doesn't like games and it's something Diana is only tangentially willing to play, I thought, all right, I gotta bring in a ringer. So fortunately, we have Danielle Yang, who has been doing work in tabletop role playing, game and behavior analysis for quite some time now. And I was very fortunate to get an email from her and her company. And I said, wow, I hope we can talk about this someday. And that is today. So, Danielle, thank you so much for coming on today's show and helping me with my tax problems. I appreciate it.
- [02:30]
D
Thanks for the invite. I'm super honored to be here. Don't put me on record as helping you with your tax problems. That's your ethical problem.
- [02:37]
B
You can co sign on them. Co sign on these taxes quick.
- [02:42]
D
But I'm so honored to be here. Thanks for the invite.
- [02:45]
B
Oh, well, it's. It was very funny because Brian Middleton of the Bearded Behaviorist had been reaching out and said, hey, is anyone interested in doing this training through Geek Therapeutics? There's a lot of websites and a lot of, like, companies that are sort of doing this work with how do we get role playing games into either education or into therapeutic environments or into social skills? And it's sort of been one of those things that it's. It's been, you know, many years that people have sort of thought about this idea and have, you know, know, sort of used it in practice. But the research base, while there are research articles on RPGs going back Daniel to like the 80s or mid-80s, not. Not exactly on this, on this use of them. And when he reached out, I said, I would love to do more with this. This seems cool. It's nice to do with another group of behavior analysts. It was a fun class. And then right after we were done, I got like, I said, Danielle and. And Danielle's company had emailed about a similar offering for behavior analysts. I said, damn it, I wish I'd waited eight weeks to do this and I could have done this one taught by a behavior analyst. Our class was very good, but, you know, it's not a behavior analytic class directly or anything. So in any case, we've been able to sort of talk about RPGs, talk about the research. Danielle, I. I emailed her immediately, said, what research is there? And she sent me just like this huge list. It was my summer vacation project this past summer, Danielle, to read everything you sent me that I could get online.
- [04:05]
A
That was really the best, most comprehensive email I have ever seen someone send someone else. It was like, can I have a few articles? You're like, sure.
- [04:14]
B
So it was great. It was so great on record.
- [04:18]
D
I'm proud of that.
- [04:20]
B
When it came time to say, let's talk about this, let's talk about the research, it felt like, well, I mean, I'm gonna ask Danielle, who's been doing this for some time, so can give us some firsthand experience as to how role playing games can be used in sessions. And you sent us the whole list of things. It seemed like it'd be rude to not ask you to talk about them, especially because you have like, summaries and everything. So we're very excited to talk about a couple of those articles today, as well as to have Danielle share a little bit more about what role playing games could look like and how they could be used in a clinical setting. So, Daniel, why don't we start with three? Only three. There's so many more. We'll give you Danielle's email address if you would also like to get a giant list of articles too. I don't know if she wants to send it to everybody, but maybe.
- [05:03]
D
Oh, I will.
- [05:06]
B
What are you talking about today, Diana?
- [05:08]
C
Okay, so we have three. Can I pull this over a little?
- [05:11]
B
Yeah, I can move my chair too.
- [05:15]
D
Closer.
- [05:16]
A
Closer.
- [05:19]
C
Okay, so we have three articles to talk about today. They include a scoping review of Tabletop role playing game TTRPG as Psychological Intervention, Potential Benefits in Future Directions by Yuliawadi, Wadani and Eng. And that was published in Psychology Research and Behavior Management 2024. Also, therapeutic use of role playing game RPG in mental health, a scoping review by Aranas, Vidhuany and Araho. And that was in simulation and gaming 2022. And then we have an unpublished dissertation that's pretty often referenced in this arena. It's Evaluation of a Role Playing Game to Improve Social Skills for individuals with ASD. That was by Helbig and I. 2019 was when it was unpublished. Okay, there we go.
- [06:13]
B
When it was created. Yeah, put into typeface. All right, so, Danielle, why don't we start, if you don't mind telling us a little bit about yourself, how you became Interested in using RPGs in your clinical work.
- [06:25]
D
Yeah, well, I'm. I'm a private practice BCBA and how TTRPGs have been a recreational interest forever. I grew up playing them and never stopped. I have several games going my whole life. It. It became a professional thing eight years ago when I had a client who wanted to make friends and were working while we were trying to work on social skills and just nothing was. We weren't going anywhere. And he took me to a game store every session. He wanted to hang out at this game store, but he didn't feel confident talking to the people there and not even really with me. But one day he just makes this offhand comment that, you know, I wish I knew how to play Dungeons and Dragons, which is the most popular TTRPG that I play. So he's like, I wish I knew how to play that. And I'm like, oh, why not? I can teach you. Maybe it'll give us something to talk about, you know? And it blew me away that rather than just giving us something to talk about, playing this game together completely turned our sessions around. And having that structure of the game provided just the antecedent arrangement that he needed to start to have Some reciprocal interactions with me, practice some of those skills. We were able to add another player and practice with them and kind of move on from there. But that planted the seed. And then I just kept having experiences to try this out and see how I can shape an imaginary environment to meet the client. Where they're at has been really fun. I've used it in different ways in different settings, and it's become this versatile tool in my tool belt.
- [08:10]
B
Excellent.
- [08:10]
A
I can say that I hate games, I can say that I don't love them, but I can imagine how useful it is. Right. I have played some role playing games and I can imagine how useful it is teaching those specific skills. Right. Cause it's very safe. It's a safe place. Right. And you're having fun. You're not like, oh, we're working.
- [08:28]
C
And I love youthful or youthful useful, useful. It's probably both.
- [08:36]
B
Well, anyone can play. If you've been to an RPG convention, there's a lot of old people there too, you know.
- [08:41]
A
Yeah, but I can imagine, yeah, but I can imagine it's very useful. Right. And I, I, I love the idea of it. Although I don't love playing games, I love the idea that that could be very helpful, right. In setting up situations where you could really target specific skills and something that someone loves to do. Right. You said that they really wanted to play D and wow, what a better way to, you know. Well, there isn't a better way to use motivating operations than something that someone already wants to do, right?
- [09:12]
C
Absolutely.
- [09:13]
D
Yeah. That's a huge benefit of it is the social validity piece. You know, clients tend to love it and parents tend to love it, at least if they're the ones that are wanting to do it.
- [09:23]
B
So, Danielle, for folks, you know, the listeners are probably pretty familiar with, you know, RPGs, because this isn't like 1979 where people might not have known what an RPG is. However, I do think there are a lot of distinctions and even in some of our scoping reviews that, you know, we were sort of looking at, we'll be discussing and pulling a little bit from in this discussion, there are distinctions between types of role playing games. We'll talk a little bit about role playing games versus something like, say, gamification. Right. So these, these aren't all, you know, the same term. Would you mind kind of doing a quick ttrpg, you know, definition for folks who sort of just hear, oh, you mean Dungeons and Dragons, as if, like that now explains the whole thing, Right?
- [10:05]
D
Yeah, I'll give You my definition from my head, there's a whole bunch and a whole bunch of different articles. People are trying to define them. But what, what I would say is the. An RPG is some game where you're playing as a character in some sort of fictional, usually fantasy setting and you and the other players pretend together and collaboratively tell a story. The TT part when it's a TTRPG is added when there's some tabletop gamification elements, so some rules and dice tokens, something like that. That gives it a little more structure and sets up some engaging contingencies. And the cool part about, for us as clinicians and educators is for most TTRPGs, the players usually control one character and then there's a game master. And I usually just say gm. So you'll hear that GM or dungeon master DM for Dungeons and Dragons. And the game master controls the environment, which you know, the antecedents and the consequences and everything that's happening before and after the character's actions, which you can imagine gives clinicians some power to put in just the right stimulus, prompt or saliency or just whatever that client needs just, just with their languaging as we collaboratively tell this story together and act out the story together.
- [11:31]
B
Nice. And so when we talk about something like Dungeons and Dragons, that's the most popular because it is the originator of the role playing game as we know it today. And really the difference, I think folks might be like, well, is everything a Dungeons and Dragons? It really comes down to what is the content, what's the fantasy world, as well as some of the differences in, in the rules. Like, I know Danielle, you're you like a lot of the rules when there's like a lot of good rules, like they call it crunchy for folks having the crunchy rules, like lots of little rules, Like, I know you showed me that system called Draw Steel, which had a lot of little extra rules for combat, you know, which. Which could be very cool, but doesn't have to be that way. What would you say are sort of like the breadth of RPG systems out there that either you've seen in the papers or you've used with clients when you've been looking for Systems for using RPGs in clinical work?
- [12:19]
D
I mean, the breadth of RPG systems out there is huge. The breadth of RPG systems used clinically is primarily Dungeons and Dragons because it's most popular. I would not say it's the most inherently set up to be used clinically. There are, like you said, simpler, not as crunchy games that could be better for that. There's also a lot of unpublished dissertations of people creating games specifically for a therapeutic setting. There's a few other. There's a few things out there in the research and that people have done. But Dungeons and Dragons does tend to still be the most popular clinically too, just because of the popularity it has.
- [13:03]
B
That's true, but other systems I know, like, for me, I'm much bigger fan of RPGs that have more rules, light systems. And the focus more is on the collaboration and the storytelling, the, the inhabiting the character that you play to solve puzzles and, and do problem solving. And you know, I always play a character. I don't care if I'm the barbarian who's supposed to not know very many syllabic words. I always end up being like, let me try to talk my way out of this problem. I don't want to use my axe to kill anything. Which, which can be nice in, in the RPG framework, though I suppose could be a little bit limiting with clinical work. You do have to railroad things a little bit just in order to focus.
- [13:39]
C
Violence is not the answer.
- [13:41]
B
Let's kill everything. Oh, well, now we're not friends. No friend skills.
- [13:45]
D
Dungeons and Dragons is, it's, it's made for. It's a monster killing game. Like the rules are for slaying monsters, which is, it makes it so when people do use it clinically, if you're not doing a lot of combat, the rules are actually pretty rules light for not combat things, but the game is structured for combat, which is.
- [14:06]
C
I don't know.
- [14:07]
D
I was going with that.
- [14:09]
A
I did not know that actually. No. Because anytime I ever talk to anyone that plays, did they always tell me about the journey that they're taking?
- [14:20]
D
Right.
- [14:21]
A
They're like, and we walked this far.
- [14:22]
C
Yeah.
- [14:23]
A
These people. And it's never about. And I said, this monster, it's always like. And we did all of these things.
- [14:30]
D
You look at the rules, these are the things you can do and they're all combat related. But I think our culture now is we want to tell stories and we want to tell meaningful stories. And that's the system that's still popular and that's the culture and we're putting those together. Even though there are systems that are more story focused. I'm on a quest to find my new favorite system for not combat focused.
- [14:54]
C
Well, I was just going to ask, are there other, other games that y' all like to play or would recommend?
- [15:02]
D
I, I personally am on that quest still. I Liked Rob's Bison system. I thought that was fun. The Dungeons and Dragons that I use clinically is a very simplified version of which for me, it gives them a little bit of a behavioral cusp of. You've learned some of the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. You can now go to any game store and have a community. But we're not teaching clients all those crunchy rules just to get to our behavioral role play.
- [15:31]
B
Yeah, a lot of times I know when doing the coursework, and then even if you look at a lot of the game master kind of guidebooks, there's a real kind of breakdown in terms of when you're playing. There's certain rules, you're rolling dice, when the outcome is potentially in chance. Maybe you will, maybe you won't jump across the pit or hit the dragon with your sword, and then you break down the adventure into either sort of like different encounters, which could be combat, which a lot of people like, but therapeutically, not always the greatest use of time. There's the sort of exploring part of it, and then there's sort of the interaction part of it, and you can sort of mix and match them all. Like, you could go into a dungeon and fight stuff or not fight the stuff. You know, maybe you want to talk to the goblins that you just met rather than just immediately kill them. Though, again, I think historically, it's usually just kill everything. So sometimes new players do think, like, well, there's a thing that doesn't look like me, better murder it. Which, again, maybe that's the goal of your session. Like, you know what? You don't have to attack the first person you see. It's okay.
- [16:37]
D
And then do some debriefing and rule formation for their real life.
- [16:43]
B
So. So in terms of systems, there's lots of great systems. Hopefully nobody out there thinks that Dungeons and Dragons is still tied into Satanic panic stuff from the. The early 80s, or Tom Hanks climbing in the sewers or whatever he did in that movie he was in way back when. So it's. But it's very popular. It's popular online. People like watching people play Dungeons and Dragons. I think, Daniel, the experience you described with your client of I'd love to do this does feel more and more like something you'd hear, as opposed to, like, when I wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons and it was, does anybody want to? And the answer was no, or you're a loser. You know, like, they weren't. It wasn't as nice. Wasn't as nice a response. Much more Popular.
- [17:21]
D
Almost anybody. Almost anybody now who sees that I play this, you know, they see the books or they hear me talk about it, immediately ask me to teach them. Like, nowadays, everybody wants to learn, which is fun.
- [17:32]
C
Is that because of Stranger Things?
- [17:34]
D
Yeah, I think so. Stranger Things and critical Role. Just jot it up.
- [17:37]
C
Yeah, Yeah.
- [17:39]
A
I still don't want to. I'll never ask you, Danielle, but have.
- [17:43]
D
You seen my books?
- [17:44]
A
Jackie, I have seen your books, and I probably have those books in my house as well. And I will never ask you, nor will I ask Rob.
- [17:52]
B
Oh, you sure? I was gonna see. I was gonna write off the books, then I was gonna give them to you to write them off again on my taxes as a gift. You see a double dip on that? No, it's not gonna work.
- [18:01]
A
I think I already have all those books. We've got a lot of.
- [18:05]
B
I know your husband does have a lot of stuff. I don't know. He only just played the new version recently, though. I think because you could play old, you can play the old 70s version. If you really, really want to read a terribly written instruction manual. You can play the super old Dungeons and Dragons, which makes no sense. Well, so it's fun to play. Unless you're Jackie. It's a lot of fun to play. It's something that I think entices people in. You can bring what you like to it. Whether it's more of the I want to fight things and have lots of strategy or whether it's more like the way I want to play, where it's more about, like, I want to set a scene and then have people sort of talk and engage and then occasionally do rolls. Just, you know, when it feels like it'll make the game more fun, though I tend to forget, like, the Daniel, the. The Visen system you mentioned is a mystery one. I tend to forget to ask people to roll. And I just. If they're asking me good questions, I'll like, just tell them stuff they need to know to solve the big mystery of the game, which I don't know if that makes it better or worse, but no one has. Has quit and said, I, I hate this game. So that's been good, I guess. But what are the actual documented values of adding role playing? So, you know, role playing itself is not behavior analytic. I mean, I suppose you could think it's a little behavior mod in terms of, like, well, the things you are good at. You get bonuses, too. You get experience points for completing goals. So it potentially reinforces, you know, monster killing behavior or Helping villager behavior. Right. But not, not, not really in that sense. So we have to think about it in terms of it's an additive to our other either therapeutic or skill training based outcomes. So while certainly there are lots of folks and you know, Daniel, you described some clients who've done really well with using that system, you know, using role playing games as kind of whether it's a cusp or whether it's just the motivating operation to actually engage more with like the behavior skills training of it all and friendship skills. What do we actually know more globally as to the value of smooshing these things together? Smushing our clinical therapeutic skill training with role playing games, I think, you know.
- [20:04]
D
You mentioned role playing not necessarily being behavior analytic, but we use roleplay all the time already. You know, behavior skills training, we love that. We know that acting out an SD behavior relation in pretend can generalize over to our real life. And using this clinically, you're pulling from that strength, right? You are role playing if you're actually acting it out. And I don't remember the rest of your question. It was pretty long.
- [20:32]
B
No, you're right. No, you're right. So you're right. We use role playing. But I think when we talk about role playing, you're right. We're really talking about it in terms of like, I just can't create the antecedent and the consequence that I want you to be experiencing so that you can engage in the behavior and strengthen that response. Because it's working with a client and the client's not here, or you need to learn the skill before you work with the client. Whereas when we talk about role playing games, while those mechanisms are in play, there is that component of, and it's a fun game that is so potentially so far removed from the actual, you know, friendship skill or the maybe cognitive behavior therapy skill, or the acceptance or mindfulness skill you're say, practicing. So when it comes to role playing games as part of the clinical work, like, what do we know in terms of what works, what doesn't work? What are the results of the papers out there?
- [21:24]
D
Kind of narrow down the best place to go with this.
- [21:27]
B
I mean, this might be a good time. We can just look at our, you know, the scope, because the scoping reviews. I feel like one of the themes that we talk about is it's a lot of description. There's some randomized control trials, there's some quasi experimental studies, but there's a lot of I did this thing and it seems good and the reports were all. Everyone loved it and felt they were better at whatever the skill was. But I mean, where are you seeing it in the research? Like just kind of looking at some of those scoping reviews, like what are some of the areas this has been used and general results.
- [21:59]
D
Yeah, the research is very all over the place. There is a lot of research in a lot of different places. People are very excited about this. And like you mentioned, Rob, the theoretical piece is huge. There are a whole bunch of theoretical articles of people saying wow, TTRPG has the same structure as group therapy or wow, the three term contingency ABC is right there in a TTRPG or psychodrama or whatever. There's a lot of theoretical things, there are a few preliminary experimental things and I don't know if we want to get all the way into it right now, but there's some promising experimental things and then there's the fact that the research is all over the place. But some of the things that are coming out more consistently as a benefit is the social validity piece. There are a lot of studies seeing higher social validity, higher engagement, higher ascent that can be really huge for if clients need that kind of antecedent motivating operations. And then there's what the research usually calls psychological safety, but is basically just this rule governed, discriminative, dectic perspective taking of this is the game context there, then this is my character there, not me here now, which can help make clients more comfortable to contact something aversive or sensitive and kind of have that psychological safety of the. The game separation to start. Those are the two biggest things that are coming out in the research. But a lot of the research is, you know, the other thing that's coming out in the research is we did this and we saw improvements in this skill, but it's not compar. Comparative. There's not a lot of like, oh, what if we would have done treatment as usual. And I don't know if you want more into that. I know you had other questions about.
- [23:51]
B
That later, but yeah, actually I, I know, I think it's a good start. And I know, you know, for, for you as someone who's been using this more and more. I mean, are your kind of like anecdotal benefits like the things you're noticing with your clients kind of mimicking the same things like you're hearing a lot more. That was, oh, that was so great. What a, what a fun time I had at session versus a sort of like yeah, yeah, I did the greet friend skill 50 times. Already? I'm done now.
- [24:16]
D
Yes. Yeah. And I don't even know how you would even get this into research, but what I see in practice is just like you mentioned the, the narrative story, this ongoing narrative part is. It's more immersive and it seems more like real life. Even though you might be slaying dragons, it seems more like real life that we're going through. You know, it's not. Here's this random scenario, let's do bst. You know, I'm a bully. React to me. Great. You did what my, you know, you did what your therapist told you to. It's. I am living out this story and now there really is a bully and it's more immersive that way. And you might be able to have delayed consequences and things. That narrative piece feels very helpful to me. I haven't done reversals or alternating treatments with my clients, but that feels really helpful. Anecdotally. And then also the gamification piece, having the. That the way the game is structured, that it gives as a game master, full environmental control, that if you are buying into this game, you are buying into that. I am the environment. And what I say is that environmental control piece can be a lot pretty helpful because I'm not having to follow the client around and contrive things at. I just say it and it is so.
- [25:42]
A
So can I ask just a general for people that are like me, that don't play role playing games and don't really know how it's set up, do you come in with like an idea of how the game goes? Right. Do you have like a beginning, middle and end of how you think people will get places? Or is it like controlled by the game and how people, what people do? Or do you have like a YouTube know, like an idea of like, okay, we're going to go on this quest and at this village there'll be these types of monsters or I don't know.
- [26:14]
D
Yeah. Usually you come in with an idea, you come in with kind of a plan, but you're not, you know, the characters, the players control the characters and you just control the environment. Which as behavior analysts we know can. We can still guide the game where we want it to go using our consequences, but it is a collaborative storytelling piece.
- [26:35]
A
Thank you. I never knew and I never wanted to ask because I never wanted anyone.
- [26:40]
D
To think I was interested. So actually, Jackie, I'm gonna play. You know, you could come this. Hi.
- [27:03]
A
Do you want to be a bcba, also known as a board certified behavior analyst?
- [27:08]
C
Sure. We all do now.
- [27:10]
A
You can come to Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts to get your graduate degree just minutes outside of Boston.
- [27:16]
C
Choose from any one of these Masters.
- [27:19]
A
Of Science in Applied Behavior Analysis, Master's.
- [27:21]
C
Of Science in Special Education, dual degree in Special Ed and aba, or be.
- [27:26]
A
Eligible for your Postmaster Certificate.
- [27:29]
C
You can complete your degree and be ready to sit for the exam in.
- [27:32]
A
Two years and our 2022 graduates had a 92% pass rate on the BACB exam.
- [27:38]
C
Come enjoy approved fieldwork placements, ethics, mini handbooks, PhD levels, professors, small class sizes, and a service trip to Iceland if interested.
- [27:47]
A
And don't forget, our program is accredited by the association of Behavior Analysis International or abai, and as a Tier one Master's degree program.
- [27:56]
C
Don't delay. Supplies are limited. Learn more at regiscollege. Edu.
- [28:01]
A
Again, that's www.regiscollege.edu regiscollege.edu one more time www.regiscollege.edu see you there.
- [28:20]
B
Hey everyone, Sorry to pause our conversation with Danielle Yang about TCRPGS and Behavior analysis, but I wanted to remind all our listeners that Aba InsideTrack is ACE and Kwaba approved. By listening, you're able to earn one learning credit. All you'll need to do is finish listening then go to our website abainsidetrack.com fastest way to get there is to click the link in your podcast player. It'll take you right to the page for this episode and it will give you some questions you need to answer as well as some code words you need to enter. I'm going to give you the code words now and the first code word is flour F L O U R. It's an ingredient for baking and such. For you can't have an RPG without a baker character. I mean you could, but you probably want to have one. Make make the world feel lived in, right? With flour. All right, let's get back to our discussion of TTRPGs.
- [29:13]
C
I think that you hit on something important there, which is it can be really hard to manufacture authentic feeling opportunities in BST if the role play is really short because everyone knows that you're just practicing, they know it's not a real scenario and mostly they just want to get it over with. Because roleplay is quite aversive, I think to a lot of people, even though we know that it is beneficial in the context of BST to do the role play piece. But it takes on a whole different element. Like you're saying when it's this long term role playing that you are going to do in A Dungeons and Dragons or something similar. And it doesn't feel, it doesn't feel the way it does in BST when you like are forced to do like the little mini role play. It feels very different and, and very much more real. And so I think if you have a client who what they are trying to work on is something that's maybe more problem solving type of area. Right. Or more, some more in depth like interaction between, you know, negotiations between other players. Right. Then these types of role playing opportunities are going to be really much more beneficial and likely much more closely aligned with what they would be doing in a real life scenario than just like the, the straight up BST role plays that you might see in other contexts. So that's a really interesting point I hadn't thought about.
- [30:48]
D
And it builds this like you're coming from a context of dance reinforcement. We're playing a game, you know, not aversive. We're going to do a role play, right?
- [30:58]
C
Yeah, yeah. And voices are optional but you know, recommended.
- [31:04]
B
You mentioned something and I know it's in some of the scoping reviews and in some of the other papers that you sent over the time we've gotten to know each other kind of when we talk about the benefits, certainly just the fact it's a game, even though the BST of it all might look exactly the same of like I'm setting up a situation and you must engage in this and then you'll get feedback. The format of the feedback might look different. I think there's just something very cool about maybe like the psychological safety that goes into practicing. Practicing in the role playing game context it seems a little similar to say choosing to play like virtual reality training simulators of like this is fun and it'll still potentially teach me the skill. Are there other things that you, you see as kind of like big benefits to why you might say choose I'm going to use TTRPGs in this session versus I'm just going to do my BST plan or I'm just going to do some feedback and more social reinforcement.
- [32:01]
D
I think you summarized most of most of them already. The ongoing narrative piece, the increased engagement, maybe if you need more engagement from a client, the psychological safety piece. Also the structure for contingencies. If I'm struggling to find a way to contrive capture something, it's pretty easy when all I need to do is language. But really when it comes down to when is this better than treatment as usual, that's the research question that I want answered. People aren't doing because yet people aren't doing yet. Please do it. Because especially looking at behavior analysis, I don't like, I can't tell you how or why or when this RPG structure is better than however else I might decide to structure my interventions. Because I'm not doing, you know, I'm only doing it's working for this client. So I, you know, do their treatment and discharge them. But there are a few like comparison CBT thing one things out there. But really not a lot of comparison studies that I really like to see because it seems awesome for me as far as like the actual breaking down the comparison between the two. There's not research on it.
- [33:11]
B
Yeah. But I mean it. I'm not even sure like what that would. What that would look like. Exactly. Because some of it does seem like at least in the current state of the research is clear. Clients seemed interested. So we did it this way. We saw results. Let's move on. So there's, I guess there's a question of like, would you really need a comparison study? Because it's not going to become prescriptive.
- [33:32]
A
Sadly. You always need a comparison study.
- [33:34]
B
I know.
- [33:35]
A
And under what conditions would. And under what condition would the RPG more effective than just bst. Right. Because hypothetically the RPG might be more time intensive for the practitioner. They might need an extra training than the vst. Right. But if it's going to be ultimately more effective for all the reasons you said, like psychological safety. Right. It's more realistic, it's longer then you would want to do that before a bst. I'm into it. I got this. I love. I don't want to do the research, but I love, I would love to read it.
- [34:03]
B
Well, I mean I. And I guess some of the comparison might come sort of in the generalization too because I know in the scope, the scoping reviews there, there was some discussion of the idea and I think Daniel, you put in some of the notes the fact that you can capture know a lot of Stokes and bear generalization. Or maybe it was in the. The dis. The helping dissertation. You know how much.
- [34:23]
A
No, there's no train and help. I love.
- [34:26]
B
No, because like you're setting up multiple exemplars. You can train loosely throughout the RPG scenario and you're in control of every aspect. You don't have to go find the scenarios you have to go do. But if you were to compare Danielle, like what do you. What might that might. Might that look like like multiple baseline of like we're doing each. Each encounter teaches a Skill. And then after the encounter, I'm going to make you do BST and we'll see if baseline goes up. Like, what do you think?
- [34:52]
D
I'm not a researcher, but I think I'd have to do, like, across behaviors, like multiple baseline across behaviors or something, or alternating treatments. But, like, I'd like. I'd love to see bst, random BST scenarios versus ongoing RPG bst, or like, graduated exposure guided imagery versus, you know, graduated exposure guided imagery through an ongoing rpg, you know, and I don't know, you know, is it going to make a difference in skill acquisition period? Is it going to make a difference in skill acquisition when there are delayed consequences? Is it just the engagement and the psychological safety, the social validity and the generalization? Is that better or worse? You know, I. It feels like it gives me all of those things with my clients, but I'm not doing reversals, so. Right.
- [35:42]
A
I mean, you probably couldn't do a reversal.
- [35:44]
D
Right.
- [35:44]
A
Because you couldn't unteach a skill. But wouldn't it be fascinating to see generalization and, like, problem solving when you nev. I mean, like, you were problem solving about, like, a com. Like something vastly different that would not happen in the world? You're like, should we kill this dragon? Right. And then. And then you're like, oh, should we buy this milk? Right. It's the same question, but you're asking it in different ways. So I just think that would be so cool the way it allows you.
- [36:11]
D
To get multiple exemplars. It's just like the spectrum of whatever the stimulus class is and response class that you're trying to connect. You can get that whole spectrum pretty easily in an rpg.
- [36:22]
A
Right. In a way that's natural in the rpg. It doesn't feel forced. Oh, I just love it. But I don't want to do it, but I love it. The idea.
- [36:32]
D
That gets you.
- [36:33]
A
Yeah. I mean, you might be convincing me.
- [36:36]
D
I.
- [36:37]
A
Maybe I'll have to, like, creepily sit in a corner while someone plays.
- [36:42]
B
Jackie, we've never really gotten into the. Just. Why do you don't like games? It's just sort of a. I just don't like, like. I mean, are you just sitting there like, I'm engaged in this and every second is torture? Is it like that kind of a feeling?
- [36:53]
A
No, I think usually the games that people want to play are really long and. Right. Like, I don't really have eight hours of a day that I can just be like, you know, here it goes. And. Right. And usually, like, when I've Played when I've been prompted to play like Settlers of Catan. Right. That's a long game. That can be long. Right. I mean, long for me. Right. I usually lose interest. So that's the, really, the big problem is that the length I don't really have. Maybe when I no longer have a child or hobbies that are my own.
- [37:29]
C
Or when she's grown up.
- [37:31]
A
Yeah, when I'm grown up. No, when I'm grown up, maybe.
- [37:34]
B
Okay, so Danielle kind of thinking about, you know, your treat like a treatment package. Like I'm going to use TTRPGs, let's say it's, it's client. Client driven perhaps. So, you know, whether there's something that might be better is semi irrelevant.
- [37:49]
C
You know.
- [37:49]
B
You know, you have something that could provide the same skill the client is asking to learn in that way. So there we go. You know, how is, how would it be different than, you know, to do the TTRPG session in your package than say just, I'm just going to directly reinforce certain behaviors. Like, I, I guess maybe we're at the sort of like, what does it look like to do this? You know, what, what is a session? Like kind of part of the, part of the episode.
- [38:16]
D
I'm just going to, I'm trying to think of something that we haven't, I think we already kind of talked about. It's a pretend. You can contrive anything.
- [38:26]
C
I guess.
- [38:27]
B
Yeah. Like, like maybe, maybe laying out sort of the, the, the details of it. So like, you know, we, we talked about a lot of the benefits, the things that could be in there. But what might it look like?
- [38:35]
C
I mean, actually maybe I, I do have a question. Like, would you sort of design what the campaign is going to look like based on the individual client and what you perceive as their needs? And what, what would those types of needs be? So as an example of that. Yeah.
- [38:53]
D
That designing the campaign is secondary to the, the, the designing the behavior plan. So you have your client and you have, okay, this is their target behaviors. You know, they, this client is needing to learn to tact and react to emotions.
- [39:10]
C
Okay.
- [39:11]
D
So I think the TTRPG is going to be beneficial because they're interested or it'll increase their engagement and I'm already doing it and you know, whatever. I've decided to use a TTR and now I need to develop that story to provide lots of opportunities to tact and react to emotions. There's gotta be situations that puts the client in multiple different emotions. There's gotta be situations where NPCs are in multiple different emotions. And those are my functional pieces that need to be in the story. And then it really comes down to training loosely, grab some of the client interests, grab some sort of trope, you know, because when I play recreationally, I will spend hours in between sessions planning this cool, epic story for my friends. But that's not a behavior analytics service. I'm not going to spend that kind of time on clients. I take my behavior plan. I maybe get a broad idea of, oh well, this trope, you know, might work good. Or this movie I watched last night, let me reskin that. Or you know, of the broad idea of the story. Ask what kind of story the client's interested. You know, kind of have them shape that with you.
- [40:12]
C
Yeah.
- [40:12]
D
And then just train loosely, wherever it kind of goes, however you can fit those, those trials in it. I like the idea of crafting this beautiful story that's going to be a metaphor for the client's growth that they're going to remember forever. But in reality, we don't always have that kind of time and it's probably not the best use of my time as a behavior analyst. Does that answer your question? Is that helpful?
- [40:38]
C
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. So you have the behavioral objectives as a main focus of the session and then you're just using the RPG as a means, sort of to make sure that you're getting chances to practice and address those skills that you're building.
- [40:57]
D
Right. And you mentioned what it looks like that could be totally different depending on the client. Like, I've had groups where they come for an hour and a half and we review, hey, how'd you do with your skills at home? You know, great. And then we play for an hour and then we talk about afterwards and then we send them home and like it's. The main focus is practicing in the thing in the game and then afterwards setting up some rule formation and homework plans for using the skills at home and things. And that's one way to do it. But there's also. I'm doing comprehensive, you know, autism services. And I'm with you for 30 hours a week. And one of our activities we do is we practice the skills in this half hour gameplay and then we go practice those same skills, you know, out doing whatever else we do. There's. Yeah, there's a wide spectrum of ways to apply it.
- [41:45]
C
And follow up. Question. Do you tend to do this one on one or have you done it in a group with multiple clients?
- [41:53]
A
Both.
- [41:54]
D
I, I would advise that's A whole other. Yes. I. I'd advise new people trying this to try one on one first, because just as behavior analysts, we look at the one and we want to functionally analyze their behaviors. I think a lot of people get into this and they're like, yes, groups, but it works one on one and it's easy one on one. I think the groups are fun and they add that extra social element that can be very beneficial. But it doesn't have to be. It could be either way. When I do groups, I want to make sure they have similar, similar goals so that this story I can provide all of the trials that they each need. I did try once having just a group of kids who were the same age and they each had an RBT and they each kind of fit their own trials into the story and it's not as smooth.
- [42:45]
C
Yeah.
- [42:46]
B
And Danielle, you usually have like, in terms of the logistics of a session, you've certainly got goals. The client has goals that you're putting into the story, and so you're making that part of your plan. And, and, you know, you mentioned having rbts. When you have rbts, are they usually helping with the, you know, they're running the game or are they more sort of doing the data collection so that you can focus on, you know, continuing to craft and maybe make some slight changes to the game based on noticing, you know, clients are getting disinterested. So I'm going to move this encounter up a little bit. How does that usually that work breakdown in the session? Because I know for me, the idea of running an RPG doesn't seem that hard. The idea of doing clinical, you know, sessions with a client, not so hard. I've done that for a super long time. Putting them both together. I feel like I'll just kind of do half of both and neither of them particularly well. So, like, how do you. Is it just you become fluent in both skills over the years or is it more of a. You just have to structure it in a way that allows you to treat it like any other session, just with these RPG elements.
- [43:47]
D
Yeah, I think both of both of the things you just mentioned at the end are important. Make sure you are fluent in the game first. So if you haven't ever played an RPG, make sure you are GMing recreationally learning, because GMing is its own repertoire of skills. Make sure you could do that first and then once you're fluent in that, once it gets to the point where the games, the rules kind of fade into the background and you could focus on the story. Once you've gotten there, then it's easier to take the next step of having the story and the rules take a backseat while you focus on therapy. And at that point is you mentioned, like, you're good at both of them, but you don't. When you put them together, you do both halfway, right? Do the game halfway. Don't do the therapy halfway. You know, when it comes down to it, you're in your clinical session, and if you're fluent in this game, you can use it to facilitate what you needed to use it to facilitate for, but it should be working for you. And if there are things that are part of it that are getting in the way, they don't need to be there. I like sharing the example of. A lot of BCBAs have had the experience where they try to teach a client to tolerate losing a game, and they play uno or something or they play, you know, something they've never played before. And I don't know if you guys have ever done that where you've walked in on an rbt or you yourself have tried to teach a client to tolerate losing, but you can't win. And you're like, this is me.
- [45:12]
A
This is totally me. It was high ho cheerio. Do you guys remember high ho cherio?
- [45:17]
C
Hi, ho cherio.
- [45:18]
B
No. There's too much randomness to high ocherio. That's terrible.
- [45:21]
C
Circle of hell.
- [45:22]
A
Yeah.
- [45:23]
B
And shoots and ladders. That game could go right.
- [45:26]
A
I hate shoots and ladders for high ho cheerio. I was like, okay, we're gonna tolerate how to lose. I even set it up so it was like, halfway created. Because, you know, this takes so long. High ho chero takes so long. So I'd like. They already, like, put things around, and I lost everybody time.
- [45:41]
B
And the guy's like, basket kept spinning, getting the spin of, like, the basket dump out.
- [45:48]
D
So Ron, he's. The game is. You are not fluent enough in the game. The game is not serving your contingencies. It sounds like that's a random game, so it might not be a good one to choose anyway.
- [45:57]
B
Yeah, it's a spinner. It's a spinner. There's no way to. You'd have to cheat. And then it's like, I'm teaching you that I'm cheating so I can teach you how to lose.
- [46:04]
A
I was young. Everyone. I was young. I was a bad behavior analyst at one point. We all learned from our mistakes. Don't use high ho chero.
- [46:11]
D
Don't use it or war.
- [46:13]
B
It just goes forever and Ever and.
- [46:14]
D
Ever structure the game system so it's supporting you and be fluent in it so that you can use it. There we go.
- [46:23]
B
But say in. In. In the DND session, you could make a lose because it could be something that they. There's no way to get over. Like, you just. You don't have the right sword to hit the monster, or you don't have the item you need, or they're imperial impervious to whatever attack you have. So you could put in failure after failure after failure if you really wanted to and then judge, you know, are they using their skill of, you know, maybe doing breathing after they lose or are they. Do they have a mantra that they're going to. Instead of going right to screen, like whatever the. Whatever kind of the treatment plan is for that. You can, you can program it more. More frequently and in a way that is hopefully not as annoying as just, well, we played that game for 40 minutes and then you lost. We got one chance. You did not be mad that you lost.
- [47:03]
C
One trial and it didn't go well.
- [47:05]
B
Well, I'm not playing that game again.
- [47:06]
D
So, you know, there's probably simpler games than TTRPGs. Like, if that's your only goal, you know, and I can't even think of any off the top of my head right now. But, you know, games that you are good at that you know the client is not good at. Right. You are fluent enough, you can use it to teach them. But. But yeah, it's definitely something you could use in a D and D if you're looking for the response generalization and lots of different, you know, exemplars.
- [47:31]
B
So just to make sure that folks get a chance to kind of see what a session could look like, especially around social skills. Because I know for most folks out there, if they're like, this sounds interesting to me. Like you said, Danielle, they have to make sure they can play the RPG first. And then many BCAs are probably going to be using TTRPGs as an addition to, say, social skill training versus some of the other work, you know, like using it for, you know, CBT training or ACT sessions, which there's been some research there. I know the scoping reviews did a lot on CBT, all with computer RPGs. It seemed like. It seems like there's a. There's this Sparks game they kept mentioning in one of the reviews, like. And I was like, I don't. Is this a fun game? This game sounds boring. I looked at their website. It looked really boring. Like it didn't look like what we're talking about.
- [48:13]
D
That one was made by sponsorship.
- [48:15]
B
Yeah, therapists may not be the best game masters.
- [48:19]
D
We've got these therapists trying to make serious games that aren't game designers. And that's why everyone ends using Dungeons and Dragons, because at least it's fun, right?
- [48:29]
B
If it wasn't made by a 40 year old man in, in the 70s, it's no good. Plenty of great new systems, but yeah, some of those, some of those more kind of like cpt, like ser. Like, like you mentioned serious games that the idea of. It's like this game was made just to do this. Like Math Blasters. This is a serious game to teach you math skills. It's not meant to be fun.
- [48:49]
C
It's always. No, they always know when it's just an education skill. It's like dressed up as a game.
- [48:57]
B
The Oregon Trail is the exception that. That proves the rule on the series.
- [49:01]
C
Or square one tv, if you guys remember that.
- [49:04]
B
It's not a game. No, it's a tv.
- [49:07]
C
I'm generalizing.
- [49:08]
B
Okay.
- [49:08]
C
You know, I knew they were teaching me things, but I was very entertained by that show. So I would make an exception there.
- [49:14]
B
Oh, okay. All right. But I'd. I'd love to kind of dig a little bit into Helbig's, the kind of dissertation. Because I know as someone who has run a number of sessions yourself, Danielle, what in this is good. Like if you, if you were to sort of describe it like the elevator pitch of what went on in that, how they use their system, what did you like? What would you add on sort of knowing what you've learned through your own experiences and a dissertation just being. Or any paper being a snapshot in time that can't, you know, do as. As much extra stuff. You mind just kind of giving us a quick, the quick summary of it and then talking about what you liked, what you didn't like to give people a sense of that, you know, what a session could look like with the goal.
- [49:51]
D
Want me to summarize it?
- [49:52]
B
You don't have to summarize the whole thing. I just form it in terms of like the structure.
- [49:56]
C
Oh, 100 pages, please.
- [49:57]
B
No, come on, it's a dissertation. I mean, the key component. I'll kick it off. You know, the key components are a number of clients who are working on skills. They're working on greetings, I think responding to greetings. Oh, I just looked at what the other one was taking. Feedback. So, you know, they had the social skills they were working on and the Goal was to have a game that allowed opportunities and if you use the skill. So there are, there was a BST component. I mean this was probably if, if, if you're thinking of like your first time using like when I think of my first time, if I were going to use it, it would be this cut and dry of like first I do my bst. This is how we're going to say hello or respond to greetings. Then I'd have my adventure where in which everyone would have multiple opportunities to say hello to different clients. And then based on their success or not success, they would get feedback, either positive praise or they would get some sort of direct reinforcer. And in the case of this game, this was a bespoke system, although it wasn't too dissimilar to some of the like the draw steel where it was sort of like you, you succeed and it's just a matter of how well you succeed. It was like one or two was like not very well and three to four was really well and five to six was, was a super success. And then the reinforcer was just if you use the skill correctly, your next role you got to, you got a benefit. So it was like instead of five to six, it's like four, five and six, I think or three, four, five and six.
- [51:15]
C
Right.
- [51:16]
B
The best outcome in the game. So you're not really getting very much outside of just it's all game mechanic related. And then you. They'd run the session, they take data. Then before the next session they do generalization which where they just hang around for a bit, let the kids hang out and then see did they use any of the skills which while very basic, it was nice that they had that component because so many of the other research articles I know you shared or that were in the scoping review really didn't look at. Did anyone use these skills outside the context of the therapeutic session? So even though this was, you know, the 10 minutes before the therapeutic session, it's still better than nothing. So kind of in, in that component, like what would you say are the components of like. Yes, this always needs to be in there in some form or another. And then where are the areas that you think the Helbig paper, like you could add more, you could make the sessions more robust or more, you know, therapeutically rewarding for the client?
- [52:11]
D
Yeah, I, I love that. I know she went through and she, she task analyzed the skills she wanted to work on and operationally defined them and then was taking data on them. Perfect. Right. We want to be doing that. Her game system also, it wasn't a real system. It was literally just, here's a character sheet. You could draw a picture of yourself and write about yourself, which didn't do anything for the game. And then the dice you mentioned, I'll tell you when to roll it and you see how successful you were. I think that super simple game system could be very helpful if you want to try this for the first time. I think reading Helbig and copying what she did actually gives you a pretty good structure. What I would do differently in practice is mostly focus on the individualization and the function for the client and their real life. So like Helbig gave, it was like an autism assessment of some kind. And then I think I, I, I assume that the skills kind of came straight out of that. And they were teaching to the test because the skills were kind of like one of them said, required to make eye contact and required to say please. And, you know, I probably wouldn't fuss with that, but look at, you know, what is the skill I really want them using in their life. And with that, I, I like to lean towards functional definitions. When I'm doing an rpg, I'm usually doing multiple exemplar training. Right. That, and they're at the point that I want to be able to work on a lot of response generalization across the class. So she had topographical definitions. Now I'd want those to be more functional so I can be a little bit train a little bit more loosely. And then let's see, as far as the individualization for function. Oh, and then the real life generalization piece, her final phase, which I think is just because this was a snapshot in time like you said, her final phase was accurate demonstration within the rpg. That would never be my final phase. You need to see it in real life, but you haven't done your job. Yeah, yeah, I did like the way she did the probes. It wasn't just that they were there and they saw if they did it like they were presenting, they were purposely presenting the sds, that stimulus class for the behaviors outside the game. And I love that when it was a, hey, you come and do this for an hour. They had a time that was, I don't know if Jackie mentioned this on air or before we started, but the social hour, before you start playing a game, the clients came in and kind of just hung out for a second, and that's when they kind of snuck into generalization probe. I think that's great. Make sure you're Practicing the trials, the skills outside of the game. We call them above table trials too. You can be working on problem solving as your character, but you could also be problem solving together above table about the game and then you could also problem solve above table about the loud noise that just happened outside or making sure you have a lot of. A lot of ways that you're working on your generalization. But other than that, I really like what she did. I think a lot of it could be copy pasted into practice.
- [55:13]
B
Yeah, the simple system. I would have loved to see a little more myself just in terms of how the game mechanic went into the scenarios or a little bit more practice with the scenarios. Because I do find if you were say I've never done this and I don't know a lot about RPGs. You do have to do a lot of kind of the guesswork. Like she, she gives like one scenario I think where they have to build a bridge to. To complete. And I don't know if it tied into. It didn't really tie into one of the skills that the clients were working on. So I didn't know why that was her chosen example. Like I assumed she'd pick. I think there's another one with it with an enchantress they could be nice to or they could greet the enchantress. Like that felt like a bet. Like I wanted to see. I wanted to see it in action because it did sort of feel like the example was well, you could just do that. That has nothing to do with.
- [55:55]
A
With.
- [55:55]
B
With the. They're not practicing bridge building skills. Like why is that the. The one. So I'd love to see more of that. That connection. So you know, again, if there's. With further studies I'd love to see more of that. How the skill plays out in the game and that. I think that's the only thing I found that this didn't quite capture as well for me as. As I've seen either, you know, with other folks who've done this or if I've, you know, in some of like the coursework I've been able to do in the past, I would like that.
- [56:21]
D
I didn't love. I didn't. I don't think I fully understood what she was getting at with the example in the paper. I. But she had another one in the appendices and I liked that one.
- [56:28]
B
Oh, okay. But it was like I got tired.
- [56:31]
D
Learning to ask for what you want or something. And they went shopping at a marketplace and there was plenty of. You need you need these things, go buy them and talk to different NPCs. And that I thought was a great example that easily generalizable, easy to program common stimuli.
- [56:47]
B
Oh man. Multiple exemplars for initiate a conversation. It's like you're in town. There you go. You got. What do you want to do? You got to go talk to the innkeeper. You got to go talk to the shopkeeper, the king, you know, the beggar who has all the secret. There's so many people you got to go talk to and you have to role play it out. Ah, well, good idea. Yeah. All right. So if folks are interested, this would be a good place to look as well. So Danielle, I know you know, it's hard. We can't really do a full scoping review in the time we have of like all the stuff out there though some of it is kind of missing. I think what. What we'd be looking for to be like and evidence based practice. We've got all we need to know. So there's still a lot we need to learn about TTRPGs. So why don't we move into the dissemination station and talk about that. Oh, there we are. See Jackie, you role played right there. You were the train.
- [57:42]
A
I only roleplayed.
- [57:43]
B
Can we make it? Roll the dice. Roll the dice.
- [57:45]
D
Let's see if we made it.
- [57:46]
B
Where did we end up?
- [57:48]
A
I actually made it. We already made it.
- [57:50]
D
The train. Come play. You can play as a train. I promise.
- [57:56]
B
It's the ticket to ride. Role playing game.
- [57:58]
A
That's so funny. That'd be so boring.
- [58:04]
D
When clients have a very specific interest. The way that you can just easily incorporate that in and there's research that clients will like. I can't even think of what article I was looking at. But there's articles out there where you don't. It doesn't seem like a client has a skill and then you do it with their preferred interest and they totally have it. You know, you could take advantage of that with an rpg.
- [58:28]
B
Well, sorry.
- [58:29]
C
Dissemination is Mara and Leonard example.
- [58:32]
B
So speaking of articles and kind of what we still need to know, like what would you say is next for continuing to explore how TTRPGs can be an additional means of, you know, treat. Creating meaningful treatment packages for clients.
- [58:48]
D
I think what's next is behavior analytic published studies. I, I started on it a little bit earlier but like there's some cool stuff happening but there's also.
- [59:01]
C
It's.
- [59:02]
D
And I think the. The both of those reviews that you guys read mentioned there's a Bunch of cool stuff happening but it's, it's by very passionate, excited people who aren't checking all the boxes quality wise. There, there's a lot of just qualitative interview studies and there's a lot of, you know, just a correlative thing without a lot of experimental control or it's published in this random journal of gaming no one's heard about. And, and like you mentioned, a lot of it is a CBT or education. There's not a lot of very strictly behavior analytic things, which is weird because environmental control and role play is what we do. So I don't know why we're not publishing on this but we're always so.
- [59:42]
B
Behind like ah, I think it's screaming.
- [59:46]
D
Our name but we're not doing it. So the biggest thing is just getting some stuff out there that is peer reviewed and behavior analytic, experimental. And it's time we move, move on from the theoretical papers is my thought.
- [60:02]
B
Yeah, it is fun to read about concepts like bleed between characters in real life, but you know that's, that's only going to take you so far in terms of. But what would I do? Is this worth doing? It could do this, but does it.
- [60:16]
D
What do I do to facilitate the bleed versus you know, and is this, is, does this strategy facilitate the bleed versus you know, facilitate more of the, the distance, the, the alibi.
- [60:28]
B
And we need a different term than bleed because I feel uncomfortable every time I talk about the idea. Wait, what happened in your therapy session?
- [60:36]
C
Bleed.
- [60:36]
B
Oh God.
- [60:40]
D
It's just, it's generalization. Like that's the term but the RPG community doesn't use it.
- [60:44]
C
Right? They probably aren't calling it that. I feel like this is a really unique area and the, the challenge here, and maybe this is why we don't have a lot of publications on it is, is figuring out how to best demonstrate that there is a high EO to participate and therefore likely a high level of social validity for the overall outcomes of this and then figuring out how to, you know, pull that over and really get the hard and fast operationally based data that we are looking for in our field. And kind of like having both of those pieces come together and then demonstrate that via published research would be really fantastic because we already know that we can teach many of these types of skills that we've been discussing, social skills, problem solving skills, creativity skills through a variety of formats. But we may be missing those other pieces that are harder to capture. Right, the motivational components and the social validity components. And those both seem to be really high here and we're just barely scratching the surface. Right. You also referenced that this is a cusp skill for participating within certain communities. So if someone says, hey, I would really like to be able to go to any game shop on DND night and sit down and play, that is such a valuable skill. Right? Because then they can take it from here. They can start meeting new people and forming their own friendships and own communities around something that's really meaningful to them. Learning, you know, dtt, bst, problem solving is not going to get you there. So there's something like really unique and valuable in like the package that this is putting forward. And it's going to take, it's going to take somebody's dissertation to get all of that summarized and out there. So anyone who's in school needs a new topic. This would be an awesome topic for you. And then the communities, the community is there, the technology is there. Right. And the researchers are there, but they may not necessarily be in behavior analysis. So we just need to bring all of those components together to put out really kick ass study.
- [63:03]
A
You said a bad word.
- [63:05]
C
I'm sorry.
- [63:07]
B
Well, Daniel, if folks are hearing this and they're saying, you know what, I kind of want to learn a little bit more, try this out. Certainly they got the links to the Helbig dissertation is a good one. You also for, you know, sneak preview. I'm not sure exactly when it's coming out compared to this episode, but hopefully soon have been offered to do kind of our own role play of a role play scenario. So we're going to get to sort of Act, Act 1 out in action. So that'll hopefully be fun for listeners. It'll be fun for me too. So it's my birthday month, so who cares about the rest of y'.
- [63:36]
A
All.
- [63:36]
B
But let's say everyone says no, I've learned all I want. I want nothing more to do with this topic. I'm going to learn it all on my own. What's step one for? I think you kind of mentioned it earlier, but if they're like, I want to learn more how I could do this, what should they definitely. Where should they be focusing their, their time on if they want to learn.
- [63:52]
D
More about this, they want to learn more about this.
- [63:56]
B
The use of RPGs and you know, how they could, how they can implement TTRPGs into their own work, their clinical work.
- [64:03]
D
I think the biggest. How much time do I have?
- [64:09]
B
Good. Do you go, so we're done? Yeah. We paid for this account. It will Go until we tell it to stop.
- [64:19]
D
I think there, there are, there are two kinds of people I usually meet that want to get into this. And one is the people like me and rob who love TTRPGs and are thrilled by the idea to use them at work.
- [64:31]
C
Big nerds. Big nerds.
- [64:32]
B
You know what, that's, it's reductive.
- [64:36]
D
And the people in this group, you probably have a lot of competency running TTRPGs already, which is awesome. But the place that you really want to look at is your bias and the efficiency components. Because us being so excited could put us at risk of shoehorning a client into this when there's a more efficient. Right. Or it's not going to be, you know, when it's not going to be the best for them or there's a more efficient option. We also are at risk of spending hours and hours trying to make it so epic rather than really focusing on our behavioral analysis that we're our service, that we're providing. So there's that the efficiency piece, especially if you're already excited, especially if you're already fluent. And then there's the other group of people I meet is people who find this as a therapy tool.
- [65:28]
A
First.
- [65:29]
D
They don't already have any repetitive relations with RPGs. They just notice that what they're currently doing with their clients, they don't have enough environmental control or they don't have enough buy in or you know, and these, these people sometimes don't develop the same bias issues these people are hopefully Jackie. But they, they're often able to see the game as the tool that it is and more clearly identify whether and where it'll be useful. But they have the drawback of they're not fluent in the game. You know, so these people I would look at get fluent in the game system or get a professional who is fluent in the game system. And both groups, I mean, competence and efficiency is really, I think when it comes down to getting ready to do this, you want to be able to have the game fade into the background while you focus on your contingencies, have the game facilitate your contingencies rather than just be something you're throwing on or in the way. And then with efficiency, even if you spend hours prepping for your friends the story piece, you need to learn how to let that go and be able to be more random, do more improv so that these benefits, like the, the benefits we're getting from it are not worth three hours a week prepping a story. They're great if you're able to kind of get some broad ideas, focus on your interventions, and have. Do that. Do that storytelling loosely piece. I don't know. Question that was.
- [66:56]
B
I think that. I think. I think that's a great breakdown. Either you kind of know how to do RPGs and you want to use it. So focus on. I know for me, I usually think about it similar to some of the things you shared. Daniela, I'm going to make. Let's start with an encounter. Let's start with an encounter of the skill. How could I make this? If I were going to do this with bst, what would it look like now I just need to make the much more fun and interesting version in world using the characters that my clients have created. And I started there a little bit and made a couple little scenarios and that's okay. That seems like a good place to start, too. Rather than I'm going to make. Like you said, I want to make this be the most resonant story. And at the end they're like, oh, my God, I can't believe whatever skill we were working on wasn't in my repertoire. It always will be from now on. And I'll never forget this amazing adventure. But the reality is I probably can't write that good an adventure, and it doesn't necessarily lend itself. So I have to just focus on, like, the skills or I don't know what I'm doing with RPGs, but it sounds cool. I'll just get some dice and we'll go from there. And that also not being a good idea if you can't play with friends, or you're like, I don't want to play this with anyone else outside of the therapeutic session. Maybe that's not, you know, you either need to learn it, even though you don't want to, because your clients want you to learn it, or you should just try it a couple times and maybe you'll love it. And then it gets easier, like you said, Daniel, for it to fall back in the rule. I know for me, I hadn't played in years and years, so it's been nice to be able to play again and sort of get into the habit of, I don't need to know all these rules anymore. It doesn't matter. Are we having fun? Are we doing the goal? Which again, if you're doing it socially, is just, is everyone having a good time? Which are some good therapeutic skills as well to pay attention to.
- [68:34]
D
I like that you mentioned, too. It doesn't have to be. We're Going to do a three month campaign with multiple intervention phases and four different clients. You know, it could just be. We do tabletop dtt and you're interested in the idea of heists. Let's pretend that these five, you know, puzzles are puzzles as part of a mechanism that you're breaking into. And this toy is the treasure. You know, just do that today at work and you, you could probably start to use some of these storytelling elements to increase your, your motivating operations for engagement.
- [69:05]
C
Yeah, that's cool.
- [69:05]
B
And if they finish the first puzzle quickly, you know, oh well, that's all. You get a bonus on the next. I'm going to put the first two pieces in for, you know, there you go. You got your experience system maybe to show the performance.
- [69:17]
D
It's a, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be. I'm playing Dungeons and Dragons and it doesn't have like, it could be gamification anywhere along that spectrum.
- [69:25]
B
Oh well, Danielle, thank you for making my birthday episode wish come true. And we got to talk about TTRPGs. It was a lot of fun, you know, getting to talk more about the research, hearing about the descriptions of what it could look like clinically to kind of get this information more and more out there because I don't know, it seems like if Behavior, Behavior Analysis doesn't publish our nice comparison study, someone will do it eventually, I guess. But why not? Why not us? Why don't we get ahead of this then everyone's got to cite us when they want to talk about the use of TTRPGs. You know, if folks want to learn more, is there a way that they can get in touch with you? The work that you've done, some of the trainings I know you, you, you've done for, for BCBAs. So when this comes out, you have. So it sounds like the 25th you.
- [70:05]
D
Said, Danielle, it's the 23rd, 3pm mountain, mountain standard Time. Wherever you are in the world, you know, make that adjustment. But that, that's my next. When my next course starts. So, so if you're interested in that, registrations at fantasy frameworks therapy.com and I run that course every once in a while. I also my email, my casual email is Fantasy Frameworks therapymail. I cycle through some other emails, but that's the one I always have open. So feel free to send me a casual email. I am happy to talk about this topic. I have a Discord server I'm trying to get going for behavior analysts who are interested in RPGs to have conversations like this. Can I put that invite, like in the show notes or something?
- [70:50]
B
Yeah, yeah. I. If I, I'm on the server, but I don't know how to actually share the invite. But if you send the invite, we'll put it right in the notes.
- [70:57]
D
Cool. Yeah, you click on that invite and you'll get a message for me verifying if you're human. And then. Or if you don't, just message me and then we can let you in there. But if you're not human, discord. My course, my email. I think that's it.
- [71:11]
B
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Danielle. I appreciate it.
- [71:14]
D
Thank you.
- [71:15]
B
One more time, we want to say a big thanks to Danielle Yang for coming on to talk about her work with TTRPGs in the state of research on TTRPGs and how they could be used by behavior analysts in our sessions. It was a lot of fun. Again, a very exciting topic for me personally. I do fall into that category. Danielle mentioned of the I want to make it way too fun and am I going to forget that this is for client purposes kind of thing. So it was a good, a good discussion to review some of the skills that I've learned and read about. And that's good. Good for all of you to get to hear that as well. Before we wrap up, I want to go to the last section of the show and that is pairings. Diana, take it away.
- [71:53]
C
Ah, yes. It's time for pairings. Pairings is the part of the show where I tell you about past episodes. You might want to check out if you found this one interesting. So we have talked about some of the things in this episode in sort of a variety of different ways. In the past that would include revisiting episode 76, we talked about gamification. Episode 155 where we talked about turn taking episode 160, we talked about incorporating unique interests. That was with Tamika Meadows, episode 210 where we discussed multiple exemplars. And episode 223 where we talked about generality and generalization. And finally, episode 290 where we discuss social validity assessments. You can revisit all of those as part of pairings. I also like to recommend a snack for you to enjoy while you're listening here. So you have two choices of snack today. These are the snacks that when you go into the tavern in your game, these are the two things are going to be available for you to trade in your coins for so you could get a giant turkey leg. That one costs two silver or you could get a bowl of beef stew. It's hearty, it's warming. That one costs three silver, so you can choose.
- [73:12]
B
If I use my charisma roll, can I get a discount if I succeed on a difficulty check?
- [73:17]
C
Yes, absolutely. But the, the discount that you're going to get is actually just a bonus beer.
- [73:22]
B
Oh, okay. That's fine.
- [73:23]
C
It's a meadow mead.
- [73:25]
B
Oh, mead is not beer. They're very different.
- [73:27]
C
I know. I changed it.
- [73:28]
B
Okay.
- [73:28]
C
I'm allowed to do that cuz I'm the dm.
- [73:29]
B
You know what? That's fair.
- [73:30]
C
All right. And that's pairings. Please enjoy.
- [73:33]
B
All right. Thanks, Diana. And thank you all so very much for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to learn more about TTRPGs and their place in kind of therapeutic or clinical work, like we mentioned, we're going to have a bonus episode coming out very soon where Danielle's going to walk us through what a scenario could look like. So it's more lived in experience. You also could certainly sign up for her class@fantasy frameworkstherapy.com she only got like about a week or so. So do it really quick if you want. And of course, if you're really, really interested, we do have a BCBA RPG game that happens every Tuesday or so. So if you're interested in just getting a chance to play some, some RPGs, you could always send us a quick email. Maybe we can find you a spot at the table if you want to try it out yourself. Diana won't be there. She was invited and promptly said no. And I didn't even bother asking Jackie because I know she would promptly say no. She already said it. I haven't even asked you. I know she said no already. Just thinking it.
- [74:26]
C
All right, so I also forgot and the. Throughout the course of this episode and in my preparation of pairings, I was like, didn't I talk about the gamification article that I did that was designed around D and D? And turns out I did talk about that sort of on the show, but it was like a patron only release that we sort of refound in the archives so that one doesn't have a number or an episode yet. But we were going to release it to everybody coming up as my. That's my bonus to come out.
- [74:59]
B
Yay.
- [75:00]
C
Yeah.
- [75:01]
B
So plenty of ways to keep learning more about this topic. Some of them that we forgot existed. Yeah. All right, well, thank you all so much for listening. If you haven't, please subscribe to ABA Inside Track Wherever you get your podcasts, you can find us online@abainsidetrack.com where you can find links to all of the articles we discussed, as well as to get ces. Speaking of ces, if you'd like a CE for this, you need to answer a number of questions on the website, but one of them is going to be related to a second secret code word. And then the second secret code word. Diana, you want to do that one?
- [75:31]
C
Sure. It's emerald. Emerald is a green semi precious stone that you might also have in your bag of holding.
- [75:40]
B
Perhaps it's in the dragon's hoard.
- [75:42]
C
Oh, that's where it is, right? E M E R A L D Emerald.
- [75:48]
B
Emerald. All right, some final thanks again. Thanks to Danielle Yang for coming on the show. Thanks to Dr. Jim Carr for recording our intro outro music, thanks to Kyle Sturry for our interstitial music, and thanks to Dan Dabit of the podcast Doctors for his amazing editing work. We'll be back next week with another fun filled episode, but until then, keep responding. Bye bye SA.