We’re tackling a difficult and complex topic in this episode: How to roleplay characters with mental illnesses with sensitivity and grace. First, though, we’ve got a bit of other business to talk about, starting with our forthcoming appearances on City on a Hill Gaming (including Jenny’s very cool special episode, Side Quest #4 – The Crimson In Your Veins.) Grant’s also very happy to talk about his officially-started Eberron game, which went great! We also take a minute to remind everyone about our YouTube channel, which is finally updating with new episodes like this one and old episodes as we can.

Our Patreon question is from Raymond Dickson, who asks: How do you like to deal with a planned hiatus in a game (summer, scheduled surgery, travel, etc.)—not just going ahead with someone missing from the game, but putting the whole thing on hold for a bit? Unfortunately, our advice to Raymond is … not optimistic. But we do our best!

After an enthusiastic Scripture reading, we get right into this one, starting off with a lot of caveats and notes. We then break this down into three general (and largely artificial) categories, talking about persistent and ongoing mental illnesses; temporary, acute insanities; and artificial “madnesses” brought on by the sort of external causes we encounter in genre fiction. We talk a lot about the use of these at the table, but also do our best—within our limited abilities as non-experts—to give what advice we can about helping others deal with these issues at the table and in life, too.

Mentioned in this episode: Our previous episodes on mental health with mental health experts; “spoon theory”; and Sea Lions.

Scripture: Isaiah 1:17; Matthew 25:41-43; James 5:14; 1 John 3:17-18

Peter

I’m pretty squarely on the record as finding playing evil characters to be distasteful. I think the main reason for that is I experience a lot of “bleed” and when I do something horrible to an undeserving party, even in a fictional context, I often experience very real guilt and remorse even though I know I was doing something fictional. I can detach more easily as a GM for some reason, but the one time I really tried an evil PC as a player still doesn’t sit terribly well with me, and it was over a decade ago. This makes playing “nasty characters” an unpleasant, stressful experience for me. However, I know there are lots of other folks who enjoy exploring more diverse character types, but still don’t want to actually hurt the people they’re playing with. With that in mind, I heartily recommend this article. It’s primarily aimed at LARP players, but I think a lot of the advice will be perfectly applicable to tabletop players and GMs. (There is some cursing in the article, just as an FYI.)

In this article, I will address some things to keep in mind when playing certain types of characters: villains, cruel bastards, heartless manipulators, unsympathetic types, mighty evil overlords or schoolyard bullies. For simplicity’s sake, I will just call them nasty characters. You might want to play such characters for various reasons, because the story needs an evil emperor as well as heroic rebels, or because you want to explore the psychology behind cruel actions. Or perhaps just because it’s a fun acting challenge.

More Richard Beck from me is hardly a surprise, but this little post is one of my favorite things he’s ever written and I find it incredibly profound, because the problem he describes is one I have with regularity.

I’ve noticed that, whenever we face hard choices and decisions, we tend to gravitate to the question “What is the right to do?”

More and more I’ve come to the conclusion that, as human beings, we rarely know what is the right thing to do. There are no guarantees. We cannot see into the future. There are things we may be missing.

Today (Friday, February 2nd) is Groundhog Day, and in honor of the movie by the same name (which was shot in Woodstock, IL, the town I grew up in!) And in honor of that, I share this very interesting and insightful article about what makes it such a unique, interesting, and good movie.

Groundhog Day succeeds as a film because of the way it plays with, subverts, and outright mocks the tropes of each of the genres it flirts with. While some people would call it a time travel movie, or a movie about small town America, or the most spiritual film of all time, or a rom-com, it is by breaking the rules of each of those types of films that it ultimately transcends genre entirely.

Jenny

I spent a large part of the middle school years playing flash games on various websites across the internet. One of my favourite ones was about a ninja making his way across a city to defeat his former master. If I recall correctly, it was a platformer featuring a grappling hook-based movement system. This game, Dandara, looks like it has a similar movement system, and also looks more challenging, and also looks like it’s about taking out an evil dictator, which I am all for. It’s coming out on February 6th, and I am very happy about it.

Dandara puts an interesting twist on your usual side-scrolling platformer. The titular heroine, Dandara, doesn’t actually walk or run, she jumps everywhere, clinging to walls, ceilings, and floors. Ricocheting through levels, you’ll encounter enemies and unlock attacks and secrets along the way. Combined with the topsy-turvy level design and a hectic environment, it’s highly exploratory and looks like a ton of fun to play.

One of the soapboxes I will probably die on is my Affordable and Efficient Housing soapbox. I don’t want to get onto that soapbox right now, but I do want to say that I think Rev. Faith Fowler of Detroit is doing a great job of showing how the church can do charitable works that last beyond a few meals, and contribute positively to communities in need of shelter. Here’s an article about how her church’s charity is building tiny, rent-to-own houses for homeless individuals.

The seven tiny houses that dot the northwest Detroit street of Elmhurst are charming and unique. Each seems to have a personality.
While the batch of homes has become something of a mecca for architecturally curious tourists, their purpose goes far deeper than a trend.
The houses aim is to help low-income people, and specifically, formerly homeless individuals, attain an asset and begin to accrue wealth.

It is generally held to be a truth of gaming culture that gaming stories have a time and a place, and that time and place is generally during game night, with the party from which the story originated, and nowhere else. But every now and then, you come across the perfect group, or the perfect game, or the perfect story, and something magical happens, and you end up with a gaming story worth spreading. Such seems to be the case with Record of Lodoss War and its spin-offs, which are the anime and manga product of a long-term D&D campaign.

If you’re a long-time anime fan, you probably did a bit of a double-take at this season’s Record of Grancrest War. The title, and the setup, are more than a little like the now-classic Record of Lodoss War. And for good reason: both are the creation of writer Ryo Mizuno, and both — while in different universes — have a similar adventure flavor to them.
But there’s one more thing they have in common: they’re both built up from tabletop campaigns. Because not only is Mizuno a writer, he’s also an RPG developer and a Dungeon Master. With that in mind, let’s dive back into the earliest history of Record of Lodoss War: past Spark, past Parn and Deedlit, all the way back to a D&D game back in the mid-1980s.

Grant

These aren’t reading, but I’m still gonna recommend them! We’ve never had him on the show, but Hawke Robinson has been working on research into roleplaying games and their therapeutic uses since 1983. The founder of RPGResearch.com, Hawke’s got a ton to say about the subject and is a great resource. He’s also the guest on the latest episode of Dragon Talk, the ‘official’ D&D podcast from Wizards of the Coast. If you’re interested in the topic, I strongly recommend listening to it! In a similar vein, the Min/Max Podcast has been doing a series they’re calling ‘#MedicineCheck’ on gaming and mental health, in a somewhat broader sweep than we’ve done on our show. Episode 32 features Dr. Marsha Vaughn; Episode 33 features Rev. Dr. Cindy Wallace; and Episode 34 features longtime friend of the show Jack Berkenstock. Those three episodes are all well worth your time too.

I’m still a little bit shocked by the recent death of Ursula K. Le Guin. I haven’t read quite everything she’s written, but everything I have read has been powerful, and each work left me changed—always for the better. If you’re unfamiliar with her work, I can think of no better place to start than her short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”, which can be found in its full text online. It displays in full her crisp, stark voice, powerful in its simplicity. I cannot recommend it enough, nor her other works.

[…] They were not simple folk, you see, though they were happy. But we do not say the words of cheer much any more. All smiles have become archaic. Given a description such as this one tends to make certain assumptions. Given a description such as this one tends to look next for the King, mounted on a splendid stallion and surrounded by his noble knights, or perhaps in a golden litter borne by great-muscled slaves. But there was no king. They did not use swords, or keep slaves. They were not barbarians. I do not know the rules and laws of their society, but I suspect that they were singularly few. As they did without monarchy and slavery, so they also got on without the stock exchange, the advertisement, the secret police, and the bomb. Yet I repeat that these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. […]

Finally, I recommend this article in The Guardian: “Prize launched for thrillers that avoid sexual violence against women”. The prize is funded by author and screenwriter Bridget Lawless, to counter this common, exploitative trope:

The Staunch book prize will disqualify any work that does not meet its criteria of no woman in the story being “beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered”. It is open to stories across the thriller genre – crime, psychological, comedy and mysteries – and to traditionally published, self-published and not-yet-published works.

“I’m certainly not alone in getting increasingly fed up and disgusted with fictional depictions of violence happening to women in books, films and television. It echoes, exaggerates, fetishises and normalises what happens to women in the real world. But I know there are writers creating thrilling and complex work without going there,” she writes on the prize’s website. […]

Lawless acknowledged that not all thrillers depicting crimes against women are gratuitous or exploitative. “Of course, there are [good thrillers tackling this topic] but they are not for this prize,” she said. “How we see women depicted and treated in fiction does spread out to the wider world and how women are treated there. That battle is far from won, but there is definitely a climate change. People are fed up with it. Here’s my alternative.”

During my work on the setting I’ve been designing, I ran across a free third-party supplement for D&D 5e that I really liked. It’s called Sprouting Chaos, and it has a bunch of plant-themed character races, class archetypes, monsters, and spells. Everything looks nicely-balanced to use with official material. It’s also a very professional-looking piece of work and it’s available from this Reddit thread.

In the worlds of D&D, plant-themed creatures and classes are hard to come by. This supplement aims to change that, providing  new plant-themed options for player characters, as well as new plant creatures for those players to face. If your Dungeon Master allows, these options may be used in any of your campaigns.

I learned this week that China, of all places, is well on the way to having the world’s largest Christian population, and delegates from the WCC are going to be meeting with church leaders in China.

The delegation will visit Shanghai and meet with the China Christian Council and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, as well as with the leadership and students at the East China Theological Seminary after the Chinese groups invited the WCC to visit.

They will also travel to Xi’an and visit Shaanxi Bible School and Jing Xin Church said the WCC which represents Christians mainly from the Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant traditions.

Finally, there’s a neat article in Popular Science about why it’s so much colder in the Northern Hemisphere in the winter even though Earth is physically closer to the Sun during that time.

There’s something about the geometry of space that’s never quite made sense to me. I know that the axial tilt of the Earth is the reason we have seasons, but if a slight angle away from the sun can make me see my breath in winter, why does being three million miles closer not make me melt in a pool of my own sweat? Is it really not any hotter when we’re at our shortest distance from our star? And if it is, then why should the 23.5° tilt to our axis matter at all?

Jenny

I found a really well thought out blog post that seems to be part of a series about how to make deeper, more interesting characters to play in RPGs.

This sort of “man with no name” who comes from nowhere setup is really common when it comes to our characters. We know who they are, what they can do, and we know their names… but we just sort of plunk them down in the world as if they sprang fully-formed from the ether. More often than not we talk about how far from home they are, or we make it a point that their family is dead, and they have no friends. They’re a lone adventurer, out on their own.

This is an archetype… but it often makes your character feel like they aren’t really a part of the world. It can make it harder to roleplay, and worse, it makes it harder for you to tell your story because you’re starting from scratch. If you want to make your life a little easier, all you have to do is give your character connections in the game setting.

I think it quite unfortunate that you can no longer go to the Floating Church of the Redeemer. It was exactly what it sounds like.

They brought the heavens to the seas.

In 1840s Philadelphia, the Churchman’s Missionary Association for Seamen wanted the Gospel to reach the dockworkers and sailors who worked on the city’s sin-soaked piers.

I found out about a really sweet walking-simulator story game recently called Storyseeker. It looks really sweet, and it’s free! (Funnily enough, I found out about the game because of some very cute gingerbread.)

Storyseeker is a minimalist narrative experiment driven by your curiosity. Follow the trails of weasels, talk to ghosts, cross the ocean. Find out what happened to a strange, quiet world.

Grant

First up: Two articles (conveniently linked by one article in Relevant Magazine) about Chen Si, who spends his weekend preventing suicides:

“Often it really is a life and death struggle. They’ve already climbed over the railings, and I’m left hanging onto them by an arm. I have to drag them back over,” Chen told NPR in 2006. “Sometimes after I’ve saved someone, when I’m not paying attention, they jump. And there are those I don’t reach in time.”

The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge is one of the most frequented suicide sites in the world. Chinese authorities don’t report the total number of deaths, but estimates say there is at least one successful suicide attempt at the bridge each week. Chen travels over 15 miles from his home to patrol the bridge and speak to those he sees who might need help.

I’ll probably forget, and post about this again closer to Halloween, but 2018 is the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s genre-defining novel Frankenstein. A group of folks are trying to push to get everyone to read (or re-read) Frankenstein on Halloween 2018, across the world, and that’s pretty cool. You can find out more at frankenreads.org.

Something I just found today: Wizards of the Coast published a free D&D adventure for their “Ixalan” Magic: The Gathering setting called X Marks the Spot. If you’re looking for some free D&D material, whether a full-blown adventure or a few monsters and ideas, this may be helpful.

We’re back with an episode topic selected by our Patreon supporters: That old adage, “the ends justify the means”—in other words, consequentialism! First, a few announcements: Grant now regularly streams the editing process for these episodes over on Mixer, so come hang out if you want to chat with him while he does that. Also, to help wrap up our “summer of mental health” focus, Jenny and Grant have pulled together a few mental health resources; we’ve got those listed below.

Our Patreon backer question this week is from Doug Hagler, who asks us about using a board game to introduce or set the scene for a tabletop roleplaying game. We struggle a bit with this one, admittedly, but we do manage to come up with a couple of ideas!

Then we settle into the main topic: Consequentialism, a philosophy we all know from that “the ends justify the means” adage. We describe it and address its shortcomings, then move on to how to use this idea in our games without ending up with unbearable characters! We also plug The Sci-Fi Christian along the way, which you should definitely be listening to as well.

Mental health resources:

• USA: The Suicide Prevention Lifeline; Our Fractured Minds (podcast); GoodTherapy.org
• Canada: Canada’s Suicide Prevention Crisis Site; Healthy Minds Canada’s mental health resources page.

Scripture: Joshua 1:7-9, John 11:47-50, 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Important note: This Weekend Reading series is the result of our Patreon backers supporting the show, and is the result of us breaking the $60/month barrier a while back. Unfortunately, we’ve recently dropped below $50/month. We really do like doing this series, though, so we’re going to keep doing this every two weeks for a while at least. (Asking listeners for support via Patreon is extremely helpful, and we love that our listeners do support us, but holding content hostage in some way doesn’t really sit right with us as producers of Christian content.)

Grant

First up, I’ve got an article I’ll talk some about next episode as well, but which I found utterly fascinating: “The Holiest City on Earth (Will Drive You LITERALLY Insane)“, Luke Harrington’s description (and armchair analysis) of Jerusalem Syndrome. Honestly, it speaks for itself:

Actually, the symptoms of Jerusalem syndrome—which affects as many as 100 people a year—are almost shockingly specific in their progression. First, the individual will become nervous and agitated and express a desire to leave the tour group and explore the city alone. (Tour guides in Jerusalem are actually familiar enough with the syndrome that many of them will try to step in here and put the kibosh on things.) After wandering the city alone for a while, the individual will become obsessed with cleanliness, bathing compulsively and often cutting his or her fingernails down to the quick.

The next step—and I am not making this up—is stealing a hotel bed sheet to make a toga. (The toga, of course, is a garment more associated with ancient Roman fashion, or frat parties, than with ancient Israelite dress, but the Jerusalem syndrome sufferer has more on his or her mind than historical accuracy.) Those who have studied Jerusalem syndrome note that the toga is always white, which they tie into the obsession with purity; I’d guess it probably has more to do with the fact that hotel sheets are pretty much always white, but then, I’m not the expert.

Every once in a while, I encounter Christians who believe that mental health problems are purely spiritual, and that depression, anxiety, or more serious mental disorders are a sign of a lack of faith, or something that can be merely “prayed away.” I’ll never discount the power of prayer and faith, but there’s a reason many Christians are called to work as mental health professionals! So it’s gratifying to see that Pope Francis understands that even those with great spiritual gifts can stand to talk to a therapist every now and then to “clarify a few things”:

Pope Francis says that when he was 42 he had sessions weekly with a psychoanalyst who was female and Jewish to “clarify some things.”

It wasn’t specified what the future pontiff wanted to explore. The revelation came in a dozen conversations Francis had with French sociologist Dominique Wolton, writing a soon-to-be-published book.

La Stampa, an Italian daily, quoting from some of the conversations on Friday, said Francis went to the analyst’s home. Francis was quoted as saying: “one day, when she was about to die, she called me. Not to receive the sacraments, since she was Jewish, but for a spiritual dialogue.”

High school biology classes tend to lead us to think that scientific names are dry, dusty, and static (if occasionally enlivened by a scientist trying to be witty.) Turns out, however, that rogue taxonomists abusing the system can kill you in the process of accruing scientific prestige:

Before you go rushing to the hospital in search of antivenin, you’re going to want to look up exactly what kind of snake you’re dealing with. But the results are confusing. According to the official record of species names, governed by the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), the snake belongs to the genus Spracklandus. What you don’t know is that almost no taxonomists use that name. Instead, most researchers use the unofficial name that pops up in Wikipedia and most scientific journal articles: Afronaja.

This might sound like semantics. But for you, it could mean the difference between life and death. “If you walk in [to the hospital] and say the snake that bit you is called Spracklandus, you might not get the right antivenin,” says Scott Thomson, a herpetologist and taxonomist at Brazil’s Museum of Zoology at the University of São Paulo. After all, “the doctor is not a herpetologist … he’s a medical person trying to save your life.”

In fact, Spracklandus is the center of a heated debate within the world of taxonomy—one that could help determine the future of an entire scientific field. And Raymond Hoser, the Australian researcher who gave Spracklandus its official name, is one of the forefront figures in that debate.

Jenny

One of my favourite memories from my childhood is trying to find more bookmarks so that I could kind of cheat at Choose Your Own Adventure Books, attempting to avoid a grisly end for the main character. (The alien abduction one was the hardest to get through alive, if memory serves.) I also recall a similar book series about teen drama and trying to avoid the popular kids’ wrath at school. I remember enjoying parts of those books, but also finding them rather vapid and boring after a while. Since then, I haven’t been able to truly find a good substitute in my life for those Choose Your Own Adventure books. The closest I could get was Bioware RPGs like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Until very recently when I was perusing the Google Play store on my phone and discovered Creatures Such as We by Lynnea Glasser, a choose your own adventure aimed at adult readers where you are a tour guide on the moon, and the most recent batch of tourists happen to be the designers of your favourite game studio, and you get to choose whether to maintain a professional distance, or pursue friendships and/or romance with them. The cast is incredibly diverse, and the number of choices you get to make is just… satisfying. The first playthrough of the game is free, but after that it costs $5, which I will definitely be paying.

Creatures Such as We is a philosophical interactive romance novel by Lynnea Glasser, where your choices control the story. It’s entirely text-based–without graphics or sound effects–and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

Living on the moon is lonely, and stressful, and exhausting. Video games have always offered you an escape to a better life. The easy, happy life you wish you had. Which makes it so frustrating when the game you’ve been playing ends badly. But you have a chance to figure it out, because the next tourist group is the designers. You can debate with them about art, inspire them with the beauty of outer space, get closer to any one specific designer in particular, and finally find out how to get the ending you always wanted.

Theology Nerd’s Wife Has Book Detector Installed. This article is a joke article, but seriously, I need one of those to keep myself in check sometimes.

As Lance tiptoed in the door, apparently planning on quietly slipping the books behind some of the other books stacked in various oddball piles throughout the house, he reportedly jumped in terror at a blaring alarm, which alerted his wife Melissa that he had brought home 27 new books on theology, Christian living, and the Bible.

Vincent Baker, designer of Apocalypse World, the RPG that led to many games that are Powered by the Apocalypse, recently discussed on Twitter the way he designed choices in Apocalypse World. I found the dissection of choice and compromise very interesting, and it’s given words to one of the things that made Monster Hearts and Dungeon World interesting to me. In those games, your actions don’t only have consequences for you. There are consequences for everyone else too. I like that in a game.

Peter

Divinity: Original Sin 2 released this week (on Thursday to be specific). I’ve only had a little bit of time with the final version of it, but it’s a very interesting and fun game. In particular, I don’t think I’ve ever seen pregenerated PCs done so compellingly in a video game before. And while it’s a fantastic game and fun in its own right, the thing that makes it more interesting enough to share here is the GM mode. If you remember back to the old Neverwinter Nights games, those promised to do a similar “tabletop on the PC” thing, but the tools were not as elegant as it sounds like they are here.

There are lots of prefabricated maps as well, all of which can be modified or pulled apart and rebuilt. You can build from scratch too, as well as sharing the individual components you’ve built for use in other campaigns. That means you might not find a gothic space cathedral at launch, but you’ll either be able to build one or download one somewhere down the line, provided GM mode finds a community.

While I’m pushing stuff to buy on you, I may as well mention that Reviving Old Scratch is on sale for $3 again. That book was a very impactful read for me and also gave rise to Episode 110 of our podcast.

I recently came across this rather wonderful story about a church searching for a pastor and a pastor searching for a church to serve. I really like the humility and warmth of all parties involved, and it think it’s a reminder that faith isn’t really supposed to be this grandiose thing.

Then a letter arrived from a woman named Amy on behalf of Granby Presbyterian. Handwritten. A single page. They ­didn’t drill him with knucklehead questions. They only asked if he was actually interested in being a pastor. The next morning, Jonas rose an hour early to work out his reply.

Finally, the dream of delivery drones is already a reality – for medical supplies in Africa! A company called Zipline is using drones to get life-saving supplies to medical professionals in Rwanda and Tanzania, and it is every bit as cool asit sounds.

By focusing on carrying critical medical supplies, Zipline has gotten off the ground faster and in a bigger way than other, more mundane delivery pioneers. It’s a lot easier to convince regulators to tolerate the potential safety risks of delivery drones falling out of the sky when those aircraft are making lifesaving deliveries to hospitals rather than carrying shoes or pizza.

We’re delighted to welcome Jack Berkenstock Jr. of The Bodhana Group back onto the mics this week! Jack previously joined us on STG 25, when he introduced us to the idea of roleplaying games as an adjunct therapeutic tool for children who were victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse, among others. This time, he’s here to talk more about RPGs in treatment for social skills, grief, loss, and more. After catching up with our old friend a bit, we let him plug Save Against Fear 2017 (Oct. 13-15 in Harrisburg, PA)—which we can confirm Jenny will attend this year, so catch up with her there too if you see her! We also plug the /r/ChristianDnD subreddit, especially for anyone looking to find other folks to game online with.

That done, we chat briefly about the 2017 total solar eclipse and answer (another) question from Patreon backer Fernando about Saturday morning cartoons we’d want to turn into games. Naturally, this gave us a chance to plug our podcasting friends over at the Gameable Saturday Morning Podcast, and Peter’s episodes on Batman: The Animated Series there. Our other choices: E.X.O. Squad, Reboot, Star Blazers, and Toad Patrol! (And yes, please nominate your own cartoons to game in the comments.)

Finally, we settle in and let Jack talk about his introduction to gaming, how he found out he wanted to do therapy for kids who were hurting badly, and how he figured out that those two loves might work together. In particular, we discuss methodologies, what kind of metrics work and don’t work in these sorts of situations, Olivia’s House, and how the therapeutic sessions Bodhana runs differ from your average tabletop game.

Games mentioned this episode: Unknown Armies; Cartoon Action Hour; Blades in the Dark; No Thank You, Evil!; Pugmire; Retrostar. Also mentioned: Face Value Comics; The Anglican Church’s “Prayer for Reconciliation”.

Scripture: Psalm 16:7-10, Psalm 91:2-6, John 8:2-11, Galatians 6:1-2

Adam Davis and Adam Johns from Wheelhouse Workshop join us to discuss how and why they use Dungeons & Dragons in social skills therapy! Their Seattle-based organization has been doing this for a couple of years now, and they’ve got a lot to say. (We’ve also worked with Adam and Adam previously on some Game to Grow content.) We also tackle a question from Patreon supporter Francisco (of the Retro Rewind Podcast) about replacing our favorite RPGs with board games in a pinch, and Grant briefly describes his trip to Electric City Comic-Con 2017 and his terrible-but-awesome decision to help his daughter get into the Pokémon TCG.

Adam and Adam then discuss Wheelhouse Workshop’s work: Why RPGs in general, and D&D in particular, are useful therapeutic tools; how a game session in their offices differs from your usual tabletop session; their house rules for their games; some success stories and interesting moments; and much more. Also, we mention in passing Monte Cook Games’ The Strange and Microscope, both of which are excellent games.

For more information about Wheelhouse Workshop, visit their website or find them on Twitter and Facebook.

Scripture: Numbers 23:8, Mark 2:15-17, 1 Peter 5:6-10

We’re joined this week by Matthew Surber, who’s both the Program Director at the West River Center in Maryland and a game designer affiliated with Defy Danger Adventures. We actually found Matthew through the most unlikely of sources (Reddit comments, of all things) but he turned out to be a fantastic guest! After addressing Patreon backer Tom’s question about broad and narrow skills in roleplaying games, and a quick diversion from Jenny about the dangers of Canada’s nuclear wildlife, we buckled down with Matthew to discuss applying counseling principles to games. Matthew’s got a Master’s degree in counseling and a Dungeon World game he runs for his other camp counselors; naturally, he had a lot of excellent advice to give about trust, bonds, empathy, and saying ‘yes’ as a GM and player.

Games mentioned this episode: Dungeon World; Beyond The Wall; Pugmire; Honey Heist; The Skeletons; Ten Candles.

Other things mentioned this episode: MegaDumbCast (MDC); Defy Danger Adventures; STG 25 with Jack Berkenstock; The Bodhana Group; Wheelhouse Workshop; and that rad Honey Heist t-shirt.

Matthew can be found on Twitter at @TheRealSurberus.

Scripture: Jonah 2:2, Psalm 119:76, Mark 2:15-17

I have a small admission to make: I’ve been feeling frustrated and dissatisfied lately. Some of this stems from ongoing anxiety issues I’ve got, and some stems from everyday life: Work, family, costs of living, and so forth. Some of it stems from producing a podcast—not that I mind, obviously, but scheduling guests and editing shows eats up time. All that said, though, the source of much of this pervasive dissatisfaction has been very hard to pin down.

A few of you may remember that I tried picking up oil painting last year. I’d been looking for some time for a creative outlet, because I was feeling stifled and frustrated by a lack of creative production (I thought.) That … did not work out. I still love the idea of painting, but with two young children who need lots of attention in my life right now I don’t have the time to teach myself something that uses up expensive supplies whether you paint well or paint poorly. Oil painting was only one attempt, though. I tried writing poetry. I looked very seriously into setting up a pottery studio. I’d previously mentioned learning how to make stained glass, and my wife and I bandied that around a bit. I’d been weighing buying a Wacom tablet to try digital painting (thinking that easy access to an undo button would relieve a lot of the pressure and stress of painting with actual paint.) None of these were feasible, and those that were didn’t really seem to ‘click’ when I tried them. The struggle to find “the right outlet” to dispel this vague sense of creative stagnation, and the broad sense that things should somehow be better, only added to my frustration!

About two weeks ago, though, I had a small epiphany while doing the dishes and talking with my wife Krissi. I realized that I wasn’t looking to learn something creative. I was looking to learn something—to re-engage the love of learning I still identified with, but had let fall dormant over the past few years. I’d originally defined the problem, and thus the set of potential solutions, incorrectly from the moment I started looking at it; and I’d spent over a year frustrated because the solutions weren’t right for the actual problem.

This sort of error is pretty common, to be fair. Introspection is difficult for most of us at the best of times. When we’re unhappy, frustrated, and dissatisfied with our current condition, we’re even less likely to be able to clearly analyze our situation and correctly define the problems facing us. And when we’re dealing with other people—say, in a regular gaming group, or at church and in church groups—our relationships with people in those groups complicate this sort of analysis even further.

My gaming groups have historically been excellent. Aside from my very, very first campaign (which I think was some weird Palladium game with a college gaming club? There’s a half-remembered story for an episode someday…) every group I’ve joined was mostly made up of my good friends—even the avowedly terrible games. I’ve never had to resort to pick-up games with strangers, whether on forums or that ancient, arcane rite of posting a flyer on my FLGS’s bulletin board. And the ties between us as friends have stayed much stronger than the tie to any one specific game or campaign.

That’s not to say I haven’t been frustrated by our group’s games, though. Good GMing is an art form which requires practice, but the same is true of being a good player. Some games were atrociously bad for obvious reasons. Others had subtler weaknesses—a strong concept but weak collective execution, or a mismatch between player goals and GM goals that went unstated and unaddressed. One of the things we stress on Saving the Game is clear, healthy communication between game participants as people at (and away from) the table. If I learned anything from those struggling games (and some went on for several years) it’s just how important that is. Our Fellowship game has been particularly good for this lately, perhaps because the Overlord’s player has never GM’d before and actively asks for help and feedback.

That’s the thing: Right now, there are people playing games they don’t enjoy because they can’t or won’t open up to the other players and tell them that something’s frustrating them. Even some who will do that won’t then ask the group to help pin down what the real problem is. Without support, they’ll misidentify the problem, and either take drastic action which breaks an otherwise fixable game (or group), or create a cycle of frustration as solution after solution fails.

If only this were limited to games.

My wife’s much wiser than I am, of course. That’s why she’s been teaching herself Japanese in her limited spare time these past few months.

Krissi’s been a full-time mom for five years, with one brief stint of employment before Kid #2 came along. We have great kids, and watching children grow up and be awesome is incredibly rewarding, but it’s also sort of a trap. Aside from going to the gym, grocery shopping, and taking the kids to school and such, she rarely gets to leave the house. She gets no time for herself during the day, because everything really does revolve around the kids. Diapers, meal times, naps, constant noise and demands for attention … it’s exhausting. (Don’t think I don’t know what you do for us, dear. You’re fantastic.) Going to the gym is fine physically, but she’s needed to do something for her mind for a while now.

Why Japanese? A few reasons: A love for anime; a long-standing desire to travel to Japan; and deep curiosity about a language far removed from the Romance languages we’re more familiar with, especially her high-school Spanish. Perhaps some other reasons as well. Regardless, she’s buckled down and learned a great deal in a short amount of time. And I can tell you that she’s been much happier with herself. Our five-year-old daughter noticed, too. She asked to learn a language, without any prompting from us other than a conversation we had about language families. (She thought the idea that languages could have families was hilarious when she overheard Krissi and me discussing them.)

After sampling a few languages at a very basic level (thanks to the magic of YouTube), and probably watching one too many episodes of Dora the Explorer, she selected Spanish. She loved it, and has since stuck with it far longer than I ever expected. Her pride in learning something was palpable, and infectious. Our house had suddenly turned multi-lingual, with everyone learning a new language (even the one-year-old.) Except me, because I hadn’t rediscovered that learning is fun yet.

It wasn’t until Krissi asked me, not what creative hobby I might want to try, but what I wanted to learn that everything clicked into place. And then I couldn’t shut up about it.

I’ve never been the sort to bounce from congregation to congregation, looking for “the right church”. I’ve seen plenty of people do so, however. Too many of those give up on going to church altogether. Most can’t explain even to themselves what they’re really hoping to find at “the right church,” and so their reasons for quitting particular churches and moving on often seem trivial. Their excuses typically mask a more difficult-to-explain disquiet: If you can’t clearly and correctly explain what you’re looking for, you’ll almost always end up looking for the wrong thing.

Often, these people are scratching around the edges of deeper questions about God and Christ and His relationship to them that they’re uncomfortable openly scrutinizing. Too many Christians shame those struggling with their faith into covering up their doubts, rather than acknowledging those questions and seeking to help the doubtful find answers and strengthen their faith. “Believe” and “have faith” are twisted into “don’t question” and “say the right things.” The full richness of God is emptied of meaning. Is it any wonder that the hurting and the doubting struggle to find what they really seek, when they cannot?

If we can’t help each other ask questions, can we ever hope to help each other find answers? If we can’t ask the most important questions about God, engaging our intellects and opening up our hearts, can we ever hope to hear or understand His answers?

I started teaching myself Korean the weekend before last—한글, or Hangul.

Why Korean? A few reasons: I knew the script was well-designed, which would make learning easier. I knew nothing else about it, which made me very curious indeed. I watch a lot of professional esports, which Korean players often dominate; and while I don’t want to come across as the worst sort of Korean fanboy (much as Krissi doesn’t want to come across as a weeaboo), the possibility of reading Korean esports news did intrigue me. Perhaps some other reasons as well.

I debated several different languages, bouncing ideas off my wife and weighing my options. The finalists were Korean, Chinese (of some variety), Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic. (A fun, if not exactly complimentary, fact about myself: If I’d picked Japanese too, I’d immediately have started competing with Krissi in my head and ruined the joy of learning for its own sake—for both of us.) Perhaps one day I’ll come back to those; they all have their own appeal.

So far, it’s been a delightful process. I can’t say I’ve learned much Korean in a week and a half, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much I have learned in that time. I can feel old mental muscles limbering up, stagnant rot washed away by clear water. My wife and I excitedly compare Japanese and Korean grammar (and Android keyboards for our respective languages.) I have something new to look forward to every day—something fulfilling. Something that reminds me of one of the most wondrous passages in all of Scripture, which gives me shivers every time I read it:

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

 

Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

 

—Acts 2:1-12

It seems I needed to be reminded of what that does mean: “I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; my flesh also will dwell in hope.” (Acts 2:25-26) Very likely, I’m not alone in that.

So speak up. Ask questions without assumption, and do so together in trust and fellowship. Most of all, be ready to hear hard questions rather than to silence them—and to each other help find answers. The Lord has given us tongues with which to share them.

The image featured in this post is “Pentecost” by Jean Restout II, 1732.

Jenny

I may or may not have found a bunch of new games to look for. And by “may or may not” I mean “definitely.” TTG’s Top 10: Cheap Games for Under £10 gave me a bunch of cool looking titles for me to look out for next time I’m at my FLGS, epecially Red7.

Keeping up with the latest and greatest titles often means making tough decisions about what to spend your board game budget on each month – do you drop nearly £100 on a brand new blockbuster release, or try and split your available funds between a greater number of smaller or older gems that you might’ve missed?

Sometimes life gets in the way, too – an unexpected car bill or birthday can mean waiting a little longer to play the hot game that everybody’s talking about.

But a limited budget doesn’t necessarily mean limiting your gaming experience; there are hundreds of fantastic titles you can pick up for yourself or give as a gift for the same price as a coffee or trip to the cinema. We’ve picked out ten of our favourites that will leave you with change from a tenner.

What if Adam had beaten up the serpent? Questions Children Ask by Christy Thomas really made me realize a few things about the story of Adam and Eve that I was never taught in Sunday school, but absolutely should have been.

“Mom, what would have happened if Adam had picked up a tree limb and beaten the **** out of the serpent?”

Yep, he was just a kid, maybe eight years old, when that one came popping out of his mouth. He has no memory of asking it; I’ll never forget. I was trying to make a left-hand turn onto a busy street when this sweet voice from the backseat tosses that one at me.

In retrospect, I acknowledge it as one of the most profound theological questions ever.

And finally, as I continue with my DIY/building/crafting streak, I stumbled upon some truly innovative, sturdy home designs made out of quonsets. I can honestly picture myself living in one of these eventually, especially since they’re built to withstand lots and lots of snow. Some of the houses in the photo gallery look fantastic.

One thing about this building style is that it is easy to set up, and another point is that it is inexpensive. We priced out the residential models, and didn’t even pick the smallest possible size. We picked a 20X40, 10 foot high unit (they go lower and higher is size and cost), and the estimate was $8,000. So they start at less than that, even for residential ones. We also priced out a smaller one for garage purposing, and the estimate was $1,200. Of course, you do have to think about other building costs, such as transportation, laying foundation, and other expenses.

Grant

I’ve really fallen in love with Luke Harrington’s D-List Saints series over at Christ & Pop Culture. The most recent is about George Went Hensley, entitled “A Brief History of Snake Handling, in Case the Common Communion Cup Isn’t Enough of a Health Hazard for You”, and while it’s witty and informative, it’s also a sobering remonstrance for Christians of all stripes.

It’s a tale as old as time: some guy discovers a verse in the Bible, he’s convinced no one has ever noticed it before him, he doesn’t bother to look into what thousands of years’ worth of scholars have had to say about it, and he starts his own movement based on a single sentence. Sometimes it’s the sort of thing that turns into a weird historical footnote; sometimes it results in strange phenomena like horned Moseses or Calvinism; and sometimes it results in dozens of people dying from snake bites.

C. J. Ciaramella—a criminal justice reporter over at Reason Magazine—filed a FOIA request last year for the FBI’s file on TSR, Inc. and Gary Gygax. It’s a bizzaro-world look at a harmless game company and a decent, if humanly imperfect, man, filtered through unknown sources amidst their hunt for the Unabomber.

In the early 1980s, GYGAX had been generating about $1 million per year in income. REDACTED advised that GYGAX spent his money frivolously. GYGAX was involved in an unpleasant divorce and REDACTED further advised that GYGAX was a drug abuser. GYGAX is approximately 55 years of age and is currently REDACTED. He lives on Madison Street in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and may be contacted at (414) 248-7380. GYGAX maintains a mailing address as follows: P. O. Box 388, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. REDACTED considers GYGAX to be eccentric and frightening. He is known to carry a weapon and was proud of his record of personally answering any letter coming from a prison. GYGAX set up a holding company in Liberia to avoid paying taxes. He is known to be a memer of the Libertarian Party.

Finally this week, an article in Lapham’s Quarterly—“Greatest of All Time”—about the richest athletes in history. No, not Tiger Woods or Lebron James—ancient Roman charioteers, whose winnings vastly outpaced even these modern superstars:

The very best paid of these—in fact, the best paid athlete of all time—was a Lusitanian Spaniard named Gaius Appuleius Diocles, who had short stints with the Whites and Greens, before settling in for a long career with the Reds. Twenty-four years of winnings brought Diocles—likely an illiterate man whose signature move was the strong final dash—the staggering sum of 35,863,120 sesterces in prize money. […] His total take home amounted to five times the earnings of the highest paid provincial governors over a similar period—enough to provide grain for the entire city of Rome for one year, or to pay all the ordinary soldiers of the Roman Army at the height of its imperial reach for a fifth of a year.

Peter

This is a little bit of a cheat, but I really want to draw attention to the show notes from our last episode. Sarah gave us an enormous list of fascinating resources after we recorded, and even if you don’t normally dig into them, this week, you really should make an exception.

It’s a bit less organized than many of our episodes, simply because we let Sarah take charge of much of the conversation, but we definitely think it turned out better for that! (And check below for a long list of links Sarah provided for us.)

For our listeners that play Magic: the Gathering, there are some big, and awesome-sounding changes coming. Check out the Metamorphosis 2.0 article over at wizards.com for the details.

Making Magic is an iterative process. We create something, we playtest it, we get feedback on it, and then we use that feedback to either make more new things or to adapt the things we already made. This iterative loop is not only applied to individual sets but also to the game as a whole.

There’s a very thought-provoking article on faith and doubt over on Patheos that’s worth a read.

I longed so much for proof. I felt sure that if only I could know for certain that God existed, I would find assurance and peace of mind.

I have to tell you, figuring out that there are no absolute answers available to me didn’t do much for my peace of mind. But having confidence that to be a person of faith is just as intellectually valid as being an atheist was a good starting point.

And finally, in honor of our focus on mental health for the summer, I give you this fascinating article on “personal monsters.”

In Personal Monsters, Shinn has created a compendium of not-so-cheery creatures to blame for our more delicate emotions, or for our more delicate enemies. Creatures like the Professional Mourner, for instance, that sees every little problem as the very end of the world. And the Inner Critic, that makes you look back and regret every decision you’ve ever made.

Psychology researcher, professor, and LARPer Dr. Sarah Lynne Bowman joins us for a fascinating discussion of LARP and the psychology of play and roleplaying! Sarah had an enormous amount of information to pass along to us about different styles of live-action roleplay, terminology and concepts in LARP and in the psychology of play, the seeming dichotomy between tabletop and live-action play, and so much more. It’s a bit less organized than many of our episodes, simply because we let Sarah take charge of much of the conversation, but we definitely think it turned out better for that! (And check below for a long list of links Sarah provided for us.)

We also answer a question from Patreon supporter Paige, who wanted to know how much time we spend each week on tabletop gaming; briefly discuss Overwatch; and mention Bottlequest, a Golden Cobra two-page LARP game we used in our recent Fellowship game as a one-shot bottle episode mechanic. Plus, a bit more information about fake beards and Fear the Con X!

For more information about Sarah, check out her website and her book, The Function of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity. You can also check out the Game to Grow episode we hosted, where Sarah was a guest; she’s been on and hosted a few other episodes as well.

Things mentioned in this episode, or passed on after recording by Sarah:

• Living Games Conference
• Nordic Conference (Knutepunkt)
• The Hirelings, a one-shot LARP
• Larps From The Factory
• “Papers” (a Nordic LARP)
• “Immersion into LARP: Theories of Embodied Narrative Experience” – an article by Dr. Bowman
• Shut Up & Sit Down’s painfully intense review of Dog Eat Dog
• Dystopia Rising (LARP community)
• LARPs: Legion: Siberian Story. Conscience; Magischola; Enlightenment in Blood (Vampire); End of the Line; Just a Little Lovin’; Kapo;
• TED Talk: The Power of Vulnerability
• The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA)

Special thanks to Peter for editing this one while Grant was on vacation—especially given how long the episode went!

Scripture: 1 Samuel 16:7, Proverbs 16:3, Luke 12:2

Jenny

There’s been a lot of talk in recent weeks about the benefits of gaming in relation to mental health. But something I’ve struggled with on occasion is how my spirituality and religion interact with my mental health. Jordan Holmes, a Christian psychotherapist, wrote this article on some common (and possibly dangerous) misconceptions surrounding the Christian view towards counselling.

I recently came across a message by a very well-known pastor who preached on why Christians should never see a counselor. The pastor shall remain nameless as I believe he is well intentioned; his message conveys genuine care and concern for his flock. However, as well intentioned as he may be, he is wrong; surprisingly, shamefully, wrong.

Some revised D&D 5E subclasses have done what I’d thought to be impossible: they actually got me actively excited about potentially going off-official book when making a character. That never happens! I’m particularly interested in messing around with the College of Swords route for bards.

Today Unearthed Arcana returns to being monthly, appearing on the first or second Monday of a month. To kick things off, we look back at five of the subclasses from the recent series: the barbarian’s Path of the Ancestral Guardian, the bard’s College of Swords, the fighter’s Arcane Archer, the monk’s Way of the Kensei, and the sorcerer’s Favored Soul.

People Who Read Books Are Nicer. There. You’ve seen it on the internet, so it must be true!

Jokes aside, this short article by Sarah J. Young talks about a recent study from Kingston University in London that found that reading books is connected with greater empathy and social conduct.

After being quizzed on their preferences for books, TV and plays, 123 participants were tested on interpersonal skills including how much they considered other people’s feelings and whether they acted to help others. The study, conducted by Kingston University in London, found that readers were more likely to act in a socially acceptable manner compared to those who preferred watching television.

Peter

I’ve been looking for a low-stress, easy-to-follow plan for getting into better shape and it looks like this old program from the Canadian Air Force that I found via a LifeHacker article earlier this week is going to do the trick. From the comments to the article:

“I started using this program in 1965 while I was in the Navy. It is so effective and simple. It works because it is easy to develop the habit of doing the exercises daily. It never exhausts you. Fitness just sort of creeps up on you.”

I almost want to parcel this out over several of these posts about individual episodes, and I still might, but for now, I’m just going to be generous and share the whole thing – specifically the Newsworthy with Norsworthy podcast. Luke Norsworthy has a fascinating show where he talks to all kinds of folks about various topics in Christian theology and spirituality. I discovered the podcast through a link on Richard Beck’s page, but I’ve since listened to several more, and have really enjoyed them. I have no idea how Norsworthy finds the time and energy to do the podcast and still be a pastor, but I’m glad he does.

Luke and his wife Lindsay along with their three daughters live in Austin, TX where Luke is the senior minister of the Westover Hills Church. Luke also hosts the Newsworthy with Norsworthy Podcast,  a weekly podcast discussing Spirituality, Christianity, and anything else that seems news worthy.

For those of you who are into video games as well as tabletop ones (which I’d guess is probably most of the folks reading this) The Humble Store is running its annual Spring Sale. Lots of good deals to be found on various video games, including This War of Mine, Spec Ops: The Line, and Stardew Valley, all of which are excellent games to not only play, but think about. It’s also worth noting that the Humble Store donates part of the proceeds from your purchase to charity every time you buy from them, and while the default, Charity: Water (their blurb is below) is a fine charity, there is a dizzying array of other charitable organizations to choose from.

Right now, 663 million people don’t have access to clean water. That’s 1 in 11 of us. charity: water is a non-profit organization on a mission to bring clean and safe drinking water to every person on the planet. 100% of all public donations directly fund water project costs, we prove every project we build using photos and GPS coordinates on Google Maps, and we work with strong local implementing partners to build and maintain projects.

And finally, one last thing, just for fun:

Grant

First up, an article from Relevant Magazine that hit very close to home for me: “Death, Heartbreak & Hope“. It’s the story of Levi Lusko—a church planter and rising pastoral star with a growing network of church campuses—and how he lost his daughter. (Longtime listeners may remember that we nearly lost our daughter soon after she was born to heart issues.) It was a tough read, but worthwhile, and I think it points at something very important we need to remember when facing grief and death.

“The Bible talks about the peace that surpasses understanding and I really believe God gives you peace like that, but He doesn’t give it to you before you need it,” he says. “He gives you only what you need to get through what you’re going through in the moment.”

Living in the face of devastating loss isn’t about blind optimism or avoiding pain and grief. For Lusko, it’s about facing life—including potential loss—head-on, trusting God to provide both in seasons of gift wrap and funeral plans.

Also in the “Christian Reading” category: Rev. M. J. Young, Chaplain of the Christian Gamers Guild, has been doing a very detailed Bible study for a while now, working through much of the New Testament. He’s just starting on Revelation. The backlog can be found through the mailing list archives (a Yahoo Groups discussion group) and if you want to sign up for the Revelation study, now’s the time!

Next, a simple article from the fine folks over at Gnome Stew: “Fantasy Crops For Your Game“. The premise is fairly straightforward, but it’s a useful reminder that when we’re putting together alternate universes for our games, those little details add richness and plausibility to a setting. Plus—as seen in some of these example crops—they may be more than palette-swapped foodstuffs!

Something that rarely comes up in fantasy games, though characters often travel through farming villages, is agriculture. Yes, sometimes there’s a fight in a field, or a possessed scarecrow, or orc raiders are burning the fields or slaughtering cattle, but medieval fantasy peasants grow the same crops that we do in the modern world. Which is odd when you think about it. Because yes, mad wizards are more likely to make owlbears and oubliettes than magical corn, but farm boys become apprentices sometimes and then there are times that magic just happens: Stray magic warps things or a wish ends up weird.

Finally, a really fascinating pair of articles about cartographic propaganda from Hyperallergic: “Maps Made to Influence and Deceive” and a follow-up article, “The Octopus, A Motif of Evil in Historical Propaganda Maps“. Aside from being excellent reading material in their own right, there are a few things to think about here when designing your own maps for campaigns. This is especially true if the map is supposed to be an in-game artifact. Who drafted the map, and were they trying to influence people when they made it?

Social movements like temperance and women’s suffrage in the 19th and 20th centuries utilized maps to compel the public. An 1889 map by William T. Hornaday illustrated the extermination of the American bison and helped with his advocacy for their survival. W. T. Stead’s 1894 map of vice in Chicago packs the grid of the 19th Precinct with brothels, pawn brokers, saloons, and lodging houses, the induced anxiety similar to the use of color on an 1895 map of Manhattan with “concrete socialism” in bright red and private enterprises in white. Others are vividly reactionary, like a satirical 1894 “The American Pope” anti-Catholic cartoon where the shadow of a cardinal is cast over the country and its public schools.

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It’s our distinct pleasure to welcome Jack Berkenstock of The Bodhana Group as a guest host for this episode! We give Jack plenty of time to talk about his group and their mission to help young victims and perpetrators of sexual trauma—a mission they’re carrying out with tabletop roleplaying games as a crucial therapeutic tool. We also discuss the science and goals of therapeutic roleplaying and trauma therapy in general. Plus, we do our best to plug Save Against Fear, a three-day convention in Lancaster, PA from Oct. 11th-13th hosted by and fundraising for The Bodhana Group. A big list of everything Jack mentioned is below the fold, too.

We don’t usually ask this, but please share this episode around. We want to get the word out about Save Against Fear in time for people to decide to go, and we want people to know about and support The Bodhana Group as well! Bodhana has a Facebook page and Twitter feed too, if that’s your thing.

Scripture: Psalm 103:2-5, Luke 7:20-23, John 8:3-11, and Philippians 4:8

• Rich Thomas from White Wolf Games (whose comment got this therapeutic roleplaying thing going,00:04:00) (@rich_thomas_ww)
• Drama therapy
• Everything Bad Is Good for You, by Steven Johnson
• CAR-PGa
• The Functions of Role Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity, by Sarah Lynne Bowman
• Meddling Kids by Pandahead Productions
• The Trouble with Rose by Todd Zircher
• rpgresearch.com