Critical Fail: Addressing problematic designs in table-top role-playing games for narrative therapy and community wellbeing

Table-Top Role-Playing Games (TTRPG) such as Dungeons and Dragons (DD Kato, 2019; Kwan, 2017; Zayas & Lewis, 1986), because of the way that their core mechanics encourage cooperative storytelling (Bowman & Lieberoth, 2018) and provide opportunities for meaning-making in a safe fictional world. Research on the effectiveness of TTRPG’s in the context of narrative therapy evidences great potential for building resilience and improving the wellbeing of participants (Enfield, 2007; Zayas & Lewis, 1986; Kato & Fujino, 2015). However, throughout the existing literature of games as therapy, less consideration has been spent on the design of the games themselves, primarily using out of the box games such as Dungeons and Dragons (DD Blackmon, 1994; Kato et al, 2012; Rosselet & Stauffer, 2013). Due to the popularity and commercial availability of D&D, it is no surprise that this is the game of choice for therapists. The potential of a TTRPG is the opportunity of collaborative, agentic storytelling apparently unconstrained by technology and scaffolded by an analogue system of dice and character sheets, but what the game system itself is contributing to the therapeutic experience is not typically examined. This lack of exploration of its specific contributions coupled with the fact that the game itself has been criticized for its overt cultural biases (Garcia, 2017) provides an opportunity for design lead research to ask what more can be done?