"Leveling Up" social skills: lessons learned in quarantine (Patreon)

It's been 73 days since I was able to start working from home during this quarantine. Almost all of the work that I do translated well to my new home workplace. With the transition to a virtual workspace, I grew concerned about how we would continue to provide services to our Level Up Gaming participants. For those who don't know about Level Up, it's an organization I started in 2016 with my two colleagues Christian Blake (an occupational therapist by trade) and Kelsey McIver (a special education teacher) to provide adults with autism and other disabilities opportunities to develop their social skills through TTRPG experiences. I've spoken at-length about how we started, but not on how we work.

Before the quarantine, our sessions were exclusively conducted in-person. They looked like your average D&D game, but with a few key differences. All participants complete intake forms with the occupational therapist (OT), who then discusses the needs of the group with the GM (me). My job is to craft the story around their needs and provide space or spotlight on their characters based on their individual goals. These games essentially functioned with 2 GMs - with the occupational therapist playing a character to model positive behaviour and support the narrative. They help support the players and their characters in and out of game. This model worked fantastically for us over the past 4 years. 

Then the pandemic happened. 

We had an existing program with full registration, so we opted to make it virtual in order to provide our participants with some regular programming in their week. 

Here's what we ended up doing.

For audio/video conferencing, we decided to use Zoom since I already had an existing account from the Asians Represent podcast. This would allow us to at least see each other and have private conversations in the same space. For character sheets, we went with D&D Beyond. Roll20 would serve as our virtual tabletop and dice rolling tool. We found the Roll20 D&D character sheet to be inaccessible to our participants. It also lacked much of the expanded 5th edition content. With D&D Beyond, everything is relatively accessible and explained in great detail on each character page. 

Our first session was rocky, but after 5 weeks of gaming, I began to think about how I could internally systematize my own GM style and how I could best meet the needs of our clients. Is it the ability to do different accents? A vast collection of miniatures and terrain? Was it a highly detailed map on Roll20? The answer is clearly no and instead lies in how the GM acts within "the conversation".

When in narrative control, the GM can take a number of actions: 

TEACH & TAILOR - Whatever will happen next is an opportunity for the GM to teach a new game mechanic to a player, or tailor an existing one to meet their needs. 

TAKE/RELINQUISH CONTROL & BUILD CONSTRUCTIVE TENSION - These actions allow the GM to put the spotlight on players. At Level Up Gaming, we do this collaboratively with the occupational therapist by assessing the needs of each participant as they play and based on their personal group goals. Do they want to learn to use their class abilities? Put them in a situation where said ability will be a prominent solution. Is one of their goals to be more detailed in how action is described? Prompt them with "what does it look like when you X?" Do they want to try speaking in character? Do the same!

When players find themselves in a situation where the GM decides that the outcome is uncertain enough to warrant a roll or they have been passed narrative CONTROL, they follow these steps. First, they PAUSE and determine what exactly is going on and how their character feels. What's going on? How am I feeling? Next, they ZOOM OUT of the scene and determine what their options are, and which aspect of their character makes the most sense to use.  What are my options? What are the consequences of the actions available to me? Finally, they TAKE ACTION. What will I do?

I've found that understanding this has been critical to my successes using tabletop RPGs in educational and therapeutic settings. It's easy to consume professional streams like Critical Role or The Adventure Zone and be absolutely bewildered by how in-sync the players are with the GM. Remember, these are productions with entertainment as the ultimate goal. There has to be a certain degree of flow and a faster pace to keep the audiences engaged. But at your table, feel no pressure for players to instantly react. 

Understand that that silence consists of a PAUSE + ZOOM OUT. I've met so many GMs who are uncomfortable with silence at the table. Working remotely has made me even more acutely aware of these moments and what they consist of. Give players space to make decisions and understand where your power ends/begins.

Daniel

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