Reflecting on TTRPGs as Therapy: How GMing Subverts Traditional Client-Practitioner Dynamics

     Okay so I don't know that I've ever mentioned it on this blog but I am currently working on getting a master's of social work while I also work full time. My full-time gig is at a high school, and one of the things I do at work is run a TTRPG group once each week as a type of social skills group. After doing some homework, I started thinking about how I've known some of the members of this group for the entire time they've been in high school, and how I have a much closer relationship with the students in this group than any other students. This wasn't a sudden realization or anything, but as I continue to progress through my classes, I am more and more seeing the traditional boundaries of professionalism that I am kind of forced to ignore in order to maintain one of my personal rules of GMing, which is to run a game that I enjoy prepping for and would want to participate in as a player. While I currently have no licenses that would truly let me take on the role of a therapist running a game for clients, the game I run at work is fairly close to that, so this post is going to be my ruminations on all of that and what it might mean for the emerging practice of using TTRPGs for more explicit therapy goals. This isn't meant to be any kind of formal paper or anything, I just find that putting things into essay format really helps me to organize my own thoughts on something.

    Before I get into it, some context might be useful in case anyone who isn't me ever reads this. The TTRPG group that I will be referring to throughout this essay, and using as an experiential stand-in for a true therapy group using TTRPGs as a tool, is formally considered a social skills group. Lacking any significant backing from the literature, the assumption I and the school social worker operate this group under is that the students participating in the game would struggle to make friends and learn social skills without a structure like TTRPGs, along with the fact that the very nature of TTRPGs involves social interaction with a small group. Other benefits that participants have noted include an ability to practice coping with stress related to social interactions without any real-world consequences, and gaining an inherently social hobby that they can participate in beyond high school. At the time of writing, the group consists of 4 students, an adult player who also helps the students out with game mechanics, and myself as the GM. One of the students also co-GMs with me right now so they can get more practice running the game. While this isn't really the point of this post, I'd have to say that this group has been fairly successful and shows that TTRPGs can be used for many goals beyond having fun with your friends, although I'd be lying if I said this group wasn't focused on having fun over any explicit therapeutic goals. Regardless, that's the situation which has inspired the main point of this post, which is that the role I have with this group has many parallels to being a social worker running a small therapy group while subverting other expectations normally associated with such a role. 

    Without giving myself too much credit, I think a lot of my experience with this gaming group can be used to inform on what it would be like to run a more formal TTRPG therapy group, the main difference being that I currently lack the experience, qualifications, and authority to have therapeutic goals as much more than a passive benefit of group participation. Situations arise where things I'm learning in my classes are useful, however, and as a school employee there are professional boundaries I am expected to maintain. These factors combine to help me feel like a practitioner running a therapy group regardless of what the actual labels are. With this in mind, the fact that I am doing things on the edge of traditional professionalism isn't that big of a deal. I am beholden to no code of ethics beyond what my bosses find acceptable and I have no licensure to lose if anyone takes exception to what I'm doing. Even so, I'd like to think that some of the subversion I'm experiencing would be good if it became a bit more normalized. I think the biggest professional no-no that I'm in the grey on is the way that I communicate with some of the players. 

    Before I worked at the school where I run this group, I was running the group as a volunteer, so I wasn't available to answer questions about the game and discuss character decisions without taking up valuable game time. The solution was to give the players my phone number so they could text me their questions and ideas. This was deemed acceptable so long as everyone involved was comfortable and texts were limited to things about the game. Now, a therapist making themself available to a client outside of formal therapy sessions isn't weird, but what is weird is using that connection for discussing anything other than mental health business. Now obviously getting texts from teenagers at midnight about secret plans for their character isn't the same as providing support to clients over the phone, but if I were running a TTRPG therapy group as the therapist, I would have to be prepared for both. Providing mental health support and game discussion is an expansion of the normally accepted topics for clients and practitioners to text about, which may raise concerns of increased risks for dual relationships. While I am sympathetic to such concerns, I would say that having something other than mental health crises to discuss over text would also help to build rapport which helps gaming sessions get the best results for clients. 

    Another aspect of GMing that goes against conventional guidelines of professionalism is the fact that the GM must necessarily share a lot of their thoughts and imaginations with the players, even when running prewritten adventures and campaigns. In a therapy setting, this would require the practitioner (who I assume is the GM) to spend a lot more time talking and sharing their thoughts than is normal for a group therapy session. When I run, I feel as if I am talking one third to one half of the session, which is more than I would want to be talking and sharing as the practitioner in a traditional therapy setting. In TTRPG therapy, it could be said that the GM being a player who share's much of themselves with the rest of the group forces the therapist GM to be more of a peer who is open to the clients than is traditionally accepted. Perhaps this is just because I run a homebrew setting, but I can't imagine running a game where I don't make myself vulnerable to the players by sharing my thought processes and the products of my creativity. To do so while maintaining the role of therapist could be powerful for building rapport, showing clients that their therapist is a deeply nuanced, creative person in a way that I do not think is possible in a traditional therapy setting. It forces the therapist into a partial peer role as they become a person playing a game along with their clients, but maintains a power dynamic as the therapist GM has final say on many aspects of the game, including what actually happens when players attempt to do things. I find it interesting how the role of GM both reduces and entrenches the authority of the therapy practitioner. As a GM I try to give the players a lot of information and to be generous with how I interpret their actions in the game world, reducing the power gap between GM and player, but as a therapist GM this would also be reducing the power gap between the practitioner and client in a unique way. On the other hand, it would be possible to take measures to increase the power gap between GM and player, thus also increasing the power gap between client and practitioner. I can't say that either approach would be better for a TTRPG therapy group, however my gut reaction is always to reduce hierarchy and power gaps, so perhaps this ability of TTRPG therapy to reduce power gaps is useful for my goals. Particularly in working with students who aren't yet adults, I think it is important to humanize oneself for others and help them see you for the nuanced, complicated being that you are. It helps others to empathize with you when they can see your humanity, and sharing the fantastical things that reside in one's imagination is very humanizing.

    I don't think I really have anything else to say on this matter, so there you go. While there are a lot of benefits to TTRPG therapy, there are also a lot of strange implications for what it means to maintain professional boundaries, build rapport with clients, and be vulnerable. Even if the clients and their therapist GM never even see each other by accident outside of sessions, the process of playing TTRPGs with each other breaks down some of the norms of group therapy. Maybe not everyone would agree with me, but I think it is good that TTRPG therapy could have the potential to subvert the norm in this way. Current norms in western social work can often make it seem like practitioners should be judicious with how much of themselves they share with their clients, and a form of therapy where the therapist can share an entire fantasy world of their own creation with clients bucks that trend. I feel like western society currently struggles to make space for creativity and the vulnerability that is tied to it, but TTRPGs provide that space. Maybe none of this makes sense, maybe this was all just the late-night ramblings of a person who thinks way too highly of their favorite hobby. I just hope that all of this has been coherent enough to accurately communicate my feelings on this matter.

FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD, DO NOT PUNISH YOUR PLAYERS!

     First, in case anyone happens to follow this blog and was worried about the long time since the last post, I am okay. I moved, changed jobs, got started on new health insurance, made appointments with new doctors who take that insurance, and I started selling art at local pop-up markets. Things have been busy on my end.

    Second, this post is a radical departure from what I have posted up until now. While it does not constitute a permanent change in the types of posts I will be making from now on, I might make more in the future as various things bother me. So without further ado, I'll get to the main topic at hand.

    Something I have noticed on TTRPG advice forums is that there are way more people than I am comfortable with who believe that the correct way to address poor player behavior with in-game punishments. To clarify, I mean when a GM or player makes a post complaining about another player in their group using their character to sabotage the party, harm other player characters, or otherwise work against the goals of the group, I will inevitably see more than one response suggesting that the GM respond to this behavior by harming the offending player's character or even having that character removed from the story somehow. While this kind of advice is rarely the most popular response, I also do not tend to see much opposition to it . I believe this shows that the idea of punishing players with in-game consequences is considered broadly acceptable, and I have to say that I think it is bad advice. My stance is that any issues that the GM or other players have with one player ought to be dealt with outside of the game, in the form of a respectful discussion between friends and equals.

    Now this is not to say that player characters should never suffer negative consequences for their actions in the game, that would make for pretty boring games. If a character's actions are not bothering the other players at the table, GM included, and they have natural negative consequences, then play ought to proceed like normal. The whole point of this hobby is to have fun, and I am by no means saying that a fun time should be stopped just because it could be seen as a punishment. What I am talking about is when a player is playing their character in a way that is making it harder for other players to have a good time. A person's right to do whatever they want and have fun with the game ends the moment they impact someone else's ability to have a good time, and as GM there are many ways to help make sure no player takes away from another player's good time. In-game consequences for the player's character are not one of these tools. I have seen several people seriously suggest the best way to deal with problematic player behavior is to have their character removed from the narrative and then either force the player to make a new character, or hand them a premade character. I think this kind of response is ultimately going to do more to harm the game than help it, and I have a few reasons why I think that.

    One reason, and I think this one is the most obvious, is that removing a player's character from the game and forcing the player to use a new character is a fairly extreme punishment that is more likely to kill that player's investment in the game than correct their behavior. While they may have been using that character to bother and frustrate other people, that is also the character that player brought to the table and wanted to play. Respectfully talking to the player out of game and asking them to change the way they play their character avoids this issue entirely since the player inherently gets to keep using whatever cool character they came up with. This ties into the more important reason not to take a player's character away from them, which is that removing their character and forcing them to play a new one is disrespectful to that player as a person. When you take their character away, you are robbing them of their agency as a real person to take constructive criticism and change their behavior. Using the GM's power over the game world in such a way is vindictive, and doesn't address the human being behind the character in any meaningful way. By talking to the real person sitting at the table with you about how their behavior, even if it is through a game character, is harming the other people at the table, you give them the chance to change. Odds are also pretty good that the player in question was unaware of the way they were making other people feel, and once they are told, will want to change for the sake of not wanting to upset the people they are playing the game with. Of course, some people may choose to continue their harmful behavior. Those people ought to be kicked from the group once it becomes clear that they are unwilling or unable to change. While this can be difficult, it is often for the best.

    Now, with all of that out of that way, I would like to go over some strategies that I have successfully used in the past to prevent real-world issues from arising from game-world actions. The most important strategy I have to do this is to always set certain expectations about how people treat each other at the game table and what things are off limits for player characters to do to each other. I always make sure to use part of session zero to explain that I expect the players to control their characters in a way that is generally helpful to the overall group goals and not obstructive to any other player's individual goals. Furthermore, at my tables, I do not generally allow players to roll against other players. There are, of course, exceptions for situations involving mutual consent and non-harmful competitions between player characters, but usually such situations can be handled through roleplaying and the dice don't need to come out. This basically results in a game where the player characters only ever interact with each other in ways that all players involved agree to, and supports the generally cooperative style of play I like to cultivate.

     Another important strategy I have for maintaining healthy player interactions is that I, as GM, reserve the right to hold or even veto any given player action. This power is inherent to being the GM and running the setting, really, but I think it helps to explain to the players in session zero that I do, in fact, have that power and that I will, in fact, use it to protect the good times and the feelings of any player at the table. Holds on player actions are primarily used to explain something their character would know that they don't which might change the action they want to make. Usually this is just because someone declared an action before I was done describing a room, but occasionally I use it to explain that what that player wants to do will have an impact on the other players as well. Vetoes usually come in the form of a reminder about the house rule against player vs player dice rolls, since that's the main type of action that I would want to veto, but it also tends to come up for blatantly suicidal or antisocial actions. Luckily, by setting expectations early on, these types of situations don't come up very often and are rarely much of a disturbance when they do. I find that the people I play with are understanding, and no one I have ever played with has ever felt so entitled to ruining other people's fun that I have had to kick them from the group. Perhaps I'm lucky in that regard, but I like to think that if I ever did encounter such a problematic player, I would be able to handle them.

    So to sum all of this up, I think that the proper response to a player who uses their character to negatively impact the experiences of the other players at the table is to nip the problem in the bud by setting firm expectations of how players will act towards each other before the game even starts, these expectations backed up by rules that everyone agrees to follow. Failing that, the best response is to talk to the player causing the issue outside of the game, explain what it is that they are doing, that it is making it harder for others to enjoy the game, and that they need to stop or risk not being asked to return to the group. While I don't think anyone trying to solve a player's behavior with in-game punishments is a bad person, or bad at TTRPGs, or anything like that, I do think they need to take a step back and think about their reasons for using an in-game punishment over an out-of-game conversation. In many cases, the people giving such punishment-oriented advice give it casually and act as if such a punishment is used without much thought or warning in their games. I think this is sad, and I would ask these people to put a bit more thought into their actions and how they might be making other people feel.

    So yeah, those are my thoughts on using in-game punishments, the role of the GM in maintaining the group's fun, and how such problems can be avoided in the first place through solid rules and expectations. I hope anyone who reads this finds it useful, or at the very least considers it sound advice. I use these strategies at my table and everyone tends to have a good time, so I figure I'm doing something right.