Professional Tabletop Roleplaying Games for Kids
What is a roleplaying game?
All table sessions are essentially storytelling games that use dice rolls as a chance-based method of determining success or failure in the story. The better your character's skills are and the better the die roll, the better the chances of success.
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The Story Guide is your lead storyteller who describes to you what your character sees and roleplays all the other, non-player, characters in the world. You can interact with these other characters and your surroundings just as you would in a rpg video game, but through speaking and improvising. Using a human Story Guide instead of a computer script allows for infinitely varied actions, outcomes, and possibilities.
Benefits of roleplaying Games
Scholarly Sources
Empathic Features and Absorption in Fantasy Role-Playing.
American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 58(3), 286–294.
Rivers, A., Wickramasekera, I. E., Pekala, R. J., & Rivers, J. A. (2015).
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Imaginative Role-Playing as a Medium for Moral Development: Dungeons & Dragons Provides Moral Training. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 60(1), 99-129. (Original work published 2020)
Wright, J. C., Weissglass, D. E., & Casey, V. (2017).
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Dungeons and Dragons as a Tool for Developing Student Self-reflection Skills. ​Games and Learning Alliance. GALA 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11385. Springer, Cham. Clarke, S., Arnab, S., Morini, L., Heywood, L. (2019). In: Gentile, M., Allegra, M., Söbke, H. (eds)
roleplaying Games and Therapy
While Story Tables is not currently being used as a therapeutic program, there are many psychologists and researchers who have found that playing roleplaying games can be an effective tool to treat mental health conditions. For more information, check the sources below!
Tabletop Role-playing therapy: A guide for the clinician game master
by Dr. Megan A. Connell
" Dr. Megan Connell has masterfully crafted on of the best books for anyone who wants to know about applied tabletop gaming. Her ability to easily explain the nuances and complexities into digestible nuggests is fantastic (and well-needed) for new and old Game Masters alike."
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- Dr. Anthony Bean
Role-playing games in psychotherapy: A practitioner's guide
by Daniel Hand
Tabletop role-playing games, RPGs, have long been associated with various unique emotional, cognitive, and social benefits, but only recently has the term 'RPG Therapy' entered into the mental-health lexicon. This supportive guide explores every step of the implementation process, from underlying therapeutic principle to initial creative exercises, to actual in-session play, and encourages reader to have confidence in their own imaginative abilities.
Dungeons & Dragons: The Game that changed the world
Time Magazine Special Edition
Chapter: "Healing Words"
Time Magazine did an excellent retrospective of the cultural impact of Dungeons and Dragons. In the section titles "Healing Words," TIME interviews several therapists about using the roleplaying game in their approaches to mental health.
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"Something mystical happens when you give yourself permission to play pretend. You must trust and be trusted with what feels like subjective foolishness."
Isles of Mist
Set out into the world of "Isles of Mist" an unique and easy to learn role-playing game system developed by Story Tables founders, Ashton and Callie MacSaylor.
Experience a world of magic, wonder, and mystery where the world is new even to those who live there.
Chart a path through the Great Forest, past trees as large as skyscrapers. Fly through the mists over The Lost Lake where air pirates wait in the darkness. Save the people of the once great city of Laisa from bondage. There are so many adventures to explore!
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Build your character and play to become a legend!