Click for Speaker Bio

Joshua Heath

There is a growing discussion in the academic space around the therapeutic uses of table-top roleplaying games, and a growing corpus of papers, studies, and research to indicate its powerful benefits. There are also many other spaces to use games, that on their surface are just games in a transformative way. Centers in Pennsylvania, California, and Sweden are standing up to offer academic training in the use of games in this way. Games of this type can be used in many ways, including conflict resolution (interpersonal and conflict zone), social skills building, and team cohesion and training. Our panel will discuss various ways to use games like Dungeons and Dragons in a serious and transformative way.

Attendee Benefits

We will discuss methods to use off-the-shelf tabletop games in transformative ways. We will provide various toolboxes, descriptions for where to learn more, and resources that will allow you to take action immediately with these tools. We can provide handouts that describe various methods of transformative game play as well as work participants through example uses of the games in a serious way.