Katie Fischer has witnessed some epic journeys unfold, the kind where adventurers level up and grow as they go.
The Ashland teen librarian spends some workdays helping run library-hosted campaigns of the famed tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons.
For the uninitiated, tabletop roleplaying games involve players living out a story sculpted by dungeon masters or game masters (individuals who create and gradually unspool the world and story players get dropped into.) There are narrative arcs, combat, puzzle solving, and other hard choices to be made through dice rolls and other mechanics.
Katie is there to help the game master. It’s a nice second set of hands to have for an event that, over time, began to hit its eight-player cap regularly, sometimes with four or five more on a wait list.
“It’s been kind of lovely to see,” Katie says of the attending players. “Their problem-solving skills and action in real time. And I’ve seen friendships form, and people who were acquaintances at school are now actual friends at school because they both go to these.”
This crosses over into another aspect of Katie’s life, one that also comes with epic journeys and leveling up…just of a different sort. In year 1 of graduate school to study counseling at Oregon State University, Katie has seen more and more research about how roleplaying games and storytelling can be utilized as therapeutic tools.
To clarify, this is not a be-all, end-all route for therapy. It is one potential augmentation for a mental health toolbox. That said, some studies show its promise.
A 2022 piece in the National Library of Medicine, “Role-play Games (RPGs) for Mental Health (Why Not?): Roll for Initiative” points out that this has not always been the case. Indeed, such games were (wrongly) thought to have a detrimental mental health impact as recently as the 1980s. While it focuses on roleplaying games in general, the piece pays particular attention to Dungeons & Dragons, considering its popularity and that it is the godfather of modern RPGs.
“D&D has a long history with mental health. In its early years, it was incorrectly linked by the mainstream media to teenage delinquency and immorality, without any demonstrable causal relationship,” the piece reads, noting that “additional research examining the impacts, both positive and negative, of D&D is needed.”
It goes on to look at the effect of roleplay and RPGs in clinical and non-clinical settings. The former is reported to “help increase confidence, the ability to confront situations, and cope with unexpected events,” the piece reads.
But it suggests that the therapeutic benefits of such playtime with parameters can be found more broadly in non-clinical spaces. At home with your friends, in other words. Or at the library. Multiple non-clinical studies highlighted in the piece say RPGs have benefits such as decreased social anxiety and a more comfortable setting to navigate stress and coping skills.
“I’ve thought a lot about this. I think it’s a form of escapism, but productive escapism, if that makes sense,” Katie says. “Step into this world that was literally created for you. How often can we say that? We all have these personas, these expectations that are set up for us. We have them for a reason. It keeps us safe. That’s how we perceive ourselves. That’s how we all want other people to perceive us. But how often do we get to step out of those personas?”
At the very least, Katie adds, such a pastime can be a confidence booster, something that extends to the players and the game master turning the symbolic pages on their story.
I recently saw this unfold in real time with my 8-year-old nephew. My newest and most beloved tradition with him is taking a handful of games whenever I visit and seeing if he digs any. On my latest trip, I included Home, a storytelling RPG where you’re a mech pilot who fights giant monsters to save the place where you reside. You also get to design maps, including features like cities, natural beauty, and sacred sites.
My nephew took to it so intensely. What if, he said, we draw a field of crystals on our map. Our society, he proposed, harvests the crystals for energy, but they (the crystals) also put out weird pulses when they’re harvested and handled. This calls to the giant monsters like blood spilled in the ocean would attract sharks.
As we continued to develop our world, his confidence caught fire, bloomed with time lapse splendor and speed. He smiled. His eyes got big. Of all our memorable gaming sessions thus far, mapping out our world before we even started playing is one of my favorites.
It’s a direct effect of such a pastime, Katie says . And you get to do it with others, get to see the dimensions and personality they bring to a story in progress.
“In reality, storytelling requires a group, requires other people,” Katie says. “And so, I think, with their creativity, I think it helps you kind of dissect your own perspective and how that plays into the storytelling aspect. But I think it also allows you to access other people’s perspectives and kind of celebrate their perspectives as well. What makes a good story? You know…everyone has a different answer.”
(You can see a complete list of all our roleplaying game, board game, and video game event offerings here.)