Delivery Timeline Update
almost 5 years ago – Sat, Dec 14, 2019 at 02:22:46 AM

Hello Everyone,

As mentioned before, we are sad that we’ve had to push back the delivery of the physical kits. After that update we heard feedback and support from backers to make sure that the material itself is the best that it can possibly be, and we agree.

Originally we wanted to get a fully finished product of digital material into everyone's hands before the end of December. However, finishing up the modules and the intro to RPGs section of the game master’s guide has taken longer than expected. While we need to push back the final digital release into 2020, we would like to use this as an opportunity to create a broad beta test of the written material,  incorporating everyone who helped to make this project a reality. This way everyone can start using the material itself, and we will integrate the feedback to make the final product that much better.

So while we won’t have a finished digital product for you before the end of the month, we will be giving everyone a link to download a full beta release with the most important pieces for you to jump in and start playing Critical Core. Additionally,the beta will include the Facilitator’s Guide with tons of tips and tricks for how to improve your game and start making it therapeutic.

Here is what will actually be included in the beta kit:

• Game Master’s Guide
• Facilitator’s Guide
• All Character Sheets (Levels 1-3)
• Spell and Ability Descriptions (Not yet in Card form)
• The first two Modules: Little Town of Tusk and Festival of the Birds
  

I’ll have details for how you can download your beta kit coming in an update very soon, as well as a couple of other updates planned with some other development insights.

Thank you, everyone, for your continued support with the project, hiccups and all. I’m excited to start getting things into people’s hands and hearing about the feedback that you all have.

Adam Johns

Game to Grow Executive Director

The Power of Names, We Want Suggestions!
almost 5 years ago – Wed, Oct 30, 2019 at 02:13:55 AM

Hello Everyone,

This week I'm coming to you to ask for your help and to offer a little more insight into how Game to Grow runs its groups.

In Game to Grow groups when we create something important in the fantasy world we purposefully leave out many of the details surrounding the city, location, or NPC. We decide what is necessary to actually move the story forward or accomplish what we need, and let the players fill in the important gaps themselves.  

This means that we wind up with towns with amazing traditions, like Tumble Day, where everyone in the town rolls around to get to where they are going, or a town who's main attraction is a giant mountain of cheese that seems never ending. 

One method that we use for this is naming things one letter at a time. We point around the table and ask players for the first letter of an NPCs name, then one player at a time we piece together the names of our bad guy, bumbling blacksmith, city, or mountain. Often this means that we wind up with wild names like Ketlixiv, Estonio Gooyay, or Feerd. Since the NPC is named with everyone's help, the players often feel a much stronger initial connection to them. 

This post today is to pass along a cool tool for you, but also to ask for your help. The main 3 modules included with Critical Core are tried and true plot-lines from our groups, but since many of our NPCs and towns don't start out with names, it means that we don't have names for them! While we're going to strongly encourage game masters to use these same techniques, we still need to have names in the plot-line for those who don't feel comfortable creating the name together (plus, we need to refer to the town somehow).

In the comments below, we want you to leave the name of a town, NPC, or geographical feature. No further details are needed, just names. I can't guarantee that we'll use your suggestion, but we'll add a bunch of these into the materials themselves. When you get your copy, you may just see your town or NPC name in there! 

Warmly,

Adam Johns

Game to Grow Executive Director

Development Insight: Check-In/Out Questions
about 5 years ago – Fri, Oct 04, 2019 at 09:31:32 PM

Hello and welcome back to another Development Insight! Today we’re going to elaborate on the idea of ritual, and give some greater details on using one of my favorite group rituals, check-in and check-out questions!

Check-in Questions

The check-in portion of the session is crucial for many socially-isolated youth to have a safe and structured opportunity to relate to their peers.  The clear and predictable structure of the check-in ritual helps participants experience the vulnerability of self-disclosure.

The check-in question should be clearly visible to all participants. The facilitator should ritualize who will read the check-in question (will a participant raise their hand, will the facilitator choose randomly, or will the facilitator read the question?). After the question is read aloud, the facilitator should elaborate on the question if necessary and give participants an opportunity to ask any necessary clarifying questions.

The facilitator will then choose the participant who will answer first.  Some groups benefit from using a “talking object” that signifies which participant should be speaking and which person the other participants should be tracking.  The facilitator should also answer the check-in question.

Check in questions can give an opportunity for each participant to share about their personality, interests, or opinions. Good questions also give a similar opportunity for players to reflect on the same qualities for their character, and to make up or share about their character's qualities with the rest of the group. 

Examples of Check in Questions:

• What is a special occasion food that you enjoy? Bonus: Also answer as your character.
• What is your favorite piece of clothing? Bonus: Also answer as your character.
• If you could go on vacation to any location, where would you go and why? Bonus: Also answer as your character.
• What advice would you give your character? Bonus: If they followed that advice, how would it improve their life?
• What advice would your character give you? Bonus: If you followed that advice, how would it improve your life?
  

Check-Out Questions

After the play portion of the session is over, the participants are each asked three check-out questions:

• What is a spotlight you’d like to shine on someone else?
  This question is an opportunity for players to offer a compliment or an appreciation to someone else for something they did that enhanced their experience, no matter whether it was a character choice in the game or in table conversation. This question, when asked at the end of every session, encourages players to pay closer attention to each other’s actions, decisions, and roleplay, and often provides a direct reward in the form of social appreciation for actions that support teammates.
  
• What was something challenging about today’s session or something you learned?
  This question provides an opportunity for participants to share a challenge that they overcame and for the facilitator to reflect back to them their understanding.  Sometimes players will state that they found the low dice rolls challenging.  The facilitator can reflect back to them their successes in overcoming their challenge and validate their experience.  Sometimes players will use this opportunity to state a challenge related to group behavior.  When a player does this the facilitator can use it as a “teaching moment,” an opportunity to help the player build the skill of advocating for themselves and ask another player to change their behavior. It may also prompt a return to the group norms established at the beginning of the season.
  
• What is something you predict will happen, or something you are looking forward to, in the next game session?
  This question is especially useful to conclude the check-out questions because it ends the session looking ahead to the next session, and provides the game master some insights into what the players are interested in and excited about.
  

Each participant answers all three questions before the next participant shares their answers.  The game master should also answer the check-out questions.  They can spotlight the entire group as a whole or pick a specific player who may benefit from a little extra attention from the facilitator.

In Game to Grow groups we can go into great depth with players using these questions as a framework, but the power of the check-in and check-out questions does not require psychology training. Just having the questions can give players a chance to share more about themselves or their character, or feedback about their game experiences, and it easily marks the start and end of your table game.

Warmly,

Adam Johns

Game to Grow Executive Director

Development Insight: Rituals
about 5 years ago – Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 02:33:24 AM

Hello Everyone!

Today’s Development Insight is all about the power of ritual.

This is another excerpt pulled from the Facilitator’s guide. In the guide we dive directly into each example and flush out the best practices for maintaining and applying ritual to your game. In Game to Grow groups we rely heavily on ritual to help reduce dysregulation during transition times and to set up clear expectations for the start and end of our game sessions.

The Power of Ritual

Each session should have very clear and predictable structure that begins and ends in the same way, with established transitions and signals from the facilitator to indicate to the participants what is about to happen. These strategies support regulation in participants on the autism spectrum, as transitions between activities is one of the most common times for the group to become dysregulated. Rituals refer to anything that is “regularly repeated in a set precise manner.”

The game session is full of transitions and opportunities for ritual. How will players transition from outside of the game to the seats where they will play? How will the game master hand out character sheets at the beginning of each session?

The more these transitions can be ritualized, i.e., performed consistently each time with intention and respect by everyone involved, the better.  Each facilitator will have their own group management style, but whatever the game master’s decision, the more intentionally and consistently they can adhere to it, the better.  Below are a list of transitions that should be ritualized:

• Entering the Space
• Beginning the Check-In
• Concluding the Check-In
• Receiving character sheets and dice
• Recapping the Story
• Beginning the Play
• Ending the Play
• Check-Out Questions
• Ending the Session/Leaving the Space

Rituals should be established in the first session. Rituals can be the facilitator using the same phrase, counting to three, snapping fingers, etc.  The power of ritual for group management can’t be under-emphasized.

We don't want to just give you tools to become better game masters, but to become better group facilitators. Whatever your style, I hope that you can bring some ritual into your own game space in an effective way.

Warmly,

Adam Johns

Game to Grow Executive Director

Critical Core Shipping Delays
about 5 years ago – Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 11:35:49 PM

Hello Everyone,

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we’re on track for getting the digital kits into everyone’s hands by December, the bad news is that we’re past the point of no return for physical kits, and we won’t be able to have them to you before the end of 2019. 

I’ll outline a couple of reasons for why this happened:

First, the writing process for the kits has proven more challenging than we originally anticipated. We’ve been passing the materials around to people closest to us and getting valuable feedback that we’re incorporating into the kit. While the timeline is very important to us, creating a kit to have the maximum amount of positive impact is even more important. Creating materials with the depth needed for experienced game masters and an ease of approach appropriate for brand new ones is a big endeavor, and we want to make sure we’re doing it right. Incorporating feedback from testers and advocates has taken more time than we anticipated. 

Second, the print materials have presented some challenges. Originally we had printers lined up that would be appropriate, but once we launched the Kickstarter we were approached by many companies offering better materials, better shipping deadlines, better prices, etc. In order to give you the best possible materials in the kit that we can afford within the price point that we provided, we’ve been shopping around and getting more quotes than we originally had. Additionally, there is the challenge of US tariffs on paper products from China. This isn’t an insurmountable problem, but it has pushed us to start looking into US printers as a possibility, which would be an ideal thing to be able to do for many reasons.

Lastly, the most important excuse is that there is no excuse. I know that many of you were really counting on getting Critical Core kits in your hands in December, and some people were hoping to have them as holiday gifts. I sincerely apologize to everyone for the delay, and we will continue to work to get everything to you as quickly as we can without sacrificing the quality of the contents or materials. We hope that having the digital materials in December will help you run the game that you want to run with your family, students or patients. 

The next round and expansion of beta testing is coming up very soon, and we have some more content posts planned to share what we've been working on. Thank you all for all of your support. We’re changing some things around to be better at responses on the Kickstarter page, and we’ll be happy to field any questions or concerns that you may have in the comments below or if you contact us directly. 

With my sincerest apologies,

Adam Johns

Game to Grow Executive Director