Archives for June 2016

Adam Johns and I founded Wheelhouse Workshop and run it together. We manage the business and facilitate its therapeutic gaming groups but, believe it or not, it’s not all we do.  As we are about to expand to our third weekly tabletop role-playing group helping teens build social skills, we’re taking the opportunity to share what we do outside of running Wheelhouse Workshop and thus what we bring to Wheelhouse Workshop.

Adam and I are going to write about each other.  I (Adam Davis) am a big supporter of what Adam does outside of Wheelhouse Workshop, and wish there were more therapists out there like him!

We’re back this week with the next in the series of blog posts addressing why we use tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons in our social skills groups.  Catch up here.

When we get new members of our groups, there is always a honeymoon period where the players are very excited about the format of their new social skills group.  Teens and adolescents love that they get to come play Dungeons and Dragons with us.  And for the first few sessions, they have a blast.  It’s an open fantasy world full of possibilities and they they are playing a powerful hero. What could be better than that?

Then the honeymoon ends, the players get frustrated by the restrictions of the game, and we have to tell them (and their parents) that this is a natural part of learning the game…

…and that we are doing it intentionally.