DnD Roleplaying Social Skills Groups
For kids and teens who need a little support making, nurturing, and sustaining friendships.
This program consists of a roleplaying adventure game designed to promote social skills in a safe and kind environment. Using the evidence-based Critical Core system, our facilitators guide participants through engaging roleplaying campaigns customized to special interests and designed to promote social growth, teamwork, and communication.
This program is for kids who are:
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New to/curious about D&D type role-playing games and need a supported introduction
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Experienced with role-playing games but need shorter, limited game sessions (rather than the several-hour game sessions common in D&D).
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May or may not like the traditional "dungeon" or "dragon" aesthetic and want the opportunity to design characters for role-playing that fit their interests/aesthetic.
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Need safe (background-checked) adult facilitators with experience working with both neurotypical and neurodivergent kids.
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Need a safe/secure place (NE Portland office, online or library setting) to play
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Need/want a little support making, sustaining friendships.
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Need an evidenced-based program designed to support specific social skills without
therapeutic language/feel.
About the Facilitators:
About the Program:
Regulation: Remaining calm, alert, and available through excitement and frustration, inhibiting responses while waiting, and expressing emotional affect without becoming dysregulated.
Collaboration: Asking questions, letting go of ideas, and/or allowing others to build on or change them, sustaining back-and-forth communication by picking up on cues and adjusting your own approach to support continued communication.
Planning: Identifying when two or more events need to take place in order to achieve a goal, determining more than one influence on an event, making decisive choices, sticking to a previously-made plan, and adapting when things don’t go as planned.
Perspective: Identifying and demonstrating consideration of the thoughts, beliefs, values, wants, needs, and emotional states of others, appropriately adjusting behaviors in response, recognizing that these character traits are a product of their unique context, recognizing when these beliefs are mistaken or when these characters hold conflicted internal states.
Our Adventures:
Children who struggle with social skills often find themselves in environments that, rather than helping them develop, actually amplify their challenges. The lack of social skills can turn everyday interactions into frustrating experiences, creating a cycle where growth becomes very difficult. Our program is designed to break this cycle by offering a safe and supportive environment where kids can practice and develop essential social skills in a non-threatening, creative space. Through guided roleplaying games, children can build the confidence, experience, and skills necessary for positive social interactions.
Our 90-minute sessions are designed to engage kids through a mix of roleplaying, problem-solving, and social interaction. Each campaign spans 6 to 8 sessions and welcomes groups of up to five participants. The game is designed not only to weave a collaborative storytelling experience but also to nourish within the kids the skills that will empower them to find their own strategies, tools, and strengths to navigate social interactions in the real world, make friends, and care for those friendships. The "Core Capacities" that the game is designed to improve are Regulation, Collaboration, Planning, Perspective, and Pretend Play.
Tabletop Role-Playing Games (TTRPGs) provide the perfect tool for facilitators to craft the ideal environment for players to practice these core capacities. The game master has the authority to guide, adapt, challenge, and offer support, but players make their own choices, which internally motivates social connection. Role-playing games also allow players to test drive behaviors without fear or punishment, the distance between them and their characters allows the facilitator to celebrate players for their achievements whilst making their characters face the consequences of antisocial behaviors. This way, kids are able to self-correct without falling into negative self-talk or insecurities making them more confident and empowered instead.
Space Adventure
Does your kid love science, spaceships, and exploring alien worlds? This is the adventure for them!
Space Fantasy Adventure
Space elves, enchanted starships, alien grimoires and cosmic adventures! Why choose when you can have both!
Evelyn is a social skills educator with a degree in neuroscience and experience teaching English as second language, circus arts and ceramics. She offers a playful, creative, activity-based approach to social skills development for kids and teens.
Some changes we have noticed in the teens and children throughout the campaigns are:
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They get better at picking up cues, giving each other space to contribute and taking up space
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They self-regulate and co-regulate more easily when facing difficult or uncomfortable situations (like fighting giant spiders or disappointing dice roll outcomes)
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They participate more confidently
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They lift each other and develop a sense of camaraderie
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They get much better at reciprocity in conversation and showing interest in other kids' perspectives.
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Taking space, giving space, listening to other kid's inputs, and integrating them into their own problem-solving strategy
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Impulsivity kids learn thoughtful decision-making.
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Kids with temperaments that are familiarity and safety-seeking learn to enjoy risk and tolerate uncertainty.
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Rigid patterns of social engagement become more flexible.
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Physically active children learn to enjoy stillness in their bodies and enjoy their minds as a playground.
Ernesto is a game designer from Spain who believes that growth is fostered in supportive, fun, and kind environments. Through role play games, he ignites kids’ curiosity in one another, and helps them find their own tools to build lasting friendships
Fantasy Adventure
Does your kid love swords, wizards, forest elves, magical potions and spells? This adventure might fit their taste!
Session Details:
Participants pay $45 per 90-minute session, which over the course of 6-8 sessions amounts to between $270 and $360 for the entire campaign. The first 6 sessions are paid in full before the first session. (We like to have some flexibility to adapt to the needs and rhythm of each group which is why the number of sessions is from 6 to 8 instead of being fixed).
Sessions take place in our NE Portland play therapy office with plenty of snacks.
Scheduling depends on the availability of participants, but we usually meet Fridays after school and on weekends.
These are our three main adventure themes, we also do customized adventures to match the preferences of kids with other interests outside fantasy and science fiction.
FAQ:
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Do I tell my kids it is a social skills class?
It's up to you! Some kids who have gone through the clinical track end up feeling like people are trying to "fix them". This of course is not our goal. We can be open about the goals of the group if they ask, but we are not clinical in language or demeanor because the magic of the game is in the cultivation of relationships through play.
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Is it clinical? Can I bill insurance?
This is a non-clinical therapeutic intervention. There are social and therapeutic benefits, but we are not clinicians, so we can not bill insurance.
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If my child likes it can they continue past the first 6-8 sessions?
Yes! There are optional level 2 and level 3 campaigns in each of the adventure themes we have prepared. These extensions provide further challenges and characters that build upon the skills acquired on the first adventure. In addition to this, players' characters "level up" acquiring new powers and skills that enrich the game further.
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What happens if I miss a session?
In the case of absences, we cannot refund missed sessions, but for one absence we can offer a free session in the next campaign if you choose to participate!
What is Critical Core?
Critical Core is an evidence-based tool for helping both neurodivergent and neurotypical people build social skills. It is a tabletop role-playing game developed under the guidance of people with autism, therapists, educators, and psychologists that combines social and emotional learning strategies (SEL) with the mechanics of TTRPGs to help players build social confidence, communication, and collaboration skills, develop frustration tolerance, emotional resilience, and caring for others, all while rolling dice and having fun.
It has been featured in WIRED, CNET, and Forbes.
How do I sign up?
Join our waitlist by filling out the form below. We'll get back to you with a list of available times when we have a group that fits your needs and interests.
Some interesting reads:
Children Learn More Through Play Than From Teacher-Led Instruction
Forbes
International Journal of Play Therapy
The transformative potential of role-playing games—: From play skills to human skills.
Simulation and Gaming
Child Development Journal
Therapeutic use of role-playing game (RPG) in mental health: A scoping review.
Simulation & Gaming
Influence of fantasy ability on attitude change through role playing.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Japanese Journal of Analog Role-Playing Game Studies
Journal of Creativity in Mental Health
Dungeons and Dragons: Dealing with emotional and behavioral issues of an adolescent with diabetes.
The Arts in Psychotherapy
Imaginative role-playing as a medium for moral development.
Journal of Humanistic Psychology