FAQs: What is an example of the impact of RPG Research's community programs?

In 2020, RPG Research expanded our online tabletop games platform to support large events with virtual game rooms hosted by our trained volunteer game masters. By freely providing this interactive community platform, we saved many conventions COVID cancellation, including: WorldCon, GenCon, ZoeCon, & others. At one point, our virtual game rooms hosted 20,000+ people per second concurrently! This included educational, professional, and therapeutic application workshops, accessibility panels, and more.

RPG Research’s Drop In & RPG programs support everyone from 2 to 102+ years old. The sessions typically last between 20 minutes for younger players and up to three hours for adults. Our programs provide opportunities for participants to develop their ability to communicate, work in teams, think critically, problem-solve, and experience an increase in empathy and compassion. For years many of them have been held in various locations, including the Spark Central community center, city and county libraries, school district facilities, and recently our RPG Research’s Community Center in Spokane, Washington.

At the Spark Central, two teenagers, aged 13 and 15, from separate local gangs, skeptically joined our table running Adventures in Middle-Earth. They arrived with aggressive attitudes, "wanting to kill things."

Within 45 minutes of play, their body and verbal language changed from guarded, aloof, aggressive, and wanting to wreak havoc, to open, attentive, supportive, cooperative, and relaxed.

Through role-playing game play, our programs can provide safe places for exploratory experiential learning, communication, empathy, and cooperative problem-solving, providing situations in the game for learning opportunities and cognitive linkage from simulated crisis experiences through the characters they control in the game.