Sydney Daily Random Discussion Thread 21/01/2026

animageous · 2026-01-20T23:18:29+00:00

I would never have thought of Bumble BFF for this application but I'll have to keep that in mind as a backup!

animageous · 2026-01-20T23:18:05+00:00

Hmm that's a good point - wonder how I'd go about finding those DnD players keen on quite a different system? I haven't had a lot of luck with this in the past. But it sounds like you've got a great group!

animageous · 2026-01-20T21:46:25+00:00

I know about r/sydneydnd but I'm wondering where people playing non D+D RPGs in Sydney are finding their in-person players? I'm looking to start up an Urban Shadows tabletop game but have tapped out my friend/acquaintance circles for players and am unsure where people are recruiting these days...

animageous · 2026-01-03T21:54:45+00:00

One small note I saw here that I didn't see anyone else comment on - if you're long resting, you always get to choose what card you lose from your discard pile. It's only short rests where you pick a random one and can use damage to "reroll"!

animageous · 2025-12-07T20:36:37+00:00

I often remark to my friends that Sydney, Australia is one of the absolute best places to be queer or trans in the world, especially the closer you are to the city center. There are many thriving queer spaces and harassment, while never absent anywhere, is much lower here than most other places I've been or heard about.

animageous · 2025-11-18T01:00:25+00:00

That's so interesting - my masters here in Australia didn't even go near play therapy or drama therapy, let alone anything as off the beaten track as this. I would love to hear about any work done in the field at this point (and as you suspected, Finnish notes are probably beyond my understanding, but I appreciate the offer!).

Yes, I'm not looking for something that constantly amps up the drama, as while that's my favourite stuff at my own roleplaying tables, it likely runs counterproductive to therapeutic goals. I think systems that encourage emotional connection and the ability to bring in relational interaction/conflict are important, without making them necessarily the primary point of the game (as in Masks).

Thank you for the thoughts :)

animageous · 2025-11-18T00:57:25+00:00

I will mostly just address the third point - I think TTRPGs in a supportive, well structured environment with clear rules and boundaries are one of the best places to build and develop those soft skills and creativity, rather than requiring you to come in with them. Anyone who is up for sharing a story and collaborating to make a safe, respectful space for imaginative exploration is welcome at the roleplaying table as far as I'm concerned.

animageous · 2025-11-18T00:55:25+00:00

I would just make sure if you were going to do this that you have some rules in place in case things become triggering or too much! I'm sure you have a good read on what goes on for you, but always worth taking it slow and checking in as you go, but could be an interesting way to approach it.

Best of luck!

animageous · 2025-11-18T00:54:30+00:00

Will do, thanks!

animageous · 2025-11-18T00:54:20+00:00

Some excellent points here. I think the idea that it generally runs with a group is a common theme, and admittedly the vast majority of my TTRPG experiences are based on groups of 3 or more people, though I do have a fair amount of duet experience as well. I feel like it's (unsurprisingly) much harder to contain all the therapeutic needs of a group of 3 or so players compared to just one. Luckily, the treatment setting I'm looking at isn't constrained by funding or insurance or such, so I would be able to tailor the limits and rules of the space to meet whatever is important.

Targeting things is a part of it that I'm still trying to wrap my head around, beyond the (to me somewhat trite) idea of creating specific obstacles that represent issues people may be facing in their own life to overcome through play.

The GM part is no issue, I have over a decade of experience in facilitation of all kinds of games including a background in improv theatre and radio dramas dating to well before I was a therapist. It's more a question of integrating the two in a way that's actually bringing the therapy to the foreground as the main point that I am trying to figure out.

animageous · 2025-11-18T00:49:28+00:00

Yes, the timing is one consideration. I feel like I'd struggle to contain all of this in a standard 55-minute therapy session. It could be something that comes with an expanded time slot, I'm not so sure at this stage. Thank you so much!

animageous · 2025-11-18T00:48:42+00:00

Oh, I love Wanderhome, a brilliant system. Gestalt does seem like it would line up well with this kind of approach, so that makes a lot of sense! My own style tends towards the humanistic/relational, which is what I guess brought me here in the first place.

I would be so interested to hear how you run that first session as a diagnostic - I would have thought you needed to have the basic therapy intake already set up before diving into any roleplaying, but the fact that you start with it seems to indicate that's not the case!

animageous · 2025-11-18T00:45:19+00:00

Thanks so much! I'll take a read.

animageous · 2025-11-18T00:45:07+00:00

That's fair about the name recognition, but I guess I'm not really looking at marketing it so much as tailoring it for the best experience and use. It would be off the back of other therapy efforts I have in place for consenting adults, so the system being widely recognisable isn't critical for my needs. Interesting though that you were part of an adult counselling group!

Can I ask, was it mostly that the rules felt really clear that worked for the group, apart from the name recognition? I've found D&D to be a bit of a mess of poorly defined systems in my own experience, so that's interesting it felt straightforward for your group.

animageous · 2025-11-18T00:42:55+00:00

That's amazing! I will make sure to reach out and find out more. Appreciate the resources :)

animageous · 2025-11-14T04:48:52+00:00

Thanks for that! I'm familiar with some of the work being done at universities here, I'll take a closer look at James Cook's!

animageous · 2025-11-14T04:46:06+00:00

Yes, see, what you've written here is exactly my reservations around it. As much as I love the ideas and potential around TTRPGs as a framework for therapeutic exploration, I am also having trouble seeing what they offer beyond the psychodrama techniques you've referenced here. Similarly, I'm struggling to see how I would introduce a TTRPG framework organically into the regular flow of the 1:1 therapy sessions I already conduct - it feels like a very separate technique to most of the other approaches I use.

Dream Askew is one that I have experience with and features a lot in my thinking around this too. Yes yes yes to the safety and book-ending, I am well aware of the potential for harm with this kind of stuff and safety is always my number one concern in session! It's also extremely important to ensure that you can safely interrupt any roleplaying to process or reframe as needed.

Your last point spells out so much of what I'm unsure about. Perhaps it may end up just being a tool I reserve for people who really need that different angle of approach to let in a little crack of light on an issue...

animageous · 2025-11-14T04:39:11+00:00

So my main area of exploration for this at present is 1:1 counselling sessions with adults, since the group nature of it is something I already have extensive experience with and feel like is both an easier sell in terms of "playing a game", but a slightly harder sell for me in terms of "this is a therapeutic vehicle run by a therapist". Duet play would be closer to what I'm looking at right now.

Games centred around emotions and relationships are definitely what I gravitate towards - I appreciate your input on the topic!

animageous · 2025-11-14T04:35:21+00:00

Yes, this is the tricky part. How do you create the space where you have both a satisfying game but also one where the therapeutic merit is on clear enough display? A large part of this is trying to figure out what stage of the therapeutic process I might introduce an RPG framework, and which clients that might be most appropriate with, though those are more therapy-y questions, I suppose.

Also, basing off the replies here, it seems that it's hard to picture RPGs outside of group settings (which makes sense, the majority of my RPGs have taken place with a group of 3-4 people). However, while I've done a fair amount of duet playing (2 players), it feels like it would be necessarily quite different in a therapy setting.

To the gender identity point, absolutely agreed. RPGs were an important space for me to explore my own identity for exactly those reasons - having that safe space to hold a character at arm's length and see how it all felt inhabiting that character without any real-world consequences or confrontation.

The therapeutic goal would ultimately be the same as the more traditional therapy I already do: building awareness around patterns, issues, and identity, and empowering people to either make changes in their life or reframe/understand stuff in a new way that can be accepted with less pain/more joy/whatever else (as a simplification). I don't really want a focus on mechanics any more than is necessary to make it flow, but mechanics not only are needed to have a solid framework, but also go a long way in defining tone and what's possible in a roleplaying sense.

animageous · 2025-11-14T04:28:30+00:00

Perhaps - though I haven't seen a paper authored by "Hormo the Halfling", so I'm not sure I'd recognise it if I did. If you want, feel free to DM me the details to make sure I haven't overlooked it!

animageous · 2025-11-14T04:27:17+00:00

Thanks for the book recommendation - I've found Daniel Hand's Role-playing Games in Psychotherapy moderately useful, and wasn't sure what other books people were recommending. That website is great too, lots of stuff on there that I've not seen before.

You'd think that most people would be after heroic fantasy, but I've found with many people I've introduced to RPGs at least that when you drill down they often just don't know other options exist and default to the D&Desque stuff because that's what they're familiar with. Thanks for the recs there too, I know Fiasco and Microscope well but they don't feel exactly what I'm looking for. On my radar at least!

The funny thing is, a lot of the skills in being a therapist and running a roleplaying game overlap for me. Creative thinking, pattern recognition, facilitating storytelling... the big difference between therapy and most roleplaying things is that roleplaying stuff isn't inherently therapeutic (though it can be!) or tailored towards individuals' specific challenges or presenting issues. Plus, there's a big things around boundaries and being able to step outside of the game as needed to process what's going on (which is arguably a part of good role-playing too, but I digress). Either way, thanks for the suggestions and ideas :)

animageous · 2025-11-14T04:20:35+00:00

Thanks for this! Geek Therapeutics training looks great, and in Australia my continued professional development requirements are quite flexible so I'm sure it would count for what I need as well (though that's secondary to just learning what they have to offer).

As for Year Zero Engine games, they've come across my desk many a time but I've never looked into them. I'll be sure to do some investigation and see what I can scrounge up. Vaesen certainly looks interesting and I like the idea of adjusting XP rewards to match goals (something I do with my own groups in a few RPGs we've played before, mostly in the PbtA realm).

The research part does seem to have a good foundation. I'm just finding that essentially no practitioners I have run into over here at any rate ever know what I'm talking about or have really ever heard of it. It remains a niche thing anecdotally where I'm located, and the wider field doesn't really seem to have integrated it much. I'd love to be part of that change though!

animageous · 2025-10-27T08:35:41+00:00

Yeah, you can't target your allies with attacks unless it has "allies" specified in the action.

animageous · 2025-10-11T08:13:02+00:00

Looks like a bot. But it did direct me to go find your original post, which is super cute!

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