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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Atlatl Jones" data-source="post: 4787523" data-attributes="member: 54620">Hi Aberzanzorax,I'm the guy Mallus talked about.  I'm finishing my doctoral dissertation in clinical psychology, and I've been a gamer for most of my life, so I'll give you whatever feedback I can.  My training and experience has been with adults and adolescents, not children, so there may be considerations specific to child therapy that I'm not familiar with.That way lies madness.  Speaking from personal experience.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> My first impression about this is that you might be trying to do too much.  Don't try to make a general "make children better" treatment, make a focused treatment for a focused goal.  Otherwise the treatment will be diffuse, and it'll be more difficult to make into a manualized protocol.  IMO RPGs probably lend themselves best to teaching problem solving, as well as social interaction skills if you run it right.  Be careful though, because the highly structured and ritualized interactions of playing an RPG may not transfer much to outside-world social interactions. As for the system, I would recommend a system that's quite transparent, that fades into the background while you roleplay and talk.  Games like D&D (especially 4e) draw attention to the game mechanics, distracting the players from what you're trying to teach, and socially anxious players might withdraw into them.  If people are thinking in terms of game-mechanical tactics, they'll be spending less effort on the real-world problem-solving and interaction.  Something like Fudge (or Fate) could work well IMO, as would Unisystem Light (used in the Buffy RPG).  I wouldn't worry too much about the game system at first, if I were you.  First get a concrete idea of what you want to teach, and what sorts of stories or scenarios the game will revolve around.  Knowing the sorts of scenarios is key.  For example, a lot of problem-solving training involves teaching people to identify the problem and any underlying contributing factors, to brainstorm possible solutions, to break down overarching goals and actions into a succession of achievable sub-steps, and evaluate which of the possible actions will best satisfy the various goals and challenges.  If you're making a game to teach that sort of problem-solving, what sort of game scenario would encourage the use of those skills?  The first that comes to my mind is the modern "heist" story, like Ocean's 11 or any number of other movies.  It starts with an overarching goal, and will necessarily involve a lot of breaking down the big problem into little ones, and thinking of creative solutions to those problems.   Then, the players will need to go through and execute the plan, which will involve learning to deal with complications on the fly.  It would also involve social skills at time as they try to gather information, persuade people, and deal with unexpected circumstances. Mind you, I'm not sure how accepting the psychology community would be of a treatment that involves teaching people how to be con-artists and criminals.  <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/glasses.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt="B-)" title="Glasses    B-)" data-shortname="B-)" />I'm not saying that this example is what you should be doing.  But IMO you'd be best off to focus your attention on the specific things you'll want to achieve therapeutically, and the scenarios and game system will emerge naturally from that.The setting should also stem from that consideration.  When it comes to any sort of learning or emotional conditioning, the more similar the model experience is to the real-world experience, the better the learned skills will transfer, generally.  I personally would avoid fantasy and sci-fi settings for that reason, and use a setting more grounded in the real world, akin to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, modern action movies, or various cyberpunk and near-future settings.  But again, it depends on what you're doing with it (I hope I'm not sounding like a broken record about that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />).Definitely a good idea.  The most clearly-understandable and useful textbooks I've read had lots of examples of how to do the treatment. Good luck with this.  I'm very curious about what you'll develop.</blockquote>

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