Theory and Practice in Facilitating Transformative Role-playing Games

As we discussed briefly in previous chapters, facilitation is a special role within the overall category of organizers. While this chapter will cover suggestions for specific implementation situations, we recommend reading all the sections, as much of the advice is applicable in other contexts. Facilitation can take many forms in role-playing games. A storyteller helps mediate the rules of the game and the narrative of the world. Storytellers may engage heavily, ranging from high control, representing the entire world and all characters within it, to a low control hands-off approach, with availability only for narrative or rules clarifications. As we will discuss later, many terms for this role exist, but we use storyteller to emphasize narrative responsibilities compared to other forms of facilitation. A non-player character (NPC) is a character who serves a certain function in the game and thus has somewhat limited agency (Stenros 2013), e.g., a moderator in a debate or a zombie enemy. Alternatively, a supporting character tends to be more developed and aims to support player-characters (PCs) in their experience (Fido-Fairfax 2024). Other types of facilitation include high responsibility player-characters who are full players, but are expected to run events or facilitate play for others. In-game safety team members play characters within the fiction able to provide emotional support or guide players off-game as needed for psychological safety reasons (Bowman et al. 2017; Atwater and Rowland 2018). Finally, but most importantly in transformative role-playing games, the workshop and/or debrief leader facilitates the framing of the game. A workshop leader may run pre-game warm-ups, trust-building exercises, character creation exercises, and other activities, whereas a debrief leader helps players process their experience after play through guided structured, semi-structured, or structured discussions. In tabletop, a Session 0 often serves some or all of these purposes. Finally, off-game safety team members assist players who are upset or overwhelmed (Brown 2017; Berthold 2024), whether engaging in crisis management or trying to help strategize narrative, social, or personal strategies to help the player re-engage in the activity. Role-playing games can be run in many locations. Each location has its own specifics regarding facilitation requirements and opportunities. As examples, a tabletop role-playing game can occur at a home, a community center, or a therapist’s office. Some larps occur on-site in a realistic location, e.g., a castle, a field, a campsite, or a boardroom. Other larps are played in more neutral locations, requiring players to imagine the location, e.g., a hotel conference room becoming a spaceship, or a classroom becoming a mountaintop. Some larps and freeform games are played in abstract, neutral spaces enhanced by lights and sound, such as black box theatres. Urban larps are often played in multiple locations across a city (Pettersson 2025). Online games often require special software and internet connection to play. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the affordances (Gibson 2014; Lampo 2015) offered by different types of environments is necessary when considering facilitation strategies. Some practices that work in a physical room may be more challenging to arrange in video conferencing software, for example organic role-playing scenes in which several people are talking at once. Others might be easier, for example, passing private notes to the facilitator through direct messages without the other players noticing. The length, location, player count, and requirements of the narrative design also have an impact on how many facilitators are needed, if any. The context also matters; educational and therapeutic contexts often need more intensive on- and off-game facilitation than leisure ones, i.e., have a higher ratio of facilitators to players. Thus, any given game will differ in terms of facilitation needed, as well as the required facilitation skills, e.g., whether storytelling skills are adequate, or a facilitator also needs pedagogical training. If a facilitator lacks the requisite training, additional facilitators may need to be recruited, e.g., a paraprofessional in mental health as extra support for an emotionally heavy game; a mental health professional responsible for handling the processing around therapeutic goals while the storyteller runs the narrative; or a school class’ regular teacher. This chapter will expand upon these aspects in more detail, with a strong emphasis on styles of facilitation helpful for transformative role-playing games.