As part of my current research in context project I was able to interview psychology lecturer Dr Dean A Marshall about the crossover between his roles as both a Cognitive Psychologist and a D&D dungeon master hoping to gain understanding of the roles knowledge of psychology specifically in the areas of cognitive/developmental/social psychology could benefit the development of a transformative game in the format of a TTRPG or something similar. Below is a link to the video as the transcript is raw data from the recording. that has not being edited
https://arden-ac-uk.zoom.us/rec/play/qBR5gFj6PWSzma-rgLFdrjmfWP7KaUg_JYncjsCiMD8DEStka_XsM1Tz2ABVj5ubphVtS1kayxq4D7yO.57Loo34BTlEMoiPB
WEBVTT CAPTURE OF
SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW WITH
Dr DEAN A MARSHALL BY JOHN
PADDEN
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Dr Dean Marshall: Okay, that's recorded. There you go.
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John Padden: lovely
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Dr Dean Marshall: drop me to go, then just introduce myself.
Or do you do a little introduction for okay. Hi, this is Dean, Dr. Dean, A.
Marshall. And just if you wanna give us a brief oversight off
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John Padden: your background in psychology like your
pathways that you went through, and also then go onto your role as a DM for
Hots. 8. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, everyone. So yeah, my name is Dr. Dean
Marshall. I'm a chartered psychologist and decision-making researcher. So my path
in.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, academia I started doing
psychology at college level. And I also did law at the same time. And I did
biology.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I hated law. And so and and I actually
really enjoyed biology from a scientific perspective. But I found psychology
more interesting just from a general day to day perspective. So yes, it was
scientific. But also I could think about it as an example when I was on the bus
on the way home from the lesson, and I did not want to do that with something
like law. So for me it was a natural progression of something I was just very
interested in
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Dr Dean Marshall: and so I went to do my bachelors at the
legendary Ucl. And I did my masters. Also at Ucl.
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Dr Dean Marshall: with a guy called. He's retired now, but
Professor John Fisk, and so me and him studied
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Dr Dean Marshall: specific errors in decision making, which
I'll kind of talk a bit more about later. Called the conjunction fallacy. So my
area looks at probabilities. How we judge them, and how we're not very good at
it. Actually.
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Dr Dean Marshall: after that I took a few years out. Because
things like postgraduate study, you know. Phd, level study there hard to get
into when you're not self funding and considering I come from a very working
class background, I was not
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Dr Dean Marshall: ready to self fund. So I had to go through
the processes of applying for different scholarships and grants and things like
that which take a few years, and finding the right place, etc. But luckily, whilst
I did that
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Dr Dean Marshall: also took the break between Masters and
Phd. I did stay in the realm of
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Dr Dean Marshall: research realistically. So. I did a bit of
pharmaceutical market research, which is an international company. I did some
clinical trial work. Which was brilliant, you know a very process, driven style
of research rather than I guess more theoretical, you would call it
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Dr Dean Marshall: And so we did all sorts medical stuff, you
know, pharmaceutical drug stuff as well as cosmetic and aesthetic stuff. So
literally, you know, testing back into your biology studies in college as well.
Totally, totally, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's II really enjoyed, you know, the
element of it. We we did have to consider things like the science of, How does
an anti persprint work compared to a compared to a deodorant, you know. And so
so that was really interesting. So yeah, it was good for me and
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Dr Dean Marshall: and it was good leverage. For when I was
applying for those ph, d things, because obviously, I was doing real world
research. So yeah, eventually, I was offered a
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Dr Dean Marshall: a position doing a Ph. D. At the
University of York with a little bit of money behind it, so I didn't have to
you know, pay for it all myself, which is lovely. And so that was with
Professor Elizabeth means. And so her research area is developmental
psychology. So she's a developmental psychologist. And specifically she looks
at something called mindedness, which is kind of a caregivers
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Dr Dean Marshall: like attachment to a to an infant or
someone that they're caring for, and their kind of how attuned they are to the
mental wants, needs, etc., of that person. So that was her area. Except for
she's she's incredibly I guess.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Learn it when it comes to the publishing.
And you know something. She's she's part of something called ref research,
excellence, framework. And so and so she has a vast knowledge of developmental
psychology and publications. So I actually went for an interview. For like an
Nhs Funded position, which wasn't a Phd.
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Based on this thing called the Strange situation. It's like
an attachment study.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I went for it because I had experience of
running that experiment for real at Ucl, because they have a strange situation,
Lab. Not many places do, and
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Dr Dean Marshall: after the interview she walked me out of
the building. Liz walked me out of the building, and she said to me.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Do you know we do? Phds in the department,
and I knew as soon as she asked me that question I didn't. I didn't actually
have that, you know, Nhs funded job but she was hinting that we could work
together. So I got an email from Liz a couple of kind of weeks later saying,
You know, your area is cognitive. My area is developmental.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I'm really interested in working with you.
If you want to basically blend our research interests together and come up with
a project which looks for parallels between. You know these decision making
errors that you talked about in your interview in adults and children, and how
they develop and where they develop and things like that. So that was my Ph. D.
Took me 5 years a little bit longer than I expected, but took me 5 years, and I
graduated that in 2021
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Dr Dean Marshall: and then, since then I've been working at
a place called Arden University, which is kind of this blended approach to
learning some students in person, some students online, like a bit like the
open university. So yeah, I've had a teaching heavy role
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Dr Dean Marshall: since then. But I still I still publish in
the background, you know, so got a couple of publications which is strictly
cognitive, and I've got one in review at the moment, which is gonna be
hopefully published in developmental psychology. So yeah, I'm still, I'm still
trying to stay active as a researcher.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yeah, he's still in touch with Liz as
well. Yeah. Well, that publication we've got in developmental psychology. I'm
the lead author. Liz is my second author. So she's she's co-authoring that so
the the where that came from, the data we're using for that was from my Phd, so
essentially, we've we've Cha, we've taken a chapter from my thesis, and we've
turned it into something which is, you know, a little bit more
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Dr Dean Marshall: condensed. And and and she's added a
little bit more context in in sort of the background section or introduction.
And and yeah, we've got a publication at that hopefully, so yeah, and this. And
we've got another chapter from our thesis. That's we're gonna work on. So yeah,
I stay in contact with Liz. I stay in contact with John as well from from
Uklan. I only emailed him, you know, 2 days ago, basically. So I still, I still
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Dr Dean Marshall: what you learn, maybe we'll talk about it
later on. But what you learn in certain areas is because I've I've got my
academic career, and I've got things like a you know. I have a part time
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John Padden: kind of hobby musician, I guess. Ho, ho! Ho!
Implies I'd never really do anything with it. But I do play gigs up and down
the country and stuff so, and what you're learning those types of roles is it's
often who you know is is, you know, networking is one of the strengths at the
moment is. That's why we're conducting these interviews. Where going to these
practitioner and professional lectures is is to stop kick
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John Padden: starting that approach to not necessarily even
in your discipline, or even your side of the the academic structure, so to speak,
on yourself, based on the sciences and may on the arts. It's it's the whole
process
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John Padden: collaboration networking.
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John Padden: and that sharing of knowledge.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yeah, it's gold, you know, you you got so
much worth from other people especially, you know. I think there's a tendency
for some people, and you get something like a qualification
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Dr Dean Marshall: to kind of, you know. Be a bit
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Dr Dean Marshall: I don't know. How do? How do I word this
up themselves? Let's say about the fact. They got a qualification where,
realistically, you know, experience is half the battle, regardless of if you
got certificate or not. And so, you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: there's always more knowledgeable others,
especially.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I
think I think a lot of students expect somebody who's educated to. Let's say a
Phd level to just kinda know not everything, but a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of
stuff. And yeah, you do. But in that particular field. If anything, it's it's
it's kinda too specific, you know. So I can speak for hours on a very specific
topic. To people who are interested in that very specific topic. But you ask me
most things outside of psychology, and
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Dr Dean Marshall: there's much more knowledgeable people in
the world. So you know goes. Go ask that. Basically, that's one thing I've
learned going from
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John Padden: undergraduate to post graduate study, even
changing disciplines is you? You you undergraduate? Well, from my creative
experience. It's
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John Padden: his, all the knowledge in this area. So here's
all the knowledge of illustration on a very basic level. And the different
areas you can go into which one takes you fancy if you're gonna go on to do a
masters narrow it down in this area. So, for instance, now, I'm in games
design, leaning more towards transformative games and narrative design. Even
though you've got level design. You've got environmental artists. You've got
concept artists, character artists, science side, you've got programming,
coding.
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John Padden: And then after that, you go in. So why are you
looking at transformative games mixed with narrative design, like what you
hoping to research that hasn't been done before. Was this gap in the market
that you found? That's also standing on the shoulders of giants and looking at
what's come before? Yeah. And then this this version of this new knowledge you
found into other people. But yeah, exactly, just narrowing down.
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Dr Dean Marshall: But that's what you want from a you know,
from an expert, from somebody who's taking the time and the effort to look into
something, you know. Essentially, you want them to be that one of 10 or one of
20 in the world who knows this thing in such great detail? You don't really
want to approach an expert because of the
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Dr Dean Marshall: vastness of their detail, necessarily, but
vastness of their information, I guess. But but the the detail you kind of
don't get with undergraduate. You don't get with casual learner or whatever, so
I see the point to it. But of course.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, I see myself as like a lifelong
learner. I don't think. and I think you know, you must be the same as well,
like
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Dr Dean Marshall: the type of people that progressed to
postgraduate studies.
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Dr Dean Marshall: They love learning, they love the process
of learning. So it's kind of it's frustrating at times that you can't learn the
level of detail and everything. But
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know we don't have the time.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Anyway. So so you know, that's that's a
summary ish of my you know, Academy academic side of things. But you know, I
know we're blending today's discussion with with games specifically Ttrpgs. And
for me, dungeons and dragons. So
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Dr Dean Marshall: I actually started playing dungeons and
dragons fairly recently compared to, let's say, my academic career. Yeah. So
may maybe 5 or 6
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Dr Dean Marshall: years ago now.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And it was kind of odd, actually, because
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Dr Dean Marshall: I'm much like many people, you know. I'm a
bit of a nerd, generally speaking, interested in some
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Dr Dean Marshall: fantasy stuff like Lord of the rings, but
casually, and then interested in some sci-fi stuff like Star Wars, but again
pretty casually.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and and I would like our Pg games when I
was young, when I was a kid massive, massive fan of the legend of Zelda Series.
I'm I'm the generation that was also hook line and sinker in pokemon, you know.
So so you know, these
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Dr Dean Marshall: and I and I really liked also kind of more
complex rule, based games like, like you go like trading card games things like
that. So you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: it's always been kind of just on the
radar, but
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Dr Dean Marshall: but a game like dungeons and dragons I've
never played, and I've never been approached to play. I think the most similar
thing in war gaming would have been Warhammer Warhammer. 40,000 was what I used
to play where I'm 40 K.
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Dr Dean Marshall: but again, that was actually an art
teacher. Actually, you know, Peter Austin, I suppose I can use his full name
now, cause he's he doesn't work at the school anymore, but from from Ashton.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and he started a War Armour Club, which
was really nice because it blended
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Dr Dean Marshall: a hobby, you know. That wasn't directly
art with art. So yeah, it was just brilliant.
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John Padden: I think the nice thing with his. His club is
cause it took away that competitiveness when it comes to what you could start
having
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John Padden: some of that role play because it wouldn't
always be playing against each other. Sometimes we just be. You know what? I'm
gonna paint my models? I'm gonna customize them. So what mind to stand out. And
I think that that customizability is probably what's lend itself to you, going
into dungeons and dragons, where customizability of your own character, as at
the end you've got customizability over pretty much the whole landscape. But
it's a collaborative effort between you and the players.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yeah, well, I kind of that's good point.
Cause I kind of was always like that. I would always be the person that tried
to like convert a model, you know, and being a being a 1314 year old lad, let
loose with like a scalpel, or, you know, like something something to like,
shave something off a piece of plastic, or do whatever like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I really loved it, and then and then you
wa when you have the element of like green stuff in there, so like the putty,
you know, I would like turn it into like strings of of blood or guts, or
whatever, and chop a space marine half, and then
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Dr Dean Marshall: put the guts between them like, yeah,
exactly exactly. Exactly. So. That was that was miles more interesting to me
than you know. Space marine out of the box. Put it together like it tells you
to and kind of paint it to a cooler scheme which already exists. You know, II
liked the creative element of it realistically. So so anyway. Yeah, to get back
to do some dragons about 5 or 6 years ago.
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Dr Dean Marshall: It was. So this is pre pandemic. It was
complete. I guess.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Happen stance that
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Dr Dean Marshall: 2 separate groups of friends
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Dr Dean Marshall: that weren't necessarily connected
approached me within the same week.
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Dr Dean Marshall: said, We've got we're going to try and
start dungeons and dragons game. Do you want to play? And so
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Dr Dean Marshall: I was like, why not, you know, like
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Dr Dean Marshall: I asked. You know, what what do you need
to do, and they kind of said, Oh, just turn up with some imagination, and
that's that's fine.
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John Padden: No, exactly. And so I didn't need any money to
start. I didn't need any
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Dr Dean Marshall: time, I guess, or anything other than very
brief character creation. But again I was still very new to it, so
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Dr Dean Marshall: I had 2 dungeon masters, 2 separate
dungeon dungeon masters who were experienced but, by the way, very different.
And one of them was with a kind of group of just
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Dr Dean Marshall: mutual friends. It was a very, very small
group at the time. Me, a guy called Sai, who is who is now in hot eights, which
I'll talk about in a minute. His son, who was 10 at the time and then this
dungeon master, who'd been playing since the old rules in
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Dr Dean Marshall: 3.5. So we've been playing since about,
you know, for about 15 years or so.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and, by the way, it did become obvious
cause. He was very strict on rules, you know. Much more strict than I am. And
then add this other dungeon, master called James, who.
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Dr Dean Marshall: So he approached a a group of people that
worked at the Zoo. So my wife works at Chester Zoo and heard a group of friends
basically wanted to start again. His style was completely different, because he
was very loose with the rules he prioritized essentially
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Dr Dean Marshall: and just. you know, narrative exploration,
and like fun.
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Dr Dean Marshall: over things like
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Dr Dean Marshall: exact dice roles in things like combat,
you know. So these are 2 different games that approached me in the same week.
So I ended up playing with the a smaller group on the Tuesday night, you know,
which was, we were all fumbling to create our characters. I basically said, I
wanna create a person who
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Dr Dean Marshall: who was similar to me personally,
actually, because I was still studying my Phd at the time. And so I said, Well,
I wanna create a person is kind of like a scholar or wants to learn stuff. You
know, a person that would really nerd out in a library.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And the dudgeon master advised. Well,
that's probably not going to be like a barbarian or a fighter, or someone who
just runs in with an axe and chop something up. It's probably going to be a
wizard, a sorcerer, or whatever. But wizards in D and D are the ones that
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Dr Dean Marshall: learn magic on kind of gifted it from
birth, or you know, bloodline or divine
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Dr Dean Marshall: gift, or whatever you know. So he's kind
of said Wizard, and I was like, All right. Well, I'm also.
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Dr Dean Marshall: generally speaking, quite cheeky, chappy,
and I don't want, you know. I want kind of a witty sense of humor in in
narrative terms for the game. And so he said, Well, why don't you go with like
a half link or a like a, you know. Don't go with a Barbara. Don't go with a
Goliath. Don't go with a half Orc, or whatever so you know. Don't go with your
big
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Dr Dean Marshall: characters. So I ended up being a known
gnome wizard in that game. He was called Professor Fluxus
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Dr Dean Marshall: and his whole thing was about like the ebb
and flow of energy and things like that. So, yeah, really, really good
character, cheeky guy. And I based him loosely also on Professor Mcgonagall
from Harry Potter, because he has a kind of soft
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Dr Dean Marshall: Scottish accent. Loves, loves an innuendo.
He's a he's a good character still. Still. So my first. Only by one day my
first d and d character, and probably one of my favorite to this day
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Dr Dean Marshall: and then in the other campaign. So we
started literally the day after different group.
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and I sort of just
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Dr Dean Marshall: knew I was already playing a you know, a
person which had based on myself. And so I just thought right? Well, I'm just
gonna flip it on its head. And so I just asked this other dungeon master. Okay,
well, I'm playing a known wizard in another game like, what do you recommend?
What's like the opposite of a gnome wizard, basically. And he was like, well,
probably like a big Goliath or a
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Dr Dean Marshall: half fork barbarian. So I ended up playing
a half fork. Barbarian in this other game, purely because I wanted variety.
That was that, was it. And so he's called Zorag, and he, Zorag the smasher, to
give him his full name, and he he's just completely stupid, but I just played
into that you know his, his one personality trait is stupidity. So II played
that into him as much as I possibly could, and and you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: with a character like that. You've just
got to accept that if if they die because of the stupidity.
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Dr Dean Marshall: then so be it. You know you're playing the
characters how it's supposed. Yeah, it's not. It's not. It's not the end of the
world. It's just the end of.
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John Padden: I'm
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John Padden: of almost basing the face character he made on
stereotypes with the DM. Being such a stickler for rules and everything. And
and I'm listening to you going. Oh, I want it to be a scholar, and I want to
read, and things like that. So he pointed me in a direction of a wizard, and
then I want it to be funny. So he's like you have to be a halfling, whereas
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John Padden: there's nothing nowadays, and I will get into
like how you feel. You are at the end, for I find when I look at over like
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John Padden: Youtube scenarios with, you know, dimension 20
and and things like that where they want to be a bit more loose with the
narrative, and and explore
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John Padden: the possibilities and create those
serendipitous moments where just exciting things can happen that comes from a
place of just going. You know what the rules are there not set in stone? Just a
guide, and you go. Wh! What wouldn't be funny if there was a barbarian who
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John Padden: with love box. And then you start thinking,
Well, why does he love books? And but that's going that then, for me, gets tied
back into your conjunction policy where it's like
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John Padden: you give him like these directions. So I wanted
to read books, and I wanted to be a cheeky, chappy route with you must be this.
Well, why can't be this as well? Why can't you get this sort of if that's when
you start having a more exciting time? I'm not saying you didn't, because it
was just. If you think now with some of the people you play when you face that
something you could, you see, definitely do so while I
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Dr Dean Marshall: so I'll I'll answer that. But I'll answer
it in about 2 min, because because
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Dr Dean Marshall: a after playing these games for a a a few,
you know, years, we kind of realized we just have so much fun playing these
games and and the style of play which we kind of adapted to is very crude, you
know. It's it's it's full of like filthy jokes and all the rest of it, and
especially when I started to DM, because I kind of wanted it to be very
different from.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, in academic life. I do take it
very seriously, and like a Of course I have my teaching. I have my personality
and my teaching and things like that. But if you read one of my publications
you'd think this is the driest boring man. You think like, my God, like this
person just has 0 personality. And so when you enter a game like Dnd, it is an
escape.
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Dr Dean Marshall: It is meant to be, or
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Dr Dean Marshall: purely different than
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Dr Dean Marshall: like day to day life and escape. You know,
we we have people in our group. So we formed a a group called Hot 8. We. It's
called Hot 8, by the way, because
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Dr Dean Marshall: we would basically name the different dice
roles, like everyone knows that when you roll a 20 on the dice, it's a Nat 20
natural 20. So that's roll you can get. And there's a Nat one as well. You
know, there's there's a dirty 20, you know, there's different names for things.
We just yeah, yeah, exactly like that. We just seem to be rolling 8 on the dice
a lot, and we couldn't, really.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, and eventually it just kind of
caught on that when we'd roll in, it would say, Oh, it's a hot sexy 8 or no,
it's a hot a or no. No, no. Again.
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Dr Dean Marshall: like probabilistically, you've got 5
chance of hitting app number on the dice as long as it. As long as it's an
equally weighted dice, you've got 5 chance of it, like literally every single
one of those you know numbers on their own. So no, it was just. I think it's
one of those things like, you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: after one person would name it, the next
one would say, Oh, I got high, you know, like, and then, you know you, it's
it's it's similar to something called the gamblers fallacy in in cognitive
psychology, where you know, you would essentially.
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Dr Dean Marshall: if you call the 8 a win, because we've
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Dr Dean Marshall: named it or recognized as something
special, like a natural 20. And we make a big deal out of it. You start to kind
of remember the wins more than remember the losses. And and the next thing you
know, hot 8 was just a hot 8 was just a thing that was a part of our game.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and we start to kind of call it success,
even if even though it's low number, you know, on the dies, just because it's
like, Oh, you got another 8 cool? So yeah, that was the name. But anyway. So we
made this group and then
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Dr Dean Marshall: it. Now I will answer the question in the
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Dr Dean Marshall: pandemic. It was a really really good
escape from our life, and I had become a a big fan, especially in the pandemic.
I spent a lot of time in my garden, you know I built. I built some lovely
decking and all sorts, and I'm not that, you know we painted all offences. I'm
not the kind of person who can sit there do all those manual jobs and not have
some kind of
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Dr Dean Marshall: music on or something in the background. I
can't really sit in silence and do manual jobs. And so
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Dr Dean Marshall: I got into a critical role at the time.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And so I basically listened to all of
campaign 2 critical role
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Dr Dean Marshall: in one summer.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And then I started to listen to, and I
really enjoyed it, you know, and I really learned a lot as a dungeon master
there and then.
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Dr Dean Marshall: one of my friends put me onto a different
D and D podcast which I've never heard of called dungeons and daddies.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And it's like they have such great names,
don't they? I know. Yeah. So dungeons and daddies the scenario. By the way,
these guys who play it, this, this 3 guys and a girl, and they're all. I think
they all live in La, and they are all like either stand-up comedians or comedy
writers.
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or I think one of them actually wrote for like game of
thrones or something, anyway, so
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Dr Dean Marshall: that they are talented in their own jobs.
And and they're very quick witted. The scenario of dungeons and daddies is that
they are for
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Dr Dean Marshall: normal dads from the normal world, you
know. One of them's a soccer, dad. The other one's like a a hippie. The other
one's like a failed rock star.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I identified with these guys separately, I
anyway. And then there's the this, the archetypical like step, dad, as well
like where he's. He loves the kids, but the kids don't like him. You know what
I mean like so anyway, the the going in a minivan to the
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Dr Dean Marshall: soccer game, basically for their kids. And
they end up going through a portal in in like time and space. And
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Dr Dean Marshall: and they end up in the forgotten realms
which is like one of the worlds of D and D. So they're just normal. Dad's
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Dr Dean Marshall: in a fantasy world, except for they still
have certain things from the real world, like technology, like they've got cell
phones. They've got a they've got the minivan, you know, but the mini, the
minivan starts talking and stuff, you know, cause it's a, you know, in fantasy
world. And there's and what I liked about it was the fact that there was so
many Pop culture references?
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Dr Dean Marshall: But in fantasy which made them more funny.
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Dr Dean Marshall: You know there would like there would be
an Orc character turn up and should be called like, you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I don't know
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John Padden: S. Some random celebrity. She'd be like an a
specific name, and they'd be like, oh, it'd be like Taylor Swift, or something
like an awkward turn up! Called Taylor Swift, and they'd be like, you know. Oh,
I thought, are you not like a a bard or something like that, she'd be like, oh,
no, like I'm a barbarian like what in my twine adventure I'm doing at the
moment there's a half bard called Thokk Presley. There you go! There you go it
just there's something to it where
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John Padden: people especially for you gotta think this
audiences that are watching them, not necessarily for the D and day, because
they've seen the names and they know what they do. They get those links to real
world culture.
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John Padden: It's a way in then, for them. So it's a great
narrative device. I think it's a great like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: It can be a brilliant juxtaposition
between expectation
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Dr Dean Marshall: and the the game, you know. So so, and I
try and do this as a DM. So I took a lot from dungeons in in how the game is
constructed.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and I really wanted to play on that with
my character creation. So I wanted to play with.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, Meta. Gaming is like kind of
taking knowledge outside of the game and using it to your advantage, is kind of
frowned upon in DD cause. It means that you can essentially like cheat, you
know, like as much as the game is loose with rules. There are ways to kind of
met a game, and we really kind of just don't like it, cause it sort of spoils
the fun a little bit.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and what it does, what Meta gaming does,
in my opinion, and in the group's opinion, is
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Dr Dean Marshall: it kind of forces the win at times when
winning is not the goal like in in our group? Winning is not the goal, like,
you know, killing the monsters. It's all part of it. But if you've had to met a
game to do that, then you've kind of spoiled some fun. However, I like to play
on the fact that
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Dr Dean Marshall: Metagamig is so
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Dr Dean Marshall: automatic, you know, in in cognitive
psychology, we would call it a system, one or fast processing. Basically, it's
the stuff that you can't avoid thinking about because you've got prior knowledge.
So when I when I mention like as an example, I have a Npc. In in one of in my
game called
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Dr Dean Marshall: Arnold Schnitzel Grabber, and he's based
on Arnold Schwarzenegger. But he owns a bar. So that's why I called him Arnold
and his accent I do an impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger when I play him, and
so like, automatically when I'm in the character of Arnold
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Dr Dean Marshall: as a DM. I know how I'm
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Dr Dean Marshall: voicing the character. I know how he's
acting, and things like that.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and the carrot and the players at the
table kind of they have an image in their head of like. What would Arnold
Schwarzenegger look like in fantasy world, or whatever
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Dr Dean Marshall: But he's not the same person.
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Dr Dean Marshall: He's actually he's actually a like a
really. I'm not saying Arlene Schwarzneck isn't these things, but he's a really
sweet guy in my campaign, and actually he's he's kind of frantic and like he's
sort of a one man
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Dr Dean Marshall: tavern. He runs the entire place, so he's
kind of serving you. Then he goes to the next people. Then he's here, there,
and everywhere, because he's trying to cut costs as much as possible.
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Dr Dean Marshall: maximize his profit and send his daughter
to a wizarding school. Like his. His role in my game is is like overworked dad,
essentially who has, who has his daughter's future as his motivation. But you
don't necessarily think that when you think Arnold Schwarzenegger, he probably
to terminate to Governor, whatever the subversion of expectations because
you've
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John Padden: crafted it based on this. You know what the
players conventions are around that person, and so you can play with it a
little bit. This is where I believe, like
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John Padden: your background of like developmental
psychology, and and how it can relate entirely into D, and D is
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John Padden: these little tips, these little tricks,
especially when you wanted to make
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John Padden: exciting. Have a laugh and play on things
supporting people's expectations. You know. You see, in games all the time we
offer this to exposition between
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John Padden: when you see something cute small, cuddly.
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John Padden: and then it turns around and it will just
be like a humongous monster. I think I think I try. And now embed a sort of
thing like that in in character back stories, because the the classic.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I guess it's I guess it's a stereotype at
this point is that if A. D. And D character is part of the, you know,
adventuring party, they have a tragic backstory.
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Dr Dean Marshall: It's kind of a it's kind of a meme. At
this point, you know, they've got a tragic backstory. They're always an orphan,
you know, and there's always something bad that happens to them that met them
flee, or whatever. And so I sort of. I like to try and play on that in my own
character creation. Now the fact that
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I try and add
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Dr Dean Marshall: 2 layers at least to a back story. There's
the obvious tragic backstory which is the one that they might tell. You know
the one that they might tell people about like. Oh, here's the reason I'm on
this mission is because my village got attacked, and I had to flee.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And it's like, Okay, cool. Well, they know
that you know the character knows that, and that's what they tell people. And
on the face of it.
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Dr Dean Marshall: A lot of games might just be okay with
that.
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However.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I like to add complexity, and I do this
with my current players in the campaign, so I don't want to add true spoilers
here, just in case anyone would would get them. And but but running a campaign
at the moment called Terra Nova.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and the characters have knowledge of their
own back stories, and again they can share, however much they want to with the
other players. If that's something that you set so privately with like a
session 0 with them all. Yeah. Yeah. So I did. I did like a form of a session
0. But I did them separately with the character, with with the players. II
always. I always line that sort of thing, because then, if someone has, like
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John Padden: their own kind of little story, they want to
play at the same time as the Dms. So, for instance, they've got a character
that
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John Padden: maybe there's not an old Wi wizard who's g10,
the answer to your problem is, you need to find these 5 cast items, and then you
have something to play with. Then, as the DM. Being able to bring that in into
things, they can give and take as much information to the other plans, but it
allows that on an individual basis, even though it's a group game
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Dr Dean Marshall: like having, because the DM is
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Dr Dean Marshall: is
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Dr Dean Marshall: like a big bank of secrets. I like to have
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Dr Dean Marshall: and I'm I'm letting the game determine.
I'm letting the players determine when those secrets come out. I'm not trying
to kind of shoehorn them in, force them in whatever cause. Some players just
are kind of content with
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Dr Dean Marshall: knowing some of their back story, but not
a lot of it, whereas other ones you know they they take a journey of discovery
and and and want to know that. So, as an example in in that example. I just
said, you know, characters village got attacked. They escaped, and that's why
they're on the adventure. It's a tragic backstory, because, you know, as they
looked back they saw their
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Dr Dean Marshall: father get murdered, or whatever you know,
classic, tragic, backstory, and they know that that's their knowledge.
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Dr Dean Marshall: But I know as a DM, that things like that
happen for a reason.
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John Padden: So you know, towns don't get attacked for no
reason at all. Of course you can have your purely evil people in the world.
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Dr Dean Marshall: However, wouldn't it be interesting if I
put additional notes to that person's backstory as a DM.
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Dr Dean Marshall: So they've got their knowledge. I color
code. This is just green cause. That means to me. If I say it, it's safe, you
know they know it. And then all this stuff that I add. Additionally, II color
code in my like a you know document as as red.
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Dr Dean Marshall: So this is knowledge that they do not have
about that situation?
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Dr Dean Marshall: What if, just to make things interesting,
do that subversion of expectation like you were just saying, what if their
father was the bad Guy. Essentially
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Dr Dean Marshall: so, you know, their father had been doing
something really dodgy somewhere in the world, and people were essentially
retaliating against them. So the character.
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Dr Dean Marshall: of course they see their father as a good
person, that their protector things like that. But they didn't know ever that
they were a really bad person, and that's why the attack happened. So entities
exactly that. Exactly that. So, you know, there's loads of different ways of
doing this. And I have 4 4 players in my game at the moment. All 4 of them have
complex back stories that they only know part of
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Dr Dean Marshall: and you know you have to Fe figure ways as
a DM of kind of, you know, salting the little clues about backstory in there,
and you can do it a load of different ways. That's an interesting cause. That's
that's another point I want to get onto is
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John Padden: in my current game at the moment. It's a
narrative game. It's also it's about to do the research on name conventions and
things like that, but it's basing it off of kind of almost like a common system
of obviously in day and day. You've got good neutral evil, and you've got
lawful and chaotic, and it's
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John Padden: as you go on this journey. You can take these
characters at face value because you've got a description when you first met
them.
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John Padden: and then you can talk to like a tab and owner
and learn a bit about them, and you choose who gets in your party. Then how
much more do you confess to them? Are they just in your party to help you get
your own goal, or are you gonna be the sort of play that communicates with
them? And if you do communicate with them, you're gonna find out more about
them. You then gonna go. That explains why they're this way. Why, this one's
this way. You can also then go in between 2 of these party members and the
like.
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John Padden: They're struggling to see eye to eye for
whatever reason. So you've got a cancu. They're not really good with language,
and and they're getting like
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John Padden: excited around the dwarf artificer and the
dwarf artifices just interested in the cancu's 2 blades because he wants to
know who's made them and and what they're made of.
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John Padden: but if you bring them together, they they can
actually form a really good friendship. Where, at the end of the mission, the
Kenku can have the dwarven artificial buildings and mechanical wings to make
all these loss of wings and just interested things like that. So what I'm
interested now is, how do you telegraph
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John Padden: a bit? Necessity for conversation in your
games, when you're wanting your plays to learn a bit more backstory rather than
face value, or learn a bit more about themselves and their own backstory or
each other, even in in the game as well.
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John Padden: What particular techniques would you say?
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yeah. So in terms of learning from each
other. I'm quite lucky with my group, because they are, you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: W. We're we're friends outside of the
game, which is nice.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and it means that people are like invested
in each other's characters. So during character creation
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Dr Dean Marshall: we, we did this completely separately. So
I'm not the type of DM to organize a game and say, you know, there's already a
fighter in the group. You can't be a fighter, or there's already an Orc in the
group. You can't be an Orc or something. I let people because I don't wanna
squash people's creativity or passion and things like that. You know, the reason
they make a character is because they want to play that character interesting
to them. So if I start to add any kind of you know, bootstrapping or regulation
on
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Dr Dean Marshall: how they create the character. Then it's
just gonna you know. Maybe they'll begrudge them eventually, or something, or
want to get rid of them or whatever. So so we did them completely, separately,
individually,
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Dr Dean Marshall: And then what I did as a DM. Again behind
the scenes, without them knowing it is tied their back stories to each other.
So I actually think it's interesting when you reveal something about a
backstory from character A, but it's character B that reveals it or finds out
about it from somebody else or something, and it can be as simple as you know.
I don't like to do this like shoehorning like I said earlier, but it can be as
simple as
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Dr Dean Marshall: one of them's gone to the market, and
another one's gone to the tavern, you know. This classic split the party
situation, and somebody in the tavern approaches Character B, and says like,
Oh, so you're hanging out with character. A, you know, like
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Dr Dean Marshall: I don't really like their I don't really
like their kind, because
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Dr Dean Marshall: 20 years ago this happened blah blah blah
blah blah. And so it creates an interesting.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I guess social moment for the group like,
does Character B, go and approach character? A. With that knowledge and say,
like, Oh, did you know this like what's happened. And so, you know, socially, I
like to add
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Dr Dean Marshall: complexity, and
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Dr Dean Marshall: and have linked back stories as well, even
if they don't know the linked at first. Obviously
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Dr Dean Marshall: and it kind of creates like a mutual goal
as well, because I think there's nothing worse in a game where
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Dr Dean Marshall: Players have conflicting goals, and it
creates a lot of tension, and it creates a lot of kind of it's why I don't
often advise that you know half the players be good aligned, and half the
players be evil aligned. It's like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: what are you going to do every time
there's a bandit approach on the road and say, Pay at all, or you have to go
past. And then the Paladin says like, Well, we've got the money we should pay,
and the you know. Warlock just
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Dr Dean Marshall: smashes an Eldridge blast in a bandit's
face like. And we've had these in games. And yeah, they're interesting. But
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John Padden: the predictable at the same time, you know,
like, you're always gonna have that. Good evening competitiveness between
players rather than yeah.
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Dr Dean Marshall: You know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you want it to be a collaborative effort
and game and stuff like that. And so yeah, I try to do it narratively. I try to
do it in
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Dr Dean Marshall: in social kind of like role play, style
conversations,
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Dr Dean Marshall: and also like even things like combat.
Like, I think I think a lot of dungeon masters underestimate the value in
combat as a narrative tool in a game. and so like
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Dr Dean Marshall: flashbacks are your kind of classic one.
But let's say.
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Dr Dean Marshall: character. A sees character. B, like kill
someone in a certain way in a fight.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and it'll give them during combat like a
quick flashback like, Oh, I've seen somebody like you do something like that in
the past, and it reminded me of this specific place in the world.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and it can just be as simple as saying to
the character like you get a feeling to. You know
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Dr Dean Marshall: they have something to do with that area
of the world.
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Dr Dean Marshall: So you know, or it can be like the last
dying words of someone in combat like like, Oh, you just like your father, and
then that they get killed, you know, and it's like you can you can, is it? Is
it? Good? DM,
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Dr Dean Marshall: I think you've just got to be ready to to
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Dr Dean Marshall: add to that backstory salt any at any
point, you know, rather than just like Oh, it's the mysterious old guy that
approached this from nowhere. Cause again, it's a cliche, and it's like, how
does this guy know everything about it's like, doesn't work like that for me.
It's interesting. So I always I was.
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John Padden: What I'm trying to do now is like trying to
make the equivalent in narrative gameplay, which is like Ctrpg. In a sense of
your reading the description to the guys, you're given the ideas, the guys
verbally.
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John Padden: if you were playing a digital game, it's like,
Oh, I need to go to that bookshelf over there and pick up that book because it
will be blowing, or it'll be highlighted. You can get away with that a little
bit in
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John Padden: narrative games because you can go. You've
entered an old wizards library. Everything looks normal. It's dusty. There's
loads of books. However, one of you gets a feeling of a strange or recommend
from one of the books that's you going back down into that that short cook kind
of way of dealing with things, whereas, like you say, like.
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John Padden: you don't, wanna you don't want that to be the
first stage of giving the players information. You want that to be the last
one, when all these other little breakcomes haven't worked. And but yeah. So
it's I think. Ii have got some really good advice about that, and it's not my
advice. It's the advice of
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James, that dungeon master that was in the Zoo group, and he
basically says, You know, you're rolling for things right? You know, and and
long story short, high roles are good, low roles are bad, but don't treat them
as a binary. Don't treat them as an all or nothing, and you can treat them as a
scale like they actually are.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And also it doesn't necessarily translate
to do you find it, or do you not? You know. Oh, damn! You! Only rolled a 12,
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and the DC. Check was the 13. Which means you don't find the
book. Well, no.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, if it's really important for the
story, or for you know you've set this this particular item, or something up
for for weeks, then
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Dr Dean Marshall: then they will find it. But if they roll
the dice and it's a lower number. It's gonna take them a little bit longer to
find it. Or maybe you know, an enemy will get in the way, and they'll have to
do a short combat before they do find it, you know. Yeah, exactly. If if they
roll, if they roll and they get a 20, yeah, and not 20. Then then, yeah, it's
the payoff, because they just, you know, they that's when they feel like
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Dr Dean Marshall: attuned to that item, and they spot it out
of a thousand books, you know, like that's that's a payoff for them. But
regardless, I think I think this is something which DM's don't necessarily play
on, and it can kind of slow a game down is the illusion of choice.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, like people are rolling dice,
and and that's based on chance. But if they have to find something, the dice
roll just tells you how they find it doesn't tell you if they find it or not.
So I did this in my very, very I did. I used the illusion of choice, my very, very
first
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Dr Dean Marshall: game that I was ever a dungeon master, for
because I set up a puzzle situation where there was 4 doors, and like how you
interacted with these kind of like torches on the walls, would change what the
door looked like. And so, from an outside perspective.
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Dr Dean Marshall: they had to do a puzzle and work out where
the door leads, based on what it looks like
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Dr Dean Marshall: So they were kind of, you know. One of
them was like a green flame, and it was like a forest, and the other almost
like a red flame. It was like lava and shit, you know, like, so basically
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Dr Dean Marshall: it looks like they have a choice very
early on in the game. Where are you going to appear in the world? Map?
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Dr Dean Marshall: Actually, whatever happened was, it didn't
matter what flame they chose. All it was was a skin of a of a town. The town
was always the exact same. The town, you know. They were going to appear in the
cellar of a tavern in a town when they go through that door, whether it's a
tavern that's in a town surrounded by lava. It's a tavern that's in a town
surrounded by like forest.
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Dr Dean Marshall: It's the same town. It's just flavor,
basically. So I gave. I gave the players the illusion of choice.
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Dr Dean Marshall: it
took them a good kind of like 20 min as a group to say, like, you know,
well, you're a forest gnome, and you know you're a whatever. I think we should
go this way, because maybe you're gonna be really good in that environment,
whatever. So it occupied them got them thinking. Remember, it's session one as
well. So it got them bonding really like what? You what you good at, what you
good at, you know. Who are you? Basically and and then the
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Dr Dean Marshall: and I'm sat there as a dungeon. Master
being like this is great, you know, like the the learning about each other, the
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know they're escaping an imminent
imminent threat as well. So there is kind of a time pressure, and they made the
choice, and I kind of left it as a cliffhanger. Anyway, like, where are you
going to be, you know, when you come out the door? So it gave me a week to plan
the place, but it was always the same place, you know it was. It was just me
getting narrative. No, no.
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John Padden: that's one of the one things I'm I'm struggling
with in my game is while I know that I've got to have
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John Padden: telegraphing, telegraphing. importance of
conversation. so you can go up to the the tavern owner and be like. can you
give me some extra information about these guys or not.
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John Padden: and if they don't, it's
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John Padden: I'm using that as like, cause. It's like the
first chapter of the game. I'm using that as kind of a key takeaway where
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John Padden: you then go up to the players and talk to them
and learn a bit about them. If you haven't spoken to the taven owner
beforehand, it's like a short paragraph, but if you have, it's a big one, but
because you don't see the other option.
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John Padden: the outcome of the eruption you weren't aware.
But I still need to telegraph that important knowledge. So you just drop a
little line in their life.
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John Padden: I wonder if I'd have spoken to the Tabernacle
in a first, if we could've got a bit more information, because we're all in
there the whole time just something simple like that. And then every chance for
conversation after that is kind of like
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John Padden: right? We could do this a different way, you
know. Just let them learn by.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I guess. I guess I guess, to to bring
psychology into it. Specifically, we could think about behaviorist methods of
learning. So like
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Dr Dean Marshall: like operant conditioning. So the fact
that like, if they did stuff beforehand
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Dr Dean Marshall: more often than not, they get
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Dr Dean Marshall: better dialogue, and they get like more
clues. Sometimes it might be items, rewards whatever, and if they don't, then
more often than not, the conversations are short, people are, say like, Well, I
don't even know who you are like, you know? And so you might let your players
learn that over time, and then eventually their behavior would change to test
out the theories like, if I speak to more people, does it work? And so
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Dr Dean Marshall: you don't always have to be obvious. You
don't always have to sign post. you know.
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Dr Dean Marshall:
yes. So
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Dr Dean Marshall: I suppose I should make a a specific
reference to like psychology. And and and
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know how I use my, I guess we could
call it expertise in being a dungeon master and so I'm a cognitive
psychologist. And so I study things like thought processes and my areas
decision making. But it includes things like problem solving
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Dr Dean Marshall: And and of course, I take things from my
academic space, and I apply it in
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Dr Dean Marshall: like a campaign setting.
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Dr Dean Marshall: But often it's in small details. It's
like, like you've just said, actually like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I studied this thing called like Bayesian
reasoning, or or or Bayes rule, which means that the degree in your belief of
something happening
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Dr Dean Marshall: it should change when you learn new
information, which is kind of what you talk about that
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John Padden: and
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John Padden: changes
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Dr Dean Marshall: your behavior. Yeah, it should do. It
should do for a lot of people. But in in in my research, I study the
conjunction fallacy, which is like when people are judging things like
probabilities of things happening together, they get information related to the
conjunction, and instead of
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Dr Dean Marshall: adjusting their probabilities in line with
Bayes rule. So instead of doing it in a way which is kind of proportional if
you will
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Dr Dean Marshall: like, oh, I learned a tiny bit of
information. I'll change my belief by a tiny bit.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Instead. It will be like, I learned a bit
of information, and I'm going to rely so much of my judgment on that new
information that I'm just going to make errors on my new judgments. So
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John Padden: is there a variable there on where they learn
that information from, though. And I'm going. I'm going into like Milgram
studies. Now, where.
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John Padden: if you learn that from information from someone
who seems to be a superior or a more knowledgeable source of information. Is
that potential variable for that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, could be.
Technically, it's not something cause in in cognitive. What we, what we try to
do
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Dr Dean Marshall: is isolate the effects of the independent
variables. Right? So. And we tried to do that to establish calls and effects
like, you know, the II really really test the impact of the
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Dr Dean Marshall: background information
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Dr Dean Marshall: which is independent of who says the
background information? Basically? So yeah, I do that in in in order to infer
cause and effect between
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Dr Dean Marshall: what evidence has been presented and what
judgment they make.
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And
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Dr Dean Marshall: you're talking about blending things like
cognitive with social psychology. And that is yes. Who does it come from? So
you might get the exact same information, but depending on who it comes from,
that could influence how you perceive it, and therefore make a judgment. It
definitely could. I'm not aware of the literature about it, or or a result on
it right now. But it's basic social psychology, you know. We're not only
influenced by like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, who is there? We're influenced
by things as simple as how many people are there. And also, really,
interestingly, this might be something for you to think about somewhere in your
game design is
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Dr Dean Marshall: social. Psychology is so pervasive that
we're even influenced by the
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Dr Dean Marshall: idea that there is other people
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Dr Dean Marshall: around or thinking about this thing, or
doing this thing, or whatever
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Dr Dean Marshall: or the implied presence of others. even if
it's not there.
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Dr Dean Marshall: even if it is not there at all. So as an
example, they you could run like a computer simulation of a game where it looks
like you're playing against another person.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And it's actually a computer
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Dr Dean Marshall: and so obviously, they can manipulate how
the computer plays and things like that.
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Dr Dean Marshall: if
you
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can't remember it exactly. But you can essentially
manipulate these kind of games where it looks like
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Dr Dean Marshall: be playing against like 10 people or
something like that. And people where where is always you're playing against
computer, you know. Always it's determined what what the game is going to play
in response to you.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and
people's behavior like drastically changes, they start to like lose confidence
in themselves, they start to like.
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make really quick and bad judgments and things like that. So
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Dr Dean Marshall: also, things like perceived expertise. If
if if let's imagine you're
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Dr Dean Marshall: in a pub quiz scenario, and you're told
oh, by the way, the other person's an expert in this thing, so you know. Good
luck.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know. You basically stop trying. You
kind of admit defeat, you know
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John Padden: imagined opponents
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John Padden: where, if you come second out of 2 people, or
if you come 100 out of 100 people, you dead last in both scenarios. But you're
not gonna have. It's not gonna have as much of a detrimental effect on you. If
you come second out of 2 people.
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John Padden: then 100 500 people, because you're like,
there's a vast number of people that have beaten me here. Whereas in the other
scenario, just one person beating me. Yeah, yeah. And there's very. There's
very basic
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Dr Dean Marshall: social psychology. About
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Dr Dean Marshall: the numbers of people that are involved in
things. And so you can look at social, low finger literature which basically
implies if we're on a team, we start to, you know, not pull our weight
literally. In some cases there's like a tug of war version of this experiment
where you know that you met. They measured people's strength
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Dr Dean Marshall: individually. and then, when they put them
in a team all on the same kind of like tug of war thing.
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Dr Dean Marshall: think about it it should. This pulling
strength should be the sum of their individual strengths. It wasn't normally
like the mean or something like that.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Well, no, no, it falls in proportion to
how many people are on the team.
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Dr Dean Marshall: So like one person stood on their own,
they basically give it maximum effort.
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Dr Dean Marshall: 2 people pull in the rope they both give,
let's say, maybe 99 or 98% of their effort. 3 people, 97 or 96%. You know, by
the time you have, like 10 people stood on a rope pulling it.
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Dr Dean Marshall: the total amount of strength or power they
pull. It's like 90 or less percent of what you'd expect if you just
subconscious thing as well, are they like uniquely aware that they're doing
that? It's probably subconscious. Yeah, because, I'm not sure if they asked for
like a report on it a self report afterwards about like
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know how much effort we put in? I
imagine people would report that they were putting in as much effort as when
they're on their own but now that's that. The the literature shows that people
don't, and it's called social loafing.
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Dr Dean Marshall: So it's a it's it's a finding that kind of
branches between social and sports psychology.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And and yeah, you know this, I say this to
my students all the time. You know, if you think that corporations which are
thousands of employees don't already know about these things, or put research
into these things and kind of divide people up into smaller and smaller teams
rather than you and a thousand others are trying to work on this problem.
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Dr Dean Marshall: But a thousand others are trying to work
in it like
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John Padden: cool, and I'll just sit back and do as little
as possible. There's that fable about the village where they wanna make a nice
fountain in the middle of it's common, right? The very phone and everything.
And
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John Padden: they're like, we just want everyone in the
village to put a glass of milk into the fountain, so they will just have milk
coming out of it, and one person goes well, if there's loads of places. I just
put glass of water, and it'll be fine. So so yeah, social loafing is is, you
know.
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Dr Dean Marshall: adjusting your effort on the basis of
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Dr Dean Marshall: the presence of other people. And then
there's also things like diffusion of responsibility. So like, that's the
pressure you feel as an individual when something happens in a social
situation. So yeah, if it's just you one on one with, you know, people? In a
competitive situation. Then, yeah, if you fail, it's all your fault, isn't it?
You know. And it's the same with helping behavior. You know. You stood on a
train and someone collapses, and you're the only one there.
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Dr Dean Marshall: All of the pressure of that situation is
on you to help.
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But if there's 10 other people there.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know slight hesitancy, and you might
be off the hook.
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Dr Dean Marshall: And so people often kind of like to
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Dr Dean Marshall: literally diffuse the responsibility onto
other people. So yeah, I think that's a really interesting thing to play into
potential. You know, game design is like.
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Dr Dean Marshall: just kinda like, what are other people
doing in the world? I'm gonna
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Dr Dean Marshall: say that I do use cognitive psychology in.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I just use my knowledge of things like
perception and attention in the way that I would like, determine
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Dr Dean Marshall: how a dice roll would work, or or what the
outcome of a dice role would be.
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John Padden: just to enhance the story.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yeah, I dig into my character. You know, I
really
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Dr Dean Marshall: like. I say, when I'm playing that Zorag,
that Harpo barbarian like stupidity is his thing. So even if I know
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Dr Dean Marshall: something wouldn't work, I'm gonna try it,
you know, because he would try it. So
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Dr Dean Marshall: so I think that's really really useful to
know about. Now, I don't.
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Dr Dean Marshall: I'm going to combine some areas there. So
the cognitive psychology. It helps me because it helps me organize things like
puzzles in the game, you know, quite often.
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Dr Dean Marshall: and it all. It helps me organize things
like
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you know just
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Dr Dean Marshall: how or why somebody might do something as
an individual.
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Dr Dean Marshall: But what it doesn't really help me with is
like larger scale game planning or campaign.
333
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yeah, yeah, it doesn't help me with world
building, really, to be honest with you. What helps me more with that is like
world history. So I've had to learn a lot about world history.
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01:01:32.460 --> 01:01:36.929
Dr Dean Marshall:
politics, you know.
335
01:01:36.950 --> 01:01:55.630
Dr Dean Marshall: and also just like law from other places.
So I said, I mentioned earlier that I was a very casual fan of Lord of the
Rings at 1 point. Now I'm much more than a casual fan of it, because I've been
reading not only the books, but also the law behind the books and things like
that, and
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01:01:56.420 --> 01:01:58.609
John Padden: have it done the what? Sorry? The walk?
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01:01:59.100 --> 01:02:10.659
Dr Dean Marshall: No, no, he well, he was. He was a
professor, Bob, and there's a walk he could go on. Which is the walks. He used
to go on when he was right. Well, I'm gonna
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Dr Dean Marshall: I've got another thing going to do. List.
So yeah. But II really enjoy things like mi the mythology behind. Like like II
learn a lot, and I gain a lot
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01:02:24.850 --> 01:02:32.190
Dr Dean Marshall: of
for my games by adapting mythology. And so I think so. Mythology
340
01:02:32.200 --> 01:02:39.310
Dr Dean Marshall: history, you know you're not going to run
out of scenarios or things that happen. But I think that.
341
01:02:39.630 --> 01:02:52.970
Dr Dean Marshall: combining that with with one of the
greatest piece of devices I was ever given as a as a DM. Or a player was by
James again, that DM. James, James, Captur villa, right is go. So yeah, it's
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Dr Dean Marshall: phenomenal phenomenal. DM, And
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01:02:57.990 --> 01:03:00.379
Dr Dean Marshall: he told me,
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Dr Dean Marshall: if you only know one thing about a person,
just the one thing so it could be a character you create. It could be an Npc.
It could be the biggest bad guy of your entire campaign, whatever it's
motivation. So because if you know that motivation like, write it down, make
sure it's the the highlights of that person's notes basically cause motivation.
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Dr Dean Marshall: You've you've got. You've got how they
act. You've got what they're gonna do in the world. You've got how they're
gonna respond to people cause a lot of Dmn is responding.
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John Padden: And if you don't respond appropriately,
according to that person's motivational personality, or whatever you wanna call
it, then it kind of feels unprepared or disconnected, or, you know, like
internally inconsistent things like that. I've got it onto Google drive now,
it's just poor quality. But I'll send it across to you. But they
347
01:03:54.650 --> 01:04:02.120
John Padden: the narrative lead narrative designer from
Boulders Gate free. That was a the games fest earlier in the week.
348
01:04:02.140 --> 01:04:13.539
John Padden: They would they were talking over a scene that
they don't. II don't know if you play boulders gate free at all. You you would
love it, you know. It's about right. Yeah, but it's
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John Padden: There's one character that you made at a
certain point in time, and she showed the first draft of like the conversation
that she has with you, and then your 2 responses, and it's very
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John Padden: dull because it's like it's a yes or no. It's
very binary or response to it, but
351
01:04:28.850 --> 01:04:49.130
John Padden: she breaks it down into like when you're
crafting the character life is that you have. You have the character, you have
you as a designer, and then you have the player as well, and you wanna merge
those into like some sort of end diagram where the the middle, where they all
intersect with each other, is the perfect place to be, and she was clearly
talking about it. When it comes to the psychology of
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01:04:49.220 --> 01:05:00.360
John Padden: the Npc. It is absolutely their motivation
drives them. It it. It shows how they will talk to a player, and whether
they're dismissive or inviting, and
353
01:05:00.390 --> 01:05:02.609
John Padden: how they act, and then from that
354
01:05:02.700 --> 01:05:10.200
John Padden: you you give your, you make the player have
available choices based on that because they will. Then also, even in D and D,
355
01:05:10.770 --> 01:05:24.500
John Padden: they're gonna act in a certain way, because of
the history of the world, the law between the 2 races, all these interactions
that come from real world like we interact with each other in a certain way.
We're probably at this conversation. We're probably spoken in quite
356
01:05:24.880 --> 01:05:29.320
John Padden: affluent academic terminology as opposed to. If
we just met someone
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01:05:29.380 --> 01:05:31.589
John Padden: down the street. And
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01:05:31.740 --> 01:05:33.750
John Padden: and it's quite interesting. I think that's
359
01:05:33.870 --> 01:05:47.359
John Padden: where. Wanna then tie in and and start drawing.
This to a conclusion is. if we then take the scenario of games like Ttrpgs and
things like that, and start using that as a construct towards therapeutic
360
01:05:47.540 --> 01:05:59.880
John Padden: psychology. And again, like you say, with the
care given and things like that is what advantages do we have from using Ttrpgs
as a construct? Obviously we saw a lot of the
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01:06:00.050 --> 01:06:19.010
John Padden: the positives from it during things like you
mentioned before in the pandemic, because a lot of us were drawn to our towards
it, even though we went in the presence of others. That idea of being in the
presence of what was through digital formats like this, with teams and zoom
calls and stuff, it was able for us to connect and kind of forget about the
worries in the world.
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Dr Dean Marshall: Yes, so
363
01:06:21.460 --> 01:06:22.560
I think.
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01:06:22.850 --> 01:06:39.239
Dr Dean Marshall: Well, I'll I'll down to that one in a
second, because I think if you. If you have the motivation of like, let's say
at person. It could be a king of a empire, or whatever, or you've got the
motivation of, and you base that on a political system. So that would be a
monarchy.
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01:06:39.340 --> 01:06:50.959
Dr Dean Marshall: And then so you know how that works, you
know, like there's royal blood there, and you know, might be a divine whatever
you know. Blah blah blah! And then there's a separate political system at the
other side of the world
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01:06:50.980 --> 01:07:06.489
Dr Dean Marshall: which is based on a constitutional
democracy. So those people are elected. Now, of course, you can have, you know,
problems in that and all these things. But they have a different motivation. So
I think the way these political powers go about
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Dr Dean Marshall: organizing themselves in the world
368
01:07:08.990 --> 01:07:19.900
Dr Dean Marshall: can really change their behavior in the
world, you know. So I think something to think about as a DM. And this is where
I'm going to move on to the therapeutic side in a second is that like.
369
01:07:20.080 --> 01:07:21.560
show your players
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01:07:21.590 --> 01:07:31.709
Dr Dean Marshall: behavior in the world like the village
that got overrun or attacked whatever that's that's a behaviour. It's an action
that happened in the world. What the players do not know
371
01:07:31.820 --> 01:07:38.080
Dr Dean Marshall: is the reason they don't know the
motivation behind. Why it happened. It could be
372
01:07:38.110 --> 01:07:55.420
Dr Dean Marshall: scorched Earth tactics. It could be a
complete eradication, a genocide for political, religious. You name. It
reasons, you know, from either of those powers in the world, but they don't
know about it, and so I think it's very useful to.
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Dr Dean Marshall: you know, in some instances treat the
374
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Dr Dean Marshall: campaign or game a little bit like a
murder mystery like you've seen what has happened, or you might even
375
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Dr Dean Marshall: witness it happen, or or or take part in
stopping or changing something happening. But there still is a motivation
behind it, and there still is a consistent motivation behind it. I think the
idea of purely good or purely bad is
376
01:08:22.399 --> 01:08:27.860
Dr Dean Marshall: not very useful. I'm a I'm a personally,
I'm a moral relativist.
377
01:08:27.990 --> 01:08:29.319
Dr Dean Marshall: And so
378
01:08:29.540 --> 01:08:47.559
Dr Dean Marshall: I like to write into my games, good people
doing bad things, yeah, you know. And likewise the other way around bad people
doing good things. Because on the face of it, you know, my players might kind
of associate from an early interaction like, Oh, these guys! You know.
379
01:08:47.600 --> 01:08:54.439
Dr Dean Marshall: they sent a dragon to destroy this
monument or do whatever, and that's a bad thing.
380
01:08:54.529 --> 01:08:59.999
Dr Dean Marshall: But if they don't understand the
motivation behind it, or maybe even what the monument was, you know. Maybe it
was
381
01:09:00.330 --> 01:09:17.159
Dr Dean Marshall: a powering device, for, like a an evil
entity, or a god, or whatever, or or it was draining some power from somewhere,
or whatever. You know, I think it's useful for the players to go on kind of a
learning journey as well.
382
01:09:17.740 --> 01:09:36.959
Dr Dean Marshall: And I think that's much more interesting
than the than the you know. The person with horns is evil. Let's let's go and
just power up and kill the evil person, because it's like, Well, what is evil,
you know? Why are they doing what they're doing? And maybe the person who's got
a halo hanging over the head.
383
01:09:37.149 --> 01:09:39.830
you know, in the name of their God.
384
01:09:40.439 --> 01:09:41.319
Dr Dean Marshall: you know.
385
01:09:41.420 --> 01:09:51.080
John Padden: eradicated an entire nation like a a a. Are
they evil, you know. Are you going to revolt against them, or whatever I think
so, some of the best stories that we see are
386
01:09:51.200 --> 01:09:55.050
John Padden: it's always that. It's where you see a villain
have a redemption arc.
387
01:09:55.290 --> 01:09:57.610
John Padden: and things like that where you see
388
01:09:59.190 --> 01:10:03.329
John Padden: they they were motivated to do the the evil
things they did in a certain way.
389
01:10:03.370 --> 01:10:15.900
Dr Dean Marshall: and they've have. They're now have to
question their own motives, yeah, or, like, you know, for the greater good, you
know, I think this so interested to have a variety of those things going on in
the world.
390
01:10:16.060 --> 01:10:44.829
Dr Dean Marshall: and essentially let your players determine
ultimately what they want to do so. Don't tell them who the bad guy is. Just
don't do it, you know. Have 4 or 5 potential bad guys, but not all kind of
evil, outwardly evil. Let the players decide sort of like what they, as a group
really care about or really want to take an active role at in the world, and
also something to, just as DM. Advice here is that if the players sit still for
a while,
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01:10:45.070 --> 01:11:06.189
Dr Dean Marshall: The world should move on, you know. Let
let the world move on. Have a plan again, based on motivation. Have a plan for
those people in the world doing stuff. So sometimes you don't have to let the
story approach the players rather than the other way around. If they're kind of
just taking it very casually. Now, I will bring this onto this kind of
therapeutic side of things. So
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01:11:06.530 --> 01:11:21.259
Dr Dean Marshall: yeah, there's a lot of research on the
benefits of gaming, generally speaking. But then Ttrpg's or collaborative
gaming. Part of it is a social element, you know, and people tend to. You know.
393
01:11:22.170 --> 01:11:31.269
Dr Dean Marshall: I guess do better. When when they're in
groups. Generally. I was wondering if there's a social thing behind that,
because you always see
394
01:11:32.410 --> 01:11:41.749
John Padden: our colleagues anonymous, for instance, they
the convention is if it's your first time that you're probably not gonna tell
people your issues.
395
01:11:41.820 --> 01:12:09.510
Dr Dean Marshall: but by listening to other people in the
ring. Talk about it over the progressing weeks, you're gonna feel more inclined
to then share your your thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, we are social
animals. You know, we we do very well in groups, is one of the only defined
psychological needs rather than a want is is the need of belonging. So we don't
do well alone. You know we don't. That kind of Lone Wolf
396
01:12:09.650 --> 01:12:16.219
Dr Dean Marshall: like, you know, stereotype. It's not very
accurate at all, you know, the Lone Wolf would be a very
397
01:12:16.480 --> 01:12:34.330
Dr Dean Marshall: sad, potentially or or damaged person. You
know, we do. Well, socially, exactly, exactly. Yeah. And you know, in terms of
evolutionary biology, it's beneficial for us to be
398
01:12:34.330 --> 01:12:49.270
Dr Dean Marshall: social to be liked by other people. You
know, there's a reason why things like social desirability bias exists where we
we try to present a good version of ourselves to other people, or a likeable
version, or whatever
399
01:12:49.270 --> 01:13:03.829
Dr Dean Marshall: cause. It's beneficial to us and our survival.
So you know th there's that element of it. But I think that if you, as a DM.
And you were qualified in sort of like varieties of of therapy or or
counselling.
400
01:13:03.860 --> 01:13:17.080
Dr Dean Marshall: and you really could use the narrative
situations or the stories that you would develop as as psychological
interventions. And so you know, as an example, let's just take a really common
401
01:13:17.430 --> 01:13:26.020
Dr Dean Marshall: things such as catastrophizing. So as an
individual it might be. One thing goes wrong, and it's kind of like, oh, you
know, everything's
402
01:13:26.440 --> 01:13:42.480
John Padden: awful. The world's hates me and all these kind
of things. You just mentioned before, where, with the hot ace, if you get the
A, you recognize it more often. Is that like the reversal of that where, if you
see something bad happening.
403
01:13:42.770 --> 01:13:52.509
John Padden: you notice more bad things happening, and then
the world collapses around you. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely about kind of how
you would affirm the situation. So
404
01:13:52.570 --> 01:14:04.660
you know, part of Cbt cognitive behavioral therapy is
identifying these kind of erroneous thought patterns, or or purely negative
thought patterns, and reframing them.
405
01:14:04.700 --> 01:14:06.830
So as an example.
406
01:14:06.870 --> 01:14:16.870
Dr Dean Marshall: you could present the person with. So the
person has a character with an Npc. In the game who is catastrophizing.
407
01:14:16.880 --> 01:14:19.549
Dr Dean Marshall: You know you. You go into the tavern
408
01:14:19.600 --> 01:14:25.119
Dr Dean Marshall: and you ask for a drink, and the person
says, Car, you know what's the point, cause like, you know.
409
01:14:25.130 --> 01:14:37.120
Dr Dean Marshall: like a dragon, a dragon came and attacked,
and like there's no point selling these things. There's no point doing this.
The world's ending. It's the worst. Well, and the person's kind of saying,
Well, you kind of just want a drink, you know, like, surely there's
410
01:14:37.530 --> 01:14:46.470
John Padden: we still need to go with things, you know. I'm
thirsty, but it's amazing that you mentioned that because one of my previous
bits of research was into
411
01:14:47.100 --> 01:14:56.049
John Padden: a female actress, and she's made a film well,
documentary film about this as well, because she was subject to sexual abuse in
our home country, and
412
01:14:56.100 --> 01:15:01.100
John Padden: after developing the documentary film, she then
went on to make a game because she looked at the statistics of
413
01:15:01.280 --> 01:15:17.050
John Padden: females that were given sexual abuse on online
games. And like, 63% of females would hide their gender while playing. And 98%
of them had experience some sort of abuse online playing. And so she crafted
the game again, similar to what you say, where
414
01:15:17.070 --> 01:15:18.120
John Padden: your
415
01:15:18.180 --> 01:15:24.600
John Padden: companion through the game is someone who's
suffered it, and you end up taking this support role. And it kind of shows
416
01:15:25.060 --> 01:15:26.819
John Padden: male game is like.
417
01:15:27.110 --> 01:15:39.670
John Padden: Hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna prove this to you on
your own turf. And you're gonna realize, like this is what these women are
subject to. So maybe the next time is presented to you. If there's an
opportunity, or is someone else acting that way, you might defend
418
01:15:39.790 --> 01:15:47.420
John Padden: the more often. I'll try and put a stop to it
more often having having that Npc guide kind of way of doing it is definitely.
419
01:15:47.580 --> 01:15:49.150
John Padden: and it fits more with
420
01:15:49.220 --> 01:16:14.410
John Padden: very much on topic. But yeah.
421
01:16:15.000 --> 01:16:28.419
Dr Dean Marshall: it it it. It gives you a chance to step
outside of your own personal situation and do things like empathize with a
situation or an individual and then it can kind of build a problem solving
422
01:16:28.490 --> 01:16:39.630
Dr Dean Marshall: process which doesn't feel personal, you
know. So yeah, that's that's kind of. you know, one of them or another one
another one would be like.
423
01:16:39.670 --> 01:16:56.890
Dr Dean Marshall: I mean, it's similar to cast
catastrophizing, but it's like assuming knowledge. So you know, a lot of people
who struggle from mental health difficulties, especially like anxiety disorders
assume knowledge or emotions, or whatever, on behalf of other people. So
they'll say things like
424
01:16:56.980 --> 01:16:58.510
Dr Dean Marshall: everybody hates me.
425
01:16:58.700 --> 01:17:13.990
Dr Dean Marshall: Well, that's a very common phrase, or you
know I'm worthless. And you ask, why would you say that? Or because I don't do
anything. But okay, well, you know, where would you get that impression? Or
because somebody called me worthless once, you know, they called me like
426
01:17:14.050 --> 01:17:24.320
Dr Dean Marshall: Crap at my job, or whatever. Okay. Well,
you know, has everybody you've ever worked with said that, you know, like
there's a there's a question in process. So you could imagine that like
427
01:17:24.680 --> 01:17:37.150
Dr Dean Marshall: if you took the that scenario and had it
in an in an Npc. Or something, and you know, not in a derogatory way. But it
might be someone who is kind of like
428
01:17:37.550 --> 01:17:43.309
Dr Dean Marshall: a bit conspiratorial and a bit like
paranoid about a certain situation, and
429
01:17:43.480 --> 01:17:54.819
Dr Dean Marshall: and and maybe their behavior had changed,
and people were concerned about them. And so the person who's concerned about
them is another Npc. They would approach the character and say, like, you know,
Oh, my
430
01:17:55.480 --> 01:18:06.219
Dr Dean Marshall: friend, he's sometimes he's really
correct. And he told me about this prophecy once, and you know it was correct,
and it was really useful. But
431
01:18:06.340 --> 01:18:08.710
Dr Dean Marshall: he's he's convinced that there's a
432
01:18:09.440 --> 01:18:19.360
Dr Dean Marshall: I don't know. He's convinced that there's
an evil cult or something. Do you know what I mean? Like like he, he! He's
assuming knowledge or assuming whatever, but there's no evidence of it. And
433
01:18:19.390 --> 01:18:28.609
Dr Dean Marshall: and he says it's in a certain place. But
he needs you to go check it out, basically. So you'd go. You turn it into a
mission. Don't you go? You go looking for evidence of things that
434
01:18:28.720 --> 01:18:31.840
Dr Dean Marshall: doesn't exist, and you bring back to him
435
01:18:32.220 --> 01:18:43.339
Dr Dean Marshall: like essentially no evidence. You say
we've checked it out. Why would do you think that? Why don't we go there
together? It's safe, blah, blah, blah. So there's I think there's ways that a
good
436
01:18:43.580 --> 01:18:51.460
Dr Dean Marshall: qualified individual could organize
situations in the world which would help the person
437
01:18:51.550 --> 01:18:54.929
Dr Dean Marshall: who who? Who's suffering a bit kind of
438
01:18:55.530 --> 01:18:57.000
Dr Dean Marshall: tackle these
439
01:18:57.260 --> 01:19:21.110
Dr Dean Marshall: like potential problems in a way which is
safe in a way which is collaborative. It might also include the examples from
other people. So if there's if you've got 3 or 4 people sat at a table or
playing a collaborative game. You know, sometimes you don't have the answer,
but somebody else might. And you know oh, I never thought of that. Yeah, let's
go do that or something, you know, can be really, really
440
01:19:21.300 --> 01:19:23.480
Dr Dean Marshall:
useful.
441
01:19:23.630 --> 01:19:27.409
Dr Dean Marshall: So so yeah, you know, I just think
442
01:19:27.640 --> 01:19:38.829
Dr Dean Marshall: it. It is an area that is researched not
my particular area. II think another great one, you know, is is such things as
moral development, like
443
01:19:38.940 --> 01:19:53.090
Dr Dean Marshall:
It's like you said about the you know person who'd experienced kind of
like, you know, sexual objectification or or assault like it's hard for people
to empathize properly
444
01:19:53.200 --> 01:20:03.819
Dr Dean Marshall: if they've never experienced that sort of
thing, or had to deal with it or had to support someone. And so, you know, as
an example. You might get somebody who's very
445
01:20:04.160 --> 01:20:14.809
Dr Dean Marshall: I guess you could call them authoritarian
or something. You know the weak deserve to be weak and die, and all of these
things, and the strong, only the strongest survive, and whatever
446
01:20:14.990 --> 01:20:25.169
Dr Dean Marshall: which is a which is a moral claim
fundamentally so, you might put them into a situation in the game where they
actually find out about a person, a group, whatever it is.
447
01:20:25.220 --> 01:20:29.100
Dr Dean Marshall: that are kind of. you know, subjugated to
448
01:20:29.350 --> 01:20:46.090
Dr Dean Marshall: like all kinds of terrors, through no
fault of their own. through what race they are, or how they were born into the
world. What class they are, you know you name it. What what gender they are,
and what's even more interesting
449
01:20:46.240 --> 01:20:49.919
Dr Dean Marshall: is, if you flip the narrative so they
aren't in a
450
01:20:50.060 --> 01:20:52.910
Dr Dean Marshall: what they see as like a morally superior
point.
451
01:20:52.920 --> 01:20:59.849
Dr Dean Marshall: So you know, their race is the one which
is kind of frowned upon. Or you know.
452
01:21:00.120 --> 01:21:07.189
John Padden: I think you've got to be careful, obviously,
like you said to not kind of. When you look at the studies that are being done.
453
01:21:07.350 --> 01:21:12.029
John Padden: It's even with those dragons. It's always done
by practitioners off
454
01:21:12.060 --> 01:21:16.650
John Padden: therapy, if you like. The idea of
455
01:21:16.810 --> 01:21:27.260
John Padden: when you go on about discrimination of racist
within DD and stuff like that. The idea of I don't include. I've seen it, but
there was like a comic strip once about it, and it was, I don't know if it was
related to Einstein's
456
01:21:27.390 --> 01:21:31.060
John Padden: phrase or sentence that he's made at some point
where
457
01:21:31.240 --> 01:21:44.730
John Padden: you've got like a bunch of animals lined up,
and it's like the test will start in 5 min, and the test is which one of
you can climb the tree the fastest, and you've got like a monkey, an elephant,
a goldfish in a fish bowl. It's obviously the test isn't determinative of
458
01:21:44.780 --> 01:21:58.139
John Padden: them as as as individuals. So in there, where
it's like, you know, names are discriminated because they're so small, and then
if you pull them, if you pull
459
01:21:58.320 --> 01:22:13.670
Dr Dean Marshall: the play character in a world where
everything's that Alice in Wonderland, where everything's they become the
problem because they don't fit in. And and you know you can. I think this is
the beauty of something like Dnd, because it's so creative is that if you
460
01:22:13.780 --> 01:22:24.360
Dr Dean Marshall: organize it properly as a DM. You you
could fit anything into that social social situation so like, let's say, as an
example, you wanted to kind of like work on
461
01:22:24.550 --> 01:22:42.240
Dr Dean Marshall: the person's perception of money, or like,
maybe in a therapy session, it turned out that they were doing things like
sabotaging personal relationships in the pursuit of money. You know they were
working too much, and they were putting too much value on materialistic things.
462
01:22:42.240 --> 01:22:55.130
Dr Dean Marshall: you know, it might be something in your
game that you work through in a series of sessions. How you show that you know
a person who in this kind of kingdom is like Mega Mega, mega mega rich?
463
01:22:55.150 --> 01:23:00.809
Dr Dean Marshall: and
you know essentially you go in and get down the lines of
464
01:23:01.010 --> 01:23:07.360
Dr Dean Marshall: I guess personifying them based on one of
the 7 deadly sins. It is so greed.
465
01:23:07.510 --> 01:23:18.769
John Padden: So you know, I know a campaign that's purely
based on the 7 deadly sins. You were saying about mythology. There's a lot of
people that do use even the 4 horsemen of death for the 7 deadly scenes.
466
01:23:18.810 --> 01:23:33.739
Dr Dean Marshall: almost mythological way of thinking of
things. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, you'd you'd you'd stick the player into a
situation where money is is a negative thing, and you'd obviously in, you'd do
it in a in a structured and
467
01:23:33.950 --> 01:23:49.100
Dr Dean Marshall: I guess, academic way where you'd you'd
have evidence to show problems with money, and you might even think you might
even you could explore all sorts. You could explore capitalism as a as a much
wider concept there, and about the abuses of
468
01:23:49.140 --> 01:23:56.660
Dr Dean Marshall: different races. Or you know the fact that
nobody ever becomes ultra wealthy without.
469
01:23:57.050 --> 01:23:58.100
you know.
470
01:23:58.240 --> 01:24:01.190
Dr Dean Marshall: a lot more people being abused
471
01:24:01.230 --> 01:24:16.660
Dr Dean Marshall: to generate that wealth. So you know, if
the person's never had to deal with that. They've just grown up in a
capitalistic society where, like shiny, expensive things are thrust in front of
their face, and they never see the slavery. They never see the, you know death.
472
01:24:16.760 --> 01:24:18.669
Dr Dean Marshall: Then it could be a
473
01:24:18.730 --> 01:24:21.189
Dr Dean Marshall: safe place to
474
01:24:21.230 --> 01:24:27.170
John Padden: explore those topics, you know. Well, there's
something to be said of keeping it in a fancy world as well.
475
01:24:27.240 --> 01:24:55.929
John Padden: because there is a link between. When it was
when they were studying in the eighties and the nineties, and they were trying
to portray this idea of violence and video games causes violence in real life.
Where is more contemporary studies have proven it not to be the case. It's to
do with the competitiveness element and the raised chemicals in the bodies from
that is this idea that when questioning in young kids about shooting in video
games and causing violence and video games. So like, do you know, that's wrong?
Why did you do it? And they go? Well, of course it's wrong.
476
01:24:56.090 --> 01:24:57.490
John Padden: but I know it's not real.
477
01:24:57.580 --> 01:25:20.220
John Padden: It's a fantasy place. There's a different set
of rules and laws there that don't apply to me here, and that's in conjunction
with like a fantasy world is you don't have to be yourself, and so you don't
have to get triggered. You don't have to take any of that trauma outside. And
it's one thing that I've personally found from from therapies how exhausting is
feelings and stuff in such a direct way.
478
01:25:20.220 --> 01:25:40.510
John Padden: whereas if you were to take it into a fancy
world where it's not necessarily the problems that you talk about yours. But
you seen it in someone else. We all wanna help someone more more than face our
own problems. And then another thing is is when we talk about studies, that
being done is a there's a a, a lecture on the games design course.
479
01:25:40.670 --> 01:25:50.800
John Padden: and I keep getting referred to her because she
did stuff with veterans, and she was trying to get them to do it,
transformative game for them and into society. And they were just like no.
480
01:25:51.470 --> 01:26:00.139
John Padden: which is quite interesting, because they just
want to play shooter games wanna play any other sort of game. Now, one of the
things they talk about when you're doing a game.
481
01:26:00.160 --> 01:26:08.240
John Padden: a transformative game is reactants vary, which
is, if I say to you, Dean, can you go turn light on? I'm giving you a command
you're going to like
482
01:26:08.260 --> 01:26:32.339
John Padden: no like or like, you know, when you when you
say I've got to do this task, you more likely not to do it because you say
you've got to do it. Whereas if you say I get to do it, I get in this
environment. And I get to achieve these things. It's a different way of
analyzing the situation. And so it was interesting for me then, seeing how it
didn't work with the soldiers because they're so used to doing as they're told
with the general population
483
01:26:32.600 --> 01:26:45.490
Dr Dean Marshall: like to be told what today? Yeah, yeah,
yeah. Again, I think that's part of the rationale for having a qualified person
in charge of that situation, because, you know, as part of the training they'll
they'll
484
01:26:45.610 --> 01:27:01.240
Dr Dean Marshall: basically spot, look out for and try and
correct through the conversation. Specific words that are being used so like as
an example, you know, if if the person is is calling themselves worthless, or
something like they'd
485
01:27:01.380 --> 01:27:03.820
Dr Dean Marshall: they did pull them up on that.
486
01:27:03.930 --> 01:27:11.010
Dr Dean Marshall: And and language is a language is a
powerful tool. So outside of outside of
487
01:27:11.390 --> 01:27:22.570
Dr Dean Marshall: you know. And I think psychology or DD
related. I'm a vegetarian, and what I found as a really strong tool
488
01:27:22.690 --> 01:27:30.500
Dr Dean Marshall: to keep me vegetarian, basically for a
number of years is that I don't say, I can't eat meat
489
01:27:30.880 --> 01:27:48.289
Dr Dean Marshall: cause that's kind of like denying or you
know, it feels like, yeah, yeah. I say, I don't eat meat, because it puts the
onus on mean ball, you know, and it's and it's more of a a moral statement than
than a
490
01:27:48.560 --> 01:27:56.590
Dr Dean Marshall: command from elsewhere. Yeah, I can't eat.
Meat is very different than I don't eat meat, so I always use the phrase, I
don't eat meat.
491
01:27:56.680 --> 01:27:59.520
Dr Dean Marshall: And it's kind of reinforces my
492
01:28:00.040 --> 01:28:21.520
John Padden: behavior. So yeah, language is incredibly
powerful. It's like you were saying before about the whole that the individual
that thinks they're worthless, and they think everyone thinks they're worthless
because they were told at one time, simply changing it from. Everyone thinks
I'm worthless to that one person that one time thought was worthless.
Background is
493
01:28:22.220 --> 01:28:25.560
John Padden: when you're going. There's no black and white
when it comes to
494
01:28:25.600 --> 01:28:47.899
John Padden: heroes versus villains and D and D. You don't
know why someone built down the village. You don't know why that person called
you worthless, exactly evaluated assessment of your character, or was it just
an off the cuff statement that you've unfortunately taken to heart. Yeah, yeah,
what's strange is? And again, you'd have to kind of go through this as a as a
conversation with the person, but they then extrapolate that to
495
01:28:48.210 --> 01:28:59.929
Dr Dean Marshall: in extreme cases, everyone thinks I'm
worthless. Which is assuming knowledge on the basis of well, literally,
everyone, however, when you question them about. Well, you know.
496
01:29:00.330 --> 01:29:09.049
Dr Dean Marshall: do you know why that person thought you
were worth this? They might give you a behaviorism kind of answer like, Oh, I
didn't take a bin out, or I didn't do whatever, and it's like, no.
497
01:29:09.160 --> 01:29:14.779
Dr Dean Marshall: a little bit more like, do you understand
what's going on in that person's life, you know. Do you understand their
498
01:29:14.840 --> 01:29:27.180
Dr Dean Marshall: marital situation? Do you understand their
money situation behind the scenes? You know, these are common reasons why
people are, you know, neurotic, essentially. So you know.
499
01:29:27.330 --> 01:29:31.569
Dr Dean Marshall: when you question when you drill down in
it, you really don't actually understand
500
01:29:31.580 --> 01:29:34.700
John Padden: why they made that statement. And it's probably
501
01:29:34.890 --> 01:29:41.849
Dr Dean Marshall: a reflection on them more than a reflection
on you. So if you take that to its kind of
502
01:29:41.890 --> 01:29:54.489
Dr Dean Marshall: an extreme example, you don't know why
they said it, and you wouldn't slash. Shouldn't know why anyone else would say
it. So you can't assume that knowledge, you know, even if somebody would call
you worthless. You don't know why.
503
01:29:54.620 --> 01:30:02.010
Dr Dean Marshall: But everyone isn't calling you worthless.
So you know, there's there's a whole process with with
504
01:30:02.290 --> 01:30:05.780
Dr Dean Marshall: cognitive kind of reframing. and
505
01:30:06.190 --> 01:30:20.169
Dr Dean Marshall: in some situation. So there's a there's a
famous picture that gets used in very early reframing work, which is like a
picture of the ocean. It's like a little bay in the ocean, a beach, and there's
litter in the water.
506
01:30:20.450 --> 01:30:23.680
Dr Dean Marshall: You ask people there on their perception
of that.
507
01:30:23.750 --> 01:30:25.510
Dr Dean Marshall: you know. Picture.
508
01:30:25.530 --> 01:30:37.549
Dr Dean Marshall: and it's very natural to say like, Oh,
it's quite disgusting, you know, the amount of litter on that beach is is
horrible. It makes me feel really sad things like that, because it is. It's a
lot of litter in the water.
509
01:30:38.600 --> 01:30:50.410
Dr Dean Marshall: And then you ask them to go through a
structured kind of reappraisal of the photo like, well, can you evaluate the
positives versus negatives of this photo? Yeah, there's litter.
510
01:30:50.460 --> 01:30:55.599
Dr Dean Marshall: But the sand looks really nice, you know,
like the sand. It's a sunny day.
511
01:30:55.800 --> 01:30:59.220
Dr Dean Marshall: And if you know, and actually the ocean.
512
01:30:59.400 --> 01:31:13.390
Dr Dean Marshall: you can see that litters in one place,
probably based on the tide. And so most of the ocean doesn't have litter in air
over there, you know, and you get them to kind of go about this process. I
said. Like, although you do have initial negative thoughts about things.
513
01:31:13.620 --> 01:31:15.209
Dr Dean Marshall: you can pause.
514
01:31:15.450 --> 01:31:21.440
Dr Dean Marshall: rephrase. isolate the negatives, and look
for separate positives
515
01:31:21.580 --> 01:31:36.980
Dr Dean Marshall: and then use them as a kind of like, you
know, reversal essentially, and reappraise the situation. So you could do that in
the Dnd scenario you could have the person who is is only focusing on the
negative of a situation like Oh, no! The dragon attacked
516
01:31:37.070 --> 01:31:57.700
Dr Dean Marshall: but my family's alive, you know, and you
know although the tavern burnt down. I've still got this seller, which is where
all this, like gold is, and things like that, like, you know, is correct me, if
I'm wrong. Is there not an evolutionary trait to that idea of of focusing on
negative? Because I read
517
01:31:57.750 --> 01:32:05.090
John Padden: as a sports coach, he was trying to get his
athletes to not focus on their negative.
518
01:32:05.300 --> 01:32:32.189
John Padden: muscular fatigue, tiredness, how they performed
in a group and look at the positives that they achieved like yes, you didn't
confess in that competition. But you hit this Pb. And you were able to achieve
this that you have done before, he was saying. It's like it comes from an
evolutionary basis of survival and face. One was cavemen. It was more important
to know that those berries killed someone from our tribe when they hit them
rather than how beautiful that butterfly was over there. Yeah, well.
519
01:32:32.410 --> 01:32:34.790
Dr Dean Marshall: yeah. So if you think about, there's a
number of
520
01:32:35.200 --> 01:32:42.230
Dr Dean Marshall: things that kind of converge there in in
evolutionary psychology. And and and indeed, yeah, you know
521
01:32:42.370 --> 01:32:51.500
Dr Dean Marshall: evolution by natural selection. So it's
it's it kind of converges with the reason why we're superstitious as well. So
the reason why we see
522
01:32:51.720 --> 01:33:11.660
Dr Dean Marshall: a face in a in a in tree bark or something
is because we're kind of don't want to use the word designed for it. I'll use
the word evolve we've evolved to, you know. See? More than is there. We've
evolved to like recognise agency when there is none
523
01:33:11.770 --> 01:33:15.939
Dr Dean Marshall: because it's riskier to do it, the other
to do it.
524
01:33:16.100 --> 01:33:31.790
Dr Dean Marshall: The other way around, where we'd kind of
like don't pay attention to things and be quite naive. So yeah, my example that
I always provide the berries is a good one. But my example that I provide in
classrooms is the rustle in a bush next to you.
525
01:33:32.330 --> 01:33:44.089
Dr Dean Marshall: It's most probably the wind, you know. If
you look outside at any point, there's a natural sway to plants according to
the wind. Most of the time in the world
526
01:33:44.280 --> 01:33:48.629
Dr Dean Marshall: plants move because of things like natural
causes. The wind or whatever. However.
527
01:33:48.730 --> 01:33:56.410
Dr Dean Marshall: on the one out of 10 times that it might
be an animal. specifically a predator, or something which could hurt you.
528
01:33:56.770 --> 01:34:04.890
Dr Dean Marshall: If you don't give it kind of your
attention or agency, when there is none, or something like that in the
529
01:34:05.000 --> 01:34:12.619
Dr Dean Marshall: 10 out of 10 times or 9 out of 10 times,
that it's not well that one out of the 10 time you get it wrong, and
530
01:34:12.640 --> 01:34:29.009
Dr Dean Marshall: something attacks you. Something hurts
you. A snake bites you, you name it you're less likely to pass your genes onto
the next generation. So it actually pays, evolutionarily speaking, actually
pays for us to be paranoid.
531
01:34:29.070 --> 01:34:50.259
Dr Dean Marshall: It pays for us to, you know, think that
there is extra things going on when they're on at the same time. Yeah, yeah,
well, it, you know, it's over. Thinking essentially, is what it is, you know.
532
01:34:50.400 --> 01:34:52.550
Dr Dean Marshall: if we were completely naive
533
01:34:52.620 --> 01:34:56.739
Dr Dean Marshall: about the situation, I'm sure you wouldn't
have so much complex
534
01:34:57.120 --> 01:35:07.049
Dr Dean Marshall: mental health. You know, issues and things
like that. But we wouldn't be as intelligent as we are, or, you know, useful,
and things like that. So
535
01:35:07.300 --> 01:35:08.890
Dr Dean Marshall: swings of roundabouts, you know
536
01:35:08.920 --> 01:35:10.740
John Padden: it is. It is, it is yeah.
537
01:35:11.620 --> 01:35:29.289
Dr Dean Marshall: right. I'm rapidly running out of time. By
the way, so I'd like to. I'd like to continue this conversation and and speak
to. You know more about the psychological side of things, as I'm sure you would.
So let's get another one in the diary, if you don't mind. I mean, this is this
is why I mentioned to you before, like the psychology of gaming like I just
538
01:35:29.490 --> 01:35:33.810
John Padden: there's something there. and it's a discovery
of of both of us, because we can then
539
01:35:34.350 --> 01:35:51.790
John Padden: from now till the next time we decide to have
another talks I'm going to be going away. Do some reading. I'm gonna be finding
some more sources that you'd be interested in probably do the same. I will say
that I will send that video to you off that speak because they were really
fascinating. But also, if you give me 2 s.
540
01:36:01.620 --> 01:36:02.849
John Padden: can you see that
541
01:36:03.420 --> 01:36:12.039
John Padden: the art of dramatic writing cool? That was,
that was a book that they suggested. So I immediately got it and cause it's all
about
542
01:36:12.410 --> 01:36:18.579
John Padden: the idea of writing characters and their
motives and things like that, but it also has a lot of
543
01:36:18.740 --> 01:36:21.539
I would just, you know I love getting my books and reading
them
544
01:36:21.610 --> 01:36:29.810
Dr Dean Marshall: cool, cool. Thanks so much for your time.
Don't worry about it. I'll stop the recording.
