Melody [00:00] 

Welcome to the Game Master Certification Organization's interview excerpt podcast series. Hi, I'm your host, Melody Rainelle. We are currently interviewing Hawke Robinson on the topic of tabletop role-playing games. Hawke is a professional Game Master and a recreational therapist, among many other things. In this podcast episode, we will be wrapping up final comments from Hawke. So why don't we just go ahead and get started? So, Hawke, of all the questions we've asked you during the past few episodes, what question do you wish I had asked that I didn't ask you?
 
 Hawke [00:39] 

Well, first thing that pops in my head is the museum and stuff, but- I'm trying to spread the word about the museum. Let's see. What about specific design for educational settings, for example, when we've done like IEPs for ADHD and such fall in the IDEA, specifically targeting educational settings because I touched a little on educational, but I talked more on the therapy and on the layperson side and we didn't really get into education and the combination of populations that struggle in a school setting that we found really helps turn around their situations in school. So I've got a paper floating out around there about how to put together a curricula, well, an IDEA program, you know, following the IEP for an ADHD student. It's hypothetical because it's an aggregate of programs we've done with others in the past. How you can use role-playing games in an educational setting to help a student who's struggling get that part of their program, their educational process, help them get better engagement and retention and recall, and improve the whole learning experience for them. That's a whole topic unto itself, of course.
 
 Melody [01:57] 

Yeah, of course. So you mentioned something too- like if there's a gap between "I've read a book or two…" and "I'm not quite ready to commit to X amount of hours…" or whatever, you said there was something that fills kind of that gap in training for Game Masters.
 
Hawke [02:12] 

Yeah, on the LLC side, we have that. The LLC side, we have one to five-day workshops, then just training certificates for those that are really targeted. So we'll say, "What is the specific thing you're going to learn?" Boom, boom, boom, boom. You have four to six hours of training for one to five days; we'll do these intensive workshops and they're very targeted and those help target those gaps that they don't have the time to invest hundreds of hours. So that's on the LLC side. We offer those types of workshops.
 
 Melody [02:42] 

Ok, great. So thinking about community, is there anybody that you think needs to be recognized or you want to acknowledge?
 
Hawke [02:51] 

Oh, well, there's- I mean, we try to on our website, make a list of everybody we're aware of in the community that's doing great things. There's so many great people doing stuff, advancing this. Some recent stuff that were- some recent Kickstarters that were supported that we're looking forward to. The INSPIRISLES role-playing game out of England. It was originally just going to be a British Sign Language but they easily achieved their stretch goals, added American Sign Language. So we can't wait for that to be added. It's a Celtic role-playing game for children. It's based on Celtic mythologies and setting and you use actual hand signs and such as part of the role-playing game, and I just think that if people aren't already aware of that, that's just a wonderful thing to know about. We're really looking forward to getting our copy of it and sharing that with the public, and I think that's just a really neat approach. A nice thing that's happened in recent years is up until a few years ago, there really weren't any role-playing games appropriate for kids under eight or nine years old. You could modify stuff, but there was nothing really published. Then Monte Cook Games did “No Thank You, Evil!”. That's been awesome for about four or five years old on up, and then you start getting into teenage adulthood. The only problem with it is it doesn't sustain campaigns and such. We don't know yet if INSPIRISLES will. The Labyrinth role-playing game just came out. We ran that a week or two ago. We really love it. The downside is it requires a more advanced GM, but the player side is really easy. It's just it's got a lot of improv to it, so it requires a more experienced GM to run it well. But the Labyrinth role-playing game - really appropriate for younger kids. Lots of fun. Really looking forward to that becoming part of our programming and training here soon, and- Uh, what else? There's- I mean it's hard to keep up. There's stuff every week. There's great people doing things. There's programs in different states and countries popping up left and right now, which is wonderful, right? It's starting to get critical mass. We think the role-playing game industry may be getting close to the hundred million market mark, which is still a far cry compared to the two-billion dollar board game, market, but still, an improvement from 2008 when it was three hundred million for board games and you know only 20 million for role-playing games, so good progress there. So everybody who's contributing towards the positive awareness, the asking questions, the experimenting and trying out other stuff, kudos to everybody about that. We often reference works from Professor Sarah Lynne Bowman. She's done great work with LARP and other aspects. She's got especially on bleed theory, she's got some good videos on that. We think bleed is a very important consideration. Everybody needs to take into account when they're doing any level role-playing gaming. That's an important consideration, or just regular gaming as well as if you're going to do educational and therapeutic uses; you really have to understand bleed theory. How to use it in a positive way and how to mitigate the potential risks that it can cause. She cites a lot of great work from the Nordic LARP people and such. The IJRP the International Journal of Role-Playing, right, they’re a peer-reviewed, free and open journal. Kudos to them for keeping it open. I really love the stuff that's coming through there, and then of course all the volunteers at RPG Research, I can't thank enough. We wouldn't be able to do all that we were doing if it wasn't for all these volunteers willing to take their time from their very busy lives and help us all collaboratively and openly keep moving things forward and sharing it with the world, rather than hoarding the knowledge, you know? One of my favorite little mantras for that is: "The rising tide of shared knowledge raises all boats in our quality of life in an overall human condition." So thanks to everybody who's been doing that and sharing, keeping that out there and open and available so we can all grow and develop.
 
 Melody [06:37] 

Awesome. OK. If you're willing to humor me, would you please describe your better self again?
 
Hawke [06:43] 

You want it again?
 
Melody [06:45] 

Yeah, we've been asking this of all of our interviewees.
 
Hawke [06:50] 

Ok, so again my mantra has been for some time: “Patience and love." And I really- when I remind myself of that each day, it helped me get through raising my boys when they became teenagers. I was a full-time single parent of three teenage boys close in age and that was very challenging, and I needed to often breathe and say to myself, "Patience and love, patience and love." And I found that helps me in general- life in general, if I'm getting impatient with something I'm struggling with or an individual or a group of individuals. Saying that to myself has been very helpful. When I'm in touch with that, I'm definitely being the best person, you know, that I want to become. And this “patience and love”, that's my guide, and I'm in touch with that. I think that being the best person that I could be.
 
Melody [07:44] 

That's great. Thank you so much. Hawke, we really appreciated your sitting down with us to go through this interview series. We have certainly learned a lot from you. We really appreciate your time.
 
Hawke [07:56] 

Thank you. All right, you take care.
 
Melody [07:59] 

To our listeners, please see the podcast description for details on how you can connect with Hawke Robinson and check out what he's working on. This is the last podcast episode for our interview with Hawke. However, we do have more interviews coming up, so stay tuned! Follow us to receive notifications when new podcasts are released. For more podcasts and information, check out our website: https://www.gamemastercertification.org/. If you liked what you've heard in this episode, please share it. Thank you for listening.