Rob Alvarez Bucholska
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How Games Reveal Who We Are With Ryan Jones 🔍🎮 | Episode 384

 

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What if the characters we play in games reveal more about who we truly are? 🎭🎲 Tabletop Role-Playing Games (TTRPGs) offer more than just entertainment—they create powerful opportunities for self-discovery, personal growth, and deeper engagement. This conversation dives into how the roles we play in games often reflect real-life struggles, aspirations, and identities—sometimes without us even realizing it. Through immersive storytelling and emergent gameplay, TTRPGs become tools for building emotional intelligence, confidence, and connection. Whether you’re designing learning experiences, digital communities, or gamified products, this episode uncovers how role-play can drive transformation and long-term engagement.

Ryan Alan Jones is a transformational coach, mindfulness practitioner, and advocate for the power of storytelling in personal development. Currently pursuing a doctorate in leadership and coaching, Ryan’s academic work complements his unique approach, which integrates tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) to help individuals uncover new facets of themselves, build social and emotional intelligence, and foster beautiful and satisfying lives. His work bridges the creative and the practical, drawing on his experiences as a certified personal trainer, yoga instructor, actor, and director. Through his innovative approach, Ryan bridges the worlds of imagination and reality, helping others discover their potential and redefine their personal narratives.

Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in education and learning. He’s also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.

 

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Lets’s do stuff together!

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Rob (00:00)
Hey, this is Professor Game where we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification and game thinking to help us multiply engagement and loyalty. I’m Rob Alvarez. I’m a consultant, I’m a coach, and I’m the founder here at Professor Game. And I’m also a professor of gamification and game inspired solutions at IE University, IE Business School, EFMD, EBS University, and other places around the world. And before we dive into the interview, you’re struggling.

with engagement in your business and are looking to find out how to make your users stay with you, you will find a free community full of resources, quite useful. You can find it for free in the links below in the description. So, Engagers, welcome back to another episode of the Professor Game Podcast. And we have a special guest as always today. We have Ryan with us, but Ryan, we need to know, are you prepared to engage?

Ryan Jones (00:53)
Ready.

Rob (00:55)
Let’s do this. Let’s go. have Ryan Allen Jones, a transformational coach, mindfulness practitioner, and advocate for the power of storytelling in personal development. He’s currently pursuing a doctorate in leadership and coaching and his academic work complements his unique approach, which integrates tabletop role-playing games to help individuals uncover new facets of themselves, build social, emotional intelligence, and foster beautiful and satisfying

lives and his work bridges the creative and the practical, drawing on his experience as a certified personal trainer, yoga instructor, actor, and director. And through his innovative approach, he bridges the worlds of imagination and reality, helping others discover their potential and redefine their personal narratives. Ryan, don’t know if there’s anything you want to add to that, anything we’re missing, anything we should know before we get into the questions.

Ryan Jones (01:48)
I would say that it’s pretty comprehensive. I have a 19-month-old daughter, so she’s out on a playdate right now. yeah, excited to be here. Happy to be in the conversation.

Rob (02:01)
If

we’re ever in the same city, probably our daughters can play together. Mine is from November. you can make the math. It’s just a few months away. amazing. So Ryan, if we were to follow you around shadow or whatever, you know, whatever within legal and ethical boundaries follow you around, try to feel what you feel in a regular day week or what, whatever that looks like. What would that feel? What would that look like? What would be the activities or things you’re doing nowadays?

Ryan Jones (02:29)
Yeah. So I’m a practitioner of the art of living beautifully. I have a really big life. have a family that I have a sweet little daughter that I take care of and I do bedtime with her. have a group of really gorgeous clients that I get to work with who are really

like developing themselves and moving forward in their lives. So the satisfaction of watching them kind of learn and grow. I take a lot of class. I’m in a doctorate right now. So I’m studying and reading and writing and reflecting. And I run a small business. So I’m on the computer and I’m having networking meetings and talking to people and then playing games here and there when I can.

Rob (03:27)
Sounds familiar to me, you know, academic, not on the doctorate side I’m teaching, small business, young daughter. It sounds very, very familiar in my case, the engagers know these things already. I’m not going to dive deep. Ryan, we like, it seems like as you were saying, you’re leading a beautiful life and we like to sort of bring our guests to the real world as well. Because sometimes when people hear that it’s like, this person has it all figured out. And they’ve always been that way. They were sort of born into this fantastic world and

Usually that is not the case and we’ve had rough times as well. So we’d like to hear of one of those times. One of those times when, especially using these CT RPGs or tabletop role playing games, they use that things where, you know, you’re expecting them to work some way. They just didn’t flopped or whatever that looks like, especially we want to be there in that story. You know, see that first attempt at learning or that fail, how you came out of it. What did you learn? I don’t know. Guide us through that moment and that story.

Ryan Jones (04:23)
Yeah, so this is maybe a little lower stakes, but I’ve been developing a bespoke RPG to function as a coaching intervention for my dissertation. So this is a game that I’m designing for the purpose of learning and growing and personal development. And I ran a play test with a group of friends, with a group of of like close people who are all either

like coaches themselves and really well versed in the kind of personal development work or our long time game masters and game designers. And, and it was just a mess. was so messy. And I realized one of the things I was trying to do too much. And one of the challenges as a facilitator of this kind of work is there are kind of like two really big hats you’re wearing. There’s the game master, which anyone who’s ever

run a game before it knows, that’s a lot of technical skill, it’s a lot of paying attention and preparation and responding in the moment to people. So it’s a big lift in terms of attention. And then as a facilitator, where I’m focused on the personal development of the people at the table, that’s another big lift as well. So there’s this learning curve that’s very steep in terms of learning how to

facilitate the style of game that my first couple of times out, I bombed. It was really not good. I already had a fine time. I got positive feedback, but on the back end, behind the DM screen, I was just like, oh my god, how can I possibly do this? And so the things I’m learning from that are that

the potential for partnerships between a game master who’s running the game and then a coach facilitator who’s kind of outside the game, maybe playing NPCs here and there to make interventions in the group. But sort of a partnership where two people can share that load is one possibility. The other possibility is increased kind of story structure for, to help me stay grounded.

One of my ideals is that the story is emergent, that the game and the story is this thing that just happens between the players at the table, and that it can come from the creativity. We don’t need to decide a bunch of things in advance and have a bunch of story beats that we’ve already decided. But I think that for better or for worse, that ideal is a high skill.

There’s a high skill ceiling there. so starting out having a more structured approach, I think will serve me, especially in my dissertation and kind of, especially with newer players too, who have less experience role playing, getting people to kind of show up and be comfortable making something up in the moment that’s connected to everything around them is another, it’s a skill. So.

Rob (07:45)
Absolutely. That makes sense. I’m going to make a quick pause here. Sorry about that. There, when you were talking, there was some sort of clicking sound. I’m not sure. Like maybe you were doing something with your hands or something. Is there, is there something that the, like your microphone, I’m guessing is the one that is incorporated on there. Is there.

Ryan Jones (08:03)
Yeah.

No. Was it?

Rob (08:07)
There, I just heard it. Did you hear it?

Ryan Jones (08:09)
Is this yeah, it might be my my

Rob (08:12)
Then again, sorry again.

I don’t know, maybe it sounds every few seconds. I didn’t really account for that.

Because usually you’re not moving your head. was like you had your hands here. Like you did something and then all of a sudden, like you did here. I don’t know.

Ryan Jones (08:30)
Yeah, it might be my jacket if I take off my jacket right now is that

Rob (08:34)
Yes, it could be. It’s opening and closing maybe. Click, click, click. Yes. That’s it. You never imagined the impact of a small sound like that. People like, I mean, in the video, maybe you have your attention elsewhere, but you’re listening. You’re just walking like, what was that? What was that? then, sorry about that. That interruption. That’s just.

Ryan Jones (08:39)
Yeah, yeah.

No, it’s wild.

No. Push Thanks for catching it.

Rob (08:58)
No worries.

So Ryan, that was an amazing example of how you think about things in a certain way. You plan things out and then, you know, of course, don’t get me wrong, and I’m operations professor as well. So there’s no way you can, you can find me in a situation where I don’t have a plan when it’s, you know, business or teaching, right? But every plan, when it hits the real life, there’s always things that you need to be able to adjust. And so there’s a mix there between what you were saying of

You know, the emer, emergence storyline and all of that, which is fantastic. And you have to be prepared for that. Then also a structure that supports you so that that emerging story can actually happen successfully, which is the, a very important aim that I’m sure you have as well. So Ryan, how about we take a spin on that and actually go for something in the opposite direction, something that went great. You were using these TTRPGs, whether you created one specifically for this client, or you were just using it for a certain purpose.

No need to disclose any names or any private information if it’s not necessary for you. But we want to be there. We want to see some of success factors. What led you in that direction? How did you get there essentially?

Ryan Jones (10:10)
Yeah. one of the core, and here I’ll nerd out a little bit about the coaching model because I’m going to tie it in with kind of the how this works, how it functions, how this works essentially. So each of us has this set of beliefs that we formed between the age of zero and five that form the structure of our perceptual matrix.

So it’s like what I believe about myself, what I believe about other people, what I believe the world can expect from me and what I believe I can expect from the world. this becomes this. Yeah. So we make up this, this operating system essentially of, of beliefs and behaviors that form in that first five years of life when we’re, when we’re children. And then we run that operating system 90 % of the time.

Rob (10:51)
for a zero to five year old,

Ryan Jones (11:07)
just because it’s the most efficient thing to do and the brain is very expensive to run energetically. So the transformation gain is bringing when we experience upset, when we get blocked in our life, when things aren’t working, when we get these repetitive patterns, especially dynamics and relationships that are dissatisfying consistently with my wife, with my daughter at work, with my friends that, sorry.

I realized the baby monitor was on. these are the things, our beliefs are the things that are limiting our ability to express ourselves in a satisfying way and generate satisfying dynamics with others. So when we encounter upset, we can bring that into the consciousness in a conversation or through gameplay, through reflection. then…

transform that, essentially choose a new belief to start to empower, to start to build evidence for.

So how that relates to identity is we think of ourselves often in this kind of fixed way, where it’s like, this is how I am. that identity is formed and it’s not necessarily accurate. We don’t necessarily see ourselves accurately. And so with games like Dungeons and Dragons, as I’m creating an avatar to play in the game, as I’m creating a character, I’m unconsciously projecting stuff into that character. And often it’s stuff that

I want to work that I want that that I that is uncomfortable or that is aspirational or there’s unconscious stuff in there that I’m still working to process and understand about myself. An example of this is I was working with a guy and he had created this character and it was he was like this he was like this scrappy pirate and he was like

He was like, I’m not a very successful pirate. keep trying, but like my dad is this really famous pirate and he and I’m just like, always trying to live up to his expectations of me essentially. And in a coaching session, I said, you do you mind if I ask about, do you mind if I ask about your relationship with your dad? And he was like, I didn’t realize I’d done that. I didn’t realize I’d made that. I totally like, like

I have this relationship with my dad where I just think he’s disappointed in me. so this became an opportunity for him to work that dynamic more consciously. And we were able to use dad, the famous pirate as an NPC in the game and help him kind of redeem that part of himself and kind of like come to a more satisfied conclusion about who he was. And that’s just one example. People like

People often work like I had a client who like two characters were two like characters are having a romantic relationship in the party. the two of the players who decide to have a romance and one of the players had kind of a reaction to it. And he shared with me, it was like, I think my character is asexual. Like I think my character is not, doesn’t have any kind of sexual urge. And I was like, oh.

Like, interesting, very cool. Like, keep playing with that and see what happens. And then five or six sessions later, that player came out as asexual. And so this is something that he kind of discovered about himself through the character. It wasn’t something that he was necessarily aware of in himself or hadn’t named in himself. But as he was playing the character, he was making those conclusions.

as he saw how he felt as he role played that. So those are some examples of like how this can work.

Rob (15:12)
going deep and it’s like coaching, but also psychotherapy in many ways, right? Like there’s, there’s some covering of many, many deep stuff in there. So brilliant. mean, amazing cases of using these, these TTRPGs for, you know, brilliant and huge purposes as well. Love it. Ryan, if you were, you know, and I know you’re working on a TTRPG, so this might be timely in a way. If you were to build.

TTRPG or a rebuild some sort of coaching session specifically for somebody using these games that you already have or are out there. How would you approach it? Like, do you have a thought process for this? Do you have some system? Like how does that work when a new client comes in and asks for something that you haven’t necessarily done exactly that way before? How does your, where, does your thinking go?

Ryan Jones (15:59)
Yeah. So, I mean, just to talk a little bit about the game I’m making now, I want to design systems that help players take agency over the story. they’re the, the players are driving the story. It’s not the DM has decided here’s the plot and here are the, it’s like the players are co-creating the setting from this, from the jump. They’re, they’re the ones deciding what kind of world we want to play in. What kind of issues do we want to be dealing with? What kind of characters?

are competent and going to be engaging with these issues. And then obviously the character creation process, like what’s emerging in me that I want to bring into this game to work on? What’s my personal growing edge as a person that I can then as a player bring into the game and work that into the story of the game with all the other players? And then the actual

Gameplay the moment to moment gameplay. I have a dice system. I’m working on I’ve actually I’m really inspired by a dude named Anthony curza who’s a gamer and a coach out of Florida State and he he created some a system called Sam and things like simple action narrative or like simple it’s like a simple narrative system, but he does a and I’ve adapted it into a 2d6 dice system where

the middle values, the kind of 60 % of the values are player described success and failure. And then the outliers on either end are like GM describes the worst or best possible outcome. But essentially that there are no difficulty classes. all, it’s random. When you go to the dice, it’s success and failure.

the dice are weighted towards success, you’re gonna succeed more than you fail, but you’re gonna fail an awful lot. And so learning how to engage with failure and engage with success in a way that continues to drive your story forward helps you keep going where you wanna be going as a character and kind of embracing mistake, embracing that kind of thing. So that’s one example. Another example is I’m strongly influenced also by fate.

I don’t know how familiar you are with that game. Nope. But so one of the core mechanical engines in the game is a relationship between you get these fake points, you get these these tokens you can spend on activating a character aspect, which is like a brief description of something that’s essential about your character. So your character has three to five of these descriptors and they can help you in a situation.

And they can also draw you into danger. So you can spend a fate point to activate them, to help you, help you be bad-ass in a situation and succeed. But they can also draw you into danger. And when they do, you get a fate point. So there’s this economy of spending, spending fate points to be bad-ass and then, and then getting myself drawn into danger because of my aspects and then getting fate points to spend to be bad-ass. there’s that’s, that’s kind of the gameplay loop.

I’m interested in using that with a transformative angle. any character is always going from one state to another state. So they have some kind of aspect that says, you know, this character is going from street urchin to like competent burglar, you know? So maybe this player is working with scarcity and

trust and competence and that sort of thing. That there’s this narrative of growing and changing over time and the extent to which the player engages with that part of their character, they have more storytelling power essentially. So the more they engage with that essential thing that they’re working on, the more they contribute to the narrative, the more fun they have at the table. those are some of the systems I’m thinking about as I’m designing.

Rob (20:20)
Sounds great. You’re working on many interesting things. I’m guessing that’s also part of your PhD. So, you know, keep at it. I’m sure the engagers will be excited to see where that ends and even potentially if there’s anything that you can share, we’d love to hear about it too. And, you know, Ryan, some people always like to talk about, you know, the silver bullets and so on. I don’t want to go so far, but is there something that is like a best practice? Something that you say, well, when you’re using these TTRPGs,

or you’re introducing these elements for something that is not just, you know, playing the game for coaching or anything, would be a best practice that you have observed in your experience?

Ryan Jones (20:57)
I think even outside of game design, totally, like totally outside of game design, any player, any player coming to the table can engage in this way by reflecting on like, who am I? Like, what do I really want in my life? What’s not working in my life? And how can I bring some of these elements into the character I’m making for this game? So intention setting as I’m creating the character.

intention setting as I come into a game session, like, okay, today, you know, I had this fight with somebody at work and it’s really upsetting me and, you know, and it’s really about, I’m feeling disrespected and, and so I’m really, I’m okay, respect. So I’m yearning for respect. I’m, I’m, and so, so in this game today, I’m going to work out some of that stuff. I’m going to work on, I’m going to work on like getting respect or what it means to be disrespected or, that sort of thing.

So I get some additional play time in this lighter environment. then after the session, I can ask myself like, okay, how did that go? When did I feel, you know, did I learn anything new? And then how can I grow? what, how does, how does what I learned influence how I want to behave, how I, what I want to choose in my life. And then that can be a positive feedback loop. So that’s something that, and that’s something you could do.

Obviously it’s easier if you get the buy-in of everybody else at the table, but it’s something that you can do just for yourself. It’s something you don’t even need to share necessarily with anyone. It can be really beneficial to share that journey with people so that other people are looking out for you. They’re like, Rob’s working on being effective or being seen or being heard. And so I’m looking for opportunities to pass him the ball.

So it can be something I can do by myself. It can also be something that I can share with other people. But I don’t even need, I could do it, we could play D &D, we could play, you know, mothership, we could play anything and still be using these tools.

Rob (23:11)
Well, so it’s a way of bringing, you know, it’s a two-sided blade in a way, right? So it’s bringing to your zone of entertainment and of comfort in it for many people. You’re also bringing some of the quote unquote heavier stuff to work on it, but in a way where you’re also still enjoying the game. So it has that, you know, I’m bringing something heavy, but initially I think people might have a small, some people might have some reactions. this is my game space. Like leave it.

alone, but then it’s like, yes, still your game space. can still play in and by playing you’re, you’re working on some stuff and discovering new things about yourself. So I really like that, that good practice of as a player, which is something that no need to be a game designer. As you were saying, you know, anybody can just engage in this by playing TTRPGs or whatever games they are playing on as well. So Ryan, after hearing these questions, you know, with all the things that we’ve been discussing, is there somebody that comes to your mind that you say, I

really like to listen to this person answering these kinds of questions on this setting. So essentially a future guest for Professor Game.

Ryan Jones (24:16)
Actually, I would recommend Anthony Curza. think he’d be a good fit for, and I can send his information your way. He’s a college life coach out of, I think it’s Florida State University, and he’s designing a narrative game very much in this vein where he and I are very much kind of on the same path. And he works with a lot of college students. So he works with a lot of young people.

kind of helping them move forward in their lives. So he’s a cool dude.

Rob (24:51)
Sounds definitely like a cool person to talk to as well. And Ryan, in that same vein, is there a, perhaps a book that you recommend people to read if they haven’t yet?

Ryan Jones (25:03)
my goodness. Uppsala University out of, gosh, it Finland or Sweden? One of the OGs, the academic OGs who’s done a lot of the early work on kind of like the use of games for transformation. Her name is Sarah, dang it, I’m gonna need to just bring this up.

She runs the Transformative Play Lab, the Transformative Play Initiative out of Uppsala University. And they just released a book that’s free on their website. And it’s essentially best practices for this kind of like, how do you design a game that can help people change and grow? And…

And they go deep into the theory and the research that they’ve done. And they really focus on the Nordic LARP scene. kind of like realistic live action role play is kind of where a lot of their research is based. But the principles are cross-disciplinary. And it’s really generous of them to have made that available for free. And it’s a really cool resource if anyone’s interested in this kind of design.

Rob (26:29)
Sounds like there’s plenty to look into there and being a free resource, you know, it’s easy, easier to recommend it even further.

And talking about this world of TTRPGs and using them with a greater purpose as you do, is there something that you would call your, or actually not is there, what is what you would say is your superpower? That thing that you do at least better than most other people. And remember they don’t have to be exclusive. Doesn’t mean you’re the only one in the world who has it, but it’s that thing that maybe distinguishes you from the crowd.

Ryan Jones (27:00)
Yeah, I think that like, I’m really good at just being with people. like, the one thing I’ve really learned about the coaching and leadership is that like people are people and groups are self organizing so that that individuals and groups will orient toward the highest good for themselves. if you give them the space to do so. so like being simply being with people is a skill that, that

I think is really difficult for a lot of facilitators and a lot of people who want to like teach or lead because they feel like they need to do something or do the group. And so a skill that I’ve really, I think I have a natural ability in and have worked quite a bit on is, just like letting people be and seeing them accurately and, and, and empathizing with them and that sort of thing.

Rob (27:53)
Sounds like very meaningful, especially for your work, the work that you’re doing nowadays. And that’s fantastic. And now we reach an actually difficult question and it has to do with what is your favorite game?

Ryan Jones (28:06)
Gosh, that’s tough. I’ve really been enjoying Mothership. I’ve been enjoying this kind of dark, kind of apocalyptic sci-fi future kind of horror genre has been fun. A game that I would lift up as being really cool. I really like ninth level games, their polymorph system.

And particularly there’s a game for young people called Venture Society, which is a game about talking animals. There was a war recently and, and now you’re in a time of peace and, the player characters are a part of a peacekeeping force that are, they’re going around and essentially like solving problems nonviolently. And so it’s just like, they’ve got a really high value box set. And if you

want a game to play with kids that’s really about social emotional learning and that sort of thing. I think it’s hard to beat that game. So that’s something I would definitely plug as a really kind of innovative and good game.

Rob (29:16)
Venture Society is the name of the company or of the game? I’m not sure I called that one right.

Ryan Jones (29:22)
Ventra Society is the name of the game and the game company is called Ninth Level Games and they’ve got a polymorph system. the system essentially is each character class gets one die. So you get a D4 or a D12 or a D8 and so success and failure is about rolling for certain kinds of outcomes. So it’s a really simple system. It’s really easy to pick up. It’s highly narrative and I like those kinds of games.

Rob (29:51)
Sounds absolutely brilliant. Thank you for that recommendation. Sounds very meaningful as well. Is there anything that, you know, of course we’re super excited to have had you here in the podcast to listen to all of the experience and knowledge that you bring in. Is there anything else you’d like to say to the audience before, of course, letting us know where we can find out more about you and your work and so on.

Any final words or advice or we can just move on and say, you know, we can find out more about me here and there.

Ryan Jones (30:21)
Yeah,

I mean, I’ll say that.

One of the functions, a lot of people use games to escape. And you kind of alluded to that earlier and that I think the potential for games to be used in a way that expands and enriches and deepens the meaning and the satisfaction that you have in your life is worth the discomfort of some of the dark.

difficult things that we need to kind of go through in order to get to that deeper meaning and that games can provide a really safe place to do that. And so even though this work can be uncomfortable, it’s deeply and profoundly satisfying in terms of both what I get for myself as well as the connections that I create with other people through it. So if you’re concerned about losing your fun, I can assure you

It’s still fun, it’s just also something else. So the style play is additive to your fun as opposed to kind of contracting around the fun.

Rob (31:36)
Amazing, deep and amazing for sure. So Ryan, where can we find out more about all that amazing work that you’re doing about you, know, I don’t know, social media, webpage or many of these as well.

Ryan Jones (31:48)
Yeah, I post pretty consistently on Instagram. have a website. I’m still in the process of once in the next couple of years, I’ll be moving toward doing more workshops. Although I am going to be at Gen Con this year. If anybody’s going to be at Gen Con, I’ll be doing some games facilitation and workshops there. But keep a look out for my dissertation and follow me on Instagram.

Rob (32:17)
Amazing! Again, Ryan, thank you very much for sharing your insights, your knowledge, your experience. However, Ryan and Engagers, as you know, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over. Hey, Engagers, and thank you for listening to the Professor Game Podcast. And since you’re interested in this world of creating motivation, engagement, loyalty, using game-inspired solutions,

How about you join us on our free online community at Professor Game on school. You can find the link right below in the description, but the main thing is to click there, join us. It’s a platform called School is for Free and you will find plenty of resources there. We’ll be up to date with everything that we’re doing, any opportunities that we might have for you. And of course, before you go into your next mission, before you click continue, please remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast app.

and listen to the next episode of Professor Gay. See you there!

 

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