Guiding the Game: A Model for How Facilitation, Psychological Safety, Cohesion, and Creativity are Interrelated in Dungeons & Dragons Groups
Keywords:
Psychological safety, role-playing games, facilitation, creativity, group cohesion, tabletop role-playing games, Dungeons & DragonsAbstract
Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) are used in many applications ranging from community building to education to therapy. There is a persisting need to continue expanding our understanding of how practical successes and beliefs about the value of tabletop RPGs function as facilitators of benefits, like creativity, which are assumed to be inherent in tabletop RPG experiences. This exploratory
survey research adds quantitative data analysis to help understand relationships between facilitation, psychological safety, group cohesion, and creativity in tabletop role-playing games by asking: what relationships exist between the variables in players’ reported experiences of playing Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition (D&D 5e)? An internet survey of multi-item scales collected over 400 responses from participants who reported playing D&D 5e. Confirmatory factor analysis, principal components analysis, and regression analyses were conducted. This provided the following factors as valid constructs: facilitation, clarity, cohesion, support, and creativity. Regressions were analyzed among the factors, revealing these elements interrelated and indirectly related aspects in tabletop RPG experiences. We introduce a multi-item scale to measure facilitation in tabletop RPGs and outline a model for how facilitation is interrelated with clarity, cohesion, and support on one end, and creativity is interrelated with clarity, cohesion, and support on the other.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Joe Lasley, Antonio Ruiz Ezquerro
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