The ADHD Table Top Role Playing Game Experience with Chris Legge
Chris Legge joins The ADHD Podcast to discuss his tabletop roleplaying game, Soft Focuses. Chris developed Soft Focuses as a journaling game aimed at simulating the experiences of living with ADHD. Players take on the role of someone with ADHD and journal their experiences, cooperating with themselves as both player and gamemaster.
The first edition of Soft Focuses was released after extensive research and playtesting. It focused on recreating the core experiences of ADHD. After positive reception, Chris created a second edition, adding rules to simulate common ADHD comorbidities like anxiety, OCD, ODD, depression, and more. The new rules aimed to capture a more holistic ADHD experience.
Overall, Soft Focuses provides a unique tool for building empathy and perspectives around ADHD, but also gives us an excuse to talk about role playing and the psychosocial exploration of different parts of ourselves in the process. You can find the game on Chris’ website, Lumberwood Studios.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Hello everybody and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I'm Pete Wright and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Oh, Nikki. Games. We're still talking about games. I'm so excited that we're doing this series. Aren't you excited?
Nikki Kinzer:
I am.
Pete Wright:
Are you excited as a gamer yourself?
Nikki Kinzer:
Because you made it very clear to me last week that I am a gamer.
Pete Wright:
Wordle counts. That's all I'm saying.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, Wordle, and then this little arrow game that I play-
Pete Wright:
You got Arrow Game.
Nikki Kinzer:
..that is the stupidest thing ever-
Pete Wright:
For sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
... but I'm addicted to it.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding.
Nikki Kinzer:
I'm a gamer.
Pete Wright:
We are continuing our conversation with games and how they help us think creatively and expand our horizons. And today we're going to be talking about a game that is designed for you, ADHDers. The concept is absolutely fantastic, and we've got the creator of the game here with us to tell us a little bit more about it. Before we dig in, however, please head over to takecontroladhd.com and get to know us a little bit better, listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list. We'll send you an email each time a new episode is released. Connect with us on Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest at Take Control ADHD, but to really connect with us, join us in the ADHD&Discord community. It's super easy to jump into the general community chat channel. You just visit takecontroladhd.com/discord, and you are whisked into the general invitation page to log in.
If you're looking for a little bit more, particularly if the show has ever touched you or helped you understand your relationship to ADHD in a new way, we invite you to consider supporting the show directly through Patreon. Patreon is listener supported podcasting with a few dollars a month, you can help guarantee that we continue to grow the show, add new features, and invest more heavily in our community. You just need to visit patreon.com/theADHDpodcast to learn more. One of the benefits is I do a podcast that's just for members, and it's called Placeholder. And we've had two episodes in the last two weeks, two episodes. That's a big deal, Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is a big deal
Pete Wright:
It's a big deal. I'm finding some mojo. After it took me a little while-
Nikki Kinzer:
You are.
Pete Wright:
... but I'm finding some mojo and we had a fantastic conversation with community member Matt Ricketts. Thank you very much, Matt. That was a really fun conversation and I hope you got something out of it. If your members, you don't know how to subscribe, hit me up in Discord. I will help you out with that. Chris Legge is a computer tech with a love for photography, game development and creating things. He earned his BFA in photography and has published several tabletop role-playing games. He recently relocated to Washington from Alaska. That's culture shock. And he's here with us today to talk about his game, Soft Focuses, a journaling game aimed at simulating the experiences of an individual with ADHD. Intended to build insights into the challenges and nuances of living with ADHD yourself. Chris, welcome to the ADHD podcast.
Chris Legge:
Thanks for having me.
Pete Wright:
Before we dig into the game, let's start with ADHD. What's your relationship to ADHD?
Chris Legge:
I was diagnosed when I was about six. I can't remember if I was technically five or six at the time. So they were trying to figure out why I was having problems in school, did all the normal things. I had all these tests done and this was very early nineties, so it was not as common at that point. So I've always pretty much since I can remember, had a name for it. In fact, we actually got my dad diagnosed because of me, because me and him are so similar and it was pretty much oh, so you have it.
Pete Wright:
Like father-like son.
Chris Legge:
ADHD presents differently in everybody. Me and him are probably the closest, he's the closest to how it presents in me that I've seen, so that's nice, being able to know my experiences are completely valid by that. So I've dealt with, I've had the name for it and I've known about it. I was not medicated until fairly recently. I managed to go without medication. They gave me the option, and this was back when they weren't balancing Ritalin and things. I'd see other kids that had it, and I just didn't like what it was doing. And so I went, "No." I got into college and still struggled, still had problems, but I pushed through. I realized I have so many friends that have ADHD that are medicated, and I went, "It doesn't change them." Because that was something that I'd always been concerned about, was like, okay, it's going to change my creativity. It's going to do something. And I saw artist friends that were on medication and I went, "Oh, okay."
Pete Wright:
You know what? They're still creative.
Chris Legge:
Yeah, they're still creative. And I was tired of getting home from work and just being completely brain dead. I talked to my doctor and she started me off, thankfully, on one that worked for me.
Pete Wright:
Right away?
Chris Legge:
We had to balance it. But the actual medication-
Pete Wright:
Okay, but you didn't medication, but didn't have to jump from med to med like a lot of people do.
Chris Legge:
Yeah. Which was nice.
Pete Wright:
That's good.
Chris Legge:
It's a non-stim, so it's thankfully not as difficult to get right now as a lot of others, but we figured out how to do, okay for certain days you're going to need a booster and figured all that out. And it's been great. And actually, not since I started writing games, but I have written the majority of the stuff that I've written since I started taking the meds, because it just gives my brain that extra space.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, right.
Pete Wright:
For sure.
Chris Legge:
To use a gaming analogy, oh, I've told all my game friends that it's like having temporary HP. It's just a buffer. And then eventually I'll wear it down and I'll get to the...
Pete Wright:
We're going to dig into a little bit of background. For those in the audience who play games, but not tabletop games or RPGs, we need to talk a little bit about that. And I'm really curious how your ADHD influences your experience with tabletop role playing games. So I present all of that to you, that word salad to you, and I am eager to see what you can do with it.
Chris Legge:
Almost everybody that I play with now or have played with are either ADHD or have some other neuro divergence or have found out later that they have that. When we started playing they didn't. I've got a friend who got, two friends that actually have gotten diagnosed with ADHD since we started playing together a few years ago.
Pete Wright:
It turns out gaming is a comorbid condition, I think.
Chris Legge:
Yeah, it feels like that. For me, I started off with a lot of video games, brand video games. Could never, when I was younger, could never quite figure out tabletop games. I saw it, I didn't understand how it went, so I just did something else. I really liked board games, that sort of thing, but not RPGs. Eventually with the rise of actual plays and things like that, I actually started with the One Shot. If anybody knows what that is, that podcast is great. And that got me hooked. And then a friend of mine ran some games. I didn't particularly vibe with the way that they ran it, but eventually I was still into it and I went, "I should just try running something."
Pete Wright:
I'm reflecting on my experience with ADHD and games, especially gaming younger, you could sort of always tell the kids that I was playing with who had ADHD because they were the ones who were still playing six hours later but had only moved a hundred feet. There's a lot going on and they have the stamina and the hyper focus and diligence to continue to hash out these long expansive games, and also didn't make a lot of progress.
Nikki Kinzer:
I don't know what a tabletop game is.
Pete Wright:
There we go. I'm so glad you said that. Thank you, Nikki. Chris.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Chris Legge:
A tabletop game is a, it's collaborative storytelling. That's my favorite descriptor. Doesn't mean it's necessarily falls into that the way you play. Some people play it more like war gaming, but I like collaborative storytelling. Essentially it is, instead of having the computer, everything's all lined up in in RPG on a video game, you would have almost every, the computer is me. I'm usually the guy running it. I [inaudible 00:08:25] the world.
Pete Wright:
And that role is called the Game Master or the Dungeon Master, depending on the game.
Chris Legge:
Game master or Dungeon Master. In that case, the GM is essentially the world and all of the characters you interact with and all of the enemies and everything.
Nikki Kinzer:
So the person that you're playing with plays another role. If I was playing with you, I would play a role,
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
So I could be an enemy or I could be...
Chris Legge:
Not usually-
Nikki Kinzer:
No?
Chris Legge:
.. an enemy.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh.
Chris Legge:
Most of the time, and are games that have that, but most of the time, especially with Dungeons and Dragons, the big one, it's more a collaborative. Sometimes there is some crossfire between the party, but it's usually a collaborative experience. This is one of my home games, you have someone who's playing a fighter, someone is playing a monk, which in D&D is like a martial artist. Another person is an artificer, which is an inventor, alchemist type person, and the other person is a warlock and a bard. So they're a magic caster with a non-musical bard, because I contend you don't need to be a musician when you're a bard.
Pete Wright:
Controversial perspectives right here on the ADHD podcast.
Chris Legge:
So they all play their characters and they have their list of statistics that they use and list of things they can do, like in combat there's different moves you can make and they each have their spells and they have their different attacks. So I'll set the scene, they'll interact with it, they'll talk to people, I'll respond. I don't do voices like some DMs, but I will respond for all the NPCs, non-player characters.
Pete Wright:
Non-player characters.
Chris Legge:
And I'll have all of the puzzles and everything set up. Basically, the way I see it, I'm setting up a puzzle for them to interact with throughout the whole thing.
Nikki Kinzer:
Is it the same people all the time?
Chris Legge:
For me, mostly. A lot of the main group I play with, we have two different games going-
Nikki Kinzer:
I see.
Chris Legge:
... and it is the same group.
Nikki Kinzer:
They play the same roles each time too, right?
Chris Legge:
Depends. Like I said, we've got two different games,
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, that's true.
Chris Legge:
... so each game's has its own character. They have characters in one game and then they've got characters in the other.
Nikki Kinzer:
In another one.
Pete Wright:
And in some cases you could have... I'm part of a game that's been running for six years now, and we have multiple, what's called a party. We started with one party and there are five of us and the DM, and we all have our roles and we got really accustomed to those characters. And then just on a lark, the DMM says, "Okay, you wake up, you're new characters." You role your new characters, you're in a castle in the same universe far away. Now you're playing somebody else. And eventually those things are going to come together. We don't know when. But that's how you end up with some really interesting psychological dynamics that you can play with where you have to embody this other person, this other being, and explore as if you're that person. And in that regard, you are playing the party against the DM or the GM. Because they're playing the enemies, they're playing the non-player characters and they know all the answers. And your job is to get it from them and to solve the puzzles and complete the level.
Chris Legge:
In the perfect world, it's not any kind of antagonistic thing. I definitely am not the type of person that wants to get-
Pete Wright:
That wants to kill characters.
Chris Legge:
[inaudible 00:12:01].
I do my best to make sure I'm not throwing anything at them that they can't handle, stuff like that.
Pete Wright:
The ADHD bit of this is, I find my characters are generally an exploration of what I would be like without ADHD. What my character is embodied is a tour of who I am when I'm most focused. I think that's something that's been important to me to use as a way to explore interactions with other characters, doing things that I would not normally do in a safe place.
Chris Legge:
And that's one of the great things about tabletop games is, you can explore these different aspects. I know it's at this point almost a trope that some people will start playing D&D and they will play someone of the opposite sex and end up eventually discovering that they're trans. By being able to explore that in a safe place, they're able to have that. And as I try and tell people, especially when I'm introducing someone new or anything like that, tend to be someone introduces a lot of new people to tabletop games. The other thing that is you have to have a lot of experience and be able to build a character effectively. There is going to be part of you in that character.
Nikki Kinzer:
Sure, that makes sense.
Chris Legge:
One of my best friends that is in this game, they realized partway through that this character they've been playing for years and is very similar to them. They ended up basically making a version of themselves for this character.
Nikki Kinzer:
And I can see that happening unconsciously. You're not even noticing that you're doing it.
Chris Legge:
Exactly.
Nikki Kinzer:
It just is part of it.
Pete Wright:
I would say, Nikki, and I only dropped this because these people, but Kira, my wife, she plays, she has played and she's the last person in the world that I would expect to jump into a D&D game. Chris, for you, we're playing first edition.
Chris Legge:
Wow.
Pete Wright:
We've been playing for six years and it did not take very long for her to embody her character and be a part of it. She doesn't do voices. In spite of us asking her to do voices, she won't do it. But she's every bit in that part that the rest of us are. And so I just say this by way of saying it'll unlock parts of your sort of psychology that you might not believe exists. You could say you're not a gamer and then be introduced to a game and realize, oh-
Nikki Kinzer:
I see the appeal, for sure.
Pete Wright:
... this is a mental playground.
Nikki Kinzer:
Totally. Yeah. I see the appeal for sure.
Pete Wright:
Let's transition. So that's tabletop role playing game. That's the experience role playing game. Let's talk about your game and especially the mechanic of a journaling game. Because this is hard for me to wrap my head around a little bit. I've been reading your incredible documentation behind the game and I am so curious how this plays. So tell us about Soft Focuses and let's talk about the game as a journaling game.
Chris Legge:
Okay. Let's start with what a journaling game is. There's a lot of different... D&D is, like I said, the big game. It is the archetype for a lot of tabletop games, but it is only one aspect. There are millions of games out there that can pretty much do anything you want them to. One of the things that I, after getting into tabletop games and a little bit before I started writing games, but then once I started writing games, I got into the idea of solo games, where you are doing it by yourself. So some of those games, they're some where you are drawing out a map or you're placing cards in a specific pattern and you're doing this over the course of what would be a session and you're following a set of rules, usually a set of rules or prompts that, just think of it kind of like running it through a machine. Like an old school computer, you've got the card you feed in, that counts all the pips. It's like that. So you're still making your choices, you're still doing this, but you don't need to have someone there running it.
And a journaling game is similar. That one, they tend to use a lot of prompts. I'm just going to share one that I really enjoy called Artifact, where you are playing as a magical item, not the wielder of the item, but the item as it's passed down through different wielders.
Pete Wright:
You're playing an object.
Chris Legge:
Yes. Like a magic sword, a helmet, a shield, and you're playing the time from this items creation and it gets lost and then found again. And it's really, it can get really intense. It's great.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Chris Legge:
That's one thing. Solo journaling games because you are, it's just you, and it is just you writing stuff down, they can get intense. Because you are embodying stuff a lot more. You're not interacting with other people on it. That's why I went that way with this.
Pete Wright:
Because there's no gate. When you're just going through this, you don't have to worry about that protecting the aspect of you being judged, because the only judge is you.
Chris Legge:
Yeah. The only person to judge or shame you is yourself.
Pete Wright:
Is yourself. And you're very capable of that.
Chris Legge:
And I mean, that happens.
Pete Wright:
I'm just saying, we're all very good at that.
Chris Legge:
That's basically what a journaling game is. You sometimes they'll involve dice, cards, sometimes you just pick prompts, just whatever sounds good at that time. And in the case of Soft Focuses-
Pete Wright:
Soft Focuses, the name of your game.
Chris Legge:
Yes. That is the name of the game.
Pete Wright:
That all is the preamble to this. here we go. We're entering the [inaudible 00:17:52].
Chris Legge:
I'd been trying to work on, like you said, I have a BFA in photography, I'd been trying to work on a way to develop a game, or not a game, just art, a series to imbue empathy in someone. Because I feel like if more people were empathetic, things would be a lot better. I kept trying stuff and nothing was ever clicking with the art side of it. Eventually, due to a series of things that happened in my personal and work life, I just went, "you know what? A game. A journaling game."
Pete Wright:
Walk us through the play mechanics. What do you do?
Chris Legge:
The first thing you do, you are essentially playing an alternate version of yourself. I put in new rules where you can, on the new version, to how you can play it another ways, so you're not necessarily playing yourself. If you're trying to understand a family member, you can figure out how to stat them.
There's two different sets of stats. There's social and executive stats in the game. So for social stats, you have stuff like inattentiveness, delay aversion, emotional regulation, things that are more how you're interacting with people. Or you have your executive functions, which are time management-
Nikki Kinzer:
Planning.
Chris Legge:
... cognitive flexibility, set shifting, working memory. And you're doing a reverse on these. So when you are writing out your stats, you are marking them down. I have several methods here. I'm going to go with the normal, this is how you would play lots of [inaudible 00:19:35] games.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, creating your character.
Chris Legge:
You're going to roll seven, six sided dice and remove the highest and the lowest from them, because there's five stats in each section. You are then going to just assign those to wherever you would want. So if you are more affected by having problems with time management, that would be something if you roll a five, you'd put the five there. And like I said, you can figure out ways to stat people or things like that. Example, a parent wants to figure out how their kid is experiencing it, they can help figure out with the kid what the stats would be and be able to use that going forward.
Pete Wright:
And you want to put your higher roles toward the traits that are hardest for you in real life?
Chris Legge:
Yes. The ones that affect you the most.
Pete Wright:
Got it.
Chris Legge:
How your ADHD presents. So if my inattentiveness is one of my big things, so that would go higher for me. Set switching is not a problem I have at all, so that would be like if I rolled a one or a two, whatever my lowest would be, that's what I would put. Working memory would also be high for me as evidenced by me having to-
Pete Wright:
Check your own book.
Chris Legge:
... look at my own game.
From there you have this person. And you start off by, it could be at the end of the day, it could be the next day writing for the previous day, you write down a list of the major things that happened that day. Oh, I went into this meeting, I did this. Oh, the copier got stuck at work.
Pete Wright:
Paper jam, paper jam.
Chris Legge:
Yeah. I had to wait in line or I stopped to get coffee, things like that. You don't have to be real specific on what's going on, you just have to remember what happened. At that point, those are your prompts. You are going to take those and when you are going through them, you're going to write out this list, and start at the top. You're going to then roll for whatever stat fits that's not the best. So if it's a meeting and you are the note taker, that's probably one-
Pete Wright:
But I'm constantly distracted.
Chris Legge:
Inattentiveness.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Chris Legge:
So that would be the stat you would use for it
Pete Wright:
Roll for inattentiveness.
Chris Legge:
Yeah, exactly. And you are going to roll to see how much that affects you. And there's a table in there for each. So if you rolled a four on the-
Pete Wright:
Inattentiveness,
Chris Legge:
inattentiveness is executive, there we go. So if you roll a four, you would then be subtracting your inattentiveness score. So if you've got an inattentiveness score of three, that ends up being a one. And if you have a one, you get to the end of the task and realize you did not complete parts of it. Using the stat rolled-
Pete Wright:
Exactly what happened.
Chris Legge:
... what did you forget and why?
Pete Wright:
Now I have a prompt to remind me that I did not do all of the job, which is exactly what happened.
Chris Legge:
Exactly, This is primarily meant for people that do not have ADHD. I have some stuff in here for people that have ADHD now. The first version, there was really none of that. You could tell when people didn't realize they had ADHD if they got into it and this just drained me to play. Someone I know in the tabletop community actually helped them get their diagnosis they'd been trying to get for a while-
Pete Wright:
That's fascinating.
Chris Legge:
... after they played it. They were like, "Oh yeah, this hurts."
Pete Wright:
From this perspective, Chris, it seems... Who is targeted for this game? Who's playing it? What are the messages that they're getting out of it? Because I feel like if I don't have ADHD, the only reason I'm going to play this game is because I have people who are mad at me because I don't understand their ADHD.
Chris Legge:
Right.
Pete Wright:
That's kind of a small audience.
Chris Legge:
It is. It's a very niche thing, but there's a lot of people that I know that have wanted to help understand how someone else is going through this. It's not necessarily that someone's mad at them. When I sent out the review version early on for when we were doing the crowdfunding for the new version, someone in the games journalism community had some very nice things to say about it. They don't have ADHD, but they were like, "This is such a good tool for that because it helps me understand how someone else is experiencing that."
Nikki Kinzer:
I think that there's a lot of avenues that this could be really helpful. It can be helpful for the person who just got diagnosed and doesn't really understand. This could give them a better understanding of themselves and why some of these things have been difficult. But then I also think it can be really helpful for, you mentioned parents, if their child is diagnosed with ADHD to get a better idea. Teachers, it could be really helpful, if they have a couple of kids in their class that have ADHD and they need to have a little bit more empathy of what's going on.
But I also think couples, people who are in romantic relationships, oh my gosh, that could be a game changer in, this is what it's like. Here, you got to check it out because it's really hard to explain what you're feeling or what's going on when it's really hard to explain. It doesn't make sense. So yeah, I can see a lot of areas where it could be really helpful.
Chris Legge:
And that was the biggest problem early on was trying to get the right messaging because there were so many people with ADHD that played it and were like, "This has doubled my ADHD."
Pete Wright:
I don't want to live through this on paper too.
Chris Legge:
Yeah, exactly. I did put some fun stuff in this version, but it's not exactly what I would call a fun game, even if you don't have ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, but it's an educational game and it's a resource. That's how I look at it, is it's not necessarily like the D&D stuff that you guys were talking about, but as a resource, as something to really educate people around, it would be huge.
Chris Legge:
And what I ended up doing with this version is I did create and test a way of making it easier for people with ADHD, so it's less of a mental hit. And the other thing I did because I wanted to have something for people, not just that, but something else for people with ADHD and for better representation of ADHD in tabletop games, a lot of stuff out there that is not, what I would call, a good representation. There is a lot of good representation out there, but there's some that's not. And I wanted to give people the option of being able to play an ADHD character in another game. So I have a whole thing at the back for various systems and ways of adapting it. So there's like a D&D and Pathfinder section where here's how you-
Pete Wright:
Possibly, how you roll a character and essentially stat lock it as an ADHD character.
Chris Legge:
Not just your stats there, but it runs the same way. There is a mechanic in here called the morning roll because it does feel like a lot of times, at least from my perspective, from a lot of people I've talked to, how you wake up in the morning. You wake up too groggy, you sleep too late, you toss and turn all night, things like that, they all affect it. And so you do this roll at the beginning of every day to determine how you're going to do. And if you roll really badly, you may forget your meds if you're using meds, you may have a negative to the first few rolls that you have.
Pete Wright:
I see though, I could absolutely see. I need to put a set of dice by my desk because, or by my bedside table, because I can absolutely see how I would get into the habit of rolling and the act of getting a lousy roll would help me remember, oh wait, no, that I don't believe it. I am going to take my meds. I am going to take all my vitamins.
Chris Legge:
Yeah, that would work.
Pete Wright:
I am going to shower today. It could be a trigger. Just going through the morning roll could be a trigger to help me put on my best character.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's right.
Chris Legge:
So there's different rules for each system because some systems are based on days, like D&D is based on days. One of my favorites called Blades in the Dark is more based on, it's a heist game sort of thing. So it's the beginning of each score you are rolling your morning roll essentially, and then there are additional tables for that so that whenever you roll a certain way, if you're playing D&D, whenever you roll below a certain number on a check, you would then make your roll. Or if something pits one of your stats, so if you have something that would hit set shifting when you're playing, and you would work this out with your game master. This is not something I would recommend you just bring in and just go with.
Pete Wright:
New rules.
Chris Legge:
You want to make sure your Game Master's okay with this. So for D&D, or D20 systems, because they all function similarly in that way. You're playing in a D20 system, make your morning roll after your first long rest, which is when you sleep for the night or at the beginning of your end game day. When you make a roll with one of the determined stats, modify the dice used based on the results of an event roll. And then there is a new event table here.
When you roll a six, there is a hyper focusing table. I didn't want it to be the stereotype of hyper focusing is this superpower. Because it's not a lot of the time, I will hyper focus and lose sleep. The amount of times if I did not have my partner, there would be a lot more times where It'd 5:00 and I go, "Oh, I haven't eaten today."
Pete Wright:
Can I transition a bit? Because I want to dig into two more points. And the first one is what kind of research did you do to build the game in the first place? What did that process look like?
Chris Legge:
It was a lot of talking to people that, like I said, I know that thing where neuro divergent people tend to find each other without knowing it. Almost all of my friends are neuro divergent in some way, so I was able to run a lot of stuff by them, talk to them. But I also, I am the type of person that will research. I am personally, this is slight side note, I'm arachnophobic. I learned early on, if I learn about stuff, know your enemy was my mantra with it. I know more about spiders than anybody that's arachnophobic should know. I can identify all the spiders in the area. I will research. And same thing with this. I was reading medical journals and reading all sorts of different medical texts and things that are published online, I was just going through tons of it to make sure everything I was doing was on the money.
Pete Wright:
Have you ever had it vetted by, I don't know, a gaming psychotherapist?
Chris Legge:
Not necessarily.I have had a number of therapists and psychiatrists-
Pete Wright:
Playing.
Chris Legge:
Actually, when we were doing the crowdfunding, a number of them, a number of people from various countries were backing it because they wanted copies for their office.
Pete Wright:
But we have had so many experts, practicing therapists, on the show and many of them, I think of this as one of those resources. It could be a great office tool for people of a certain mindset who need to understand their family better, this could be a really interesting tool. You mentioned the crowdfunding piece. What went into that? Why a new version? What's new? What's different?
Chris Legge:
The original version was just the basic rules. It didn't include the how to play if you have ADHD, all of the alternate system stuff and it didn't include really any comorbidities and there were a few things in there I didn't like about the way it was set up originally. And so I always had this idea of releasing an expansion to it after I did the first one and eventually it ended up more than doubling in size, so it just became like, all right, this just the new version that I'm releasing.
Because I wanted to cover stuff. I know if you're assigned female at birth, and you experience a menstrual cycle, your meds, a lot of times, depending on the meds you're on, just stop working part of the year, or part of the month. And there's so many comorbidities. There's so many things that affect and come along with ADHD. PTSD and anxiety and depression and other things that can affect and change the way your ADHD actually presents and the way you personally deal with it. I wanted to include those.
Pete Wright:
I can't believe how much of that stuff you've included in here. I was reading it this morning. It was medication balancing and refills and interactions and just so many details of the ADHD life. In terms of the final feedback, when you have somebody who really invests in learning the whole thing and going through it, how long do you feel like it takes for people to come back to you and say, "Hey Chris, my mind is officially blown. I get it."
Chris Legge:
I don't know how long people are spending with it, because most of the people that I've seen in person with it, a lot of people, it's like my partner's been there to help me. I write a lot of stuff, but I'm a terrible proofreader. My partner is a godsend when it comes to that.
Pete Wright:
Helps with that.
Chris Legge:
So they've been there the whole time watching. As I'm doing this, they've seen every iteration of it. But other people that have play tested it and worked on it, they'll start reading and within a day or two, I'll get something come back and go, "What, what?"
Pete Wright:
Yeah. And that's, as I think about it, that's one of the reasons I really like this whole series we're doing, because the act of having ADHD, it feels, oh, I have to roll dice for everything. It's my life experience. How do you feel like your relationship with your own ADHD has changed by virtue of thinking through this level of detail?
Chris Legge:
Like I mentioned about the spiders. I'm still arachnophobic, but I am able to deal with it more. When I was younger, it was at the point where if I saw a spider anywhere near my room or my bed, I just was not sleeping that night. And now it's, okay, get the vacuum. I'm able to process it more because I understand, no, that is not like a poisonous one. And that's how this is.
I am able to look at it from a slightly more clinical standpoint. I'm able to put myself outside of my own experience. What I'm trying to get people to do by playing the game, just from my end, and able to look at it and go, okay, this is hitting me pretty hard right now. I can tell this is affecting me more. I know I personally deal with anxiety and I've had depression, which if you have depression, that never really goes away. It's always there. And being able to go through that and do the research and take that initial mental hit of doing all that, come out the other side and look at it from a slightly different perspective now. So I'm kinder to myself, in a way. I'm able to not beat myself up for various things.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's great, because separating the condition to who you are as a person. It's not who you are. It's something that happened.
Chris Legge:
I've always had that. I've always known, no, this doesn't mean I'm a bad person or anything like that. I learned that fairly early on. Because I've learned to adapt to my ADHD a lot. I've developed a lot of coping skills over the years, because when I was younger, it hit me really hard. And so I took a lot of mental hit from that when I was younger, but I've adapted and learned, no, that's not the core of who I am. It is a big part of me, but it is not the core of who I am. And this helped with everything else around it, that surrounds it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Ah, that's great.
Pete Wright:
I'll tell you, I'm sure there are people listening to this show who are thinking, I have to roll dice to journal? And even after talking about this for the last hour, they're saying, "Oh my gosh, I have to roll dice to journal." I just want to say, if you are one of those people, please at a minimum go check out this game. Because I think in terms of the just straight up creator economy, this is an incredibly impressive expression of you as a gamer, as a writer, and as a thinker in how your relationship with ADHD has matured over the years. It is extraordinary to me, and I'm in awe of it in so many ways and I want other people to at least explore what it means, what it looks like, and support that experience. So please check it out. Where do people go look at it?
Nikki Kinzer:
Before you go with that though, Chris. Pete, I want to say to your point, I love the idea of having a dice tell me what question to look at. That is great. I don't want to have to think about it. Anyway.
Pete Wright:
That's very powerful.
Chris Legge:
If you are worried about rolling too many dice, it is just six sided dice. You don't need the full D&D set, and it's a minimal amount of rolls. It's a couple of rolls per section of your entry. It's more just to get you-
Pete Wright:
It's a guide.
Chris Legge:
Thinking and realizing how much randomness affects how things how you're going to be interactive.
Pete Wright:
Everything. Oh, that's the message. How much randomness affects everything? Oh my God, yes. Okay.
Chris Legge:
But if you're looking to pick it up, it will be up by the time this goes up. We're still working on getting it finalized. Me and my partner have a site for the games and stuff we're making, lumberwoodstudios.com. There's a link to it there. You can pick it up on Itch.io. If you have an account there, you can search for it. It is there. And soon it will be up on Indie Press Revolution. I'm getting physical copies over there. So if you didn't Kickstart it, or it wasn't Kickstarted, but if you didn't crowdfund it and you would like a physical copy of it, they will be available there soon.
Pete Wright:
Love it. Love it. Lumberwoodstudios.com. Link in the show notes. This has been great. Chris, thank you so much for coming and sharing a little bit about, not just the game, but what these games are and gaming culture and teaching Nikki how to RPG.
Nikki Kinzer:
So helpful. Thank you so much. This was great.
Pete Wright:
Yes, for sure.
Chris Legge:
Thank you for having me.
Pete Wright:
And thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. Thank you for your time and your attention. Don't forget, if you have something to contribute about the conversation, we're heading over to the show talk channel on our Discord server and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level or better. On behalf of Chris Legge and Nikki Kinzer, I am Pete Wright, and we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: the ADHD Podcast.
