Direct Association: TRPGs and Creativity

Only one set of experimental studies have been done on TRPGs as creativity training. Karwowski and Soszynski (2008) engaged in two experiments inspired by, but distinct from, TRPGs. They sought to test the effectiveness of Role Play Training in Creativity (RPTC) on enhancing creativity scores, and to determine whether or not distributed practice had an effect or not. The same exact treatment was performed on two different groups. The only difference was one group utilized distributed practice, and so their training was spread over four weeks, one two-hour session a week. The other group

received all of their training in one single eight-hour session. For their final analysis, Karwowski and Soszynski combined both groups to make a general assessment of the effectiveness of RPTC. They found RPTC did increase creativity at similar levels to the average effectiveness of trainings reviewed by Scott et al. (2004), and that the group who utilized distributed practice had much higher gains in flexibility compared to the single-day group. The other difference between the groups was that the one-single-day group had significant changes in originality, whereas the distributed learning group did not.

However, their experiments had single-group designs, with only an experiment group and no comparison control group. They used a modified Test of Creative Imagination by Kujawski and the Test of Creative Thinking - Drawing Production by Urban and Jellen as pre-tests and post-tests. Both tests were somewhat similar to the TTCT, but once again emotional creativity was omitted. The two groups also received different treatments and yielded different results, yet were combined for the analysis of RPTC. They mention that the pre-test and post-test results had marginally significant differences when comparing across groups (Karwowski and Soszynski, 2008). This may have biased their results.

Perhaps the largest difference between these experiments and TRPGs is that, while the players created their own characters, these experiments had no true game-master – a participant of the TRPG who has authoritative control over the general storyline. The experimenters stood in front of the group, offered instructions, and then the groups took turns presenting to the experimenters in front of every other group. This active participation from an authority figure such as an experimenter is different from TRPGs which usually have each group of players choose their own personal game-master, and definitely do not have an experimenter attempting to actively change participant creativity.

The clear differences between true TRPGs and RPTC could result in different outcomes.

Whether or not RPTC managed to distill all of the useful parts of TRPGs, or if the changes

Karwowski and Soszynski made to TRPGs eliminated some useful elements, is worth investigating.

So their experiment has some limitations. For one, a one-group experiment structure is methodologically inferior to experiments including control groups. They also, like all studies on creativity training to date, did not examine emotional creativity at all.

Further, they combined groups with meaningfully different results, skewing their analysis.

So while their study is an excellent start, and the first of its kind, more investigation into the effectiveness of RPTC would be illuminating.

The present study seeks to build on the work done by Karwowski and Soszynski (2008). The present study also examines the effects of TRPGs on creativity, but does not eliminate core aspects of TRPGs to do so. Further, the present student recognizes the emotional components of TRPGs and includes the ECI as a measure of emotional creativity. Additionally, the present study has a sample much closer to gender equity, and includes a control group for comparison. Otherwise, there are many similarities:

Karwowski and Soszynski’s study had similar sized samples as this study: Their groups both had about 23 participants. This study’s treatment group (N =19) attended four training sessions over several weeks, and so due to its similar sample size and identical use of distributed practice is hypothesized to show similar gains to Karwowski and Soszynski’s distributed practice group in fluency and other measures. This experiment also includes a control group (N=20) to control for time and increase in skill in taking creativity tests.

Further, this study’s experiment group sample was roughly 37 percent male, 47 percent if game-masters are excluded. This is much more diverse than Karwowski and Soszynski’s 83 percent female sample. Seeing as Karwowski and Soszynski discovered much higher gains by utilizing distributed practice, I saw no need to include a third group where the entire treatment took place on a single day.

This study seeks to examine TRPGs in a purer form than examined by Karwowski and Soszynski’s study. They eliminated game-masters from the design, and perhaps more importantly, their research materials did not contain player choices with consequences. In one exercise whether the participants did very poorly or extremely well, they had the same result and none of their choices influenced any other part of the story. This means that important stages of problem solving were altered: nobody actually had to imagine what consequences their actions would have on the story. Therefore idea evaluation, implementation planning, and solution appraisal all were changed. With success as a given, participants didn’t need to evaluate contingency plans, how to alter implementations if circumstances changed, and didn’t have to worry as much about appraising their solution:

their solution always worked, it was just a matter of how well.

In a true TRPG, the groups must decide for themselves “If we do this, then this will happen” a step completely missing from Karwowski and Soszynski’s study. Players also have to worry about the distinct possibility of failure (including the death of their player?).

Because they eliminated continuity, they successfully created a creativity training style inspired by TRPGs, but didn’t produce the phenomenon studied by Tsui-shan Chung (2013), which showed a high correlation between TRPG players and creativity scores. An experiment with an experimenter as an active participant cannot compare directly to Chung’s results that TRPG players have higher creativity. This study emphasized consequences of choices and stressed continuity in every session, included game-masters in each treatment sub-group, and had a completely passive experimenter, so should model TRPGs much more precisely, and thus answer whether players of TRPGs have higher creativity because of self-selection, or because TRPGs actually encourage creative growth.

Yet the largest difference between Karwowski and Soszynski’s study and the current one is the recognition of the essential emotional element of role-play, and its potential consequences on emotional creativity. In order for a player to act in a fashion

suitable for their character, they must predict and simulate their character’s emotions, much as an actor would in drama. This flexing of one’s emotional “muscles” should alter one’s ability to experience and produce emotions, but Karwowski and Soszynski used no measure for emotional creativity. This study remedies this oversight by including the ECI.