Rob Alvarez Bucholska
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Role-Playing for Real Learning with Anthony Kurza | Episode 390

 

🔥 Losing users? Get free, expert-backed resources to boost retention with gamification: professorgame.com/freecommunity-web

From clueless to collaborative in one session? That’s the power of a well-designed Tabletop RPG. Rob Alvarez sits down with Anthony Kurza, creator of the SAN model and higher ed coach, to explore how role-playing games can unlock retention, connection, and deep learning—both inside and outside the classroom.

Anthony Kurza is a game designer specializing in tabletop role-playing games and an educator in higher education. His work bridges storytelling, game mechanics, and immersive learning, creating experiences that foster social-emotional learning and critical thinking. As an adjunct professor and College Life Coach and Florida State University, he helps students explore the power of collaborative storytelling, while his research focuses on how TTRPGs can be used as educational tools. He has also developed his own TTRPG system and is eager to share it with the world—whether through publishing, workshops, or partnerships that bring games into new spaces. His goal is to make storytelling and role-playing more accessible, engaging, and transformative for players and educators alike.

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)

Anthony Kurza (00:00)
It was nothing short of a miracle to watch as, you know, a group of students that had never engaged with TTRPGs before instantly get it. They were asking the right questions that you would want someone to ask in a TTRPG, right?

Rob (00:16)
Engagers, is Professor Game, where as you know, we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification, game thinking to help us multiply retention and minimize churn, amongst many other things. And I’m Rob, you know, I’m a consultant coach and the founder of Professor Game. And I’m also a professor of these subjects at IU University, EBS, EFMD, and many other places around the world. Of course, before we dive into this amazing interview with this guest that we have today, I wanted to let you know that I do have a little bit of a

freebie for you. in case you’re interested in looking at some of the hacks for community retention, go ahead down, down or up, I don’t know where it stands these days, click on the link that we have on the description and you will find just that arriving to your inbox. And today we are presented with an amazing opportunity to get to meet Anthony Curza. He was mentioned by a past guest by Ryan because Anthony Curza is a game designer specializing in tabletop and role-playing games and an educator in higher education.

His work bridges storytelling, game mechanics, and immersive learning, creating experiences that foster social-emotional learning and critical thinking. As an adjunct professor and college life coach at Florida State University, he helps students explore the power of collaborative storytelling. While his research focuses on how TTRPGs, or tabletop role-playing games, can be used as educational tools, he has also developed his own TTRPG system and is eager to share it with the world.

whether publishing workshops or partnerships that bring games into new spaces. And his goal is to make storytelling and role playing more accessible, engaging and transformative for players and educators alike. After this amazing intro into all the exciting stuff that you’re doing, Anthony, we still need to know, are you prepared to engage?

Anthony Kurza (02:04)
I’m ready. I’m excited. Let’s get into it.

Rob (02:07)
Let’s do this. So Anthony, is there anything that we missed from the intro? Anything that you’re doing? Anything we should know before we dive into the questions?

Anthony Kurza (02:16)
You know, I think that that pretty much covered it. And you said it so much more eloquently than I could ever explain it. But yeah, that pretty much covers what I’m doing right now.

Rob (02:26)
Anthony,

if we were to follow you around for a day a week, shadow you, have you as our mentor, whatever that would look like for, again, whatever timeframe you want to go for, what kinds of things would we see you doing? What would that feel like? Can you guide us through that for a second?

Anthony Kurza (02:43)
Yeah, definitely. really starting out, know, the day job for me is as a college life coach at Florida State University. And what we do in college life coaching is we work with particular populations of first time in college students to help them integrate and adjust into the university setting, right? And this can be done in a lot of different ways. And it happens, our conversations aren’t really always focused on the academics, right? It’s not always about what’s happening in the classroom.

A lot of the time it’s talking about what’s happening outside of the classroom. Are we talking roommate issues or where am I gonna park my car or where’s a good place to eat in Tallahassee, whatever it might be. What we realized, especially at Florida State, is that what is happening in a student’s life, whether it’s inside or outside the classroom, all of it contributes to their success at the university.

So we wanted to create a space where students could come and talk about whatever was important to them in the moment. So that’s what I’m doing during the day. I’m working with students and helping them address things that come up within their lives, whether it’s inside or outside the classroom. Then outside of that, I’m coming home to my amazing wife and my incredible two dogs and enjoying just living the life, if you will. But I’m also spending time creating games. I think that is

really has become a passion of mine is to just develop and create and use that creativity in a way of like making new experiences for people. Cause I’ve played TTRPGs, I’ve played regular tabletop games, I love games, I’ve always been a big fan. But now I get to use that creative energy and develop my own, which was something that I didn’t, everything was possible. So it’s been really exciting to explore that as well. So during the day,

College life coach and also adjunct professor. teach a class called introduction to tabletop role playing game design where we teach students how to design, how to play test, how to work on marketing and all that good stuff within the TTRPG industry. then outside of that, taking those lessons that I’m teaching.

Rob (05:00)
in

the classroom. Is there an online version we can register to, Anthony?

Anthony Kurza (05:04)
I

so very wish it is on my list. Absolutely it’s on my list. And hopefully, you know, I, I’ve had such a blast teaching this class. I want to take it on the road. I want to take it wherever, wherever people are interested, but I’m taking those lessons that I’m teaching in the classroom and applying it to my own practice too, which has also been really cool. Um, because then I can really like bring into the classroom that like evidence-based.

expertise for my students so that they can they can find success as well. So yeah, a long-winded way of saying I’m busy and I’m doing a lot.

Rob (05:40)
That sounds amazing and very exciting stuff to Anthony. So how about we actually dive into one of those times where you were using TTRPGs for this or that, or you created your own and things did not go your way. So a fail or a first attempt at learning. I’m sure you’ve had a few, you know, when people hear to that amazing introduction, many others, they think, these people know it all. They’ve seen it all. And yeah, but we still have many things that happen. So I want to…

dive into one of those, take some away of those, some of those lessons.

Anthony Kurza (06:10)
Yeah,

absolutely. And failure is, failure is not fun, but it’s also like such an important part of the learning process, if that makes sense. I have a background in music, so I have my bachelor’s degree in music. And, you know, I think a lot of the lessons that I learned from that was that like failure, while it isn’t a fun thing to feel, allow that to push you forward, allow that to continue for you to innovate and try new things.

And I think that’s very fully come into my experience as a game designer. A memory that comes to mind really actually has been kind of this semester in the introduction to tabletop role-playing game class. so this is our second semester going through and teaching this class. The first semester, we had super high levels of engagement. Most of the people in the class had experience with tabletop role-playing games.

which made the learning process a little bit easier because we didn’t have to necessarily explain some of the minute details about stuff. And we cut to this semester where I think maybe two people in the class were familiar with tabletop role-playing games. So we really had to start from the ground up in terms of understandings. And that led to some very interesting lectures.

trying to explain what was going on in terms of tabletop role-playing games. But the big thing that I learned from that, right, from that experience of maybe like hitting some resistance in terms of the content that I was trying to push forward in terms of TTRPGs was that we have to continue to try to innovate because I can assure you that won’t be the last time that I get in front of an audience that has no idea what TTRPGs are. I know for a fact that that won’t be the case.

So in order to innovate using those game-based approaches to say, I’m gonna try and teach you what a TTRPG is, the best way that I can do that is by playing a TTRPG. Let me show you what this experience can be like. And that was really the inspiration behind the SAN model, which I developed. The game engine that I developed was to make TTRPGs accessible and easy so that if you were to…

get in front of a crowd of people that weren’t familiar with TTRPGs, you could use this system to get them in on the ground floor, if that makes sense. So that was the biggest thing that I took away from the experience of maybe hitting some of that resistance in terms of learning and understanding was that as we continue to innovate, sometimes the best way to teach is to showcase.

Rob (08:56)
Makes sense, makes sense. was there, did you have like a light bulb moment or how did that come for you? Because sometimes we’re sort of so in the depths of the situation and so desperate that it’s hard to be able to look around and see the trees, so to speak.

Anthony Kurza (09:11)
Perhaps I 100 % agree, absolutely. For me during the class was, part of the class is that they create their own tabletop role-playing game, right? That’s the final project. And there’s a lot of systems out there that they can use and that can be overwhelming, especially for people that aren’t familiar with tabletop role-playing games. So we wanted to use the SAN system as an easy way for them to understand and get the mechanics.

for when they develop their own game so they can really focus on the creative endeavor of it, of like, let’s create the world and let’s create how the game operates without having to worry about the minutia of the mechanics. So in order to teach those mechanics, we ran a TTRPG session using the sand model. And I wasn’t sure how this was gonna work, right? I wasn’t sure if this was gonna work at all. But what we did was we had one adventure.

where all the students in the class controlled one character and they had to collaboratively work together to determine what that character would do and whether they succeeded or failed in the actions that they were proposing, right? So everyone worked together to do it. And it was nothing short of a miracle to watch as a group of students that had never engaged with TTRPGs before instantly get it.

instantly get it working together to control this character. And they were having constructive conversations where they were like, no, we should do this. We should do this. They were voting. They were they were asking questions. They were asking the right questions that you would want someone to ask in a TTRPG, right? Like what’s behind the door and are there traps and you know, all these like good questions that inherently come from just playing the game.

So watching as these students who had never had any interaction with TTRPGs before, like I said earlier, and just get it almost immediately, for me, that was the light bulb moment of like, this works. Like this actually works. You got the academic journals that say it works, but this is real world experience, you know? And it was just incredible. It was really incredible.

Rob (11:24)
It sounds absolutely amazing. And Anthony, how about we go now for understanding because you’ve mentioned the sand model several times and you you’ve developed it. I’m guessing that that will be a strategy that you would use if you were, you were to create an experience from scratch. Or, you know, if I came in and said, look, I need to use a TTRPG for this thing or that thing. How would you do it? Like, do you have a process? Is that the sand model or is it something else? Like we want to get into your head for a while and see how that plays out.

Anthony Kurza (11:53)
Yeah, definitely. So the sand model is truly meant to be a foundation, right? Of just a simplified game mechanic using 1D6, right? One six-sided die that you could find in a box of Monopoly or, you know, in any kind of board game that you might have in your house, right? I wanted to create something where they had access to the dice where they didn’t have to like, you know, go and like try to buy like the seven, you know, the seven die and like…

try and figure out which one is which and what does what. I 1D6, simple as that. So it’s meant to serve as a foundation for just getting into the essence of TTRPGs, which is collaborative storytelling, right? So if someone were to come to me, and it’s happened a couple of times where they say, I want to do this with this population of students and I want to do it using a tabletop role playing game. How do I go about that? For me, my process is pretty simple. First,

we identify what the outcome is. So, you know, for example, we’ll put it in a real world example. So let’s say you have a population of students and you want to, you want to encourage them to think about networking, right? The importance of it, right? As you go throughout your college career and you start to get ready to graduate and go into your career, networking becomes such an important part of that process for you in order to make those connections. So you have a population of students.

that you want to share the importance of networking. So we have our outcome. Then we move and identify activities that are already exist, that are already out there, that help kind of push that outcome forward. So for example, when we talk about networking, think about like developing an elevator pitch, right? It’s important when we’re introducing ourselves and when we’re talking to people that we develop an elevator pitch.

Right? You know, that 60 seconds that you get with somebody to tell them about who you are and what you’re about. So you have your outcome. You have that activity of like developing a elevator pitch. Then you craft the adventure around that. Right? So for example, let’s say, you know, you want to, you want to emphasize the importance of an elevator pitch. You want them to do that as an activity.

You have a group of adventurers, it’s the 1920s, New York City, Manhattan, cars blaring around and the city streets are bustling. Your group of adventurers are a group of private investigators and they’ve been hired to investigate a stolen gemstone that they have to find. It was stolen out of the Natural History Museum and they haven’t seen it since. The only clue, the only piece of evidence that they have.

is that that gemstone is gonna be at a gala event, a really fancy gala event at Carnegie Hall tonight. And they need to figure out how they’re gonna get into Carnegie Hall and how they’re going to find that gemstone. So all of them collectively then develop aliases, right, ways to get themselves into the gala to sneak in to try and find this gemstone. But in order to sneak in, they need to develop their own elevator pitch. They need to develop.

their alias, who they are and why they belong at that gal event. So they go through this activity where they develop an elevator pitch for this alias that they’ve created. And then you play the game. You have them go to the gal event and practice saying that elevator pitch. Then afterwards, once the session is over, you have this debrief session to say, okay, what have we taken away from this situation? What have we taken away from this scenario that we just played? The debrief is a huge part of just like making sure that

TTRPGs are transformational, right? So you have the debrief and you talk, and then you have them essentially do the activity themselves. Say, okay, so your character made an alias, your character made an elevator pitch, let’s go there and do that for ourselves and practice that ourselves. So not only are they taking the lessons that they’ve learned while playing the session, they’ve also then brought that out and practice it in real time with themselves. And that’s usually the process that I follow when developing

TTRPG specifically with educational outcomes.

Rob (16:04)
That sounds absolutely amazing. Thank you for sharing that with us, Anthony. Any application of this process that you follow, that you would like to share with us, like any specific case where it worked for you and you would like to say, this is how it worked and it went really well.

Anthony Kurza (16:20)
So I think the one that comes to mind is about a year ago, I ran a game when I was really at the beginning of my understandings of kind of what this process looked like. So I ran a game for students within the coaching center and I opened it up to anyone who wanted to take part. We had five students sign up and we set everything up. Now these were five students that did not know each other. And the goal of this

session really was to develop community and develop cohesion amongst five complete total strangers. Which, if you ask anybody, can be challenging, right? So we ran the session and the session followed just like a basic understanding of building community, what does community mean, what does commitment mean. We started talking about all these really interesting, intricate, different things within the context of the game. And as we wrapped up the session,

You know, and we said, well, thank you so much for coming. You know, here’s here are some of the things that we hope you take away from it. What did you take away? They started sharing, you know, the similarities that they had to their characters. And because of the similarities they had to their characters, the things that they were taking away from the game session, which was the importance of building that community, the importance of taking the initiative to reach out and develop relationships. And even more so as that session ended and we all said our goodbyes.

all the students started sharing contact information. They all said, we should get together and play again sometime. So not only were we talking about building community within the game structure, they then took that and then immediately put it into practice with the people that they were in the room with. So we took five complete strangers and together developed in essence of almost a friend group, which was just incredible. Like seeing that in practice, that was, that was again, another like light bulb moment for me of like, there’s something here.

Rob (18:18)
Nice, nice. sounds amazing. So Anthony, from this experience that you’ve had, you know, both playing and now developing and using them in different contexts is I don’t want to go for a silver bullet, right? Because something that works always is not, is not real, but is there something that you would call maybe best practice when you’re thinking about creating a TTRPG or using a TTRPG? What kinds of things that would maybe, you know, make it a little bit better at least most of the time? Is there such a thing as a best practice?

Anthony Kurza (18:47)
I think that the best practice is continuing and it’s always evolving, right? It’s always a little bit different, especially when it comes to tabletop role playing games. You know, as I mentioned earlier, there are thousands, tens of thousands of TTRPGs out there between major publishers and independent publishers that offer so many different styles of games. Now, what I would always encourage in terms of best practice is explore the different types of TTRPGs.

Go out there if this is something that you want to incorporate in your practice whether it’s in your personal life or in your professional life Go out there and find a game that fits what you are trying to do now I’m gonna plug myself. Sorry, but I built a system that is meant to be modular, right? I built something that is meant to to encompass a wide variety of situations, but even I’m not naive enough to To say that that is the end-all be-all there are so many games out there that accomplish so many different

things and some games I’m sure we’ll talk about during our time chatting today that offer really unique ways of incorporating the idea of chance and intention that really helps the learning process grow. So I would encourage like if people are looking to incorporate this into their practice to go out there and discover what types of games there are to see what fits the situation that you’re trying to fill.

Rob (20:13)
Amazing. Deep, deep stuff we’re getting to here for sure. So Anthony, from what you’ve heard, I know you’ve heard a few episodes as well. and, you know, we’re kind of in a, very close space. is there anybody that you think you would say, well, like Ryan said, I would like to hear Anthony, is there somebody that you would like to listen to in a future episode of the, of the podcast?

Anthony Kurza (20:38)
I can name a million names. I can name a million, million names. There are so many people out there that are doing such incredible work. When I started this journey, I felt like I was alone on an island. I was like, I found this cool thing.

but nobody else seems to know what I’m talking about. And as I started diving into the community more, found that there are so many people spread across the United States, but across the world that are doing this work, that are building communities. so I’ve met so many incredible people. the work of like Joe Lasley, right? Who’s doing work up in Maine that runs a company called Game and Amics. does a program called Lead RPG.

where they really focus on using TTRPGs to develop leadership skills and abilities. Awesome person that I’ve had a lot of connection with. You know, I think about the work of like Garrett Monroe and Marianne Pullenon, who are publishing a book specifically about using TTRPGs in an educational setting. I think about Sarah Bauman who works at Uppsala University that is

revolutionized role playing as transformation, revolutionized that idea. But even in my own local sphere, right? My partner in crime, his name is Corbin Nall, he’s doing a lot of work with what we call playful advising. So it’s term that he himself has developed, which is using game-based approaches when advising students in a higher education setting.

I about, I just had a conversation with her today, name’s Delaney Stills. She is doing so much incredible work with game-based learning in a housing scenario. So looking at housing leadership and using game-based approaches to help improve their practices. So I know I just gave a list of like six people, but it’s because this community, the more I dive into this community, the more it’s expanding and the more I’m realizing that there are so many people out there that are doing good work.

another one, Allie Watts doing some fantastic work at Bowling Green State University just published an article about playful criticality, A playful approach to being, you know, to having that criticality, which is so important. Yeah, so there’s so many amazing people doing such incredible work that I think is so important that we continue to lift up those voices and talk about these things. So obviously with all these people, I’m happy to send you emails and, you know, like whatever you need.

Because I think all these people would be incredible people just to kind of pick their brains.

Rob (23:28)
That sounds absolutely amazing. The list that we could have out of this episode of people could be interesting into space. I’ve said this many times and I think somebody will start, I don’t know, emailing or calling me eventually saying, Rob, stop saying it. Just go ahead and play your TTRPGs. I have never really played, like I did a quick experience with a friend. we did it online, but I also had to leave relatively early. So I did like, let’s say an hour online. Yeah.

of this, but I’ve never really like dived into doing this with a bit more follow up. have throughout the years, I’ve understood more and more of the principles. almost, and I almost feel like a do it, my like be a game master almost. I’ve heard so much of it. I’m so excited about it, but you know, life gets always complicated. And I would definitely, this is definitely something I need to explore personally, professionally a lot more, in the future for sure. keeping up with the recommendations, you mentioned a bunch of guests.

Anthony Kurza (24:07)
Yeah

Rob (24:26)
which all sound absolutely amazing. How about a book? If there was a book that you could recommend, which book would it be and why?

Anthony Kurza (24:33)
You know, so the first one that comes to mind, transformational role-playing game design, that’s coming out of Uppsala University with Sarah Baumann again, really innovating the way that we look at role-playing as a transformational container, as a thing that helps people fundamentally change. This is new, this was just released, it is free.

in reading it has shifted a lot of my mindsets in terms of the work that I’m doing. So always highly recommend it. Now, if people are looking to do work within tabletop role playing games, also suggest, monsters, it’s right down here, sorry, monsters, aliens, and

Monsters, aliens, and holes in the ground. Monsters, aliens, and holes in the ground. We got there. This is a historical look at tabletop role-playing games. And the reason that I suggest this, right, this historical perspective is because throughout the history of tabletop role-playing games, right from the beginning, right, 1974, Dungeons and Dragons to now, tabletop role-playing as an industry has grown so much and incorporated so many different…

ideas, right? You think about like 1974 Dungeons and Dragons, it comes out of the war gaming industry, right? The hobbyists that are doing war gaming, that are simulating battles. That’s where Dungeons and Dragons was born from. But even within 10 years after that, you start incorporating new companies like Chaosium introduced Call of Cthulhu, which is Lovecraftian horror. And this was the first time in a decade of tabletop role playing games that a new idea had come forward.

the idea that tabletop role-playing games weren’t just about being the most powerful thing in the room, there is power in being powerless, right? So taking an horror approach to help people explore what it means to be powerless and what that means for us and our psyche. And that continued throughout the 50 years that we’ve been playing tabletop role-playing games, right? Every decade can be marked with

a game or two games or an idea that has reshaped the industry and our understanding of what the game could be. So I always encourage taking that historical perspective just to get a better idea of where the game came from to help us push, continue to push it forward.

Rob (27:01)
Sounds like very good couple of books for sure. I might be getting it wrong, but I think Sarah Bowman’s book has been recommended before, but I’ll check that up in our episodes. I love the fact that it has been recommended before. not complaining at all. It’s interesting to see how more than one person recommends it. Honestly, a book that I had never heard of before getting this recommendation. So interesting to see how some of these recommendations repeat and not in those like, for example, like we have definitely here in my library behind this.

as well. I forgot his name. His games are… Well, used to be… Well, I always like to say he used to be an indie developer. Now he’s not really that much indie. He has a more formal company. And I’m just lacking away on his name and I completely forgot. I think he’s episode 102 or something. So let me see if I can find it that way. In any case…

It’s interesting to like that book has been recommended many times for sure. Right. That’s one thing. But when you go to sort of I don’t want to say darker reasons, it’s not darker in any way, but books that are less visible. Jesse Shell and Shell Games. That’s why I was watching episode 102. His gag, The Art of Game Design is a book that has sold many, many, many copies that a lot of people know of. But then you go maybe

Don’t get me wrong. Maybe Sarah is definitely in that space as well. But getting books that have not been so visible to everyone, or at least not to me, is always a good thing to see. then that also makes sense for me to put at the top of my list. Remember when I was saying, you know, I commit to many things. I don’t like to commit to reading every book because I get, you know, every now and then I get people, read my new book. You know, I’ll send you something. Give me your recommendation. Every now and then I can do that. But I…

I definitely can honor as many people as I love.

Anthony Kurza (29:01)
There’s

only so much time we have, Exactly. 24 hours of the day, you know? If we’re trying to read 60 books in two days, you know, it’s not gonna work. It’s not gonna work. But there’s a lot.

Rob (29:12)
few decisions that I would really change in my life is at some point I had in front of me and it was a lot of money like I would have managed to scrape the money but it was a lot of money. His fast reading courses and I had a friend who actually took it and I saw very good results like 10x in his reading speed. I should have taken that course. I still kind of regret that.

Anthony Kurza (29:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, well now for me it’s like,

for me it’s like, you know, going through grad school is like a great graduate. I learned how to grad school read, which is definitely upped my reading time. is absolutely has been able to get me through a lot of a lot of heavy material for sure.

Rob (29:51)
Absolutely, absolutely. So we’re getting to a difficult question now, Anthony, because it’s all about what would you say is your favorite game?

Anthony Kurza (30:02)
And the thing is like, knew this question was coming and still you asked the question and you know, my mind’s racing now. Okay. So, think the two that really stand out to me. the, and these are, of course they’re to be tabletop role playing games because surprise, surprise. the two that come to mind, the first one is dread.

Dread is a tabletop role-playing game that in the lieu of dice, right, in lieu of like rolling dice in order to represent chance and percentages, they use a Jenga tower. So anytime that your character would do something that they wouldn’t normally be able to do, or whether you do something that there’s a chance of failure, you pull a block from the Jenga tower. And that continues through the game. The whole idea is that this game is supposed to represent, like have this physical representation of what tension is.

Right, because when you get the Jenga tower to a certain point, everyone’s kind of on edge and you really have to start making choices of like, do I want to do this action and risk the tower falling over? Because if the tower falls over, your character is removed from the game immediately, right? They’re just gone. And it’s funny, a couple of weeks ago, we actually, ran a game of Dread with some students and it was another example of like, you got to see.

the actual physical tension in the air as the adventure went on and watching them try to figure out, okay, do I have enough courage to do this with the risk of failing, with the risk of this tower falling? So it’s been really, really cool. The other one that I’ll mention is a game called Alice is Missing. This was developed by Spencer Stark, who has notably done stuff with Critical Role. He’s one of the main producers on Daggerheart, which was Critical Role’s

TTRPG, very well regarded game designer. He developed this game that is a silent role playing game. So it’s actually a texting based. The whole idea is that you spend your time looking, I’m not gonna, this is not gonna spoil the game, but there is a young girl, Alice, she’s missing, surprise. And you have to find Alice, right? That’s the whole point.

but you’re doing it through texting conversations. So you’re role playing in a texting group chat and developing the story that way. And I love that game because first off, just innovative way to play a TTRPG. But also I think for a lot of people trying to get into TTRPGs, the idea of role playing is maybe a little bit intimidating. They’re like, do I have to do a funny voice? And do I have to, you know, do I have to do hand, like what do I have to do here?

With a silent role-playing game, you can really get into character and role-play with a little bit more safety, if that makes sense, because you’re just texting, right? You’re just writing it down as your character. So maybe a little bit less intimidating than jumping right into just a normal TTRPG.

Rob (33:04)
Awesome, that sounds super cool. Super cool. Thank you for those recommendations as well. So Anthony, thank you very much for taking a part of your time to be with us today. Is there anywhere you want to lead us to? Like do you have a web or I don’t know project or any call to action you want to have right now is a great moment. And of course, if you have any final words you want to say, now is the time.

Anthony Kurza (33:27)
Yeah, absolutely. first and foremost, thank you so much for having me on and hearing me ramble. I appreciate it. This is something that I just feel so passionate about. And so to get the platform to be able to talk about it has been nothing short of a pleasure. As a game designer, I independently publish on itch.io. So if you look me up on itch.io, it’s just Anthony Curza.

You’ll see my sand model there. The sand game engine is absolutely free. You are not required to pay for it at all because I really believe in the accessibility of this and I want people to take it and hack it and slash it. So make it whatever you need it to be. But there’s also a couple other adventures on there to kind of get your feet wet with it. So please check me out on there on LinkedIn, Anthony Curza. That’s where I’ve been posting a lot of just like my…

just random thoughts and ideas about the ideas that we’ve talked about today. So if you’re interested in learning more, and most importantly, reach out, right? If you’re listening and this is something that’s cool to you, reach out, hit me up, let’s talk about it. I’ll talk about it for days. I think the big thing that I really want to emphasize here is that there is a community out there for those that are listening, there is a community.

And we are ready to continue to expand. So please don’t be a stranger. Let’s figure out how we make things happen.

Rob (34:54)
Absolutely love that so Anthony thanks again for being with us today and engagers remember if you’re interested in in this kind of community building that also Anthony has been talking about if you want to dive further definitely contact Anthony through the the two places you had it’s gonna be on the description in the under description where you can also find a link to the three gamification hacks for Increasing your community’s value that I have mentioned at the start. No pressure Just if this is something that sounds interesting to you definitely hit

any of us up or any of the web pages from Anthony plus this freebie there it comes at no cost no difficulty also so please go ahead and do that however Anthony 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 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 Game. See you there.

 

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