Using RPGs to Reclaim Joy After a Hard Year

For many people, 2025 has felt like a year that kept swinging long after the bell rang. Loss, uncertainty, burnout, and isolation have left a lot of us running on fumes. In the middle of that exhaustion, an unexpected lifeline has shown up at kitchen tables and virtual call screens: tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs).

Groups like Roll2Heal have watched this happen in real time. You don’t need to be okay to play, you just need to show up. Roll2Heal creates welcoming spaces where anyone can sit down, roll some dice, and remember what it feels like to laugh again. Their community is built by gamers, not licensed therapists, and the healing that happens is the natural by-product of shared storytelling, not clinical treatment.

The idea isn’t new, even if the organized expression of it is. In his book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Sebastian Junger explores how humans are wired for small-group cooperation and mutual reliance. He points out that throughout most of history, people lived in tight-knit bands where everyone had a role, everyone was needed, and collective narratives (stories told around the fire) helped the group process hardship. Modern life has largely stripped those conditions away. Many of us spend our days in relative isolation, carrying private burdens without a shared story to put them in.

Tabletop RPGs quietly recreate the ancient conditions Junger describes. A party of four to six people gathers with a clear common purpose (“save the village,” “explore the dungeon,” “survive the haunted starship”). Each person has a meaningful role. The group faces meaningful risk together. And perhaps most importantly, they co-author a story in real time. When the session ends, everyone leaves with the same lived experience—an instant sense of “we went through that together.”

That shared narrative is powerful medicine for a hard year. Players report that for three or four hours, the background noise of grief, anxiety, or burnout fades into the distance. They get to be someone brave, someone funny, someone useful. They get to matter to other people in a way that feels immediate and undeniable.

Roll2Heal leans heavily into making sure that feeling stays safe and positive. Games begin with the Deck of Player Safety—a structured tool that lets everyone anonymously flag topics they’d rather avoid and suggest the kind of tone they need tonight (silly, hopeful, spooky, cathartic, etc.). Unlike simpler safety mechanics, the Deck gives nuanced control without breaking immersion or putting anyone on the spot. It’s a small ritual that says, “Your comfort matters more than the fiction,” and it sets the stage for genuine relaxation.

The results speak for themselves. Veterans reconnect with buddies they haven’t laughed with in years. Parents who spent months in survival mode remember how to play. People grieving a death find themselves smiling when their character’s ridiculous goblin sidekick succeeds against all odds. Joy shows up not because the problems vanished, but because for a little while there was something louder than the problems.

You don’t need prior experience. You don’t need to “be good at acting.” You just need to want a night where the story is about possibility instead of scarcity. Roll2Heal newcomers have sat down nervously, opened a character sheet for the first time, and left hours later with new friends and a lightness they hadn’t felt in months.

If this year took more than it gave, consider stealing a few hours back. Find a group—or gather a handful of people you trust and try a one-shot adventure. Let the dice decide what happens next for a change.

Because sometimes the best way to remember you’re still here is to roll initiative and find out what your elf wizard does when the tavern catches fire. More often than not, the answer is: something worth laughing about tomorrow.

And laughter, after a hard year, is its own kind of victory.

To see if there is a group near you, or if you are interested in GMing and/or creating a chapter in your area join the Roll2Heal Discord at : https://discord.gg/q7HAsxb4Rt