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This article describes a developmental framework for the application of role‐playing games (RPGs) in leadership learning. RPGs relate to leadership learning on a range of levels from individual development, to team building, to parallel group processes. The variety and depth of learning and development potential in RPGs is very exciting, particularly the potential for collective creativity associated with the need for leadership that transforms communities. Many established learning frameworks used for leadership/adult learning are included and an original framework for adopting a developmental understanding is explained.

Games aren't just useful products, the process of creating games is playful and full of learning potential. This article builds upon a discussion of game‐based learning as a cyclical, iterative process that includes motivation, action, and feedback by taking the discussion of the activity of creating games as learning activity. Leadership students first interact with predesigned gaming environments and then, as further demonstration of the confluence of game‐learned skills/knowledge and theory, they come to create their own cooperative gaming worlds.

This study investigated the experiences of people who claimed exposure to Critical Role, a web series featuring a group of voice actors playing a tabletop role-playing game (TRPG), impacted their lives in meaningful ways beyond entertain-ment. Building on previous research that documented players engaging in role-playing games, livestreaming, and role-playing game (RPG) fandom subculture, this study specifically explored the perspectives of individuals who reported a transformation-al impact of experiencing gaming vicariously through watching Critical Role. This paper reports a detailed narrative of one of the cases from qualitative interviews, which conveys major themes that illustrate the perspective of the individual watching. The paper compliments this detailed case description with a discussion of findings from seven in depth interviews to explore the experiences of the interviewee focused on in the context of the study sample. This study is primarily focused on the individ-ual watchers’ experience of gameplay and role-playing experiences, which they attribute to personal growth. The term paraso-cial gaming is introduced to characterize a part of vicarious experience associated with watching media figures playing games.