Every month, NASAGA highlights one of its members who is doing fantastic things. November’s Member of the Month is Maryanne Cullinan, PhD (she/her), a public middle school teacher at Great Brook Middle School in Antrim, NH, TTRPG researcher, and co-founder of the non-profits TabletopEDU and Gaming the System(s).
What kind of work do you do?
I’m a middle school educator, teaching 5th through 8th grades as the enrichment teacher. We have 215 kids in the school and I work with the majority of them. I have a special education certification and do work with students who have been identified through special education, but I also work with pretty much everyone who's a square peg in a round hole. I work with the National Junior Honor Society, do a lot of improv theater, costume design, hands-on science, remedial math and reading, photography, mythology, whatever is needed by the population. I have a play that regularly has 70 student actors and techies. It is also costume/props designed by students. Additionally, I have a role playing game club that has between 40 and 60 students a year.
As a tabletop roleplaying games researcher, I have articles in the International Journal of Role Playing, Simulation and Gaming, Board Game Academics, and the Japanese Journal of Analog Role-Playing Game Studies. I’m in conversations now with IJRP about joining their board. At NASAGA 2026, I presented “Kobolds Ate My Nervousness: Flexible Thinking Through Kobolds Ate My Baby,” and recently presented at Serious Play in NC.
TableTopEDU is a nonprofit looking to help people who use applied role playing games in educational settings - schools, camps, libraries, after school clubs, etc. - find each other, build community and share resources. We have a website and Discord server where we share resources, play games and share and information. We published a book called Adventures in Teaching and Learning with TTRPGs that successfully Kickstarted with $81,000 in contributions.
I also work with another nonprofit called Gaming the System(s). Its main focus is the Game-Based Education and Therapy Conference presented by GAMA at Origins Game Fair. The mission's a bit different than TabletopEDU because it’s a little more about specific professional development for people who use applied games of all kinds for therapy and education. We'll probably be expanding out to more applied settings such as organizational leadership this year at GBET.
Why are you a NASAGA member?
The community! I’ve been a lurker for a long time, gotten emails, and looked at the resources. But I’ve just recently been to the conference and it was neat to spend time with a combination of people I already knew from my other work and amazing new people. I really appreciate, as a woman in this space and generally as a human being, the lack of ego in NASAGA. There's a high level of understanding and knowledge about games, and interest in how games can help make the world a better place. But there’s a low level of the academic ego and bad behavior that sometimes can get in the way of that mission. That’s really important to the other organizations I'm working with too, so it's nice to find more of my people here.
What’s your favorite NASAGA memory?
At NASAGA 2026, running the preconference with Joe Lasley was super fun and the participants were amazing. It was a great excuse to work with him, he’s brilliant and fun. His work in organizational leadership and my work in K12 education really dovetail, so having the excuse to come together was great.
Our group of participants was smart and thoughtful, and seeing them consider how they’re going to remix our ideas into their own field was great. Just a few minutes ago, someone put a picture of a mushroom in the NASAGA Discord, saying it reminded him of the pre-conference. That was referencing a short role playing game activity where the participants were imagining themselves as eighth graders who are roleplaying as anthropomorphic mice ranger apprentices. They had to use dichotomous keys and their knowledge of fungi to sort out which mushroom specimens went to the group of mice defending the mouse city and which ones they could use to feed the babies. You don't want to kill off all the baby mice in the town. It's very embarrassing as an 8th grader. Everyone teases you.
Image credit: Picture by Jesse DeRose
NASAGA’s theme for the coming year is “Reset, Rebuild, and Realign.” If you had to prioritize one of those three, which would it be, and what would you particularly like to see happen?
Rebuild. It's a hard time for many of us. I wonder how can we get into that magic circle of play in other aspects of our lives? We could use it in all of them. This is a very challenging time in K12 education right now. There's a lot of both political and monetary pressures on us as public educators and a lot of narrative that's very negative about public education. In role playing games we travel as a party. When one person gets attacked, we all roll initiative. We’re a party who stick together.
Additionally, it is important to refind whimsy, that iterative thinking of Let's try this and see what happens and try again kind of optimism which happens in game play. I mean, I teach middle school. If I don't come to my work with optimism that things can be better, I probably shouldn't work with 14-year-olds, because things are not great for them between 10 and 14, right? They are works in progress. So every day I have to look and say that it's a building day.
For NASAGA itself, I’m very hopeful that it can work with the Game-Based Education and Therapy Conference next year. I’d love to have all of the people I like and respect work together and be in the same place at the same time.
Anything else?
All hail King Torg! [If you know, you know.]
