Play The Gatekeeper Game! The Most Fun You’ll Ever Have Being Denied a License
Satirical? Yes. Implausible? Sadly, no.
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Hey kids! Are you tired of wondering why you can’t get ahead in life? Now there is a game that’s fun and terrifying to play that helps you understand! It’s called Gatekeeper: The Licensure Game!** Now you can learn about the hidden tests and bosses that are hogtying you with red tape!
Did you remember to hire a lawyer before you started class? Uh oh!
Share it with your friends!
Bucket of crabs sold separately.
Gatekeeper: Dreams Denied Edition
🎲✨Step into the Madness of Bureaucratic Mayhem!✨🎲
🔥GATEKEEPER: THE LICENSURE GAUNTLET🔥
The Board Game They Don’t Want You to Play
Are YOU brave enough to chase your dream of becoming a licensed counselor? Think again. In this brutal, journey through licensure hell, you’ll battle power-hungry boards, dodge ideological purity tests, get lost in accreditation quagmires, and survive the soul-crushing force of... a smiling competitor quashing your future with the stroke of a pen.
🧠 Outwit the Compact Commission!
💰 Pay endless fees for exams, transcripts, and "diversity trainings"!
💼 Fight for your right to practice—let’s hope you don’t have a degree from non-approved schools like Harvard or Columbia (Seriously, the Ivy League programs are unaccredited. Go check!)!
Because: Gatekeeper isn’t just a game... it’s a wake-up call.
Already available at a licensing office near you... try one of over 300 editions!
😈
🎲 "Gatekeeper: The Licensure Labyrinth"
👥 Players: 2–6
⏱️ Game Length: 60–90 minutes
🎯 Goal: Navigate the ideological traps, bureaucratic mazes, and power-hungry gatekeepers to become a Licensed Counselor — without selling your soul (or going broke).
📦 Box Contents:
Game Board – A spiraling path from "Student Hopeful" to "Fully Licensed Counselor"
Player Tokens – “Idealist,” “Rebel,” “Burnout,” “Networker,” “Conformist,” “Maverick”
Card Decks
CACREP Cards (red) – Challenges from the accrediting body
Compact Cards (blue) – Can you meet their standard?!
DEI Directive Cards (purple) – Ideological purity tests
Backdoor Cards (green) – Loopholes, allies, and escapes
Soul Tokens – Each player starts with 5. Lose them all? You're out.
Debt Tokens – Rack these up as you navigate grad school.
Victory Path Tracker – To monitor who’s closest to full licensure.
"Gatekeeper" Miniatures – Movable obstacles that block player progress with adorable red tape!
🛣️ The Game Board
A winding spiral with five stages:
The Ivory Tower – Grad school
The Exam Gauntlet – Standardized tests, theoretical models
The Internship Quagmire – Unpaid work, overbearing faculty, and ethics dilemmas.
The Licensure Thunderdome – Get judged by your peers. Should you look competent or mildly incompetent? What do they want more in a competitor?
The Ideological Purity Trial – A solid semester of Multicultural Counseling, better be up on your racial stereotypes and gender, just don’t call them that!
🎭 Player Archetypes (Each with Abilities)
Idealist – Immune to 1 DEI Directive per round
Rebel – Can challenge a Gatekeeper once per stage
Burnout – Starts with extra Debt but advances faster through red tape
Networker – Trades cards and tokens more effectively
Conformist – Passes DEI Directives automatically but loses a Soul Token every 3 turns
Maverick – Starts outside the system; can bypass any one stage with a risky roll, but if you get doubles you’re mobbed and ejected from the game. What could be more fun?!
🃏 Card Types and Examples
🔴 CACREP Cards
“Must adopt a critical theory framework or redo coursework” – Pay 1 Soul Token or skip a turn
“Program didn’t recruit enough minorities and get flagged by CACREP mid-semester” – Pay $10,000 for tuition increase and Return to Ivory Tower
“Site supervisor demands ideological allegiance” – Choose: Pay 2 Debt Tokens or lose 1 Soul Token
🔵 Compact Cards
“Your state joined the Compact, but only for CACREP grads” – Pay 2 Debt Tokens or delay licensure
“Appeal denied by licensing board” – Go back to student hopeful.
🟣 DEI Directive Cards
“You failed to show sufficient commitment to anti-oppression” – Lose a Soul Token
“You refused to affirm a client’s ‘lived experience’ over evidence-based practice” – Pay 1 Debt and 1 Soul
“Diversity Audit” – Roll dice. Low score = report filed against you
🟢 Backdoor Cards
“Found a rogue state that accepts your degree” – Skip next Compact Card
“Disgruntled accreditor insider leaks CACREP’s playbook” – Avoid next red card
“New legislation opens up licensure paths” – Advance 2 spaces
“You got an Ivy League degree. You can get by on swagger!” - You use your privilege to protest, taking over a random library, shouting anti-Semitic slurs. Skip the next three DEI Directive Cards.
🕹️ How to Play
Roll to move on your turn. Land on colored spaces to draw corresponding cards.
Face challenges, pay tokens (Soul or Debt), and strategize with other players.
Occasionally, a Gatekeeper miniature is rolled onto the board and blocks a path. Players must work together (or betray one another) to get past.
The first player to reach the Final Trial and pass 2 out of 3 ideological purity checks without losing your Soul or collapsing from Debt wins.
🧠 Educational Angle (Optional Rule Set)
If used in educational or advocacy settings, include a “Fact Behind the Card” rule. Each card includes a QR code or brief summary of the real-world event/policy it corresponds to e.g.:
"CACREP demanded only counselors who graduated from programs requring 60 credit hours of coursework (just like their standard) be allowed to join in the Counseling Compact." (Based on 2022 letter later deleted)
🏆 Win Conditions
Victory: Reach licensure with at least 1 Soul Token and fewer than 10 Debt Tokens.
Alternate Victory: Uncover and use a legal or political loophole to dismantle CACREP’s monopoly (requires 3 Backdoor Cards + a roll of 6).
**not a real game, but sadly close to real life.
Housekeeping
This week has seen the return of Brood XIV 17-year cicadas in our neck of the woods and boy are they loud if you are in their area. From Poppet and my walks, we have discovered that they hang out in pockets. So you could in the course of a long walk, not hear anything, hear a faint but growing buzz, be surrounded by loud buzzing everywhere, and then continue to where you hear naught by birdsong again.
It’s pretty amazing, and definitely one of those things I feel honored to have experienced in my lifetime.
Hear for yourself. To get the full effect, wear headphones and turn the volume up. The microphone makes it sound like they are in the distance. They were not. And they were quite a bit louder.
According to the Tennessean, Brood XIV is simultaneously nearly threatened and the second largest of the 17-year broods. So if you are fortunate enough to hear them, enjoy the amazing show. Then shake your fist at them, letting them know just how you’re going to give them the what for, so they too can know what it is to be truly threatened, like the rest of the cool kids.
On the Bookshelf
I am happy to report that reading continues or to be more accurate, I’ve been doing a lot of listening. That seems to be working out a lot better, though I am also going through these books slowly and highlighting things I may want to quote later. That’s why I haven’t taken any off yet.
Accreditation on the Edge: Challenging Quality Assurance in Higher Education by Susan D. Phillips
The Case Against Education by Bryan Caplan
The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong by Rebecca Haw Allensworth
Moral Calculations: Game Theory, Logic and Human Frailty by Laszlo Mero
The New Know-nothings: The Political Foes of the Scientific Study of Human Nature by Morton Hunt
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard by Marc Brettler, Carol Newsom, Pheme Perkins
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of the New Elite by Musa al-Gharbi
“Whatever It Is, I’m Against It”: Resistance to Change in Higher Education by Brian Rosenberg
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About
Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.
Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.
You can also find my work at Minding the Campus
Not sure whether to laugh or cry...