Role-Playing Game Studies

Author: Sebastian Deterding
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317268318
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 905

Book Description
This handbook collects, for the first time, the state of research on role-playing games (RPGs) across disciplines, cultures, and media in a single, accessible volume. Collaboratively authored by more than 50 key scholars, it traces the history of RPGs, from wargaming precursors to tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons to the rise of live action role-play and contemporary computer RPG and massively multiplayer online RPG franchises, like Fallout and World of Warcraft. Individual chapters survey the perspectives, concepts, and findings on RPGs from key disciplines, like performance studies, sociology, psychology, education, economics, game design, literary studies, and more. Other chapters integrate insights from RPG studies around broadly significant topics, like transmedia worldbuilding, immersion, transgressive play, or player–character relations. Each chapter includes definitions of key terms and recommended readings to help fans, students, and scholars new to RPG studies find their way into this new interdisciplinary field.

Sexuality in Role-Playing Games

Author: Ashley ML Brown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317607023
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 157

Book Description
Role-playing games offer a chance to pretend, make believe, and share fantasy. They often invoke heavy themes into their game play: morality, violence, politics, spirituality, or sexuality. Although interesting moral debates perennially appear in the media and academia concerning the appropriateness of games’ ability to deal with such adult concepts, very little is known about the intersection between games, playfulness, and sexuality and what this might mean for players. This book offers an in-depth, ethnographic look into the phenomenon of erotic role-play through the experiences of players in multiplayer and tabletop role-playing games. Brown explores why participants engage in erotic role-play; discusses the rules involved in erotic role-play; and uncovers what playing with sexuality in ludic environments means for players, their partners, and their everyday lives. Taken together, this book provides a rich, nuanced, and detailed account of a provocative topic.

The Postmodern Joy of Role-Playing Games

Author: René Reinhold Schallegger
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476631468
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
Historian Johan Huizinga once described game playing as the motor of humanity's cultural development, predating art and literature. Since the late 20th century, Western society has undergone a "ludification," as the influence of game-playing has grown ever more prevalent. At the same time, new theories of postmodernism have emphasized the importance of interactive, playful behavior. Core concepts of postmodernism are evident in pen-and-paper role-playing, such as Dungeons and Dragons. Exploring the interrelationships among narrative, gameplay, players and society, the author raises questions regarding authority, agency and responsibility, and discusses the social potential of RPGs in the 21st century.

Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age

Author: Stephanie Hedge
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476676860
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
The Digital Age has created massive technological and disciplinary shifts in tabletop role-playing, increasing the appreciation of games like Dungeons & Dragons. Millions tune in to watch and listen to RPG players on podcasts and streaming platforms, while virtual tabletops connect online players. Such shifts elicit new scholarly perspectives. This collection includes essays on the transmedia ecology that has connected analog with digital and audio spaces. Essays explore the boundaries of virtual tabletops and how users engage with a variety of technology to further role-playing. Authors map the growing diversity of the TRPG fandom and detail how players interact with RPG-related podcasts. Interviewed are content creators like Griffin McElroy of The Adventure Zone podcast, Roll20 co-creator Nolan T. Jones, board game designers Nikki Valens and Isaac Childres and fan artists Tracey Alvarez and Alex Schiltz. These essays and interviews expand the academic perspective to reflect the future of role-playing.

Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens

Author: Gerald A. Voorhees
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441141081
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 387

Book Description
Dungeons, Dragons, and Digital Denizens is a collection of scholarly essays that seeks to represent the far-reaching scope and implications of digital role-playing games as both cultural and academic artifacts. As a genre, digital role playing games have undergone constant and radical revision, pushing not only multiple boundaries of game development, but also the playing strategies and experiences of players. Divided into three distinct sections, this premiere volume captures the distinctiveness of different game types, the forms of play they engender and their social and cultural implications. Contributors examine a range of games, from classics like Final Fantasy to blockbusters like World of Warcraft to obscure genre bending titles like Lux Pain. Working from a broad range of disciplines such as ecocritism, rhetoric, performance, gender, and communication, these essays yield insights that enrich the field of game studies and further illuminate the cultural, psychological and philosophical implications of a society that increasingly produces, plays and discourses about role playing games.

The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games

Author: Jennifer Grouling Cover
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786456175
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
Despite the rise of computer gaming, millions of adults still play face to face role playing games, which rely in part on social interaction to create stories. This work explores tabletop role playing game (TRPG) as a genre separate from computer role playing games. The relationship of TRPGs to other games is examined, as well as the interaction among the tabletop module, computer game, and novel versions of Dungeons & Dragons. Given particular attention are the narrative and linguistic structures of the gaming session, and the ways that players and gamemasters work together to construct narratives. The text also explores wider cultural influences that surround tabletop gamers.

Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge, 2001–2012

Author: William J. White
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030528197
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

Book Description
This book provides an introduction to the Forge, an online discussion site for tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) design, play, and publication that was active during the first years of the twenty-first century and which served as an important locus for experimentation in game design and production during that time. Aimed at game studies scholars, for whom the ideas formulated at or popularized by the Forge are of key interest, the book also attempts to provide an accessible account of the growth and development of the Forge as a site of participatory culture. It situates the Forge within the broader context of TRPG discourse, and connects “Forge theory” to the academic investigation of role-playing.

The Functions of Role-Playing Games

Author: Sarah Lynne Bowman
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786455551
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
This study takes an analytical approach to the world of role-playing games, providing a theoretical framework for understanding their psychological and sociological functions. Sometimes dismissed as escapist and potentially dangerous, role-playing actually encourages creativity, self-awareness, group cohesion and "out-of-the-box" thinking. The book also offers a detailed participant-observer ethnography on role-playing games, featuring insightful interviews with 19 participants of table-top, live action and virtual games.

An Introduction to Game Studies

Author: Frans Mäyrä
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1473902924
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 415

Book Description
An Introduction to Game Studies is the first introductory textbook for students of game studies. It provides a conceptual overview of the cultural, social and economic significance of computer and video games and traces the history of game culture and the emergence of game studies as a field of research. Key concepts and theories are illustrated with discussion of games taken from different historical phases of game culture. Progressing from the simple, yet engaging gameplay of Pong and text-based adventure games to the complex virtual worlds of contemporary online games, the book guides students towards analytical appreciation and critical engagement with gaming and game studies. Students will learn to: - Understand and analyse different aspects of phenomena we recognise as ′game′ and play′ - Identify the key developments in digital game design through discussion of action in games of the 1970s, fiction and adventure in games of the 1980s, three-dimensionality in games of the 1990s, and social aspects of gameplay in contemporary online games - Understand games as dynamic systems of meaning-making - Interpret the context of games as ′culture′ and subculture - Analyse the relationship between technology and interactivity and between ′game′ and ′reality′ - Situate games within the context of digital culture and the information society With further reading suggestions, images, exercises, online resources and a whole chapter devoted to preparing students to do their own game studies project, An Introduction to Game Studies is the complete toolkit for all students pursuing the study of games. The companion website at www.sagepub.co.uk/mayra contains slides and assignments that are suitable for self-study as well as for classroom use. Students will also benefit from online resources at www.gamestudiesbook.net, which will be regularly blogged and updated by the author. Professor Frans Mäyrä is a Professor of Games Studies and Digital Culture at the Hypermedia Laboratory in the University of Tampere, Finland.

Japanese Role-Playing Games

Author: Rachael Hutchinson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793643555
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
Japanese Role-playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG examines the origins, boundaries, and transnational effects of the genre, addressing significant formal elements as well as narrative themes, character construction, and player involvement. Contributors from Japan, Europe, North America, and Australia employ a variety of theoretical approaches to analyze popular game series and individual titles, introducing an English-speaking audience to Japanese video game scholarship while also extending postcolonial and philosophical readings to the Japanese game text. In a three-pronged approach, the collection uses these analyses to look at genre, representation, and liminality, engaging with a multitude of concepts including stereotypes, intersectionality, and the political and social effects of JRPGs on players and industry conventions. Broadly, this collection considers JRPGs as networked systems, including evolved iterations of MMORPGs and card collecting “social games” for mobile devices. Scholars of media studies, game studies, Asian studies, and Japanese culture will find this book particularly useful.