The Postmodern Joy Of Role Playing Games

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The Postmodern Joy of Role-Playing Games

René Reinhold Schallegger
The Postmodern Joy of Role Playing Games Book PDF

Author : René Reinhold Schallegger
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2018-02-16
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781476631462

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The Postmodern Joy of Role-Playing Games by René Reinhold Schallegger Pdf

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.

The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies

José P. Zagal,Sebastian Deterding
The Routledge Handbook of Role Playing Game Studies Book PDF

Author : José P. Zagal,Sebastian Deterding
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 588 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2024-06-27
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781040029763

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The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies by José P. Zagal,Sebastian Deterding Pdf

This Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to the latest research on role-playing games (RPGs) across disciplines, cultures, and media in one single, accessible volume. Collaboratively authored by more than 40 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 Baldur’s Gate, Genshin Impact, 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 worldbuilding, immersion, and player-character relations, as well as explore actual play and streaming, diversity, equity, inclusion, jubensha, therapeutic uses of RPGs, and storygames, journaling games, and other forms of text-based RPGs. Each chapter includes definitions of key terms and recommended readings to help students and scholars new to RPG studies find their way into this interdisciplinary field. A comprehensive reference volume ideal for students and scholars of game studies and immersive experiences and those looking to learn more about the ever-growing, interdisciplinary field of RPG studies.

Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Experience of Imagined Worlds

Nicholas J. Mizer
Tabletop Role Playing Games and the Experience of Imagined Worlds Book PDF

Author : Nicholas J. Mizer
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2019-11-22
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783030291273

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Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Experience of Imagined Worlds by Nicholas J. Mizer Pdf

In 1974, the release of Dungeons & Dragons forever changed the way that we experience imagined worlds. No longer limited to simply reading books or watching movies, gamers came together to collaboratively and interactively build and explore new realms. Based on four years of interviews and game recordings from locations spanning the United States, this book offers a journey that explores how role-playing games use a combination of free-form imagination and tightly constrained rules to experience those realms. By developing our understanding of the fantastic worlds of role-playing games, this book also offers insight into how humans come together and collaboratively imagine the world around us.

Forum-Based Role Playing Games as Digital Storytelling

Csenge Virág Zalka
Forum Based Role Playing Games as Digital Storytelling Book PDF

Author : Csenge Virág Zalka
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2019-03-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781476635262

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Forum-Based Role Playing Games as Digital Storytelling by Csenge Virág Zalka Pdf

When people hear the term "role-playing games," they tend to think of two things: a group of friends sitting around a table playing Dungeons & Dragons or video games with exciting graphics. Between those two, however, exists a third style of gaming. Hundreds of online forums offer gathering places for thousands of players--people who come together to role-play through writing. They create stories by taking turns, describing events through their characters' eyes. Whether it is the arena of the Hunger Games, the epic battles of the Marvel Universe or love stories in a fantasy version of New York, people build their own spaces of words, and inhabit them day after day. But what makes thousands of players, many teenagers among them, voluntarily type up novel-length stories? How do they use the resources of the Internet, gather images, sounds, and video clips to weave them into one coherent narrative? How do they create together through improvisation and negotiation, in ways that connect them to older forms of storytelling? Through observing more than a hundred websites and participating in five of them for a year, the author has created a pilot study that delves into a subculture of unbounded creativity.

Tabletop Role-Playing Therapy: A Guide for the Clinician Game Master

Megan A. Connell
Tabletop Role Playing Therapy A Guide for the Clinician Game Master Book PDF

Author : Megan A. Connell
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2023-03-28
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781324030614

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Tabletop Role-Playing Therapy: A Guide for the Clinician Game Master by Megan A. Connell Pdf

A comprehensive book explaining “applied RPGs”—using role-playing games therapeutically. Across the globe, therapists are using tabletop roleplaying games (RPG) such as Dungeons & Dragons as a part of their practice. This book provides an overview of what RPGs are and what makes them such an effective and powerful tool for therapy. By examining research on gaming, flow, immersion, and role-play, readers will gain a better understanding of the theoretical underpinnings and how to skillfully and ethically use RPGs in their own practices. The author also looks at the history of RPGs, specifically focusing on issues of diversity and representation to help providers understand some possible pitfalls that exist within the medium. The book utilizes an example group to walk through everything from conception, planning, running, documentation, and termination of the group.

Strictly Fantasy

Gerald Nachtwey
Strictly Fantasy Book PDF

Author : Gerald Nachtwey
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2021-05-12
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781476643472

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Strictly Fantasy by Gerald Nachtwey Pdf

Role-playing games seemed to appear of nowhere in the early 1970s and have been a quiet but steady presence in American culture ever since. This new look at the hobby searches for the historical origins of role-playing games deep in the imaginative worlds of Western culture. It looks at the earliest fantasy stories from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at the fans--both readers and writers--who wanted to bring them to life, at the Midwestern landscape and the middle-class households that were the hobby's birthplace, and at the struggle to find meaning and identity amidst cultural conflicts that drove many people into these communities of play. This book also addresses race, religion, gender, fandom, and the place these games have within American capitalism. All the paths of this journey are connected by the very quality that has made fantasy role-playing so powerful: it binds the limitless imagination into a "strict" framework of rules. Far from being an accidental offshoot of marginalized fan communities, role-playing games' ability to hold contradictions in dynamic, creative tension made them a necessary and central product of the twentieth century.

Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age

Stephanie Hedge,Jennifer Grouling
Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age Book PDF

Author : Stephanie Hedge,Jennifer Grouling
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2021-02-18
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781476642017

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Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age by Stephanie Hedge,Jennifer Grouling Pdf

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.

The Performance of Video Games

Kelly I. Aliano
The Performance of Video Games Book PDF

Author : Kelly I. Aliano
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 231 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2022-10-27
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781476647906

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The Performance of Video Games by Kelly I. Aliano Pdf

When viewed through the context of an interactive play, a video game player fulfills the roles of both actor and spectator, watching and influencing a game's story in real time. This book presents video gaming as a virtual medium for performance, scrutinizing the ways in which a player's interaction with the narrative informs personal, historical, social and cultural understanding. Centering the author's own experiences as both video game player and performance scholar, the book thoroughly applies concepts from theatre and performance studies. Chapters argue that the posthuman player position now challenges what can be contextualized as a lived experience, and how video games can change players' relationships with historical events and contemporary concerns, ultimately impacting how they develop a sense of self. Using the author's own gaming experiences as a framework, the book focuses on the intersection between player and narrative, exploring what engagement with a storyline reveals about identity and society.

Watch Us Roll

Shelly Jones
Watch Us Roll Book PDF

Author : Shelly Jones
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 227 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2021-08-03
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781476643434

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Watch Us Roll by Shelly Jones Pdf

Actual play is a movement within role-playing gaming in which players livestream their gameplay for others to watch and enjoy. This new medium has allowed the playing of games to become a digestible, consumable text for individuals to watch, enjoy, learn from, and analyze. Bridging the gap between the analog and the digital, actual play is changing and challenging our expectations of tabletop role-playing and providing a space for new scholarship. This edited collection of essays focuses on Dungeons and Dragons actual play and examines this phenomenon from a variety of different disciplinary approaches. Authors explore how to define actual play, how fans interact with and affect the narrative and gameplay of actual play, the diversity of gamers (or lack thereof) within actual play media, and how audiences can use actual play media for more than mere entertainment.

Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons

Premeet Sidhu,Marcus Carter,Jose P. Zagal
Fifty Years of Dungeons Dragons Book PDF

Author : Premeet Sidhu,Marcus Carter,Jose P. Zagal
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 387 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2024-05-14
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9780262547604

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Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons by Premeet Sidhu,Marcus Carter,Jose P. Zagal Pdf

On the fiftieth anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, a collection of essays that explores and celebrates the game’s legacy and its tremendous impact on gaming and popular culture. In 2024, the enormously influential tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons—also known as D&D—celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. To mark the occasion, editors Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter, and José Zagal have assembled an edited collection that celebrates and reflects on important parts of the game’s past, present, and future. Each chapter in Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons explores why the nondigital game is more popular than ever—with sales increasing 33 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite worldwide lockdowns—and offers readers the opportunity to critically reflect on their own experiences, perceptions, and play of D&D. Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons draws on fascinating research and insight from expert scholars in the field, including: Gary Alan Fine, whose 1983 book Shared Fantasy remains a canonical text in game studies; Jon Peterson, celebrated D&D historian; Daniel Justice, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture; and numerous leading and emerging scholars from the growing discipline of game studies, including Amanda Cote, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, and Aaron Trammell. The chapters cover a diverse range of topics—from D&D’s adoption in local contexts and classrooms and by queer communities to speculative interpretations of what D&D might look like in one hundred years—that aim to deepen readers’ understanding of the game.

The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 Games

Patrick Hickey, Jr.
The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 Games Book PDF

Author : Patrick Hickey, Jr.
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2023-01-20
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781476688541

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The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 Games by Patrick Hickey, Jr. Pdf

Featuring interviews with the creators of 37 popular video games--including SOCOM, Shadow of the Colossus, Tekken Tag Tournament and Sly Cooper--this book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of some of the most influential and iconic (and sometimes forgotten) games of the original PlayStation 2 era. Recounting endless hours of painstaking development, the challenges of working with mega publishers and the uncertainties of public reception, the interviewees reveal the creative processes that produced some of gaming's classic titles.

The Minds Behind Shooter Games

Patrick Hickey, Jr.
The Minds Behind Shooter Games Book PDF

Author : Patrick Hickey, Jr.
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2021-03-15
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781476682730

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The Minds Behind Shooter Games by Patrick Hickey, Jr. Pdf

Featuring interviews with the creators of 39 popular video games--including Halo 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Medal of Honor and Metroid Prime--this book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the origins of some of the most iconic shooter games. Interviewees recount endless hours of painstaking development, the challenges of working with mega-publishers, the growth of the genre and the creative processes that produced some of the industry's biggest hits, cult classics and indie successes.

The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games

Patrick Hickey, Jr.
The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games Book PDF

Author : Patrick Hickey, Jr.
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2022-07-08
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781476645018

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The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games by Patrick Hickey, Jr. Pdf

Prior to the arrival of the Sega Genesis, video games were still largely considered "kid stuff," but with a far more mature and eclectic range of titles, and an understanding of what gamers wanted, Sega and its Genesis/Mega Drive console began to shift the expectations for what gaming could be. Never scared to innovate, Sega's impact on the industry continues to this day through the games they originally developed and the technology their consoles pushed into the mainstream. Featuring interviews with the creators of over 40 games on the Sega Genesis console including Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Altered Beast, Aladdin, Earthworm Jim and NHL 95, this book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of some of the influential, iconic, and sometimes forgotten games on Sega's most important contribution to the game industry. The interviewees reveal the challenges of working with mega publishers, the uncertainties of public reception, and the creative processes that produced some of the 16-bit era's classic titles.

Playing with the Guys

Marc A. Ouellette
Playing with the Guys Book PDF

Author : Marc A. Ouellette
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2021-06-08
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781476643496

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Playing with the Guys by Marc A. Ouellette Pdf

A lot of work has been done talking about what masculinity is and what it does within video games, but less has been given to considering how and why this happens, and the processes involved. This book considers the array of daily relationships involved in producing masculinity and how those actions and relationships translate to video games. Moreover, it examines the ways the actual play of the games maps onto the stories to create contradictory moments that show that, while toxic masculinity certainly exists, it is far from inevitable. Topics covered include the nature of masculine apprenticeship and nurturing, labor, fatherhood, the scapegoating of women, and reckoning with mortality, among many others.

Who's in the Game?

Terri Toles Patkin
Who s in the Game Book PDF

Author : Terri Toles Patkin
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2020-11-30
Category : Games & Activities
ISBN : 9781476676913

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Who's in the Game? by Terri Toles Patkin Pdf

Some board games--like Candy Land, Chutes & Ladders, Clue, Guess Who, The Game of Life, Monopoly, Operation and Payday--have popularity spanning generations. But over time, updates to games have created significantly different messages about personal identity and evolving social values. Games offer representations of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, age, ability and social class that reflect the status quo and respond to social change. Using popular mass-market games, this rhetorical assessment explores board design, game implements (tokens, markers, 3-D elements) and playing instructions. This book argues the existence of board games as markers of an ever-changing sociocultural framework, exploring the nature of play and how games embody and extend societal themes and values.