What do you think?
Rate this book
Role-Playing Game Studies
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.
- GenresGame Design
484 pages, Paperback
Published April 24, 2018
3 people are currently reading
28 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 20, 2021
This book presents role-playing games from the perspective of various fields of academic study. The book is divided into four sections: Definitions, Forms, Disciplinary Perspectives, and Interdisciplinary Issues.
The section on Definitions is useful in that it gives an overview of the wide variety of definitions for role playing. For those doing academic research on role-playing, this could point to some useful sources.
The section on Forms provides descriptions of the various types of role-playing activities. Each section gives a brief history of each form and discusses key innovations in those forms. Since each chapter only deals with a single form, this section is focused, so the content all seems relevant to the discussion.
The section on Disciplinary Perspectives is the weakest section of the book. The focus of these chapters seems to be more on the discipline than on roleplaying, so they are front loaded with lots of explanation of basic terms and concepts within the discipline. To give an example, my area of research is education. The chapter on education starts off with an explanation of learning theories, which is something education researchers already know very well, so my impression is that this is not written for in-discipline readers. Another weakness of this section is that the chapters tend to mix the role-playing forms, so within a heading research on tabletop RPGs and MMORPG will be cited to support a concept. From my perspective as a player, very different things are happening in different forms of role-playing, so I feel that they shouldn't be mixed so casually. Finally, certain fields don't seem to have much relevant research into RPGs. I'll use the education section again as an example. It has a paragraph citing a study on how children who play Civilization are more motivated to learn history. I felt this was a little off target because there is a difference between game research and role-playing research.
The final section on Interdisciplinary Issues was much stronger than the section on Disciplinary Perspectives because the focus is put back on the RPGs. Also, the issues discussed here seemed to have the most potential for research.
There were three standout chapters that I'd like to recommend reading. I really enjoyed the chapter on online freeform role-playing (chapter 8). I have participated in this kind of role-playing before, but I never knew what to call it. Reading this chapter opened my eyes to a type of role-playing that I am really interested in trying more. Also, the chapter on world building (chapter 20) felt relevant to RPGs, both from a player's perspective and from a researcher's perspective. Finally, the chapter on representation (chapter 26) seems relevant to changes in the role-playing community that I have observed in my lifetime.
The section on Definitions is useful in that it gives an overview of the wide variety of definitions for role playing. For those doing academic research on role-playing, this could point to some useful sources.
The section on Forms provides descriptions of the various types of role-playing activities. Each section gives a brief history of each form and discusses key innovations in those forms. Since each chapter only deals with a single form, this section is focused, so the content all seems relevant to the discussion.
The section on Disciplinary Perspectives is the weakest section of the book. The focus of these chapters seems to be more on the discipline than on roleplaying, so they are front loaded with lots of explanation of basic terms and concepts within the discipline. To give an example, my area of research is education. The chapter on education starts off with an explanation of learning theories, which is something education researchers already know very well, so my impression is that this is not written for in-discipline readers. Another weakness of this section is that the chapters tend to mix the role-playing forms, so within a heading research on tabletop RPGs and MMORPG will be cited to support a concept. From my perspective as a player, very different things are happening in different forms of role-playing, so I feel that they shouldn't be mixed so casually. Finally, certain fields don't seem to have much relevant research into RPGs. I'll use the education section again as an example. It has a paragraph citing a study on how children who play Civilization are more motivated to learn history. I felt this was a little off target because there is a difference between game research and role-playing research.
The final section on Interdisciplinary Issues was much stronger than the section on Disciplinary Perspectives because the focus is put back on the RPGs. Also, the issues discussed here seemed to have the most potential for research.
There were three standout chapters that I'd like to recommend reading. I really enjoyed the chapter on online freeform role-playing (chapter 8). I have participated in this kind of role-playing before, but I never knew what to call it. Reading this chapter opened my eyes to a type of role-playing that I am really interested in trying more. Also, the chapter on world building (chapter 20) felt relevant to RPGs, both from a player's perspective and from a researcher's perspective. Finally, the chapter on representation (chapter 26) seems relevant to changes in the role-playing community that I have observed in my lifetime.
Displaying 1 of 1 review