6,973 research outputs found

    Connecting Worlds. Fantasy Role-Playing Games, Ritual Acts and the Magic Circle

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    Categories Theoretical Perspectives: game definitions and the construction of the magical circle. Research Methodologies and Case Studies: Role Playing Games and the Fantasy subculture in the Netherlands. Abstract As I demonstrated in my article ‘The Other Game Researcher’ (presented at Level Up DiGRA gamesconference 2003), on the development of gamestudies and a game research methodology, I’m fascinated by the construction and workings of borders. Herein I discussed how game researchers are busy doing game studies: researching, writing and publishing articles, organizing conferences and creating a curriculum. I argued that creating a new autonomous discipline such as game studies mainly involves constructing boundaries on different levels. In this paper I will take the ideas as presented in ‘The Other Game Researcher’ a step further. Here I will focus on the construction of borders and spaces in games and play. Specifically the borders of play and space/time as they are constructed in my object of research: (Fantasy) Role Playing Games (RPG). In this analysis I will not only focus on digital RPGs (Multi User Dungeons and Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) but also on ‘analogue’ RPGs such as the table-top ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ game and Live Action Role Playing (LARP). I will argue that these games are quite literally ‘worlds of play’, which tend to exist in a mixed reality. RPGs are not only constructed in the fantasy world of the game but also in the daily life of the players. Therefore the fantasy subculture surrounding these games, existing in the daily life of the players, is crucial in this analysis. I will focus on the construction of borders and space/ time in these games and the Fantasy subculture in the Netherlands from various perspectives/ levels. I would like to discuss how RPGs are at the same time included but also excluded from definitions of (digital) games and play. It will be argued why this ‘being on the border’ of RPGs is exactly what makes them interesting and useful to research. Secondly, I will discuss how the game space or the magical circle as the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga called it, works in RPGs. I will discuss how in analogue and digital RPGs this is not an already existing and closed framework but a space that is being constructed in time. This theoretical analysis will be embedded in examples from the fieldwork I conducted at the yearly Elf Fantasy Fair in the Netherlands (2003 and 2004, http://www.elffantasy.nl/) . This festival is important in the Dutch Fantasy subculture as it attracts more than 20.000 participants, who are interested in fantasy and RPGs. To contextualize the Dutch Fantasy Role Playing scene in an international perspective I will refer to US (Fine and Mackay) and Scandinavian (Nordic role-playing convention publications) theoretical research and fieldwork on RPGs. By using this information I will discuss how the magical circle is being constructed with diffuse borders. In Fantasy Role Playing games the magical circle is constructed and performed as a ritual space, in which players create identities and meaning because they are performing the game between worlds. References Aarseth, Espen, "Allegories of Space: The Question of Spatiality in Computer games" (1998). As LARP Grows Up –Theory and Methods in LARP (2003). Copier, Marinka, "The Other Game Researcher - Participating in and watching the construction of boundaries in game studies" in: Level Up Conference Proceedings (2003). Fine, Gary Allen, Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds (1983). Huizinga, Johan, Homo Ludens (1938). Juul, Jesper, Half-Real. Videogames between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (Copenhagen, 2003). Mackay, Daniel, The Fantasy Role-Playing Game. A New Performing Art (2001). Montola, Markus and Jaakko Stenros ed., Beyond Role and Play. Tools, Toys and Theory for Harnessing the Imagination (2004). Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play. Game Design Fundamentals (2003)

    Play Harms: Liability and the Play Conceit in Virtual Worlds

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    Fictional Practices of Spirituality I: Interactive Media

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    "Fictional Practices of Spirituality" provides critical insight into the implementation of belief, mysticism, religion, and spirituality into worlds of fiction, be it interactive or non-interactive. This first volume focuses on interactive, virtual worlds - may that be the digital realms of video games and VR applications or the imaginary spaces of life action role-playing and soul-searching practices. It features analyses of spirituality as gameplay facilitator, sacred spaces and architecture in video game geography, religion in video games and spiritual acts and their dramaturgic function in video games, tabletop, or LARP, among other topics. The contributors offer a first-time ever comprehensive overview of play-rites as spiritual incentives and playful spirituality in various medial incarnations

    Rules of the House: Strategy, Tactic, and Violence in One World By Night, World of Darkness, Live-Action Role-Play Games

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    The following thesis focuses on governance of institutionalized play in three World of Darkness live-action role-play (larp) games (ethnographic field work conducted between May and August of 2016), whose players have willingly allowed the international organization of One World by Night – an organization made up of their peers – to unify them in such a way as to create connection, community, and shared story across the world. I analyze four locii within these games (the book, the organization, the storyteller, and the player) using Michel de Certeau’s, The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Steven Rendall, specifically focusing on the roles of the tactician and the strategist, to illustrate how the varying levels of power within these games work with, and pull against, each other. As the field work was originally conducted to investigate violence within these physical role-play games, the heart of this thesis, and one of the threads that connects each chapter, is a discussion of violence, used to confirm the serious attitude these games can sometimes engender. Though Michele de Certeau may not be a name generally associated with the discussion of gaming, it is my hope to show that gaming communities can be analyzed using the same theories anthropologists might use to examine any other community or society, as gaming communities are not separate from the rest of the world, but an integral part of the system

    Spielgrenzen und ihre Denkweisen

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    Digitale Spiele stehen in den letzten Jahren im Zentrum einer Entgrenzungsbewegung, die im Begriff ist, das Ludische als Kulturphänomen zu transformieren. Dabei geht es nicht nur um die im Zuge des Medienwandels und als Folge neuer Vertriebsformen ubiquitäre Verfügbarkeit von Spielen, sondern mit Joost Raessens um eine weitreichende Ludifizierung von Kultur, die zahlreiche Bereiche des alltäglichen Lebens immer spielerischer gestaltet

    Dungeon Classroom Guide: Using Tabletop Role-Playing Games in the Classroom

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    I’m writing this booklet to show educators why tabletop role-playing games are a useful academic tool. I have loved teaching and tabletop role-playing games for a long time. I firmly believe they are both magical. As I’ve learned and experienced more of teaching and role-playing, I’ve come to discover their synergies. The goal of a classroom is to gather minds and learn through experience. The goal of a tabletop role-playing games is to gather minds and learn through experience. At first glance, the types of learning associated between the two don\u27t seem to synchronize. Classrooms are formal; games are informal. Classrooms are mandatory; games are recreational. Classrooms are for the future; games are for the now. With proper understanding, however, you can see these dichotomies as a spectrum. You can see how to blend classroom and game into a uniform artifact of discovery and enjoyment. Furthermore, you can see how each benefits from the other, enriching the experience of either in the absence of its counterpart. Some of you who are reading this may already be familiar with tabletop role-playing games, and therefore already have an inkling of the connection between them and education. For you, portions of this booklet may seem unnecessary. Hopefully, portions of it are still helpful in formalizing your intuitive connection and presenting possibilities for combining the two. For those of you who are not familiar with tabletop role-playing games, you may find it necessary to pause your reading and look up some information because the things I am saying sound like a foreign language. Both of these are alright. This is not a summative guide of everything education and everything tabletop role-playing, but one future teacher’s understanding of how the two play into each other. It is neither perfect nor complete, nor is it meant to be. It is more of an access point for you to start experimenting with tabletop role-playing games in your classroom. Just like the story created around the table during a tabletop role-playing game, truly harnessing this book will come in the moment of play. Regardless of where you start when reading this booklet, I hope by its end you see how teaching and tabletop role-playing work together because of their focus on people, imagination, and an unceasing desire to explore

    The Magic Circle as Occult Technology

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    Dual Consciousness: What Psychology and Counseling Theories Can Teach and Learn Regarding Identity and the Role-Playing Game Experience

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    Many psychologists, therapists, and educators have emphasized the practice of play, especially with enacted roles, as a site for learning and therapeutic growth. This article weaves together a plethora of theories from psychology, Counseling, and role-playing game studies in an effort to understand the nature of enacted roles, their relationship to identity, and their transformative potential. Challenging the notion that identity is a fixed, stable monolith, the article synthesizes four overall approaches to theorizing the nature of identity drawn from various theories: identity as a social construct, narrative identity, identity as psychodynamic, and identities as parts of a whole. The authors posit that these ways of framing identity can help role-players, designers, and facilitators better understand the multifaceted nature of selfhood. This work holds implications for understanding the enactment of characters in role-playing games, especially with regard to the transformative potential of the role-playing experience. Throughout the article, we also explore the psychology of play from the perspective of therapeutic practices and modalities that exist outside of the discourses of role-playing games as a hobby or field of academic study. We will emphasize how role-play, identity shifting, narrative, and embodied enactment are present in many existing therapeutic processes to various degrees. Examples include psychosynthesis, Gestalt therapy, drama therapy, narrative therapy, Internal Family Systems, and person-centred therapy. We will highlight clinical therapists who use role-playing games to augment more traditional practices. Furthermore, while role-taking activities are central to many human experiences throughout time, the article will emphasize benefits the imagination space of role-playing games, particularly with regard to prolonged perspective taking, co-creative improvisation, the alibi of fiction, and increased agency and empowerment. The article will also address limitations to the form that might interrupt its transformative potential, such as cognitive dissonance, identity defense, and difficulties with integrating these experiences within one’s life narrative after they conclude
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