When we were writing Dungeons & Dreamers, John and I spent a great deal of time whittling away various themes and ideas that just didn’t quite fit into the narrative. The best story that didn’t make the book was a long chapter I wrote about Richard Garriott’s mother helping a community build a prefabricated Children’s Museum.
Freed from the constraints of the narrative, it’s equally enjoyable to gather the smaller stories that wouldn’t have fit into our book but that clearly grow out of the idea of games as community.
Live Action Role-Playing Games
While we wrote about Austin’s Society for Creative Anachronism, which was really LARPing before LARPing was a thing. These days, I’ve been seeing stories about theater groups and game organizations using LARPs as a form of comedy and expression.
- Live action role-playing turns Rosa Parks Circle into battlefield
- What do you get when you combine Dungeons & Dragons and improv comedy?
On Games Making You More Social
People continually argue that games make us less social and more violent. Neither of those ideas are true, but these mythologies persist. The premise of our book is meant to challenge those notions, and we felt so strongly about the games and violence debate that we made that portion of our book freely available.
Rather than rehash those arguments, I thought it more interesting to find stories about people finding friendship and happiness through games.
- Study shows online gaming makes players more social
- Tabletop strategy games still popular, create sense of community
- Role-Playing Games: The Best Place For Online Dating?
Role-Playing Games as Classroom Teaching Aids
I’m in the process of creating a storytelling class that uses Dungeons & Dragons as the main text. Certainly there are other systems of play, but I happen to enjoy this one (probably because I’m most familiar with it). So it’s with great interest that I follow how other educators are using role-playing games with students.
- Class ‘Warcraft’: Ramapo Central teacher uses role-playing video game with middle-schoolers
- Professor uses LARP past to grow
- In Which the Internet Creates Ways for Museums to Incorporate RPGs (well, I wrote this one)
A Brief History of Tabletop Games
Sometimes it’s nice to simply read a bit about how much these games have evolved in society.
The Prerequisite “What I Learned About Life by Gaming”
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. As such, everyone wants to write about the “lessons learned from playing” articles and posts.
Thanks for the link to my post (In Defense of Dungeons & Dragons)! And thanks for the work you’re doing here! Your efforts are greatly appreciated.
Thanks Anthony. We’ve been writing about this for a long time, but we’re big believers that the best way to spread the gospel is to help people find other smart writers and writing. 🙂