In the last year, I’ve reflected upon the relationship between role-playing and the rise of computer gaming, and how that relationship has shaped the current revival of tabletop gaming (or as I dubbed it in a previous post: The Renaissance.) I have always loved PC games and often spend time on sites like yesgamers.com buying new in-game […]
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 […]
So my summer project: to create The Downtown Writers Jam, an event that brings together a little bit of music, a little bit of writing, and a whole lot of attitude. I want to create a space for writers to leave behind the podium, and replace it with their soul. I want to create a place where we move the words from the page and bring them into the crowd.
A few days ago, I gave a lecture to at Eastern Illinois Historical Administration Symposium, a day-long conference that brings together museum curators and graduate students preparing to curate. During my talk, I mentioned the idea of using Dungeons & Dragons (or other role-playing games) as an outreach mechanism for museums, which are one of […]
**I’ve launched a Reddit discussion about how to incorporate RPGs and D&D at Museums. You can join the discussion there, or begin one here. I’ll recap it all in a few days.** On April 12, I was invited to give a lecture at the Historical Administration Program Association Symposium at Eastern Illinois University, a yearly […]
While writing the Second Edition of Dungeons & Dreamers, John and I spent a great deal of time discussing Part IV: A Darkness Falls (read this section for free), which deals with the socio-political issues related to computer games and violence. We wanted to make sure we treated the issue fairly and that we relied […]
I suppose had John and I really thought through Dungeons & Dreamers back in 2001, we might have considered creating a little cottage industry around the book’s basic premise. As we researched and then created the spider web-like narrative plot points that connected modern computer game developers with Dungeons & Dragons, we were continually struck […]
If you don’t completely love the fact that in Florida, a Republican congressional candidate faced a scandal because pictures of him LARPing hit the media, then I don’t want to know you. Of course it’s completely silly that this is even a story. I’m far more likely to trust somebody who can muster up the time […]
If you’ve been reading the blog (or part of the Dungeons & Dreamers Google+ page), you’ll know that we’ve been having a discussion about the importance of “role playing” in role-playing games. As a storyteller, I find the role play to be most important in any communal game. How people react to each other and […]
[View the story “Do Role-Playing Games Dream of Encompassing Rule Sets” on Storify]
I love watching Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games seep into the public consciousness. (Well, maybe not so much when South Park did it, like here or here.) The more we see the games depicted — even when depicted with its most nerdy roots — the more people begin to internalize the idea that these game […]
Outside my fancy and lucrative writing career, I’m also a professor at Ball State University where I’m the director of our Digital Media Minor, an online-only program that teaches students digital story development and design. We’ve spent a great deal of time searching for ways to make the program less individualistic, which is a problem facing […]