Role-Playing Literature

[Squark]

Minor Clarification here- By Roleplaying Litterature, I mean books and articles about the Roleplaying community and the hobby itself, not novels

Anyway, Im working on my senior project (for my last year of high school, that is), and after a lot of deliberation, my teacher suggested I teach my class a bit more about Roleplaying. The problem is I can't find any articles or books on this subject. Does anyone know of any credible sources (The reason this is important is because the school can be a bit of a stickler about this sort of thing. Wikipedia got the axe, for instance) you could reccomend?


(Mods, my sincerist apologies if this should go to a different forum)

[Force]

Perhaps you should try Google Scholar for access to journal articles? You'll need school access, probably, in order to get the actual articles.

Edit: Wikipedia lists a few books and journal articles in its references section. That might be a good start.

[Telonius]

Quick google resulted in this (http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/whatis/psychology.html)site. Can't vouch for the reliability of the information or articles, or if the list is cherry-picked to show what the author wants. But it might be a good starting point.

[grimbold]

i believe there is a book called "the making of dungeons and dragons" however i am not entirely certain on that. You may want to look up some interviews with the guys who write sourcebooks.
like Monte Cooke, Gary Gygax, those people

[Salanmander]

I'd like to second google scholar as an excellent starting point for this sort of research. A quick scholar search for "roleplaying games" yielded the following things that may be interesting

Shared Fantasy: Roleplaying Games as Social Worlds (http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=rLlLbN0XuSEC&oi=fnd&pg=PP11&dq=roleplaying+games&ots=Awu2TVzUVn&sig=i5tEDIuD0YqCPKEg_wow8T33u4E#v=onepage&q&f=false), which is a book on the subject, probably focusing on social aspects. Not all of it is on google books, but check your local library, and see if that have an inter-library loan system, you may be able to find it.

On the Role of the Die: A brief ludologic study of pen-and-paper roleplaying games and their rules (http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/dormans) (a name actually longer than the URL), which is a probably over-pretentious (ludologic just means "of the study of games") web-published paper on rules sets. I wouldn't use it as a source for anything I planned to publish, but for a high school paper it's probably fine.

Role-Playing Games, Models and Negotiation Processes (http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/6/2/10.html), which lists a few papers talking about RPGs as used in more formal contexts, like why they might be useful for honing behavioral models of people (like economics maybe?).

and Roleplaying games and the christian right : Community formation in response to a moral panic (http://archimedes.ballarat.edu.au:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:919;jsessionid=35E854180749377336F880F02F35C 2CD), which is a completely legitimate journal article about conservative reactions to RPGs, and the reactions to those reactions. (Maybe even a third layer, I didn't look closely.)

[Squark]

I found Shared Fantasy on google scholar, too. Unfortunately, neither my county library nor my school library has one. Still, Google Scholar does merit further investigation. I'll have to take a more detailed look after lunch hour.

[Salanmander]

Do check to see if you have an inter-library loan. It's not always obvious, but in the county that I live (Alameda), the county libraries are part of the Link+ system, which includes the University of California libraries, which includes UC Berkeley, which is one of the largest libraries in the united states.

[obliged_salmon]

I've looked at the International Journal of Roleplaying. It's sort of heavy stuff, but some of it might be helpful, and it's free.

http://journalofroleplaying.org

[Force]

If you have a local community college or university, see if you can access their catalog over the 'net. If not, go there (or as a last resort, call there) and see if they have any books you can't find elsewhere.

[gorfnab]

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf has a decent number of chapters devoted to D&D and other roleplaying.

The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange by Matt Barrowcliffe is pretty much what the title implies.

Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress: A Girl's Guide to the D&D Game by Shelly Mazzanoble explains D&D from a woman's perspective and is also a great guide for newbie D&D players.

Thirty Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons is a great compilation of articles explaining some of the history of D&D from various game designers and celebrities like Vin Diesel.

[Squark]

Does anyone know where the Pulling Report was originally published? I can't find any information about that,

[Salanmander]

It's entirely possible that it is simply self-published online.

[Dimers]

You can use John Kim's website (http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/site/sitemap.html) as a source itself, and as you click through, you'll find links and references to other materials.

[Telonius]

If he gives you grief about an online source, you can tell him that most major scientific journals now have no difficulties accepting stable websites in their References sections. (i.e. Wikipedia, bad; well-established website that has been in existence over 10 years containing academic research and tons of good citations and/or active links to real research, good).