The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games

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Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786460091
Total Pages : 239 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (864 download)

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Book Synopsis The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games by : Michael J. Tresca

Download or read book The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games written by Michael J. Tresca and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the evolution of fantasy gaming from its origins in tabletop war and collectible card games to contemporary web-based live action and massive multi-player games, this book examines the archetypes and concepts within the fantasy gaming genre alongside the roles and functions of the game players themselves. Other topics include: how The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings helped shape fantasy gaming through Tolkien's obsessive attention to detail and virtual world building; the community-based fellowship embraced by players of both play-by-post and persistent browser-based games, despite the fact that these games are fundamentally solo experiences; the origins of gamebooks and interactive fiction; and the evolution of online gaming in terms of technological capabilities, media richness, narrative structure, coding authority, and participant roles.

Dangerous Games

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520284917
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Dangerous Games by : Joseph Laycock

Download or read book Dangerous Games written by Joseph Laycock and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-02-12 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1980s saw the peak of a moral panic over fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. A coalition of moral entrepreneurs that included representatives from the Christian Right, the field of psychology, and law enforcement claimed that these games were not only psychologically dangerous but an occult religion masquerading as a game. Dangerous Games explores both the history and the sociological significance of this panic. Fantasy role-playing games do share several functions in common with religion. However, religionÑas a socially constructed world of shared meaningÑcan also be compared to a fantasy role-playing game. In fact, the claims of the moral entrepreneurs, in which they presented themselves as heroes battling a dark conspiracy, often resembled the very games of imagination they condemned as evil. By attacking the imagination, they preserved the taken-for-granted status of their own socially constructed reality. Interpreted in this way, the panic over fantasy-role playing games yields new insights about how humans play and together construct and maintain meaningful worlds. LaycockÕs clear and accessible writing ensures that Dangerous Games will be required reading for those with an interest in religion, popular culture, and social behavior, both in the classroom and beyond.

Dungeons and Desktops

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Publisher : A K PETERS
ISBN 13 : 9781138574670
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (746 download)

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Book Synopsis Dungeons and Desktops by : Matt Barton

Download or read book Dungeons and Desktops written by Matt Barton and published by A K PETERS. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to computer role-playing games -- Origins -- The dark age -- The bronze age -- The silver age -- The birth of the golden age -- SSI's golden age -- Origin's golden age -- The golden age of Sir-Tech, New World Computing, and Sierra -- Early Japanese role-playing games -- Dungeon master and the rise of real-time 3D -- Other games of the golden age -- The epic fails -- The platinum age -- Diablo and the rise of action RPGs -- Fallout and Baldur's gate -- Other treasures of the platinum age -- The birth of the modern age -- Modern JRPGs -- The rise of the MMORPG -- The late modern age -- The renaissance, Kickstarted -- The road ever ventures forth -- Surprise encounter -- Appendix I : the CRPG bestiary of the extraordinary and the obscure.

The Elusive Shift

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262360942
Total Pages : 332 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis The Elusive Shift by : Jon Peterson

Download or read book The Elusive Shift written by Jon Peterson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the early Dungeons & Dragons community grappled with the nature of role-playing games, theorizing a new game genre. When Dungeon & Dragons made its debut in the mid-1970s, followed shortly thereafter by other, similar tabletop games, it sparked a renaissance in game design and critical thinking about games. D&D is now popularly considered to be the first role-playing game. But in the original rules, the term "role-playing" is nowhere to be found; D&D was marketed as a war game. In The Elusive Shift, Jon Peterson describes how players and scholars in the D&D community began to apply the term to D&D and similar games--and by doing so, established a new genre of games.

A Guide to Japanese Role-Playing Games

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781838019143
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (191 download)

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Book Synopsis A Guide to Japanese Role-Playing Games by : Bitmap Books

Download or read book A Guide to Japanese Role-Playing Games written by Bitmap Books and published by . This book was released on 2021-10-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Playing at the World

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780615642048
Total Pages : 698 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Playing at the World by : Jon Peterson

Download or read book Playing at the World written by Jon Peterson and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 698 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the conceptual origins of wargames and role-playing games in this unprecedented history of simulating the real and the impossible. From a vast survey of primary sources ranging from eighteenth-century strategists to modern hobbyists, Playing at the World distills the story of how gamers first decided fictional battles with boards and dice, and how they moved from simulating wars to simulating people. The invention of role-playing games serves as a touchstone for exploring the ways that the literary concept of character, the lure of fantastic adventure and the principles of gaming combined into the signature cultural innovation of the late twentieth century.

Fight, Magic, Items

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Publisher : Running Press Adult
ISBN 13 : 9780762479634
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (796 download)

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Book Synopsis Fight, Magic, Items by : Aidan Moher

Download or read book Fight, Magic, Items written by Aidan Moher and published by Running Press Adult. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take a journey through the history of Japanese role-playing games--from the creators who built it, the games that defined it, and the stories that transformed pop culture and continue to capture the imaginations of millions of fans to this day. The Japanese roleplaying game (JRPG) genre is one that is known for bold, unforgettable characters; rich stories, and some of the most iconic and beloved games in the industry. Inspired by early western RPGs and introducing technology and artistic styles that pushed the boundaries of what video games could be, this genre is responsible for creating some of the most complex, bold, and beloved games in history--and it has the fanbase to prove it. In Fight, Magic, Items, Aidan Moher guides readers through the fascinating history of JRPGs, exploring the technical challenges, distinct narrative and artistic visions, and creative rivalries that fueled the creation of countless iconic games and their quest to become the best, not only in Japan, but in North America, too. Moher starts with the origin stories of two classic Nintendo titles, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, and immerses readers in the world of JRPGs, following the interconnected history from through the lens of their creators and their stories full of hope, risk, and pixels, from the tiny teams and almost impossible schedules that built the foundations of the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest franchises; Reiko Kodama pushing the narrative and genre boundaries with Phantasy Star; the unexpected team up between Horii and Sakaguchi to create Chrono Trigger; or the unique mashup of classic Disney with Final Fantasy coolness in Kingdom Hearts. Filled with firsthand interviews and behind-the-scenes looks into the development, reception, and influence of JRPGs, Fight, Magic, Items captures the evolution of the genre and why it continues to grab us, decades after those first iconic pixelated games released.

The CRPG Book: A Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781999353308
Total Pages : 528 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (533 download)

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Book Synopsis The CRPG Book: A Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games by : Felipe Pepe

Download or read book The CRPG Book: A Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games written by Felipe Pepe and published by . This book was released on 2019-09 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reviews over 400 seminal games from 1975 to 2015. Each entry shares articles on the genre, mod suggestions and hints on how to run the games on modern hardware.

Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age

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Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476676860
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (766 download)

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Book Synopsis Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age by : Stephanie Hedge

Download or read book Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age written by Stephanie Hedge and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Digital Age has created massive technological and disciplinary shifts in tabletop role-playing, increasing the appreciation of games like Dungeons & Dragons. Millions tune in to watch and listen to RPG players on podcasts and streaming platforms, while virtual tabletops connect online players. Such shifts elicit new scholarly perspectives. This collection includes essays on the transmedia ecology that has connected analog with digital and audio spaces. Essays explore the boundaries of virtual tabletops and how users engage with a variety of technology to further role-playing. Authors map the growing diversity of the TRPG fandom and detail how players interact with RPG-related podcasts. Interviewed are content creators like Griffin McElroy of The Adventure Zone podcast, Roll20 co-creator Nolan T. Jones, board game designers Nikki Valens and Isaac Childres and fan artists Tracey Alvarez and Alex Schiltz. These essays and interviews expand the academic perspective to reflect the future of role-playing.

Heroic Worlds

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780879756536
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (565 download)

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Book Synopsis Heroic Worlds by : Lawrence Schick

Download or read book Heroic Worlds written by Lawrence Schick and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons explains their evolution and gives complete definitions and descriptions for related game products. Arriving on the scene in 1973, such games caught on rapidly and spawned a thriving industry. These games are regularly played improvisations, with rules that allow for consistent resolution of action, in which heroic characters created by the players battle enemies or solve mysteries. Featuring essays by eighteen top industry designers, Heroic Worlds explains the evolution of role-playing games and their influence on other forms of entertainment. The art and jargon of game design, play, and collection are defined in detail.

The Functions of Role-Playing Games

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Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786455551
Total Pages : 217 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (864 download)

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Book Synopsis The Functions of Role-Playing Games by : Sarah Lynne Bowman

Download or read book The Functions of Role-Playing Games written by Sarah Lynne Bowman and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-04-13 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study takes an analytical approach to the world of role-playing games, providing a theoretical framework for understanding their psychological and sociological functions. Sometimes dismissed as escapist and potentially dangerous, role-playing actually encourages creativity, self-awareness, group cohesion and "out-of-the-box" thinking. The book also offers a detailed participant-observer ethnography on role-playing games, featuring insightful interviews with 19 participants of table-top, live action and virtual games.

Japanese Role-Playing Games

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793643555
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis Japanese Role-Playing Games by : Rachael Hutchinson

Download or read book Japanese Role-Playing Games written by Rachael Hutchinson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-04-11 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japanese Role-playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG examines the origins, boundaries, and transnational effects of the genre, addressing significant formal elements as well as narrative themes, character construction, and player involvement. Contributors from Japan, Europe, North America, and Australia employ a variety of theoretical approaches to analyze popular game series and individual titles, introducing an English-speaking audience to Japanese video game scholarship while also extending postcolonial and philosophical readings to the Japanese game text. In a three-pronged approach, the collection uses these analyses to look at genre, representation, and liminality, engaging with a multitude of concepts including stereotypes, intersectionality, and the political and social effects of JRPGs on players and industry conventions. Broadly, this collection considers JRPGs as networked systems, including evolved iterations of MMORPGs and card collecting “social games” for mobile devices. Scholars of media studies, game studies, Asian studies, and Japanese culture will find this book particularly useful.

The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible

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Author :
Publisher : Obsidian Studio
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 266 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible by : Sean Patrick Fannon

Download or read book The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible written by Sean Patrick Fannon and published by Obsidian Studio. This book was released on 1999 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fantasirollespil.

The Last Threshold

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Publisher : Wizards of the Coast
ISBN 13 : 0786964294
Total Pages : 457 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (869 download)

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Book Synopsis The Last Threshold by : R. A. Salvatore

Download or read book The Last Threshold written by R. A. Salvatore and published by Wizards of the Coast. This book was released on 2013-03-05 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drizzt navigates a winding path littered with secrets and lies in this suspenseful conclusion to the Neverwinter Saga Drizzt is tangled up in Dahlia’s dark secrets more than ever. The ties that once held them close now threaten to rip apart as Dahlia’s bonds to Drizzt’s former foe, Artemis Entreri, continue to grow. Determined to stand for what’s right in the Realms once again, Drizzt forges a new road north toward Icewind Dale. Will Dahlia, Entreri, and the rest of his new companions follow? Will he be forced to fight the darkness alone? Either way, he knows now where he’s headed—back to the only place that’s ever felt like home. Meanwhile, in the caverns of Gauntlgrym, the drow Tiago Baenre enlists the help of the Bregan D’aerthe in his quest to destroy his grandfather’s killer: Drizzt Do’Urden. While making promises they may not keep, the agents of the elite drow mercenary group hide plans of their own . . . The Last Threshold is the fourth book in the Neverwinter Saga and the twenty-sixth installment in the Legend of Drizzt series.

Role-Playing Game Studies

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317268318
Total Pages : 905 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (172 download)

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Book Synopsis Role-Playing Game Studies by : Sebastian Deterding

Download or read book Role-Playing Game Studies written by Sebastian Deterding and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 905 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

The Role-Playing Society

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Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786498838
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (864 download)

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Book Synopsis The Role-Playing Society by : Andrew Byers

Download or read book The Role-Playing Society written by Andrew Byers and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-03-04 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the release of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, role-playing games (RPGs) have spawned a vibrant industry and subculture whose characteristics and player experiences have been well explored. Yet little attention has been devoted to the ways RPGs have shaped society at large over the last four decades. Role-playing games influenced video game design, have been widely represented in film, television and other media, and have made their mark on education, social media, corporate training and the military. This collection of new essays illustrates the broad appeal and impact of RPGs. Topics range from a critical reexamination of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, to the growing significance of RPGs in education, to the potential for "serious" RPGs to provoke awareness and social change. The contributors discuss the myriad subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways in which the values, concepts and mechanics of RPGs have infiltrated popular culture.

Second Person

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262514184
Total Pages : 428 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Second Person by : Pat Harrigan

Download or read book Second Person written by Pat Harrigan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-01-22 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Game designers, authors, artists, and scholars discuss how roles are played and how stories are created in role-playing games, board games, computer games, interactive fictions, massively multiplayer games, improvisational theater, and other "playable media." Games and other playable forms, from interactive fictions to improvisational theater, involve role playing and story—something played and something told. In Second Person, game designers, authors, artists, and scholars examine the different ways in which these two elements work together in tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), computer games, board games, card games, electronic literature, political simulations, locative media, massively multiplayer games, and other forms that invite and structure play. Second Person—so called because in these games and playable media it is "you" who plays the roles, "you" for whom the story is being told—first considers tabletop games ranging from Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs with an explicit social component to Kim Newman's Choose Your Own Adventure-style novel Life's Lottery and its more traditional author-reader interaction. Contributors then examine computer-based playable structures that are designed for solo interaction—for the singular "you"—including the mainstream hit Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the genre-defining independent production Façade. Finally, contributors look at the intersection of the social spaces of play and the real world, considering, among other topics, the virtual communities of such Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) as World of Warcraft and the political uses of digital gaming and role-playing techniques (as in The Howard Dean for Iowa Game, the first U.S. presidential campaign game). In engaging essays that range in tone from the informal to the technical, these writers offer a variety of approaches for the examination of an emerging field that includes works as diverse as George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards series and the classic Infocom game Planetfall. Appendixes contain three fully-playable tabletop RPGs that demonstrate some of the variations possible in the form.