A year or so ago I wrote my honours thesis on the gaming community in my home town.  It's got lot of stuff about roleplaying and things in there.  I thought some of you might be interested in reading it.  I don't stand by evrything I said then, now, but I'm still pretty happy with it.

It's published on a blog, or you can PM me and I'll email you a doc file. The blog is: http://www.thisisreallynotablog.blogspot.com

Ignore all the other crap at that site.

I've put this in actual play becasue there are some descriptions of actual play in the thesis, and it seemed the best fit. 

Cheers,

Simon

Simon,

Very interesting and thorough! I did not read it in its entirety, but was impressed by your courage in digging deep into each issue you explore--I can see why you feel like an "outsider" once again, having dissected your "Mage" community of gamers and seen its guts spread out on the table, you can never look at it the same way again.

Your "three layer" breakdown seems like a good explanatory model, simple to understand for the gaming "layman". Speaking of which, it seems to me that your text really leaves out anyone who is not completely immersed in the culture and the club you describe. I love gaming, but have never owned more than a handful of books, never spent several days straight playing games, never painted or owned any miniatures, etc... surely I'm not the only one? What about the more casual gamers? It would be interesting to see what proportion they represent.

Of course, maybe that's just a section I missed.

Less on-topic, I loved the schemes to keep The Girl's nose warm. Keep working on it!

Best,

Paul

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the feedback.  I totally understand not reading it all.  It's pretty lengthy, and a lot of it is "for the anthropologists" stuff, which is interesting, but only if you really like theory. 

I think the reason the thesis dosn't cover "casual gamers" so much is becasue it's an ethnography of a community, rather than a study of "geeks" in general.  It's something of a problem with ethnography that marginal members of the community (that is, people who are peripherally involved) are not well included.  My thesis also didn't cover the probably numerous gamers in my home town who have been playing AD&D with the same group for fifteen years, and never meet another gamer. 

The "three layer" analysis was convenient, but I'd hate to think of it as authoratative. It's just a way of looking at it that I found useful at the time.  (Briefly stated, for those of your watching at home, I looked at a wargame and tried to break down the meaning into "mechanics", "performance" and "story" - all three of which go into making the "meaning" of an in-game event).

RE: The Girl's nose.  Yeah, that thing is always getting cold.  I meant to post the thesis in a dedicated blog, but I was in a hurry, and couldn't remember my username from three years ago.  So you all get my personal musings.  Glad you were entertained. 

I just finished reading (well, skimming) your thesis, it's good stuff. Sorry to hear about the collapse/transmutation of your local geek subculture, hope you find a satisfactory place in it in due time.

Some of your other blog posts are pretty clever and amusing as well. I like the ideas on culture-as-technology. I think biological, cultural, and technological evolution are all intextricably intertwined. There are brain structures specifically developed to handle social interaction, for instance. It wouldn't surprise me if humans have or soon will develop similar biological traits to take advantage of our physical technologies which are rapidly outpacing our ability to comprehend them (damn that Gutenberg, anyway). But I think your ideas about social structures being created or evolved to address challenges are interesting to contemplate. I am put in mind of a lot of the religious dietary and behavioral strictures, such as "meatless fridays" and "kosher" food preparation, to name a few examples. Historically, these arose out of specific challenges to supply/demand and disease control, and became so ingrained in the cultures that the traditions they established have outlasted the challenges they were created to address by hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. If that's not an example of what you're talking about, perhaps I'm missing the point.

Your musings on posthumanist-selfhood and b(r)anding are also interesting, but I've babbled on here long enough.

Oh, and the Methods for Keeping Girl's Nose Warm During Sleep is a riot. Does she really complain of a cold nose while sleeping? That in itself is pretty bizarre.

Oddly, I have a friend who is at this very moment vacationing in NZ. I keep pestering her and asking what they did with the old Zealand, and if there are a lot of zeas there. Maybe you can answer those? Or maybe you can do what she will most likely do and smack me upside the head until I stop asking stupid questions.

Hi!

Thanks for reading! It's gratifying to know that someone besides by supervisor has read the thing.

I haven't posted in that blog for a while, and I'd kinda forgotten about those posts, but yeah, that was some stuff I used to think about a lot. 

"Old" Zealand is just called Zealand, and it's in Holland somewhere, I think, ruminating on how the youngster is stealing all its glory.

Hey Simon,

Is there a way, at this point, to bring an actual play account into your thesis topic/argument? That is to say, here in this thread?

I'm pretty sure there is.

Best, Ron

Yeah, that's a good prompt for me Ron.  I'd really like to talk about how "real life" relationships between people impact "in game" relationships, and how people actually play, which is something that doesn't get much attention at the moment I think.  You're right that I need to bring an actual play account from my thesis through to here if I want to get more discussion going here.  That's going to take a bit of work, but with knife fight down I'm not doing anything else with my time.

Thanks Ron,

SImon