RPG Rules Study

[mmagsgreen]

Hello! My name is Matt Green and I am a PhD student in the Writing and Rhetoric program at George Mason University. I am conducting a study on tabletop roleplaying games; specifically, I’m interested in how play groups approach rules and rule making.

Toward this end, I was hoping some of you might be interested in filling out a seven question survey. If you are, I would like to direct you to this page, which contains the informed consent document with a link to the survey at the bottom. I’ll also be keeping an eye on this thread to chat in case you’re interested in talking about this sort of thing.

We anticipate the survey should take you between five and thirty minutes, depending on how detailed you wish to get.

Here’s the link to the informed consent document: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzPgFMohGCl4VkQ3czZTQlZOTDQ

IRBNet Number: 986127

 

[MNblockhead]

Limiting the responses to the last game I played is rather narrow in scope. Didn't make any rule changes in the last game, but I have made rule changes earlier in the campaign.

 

[mmagsgreen]

Ah, apologies for the confusion. 'Game' is supposed to encompass a campaign, a one-shot, or any self-contained number of sessions. Game in the sense of the setting and ruleset, not game in the sense of the one session.

 

[aramis erak]

Also fails to ask if you did make changes.

 

[mmagsgreen]

Also fails to ask if you did make changes.

Thanks for pointing that out-I added some clarification that was in the prototype but got lost in the translation to the Google form.

 

[Lwaxy]

Interesting. What's the big goal, if any, behind those specific questions?
And yes, I answered.

 

[mmagsgreen]

Well, the big goal is exploring the reasons how and why players appropriate games for their own use. I don't know that there will be anything particularly useful to the world that comes out of it, but it is part of the thread that a gentleman named Ian Bogost started with his book Persuasive Games and another gentleman named Miguel Sicart challenged in an article called Against Procedurality. Both of them are talking about video games, and the idea that rules are an argument for how the world (or how fun in the world you're interacting with) should work. I'm trying to expand the framework and perhaps approach "rules as persuasion" from a bit of a different angle.

Will there be a real impact on TRPGs or the wider world? I have no idea. Probably not. Might get some conversations going about rules and player appropriation, though!

 

[MNblockhead]

Once published, please post a link to the paper.

 

[Lanefan]

Done, though my answers might be a bit out in left field: my current campaign (which I based my answers on) has a mostly-homebrew ruleset built on top of another mostly-homebrew ruleset that several further layers down has 1st editon D&D as its foundation. So, most of my changes were homebrew-to-homebrew.

Lanefan

 

[mmagsgreen]

Done, though my answers might be a bit out in left field: my current campaign (which I based my answers on) has a mostly-homebrew ruleset built on top of another mostly-homebrew ruleset that several further layers down has 1st editon D&D as its foundation. So, most of my changes were homebrew-to-homebrew.

Lanefan

Honestly, the more variety, the better. Thanks much

Once published, please post a link to the paper.

Absolutely! It's going to start out as a conference presentation, and I'll do a write up for that and post it after I present next month.