The Morrow Project is one of my favorite tabletop roleplaying games. Some of this is clearly nostalgia; I played it when I was in college back in the 1980s, and I met my partner Lynn through my gaming group. Some of it is related to my academic and personal study of nuclear war – something… Continue reading Revisiting The Morrow Project
Some time ago, I had a discussion with a friend and fellow academic about the OSR — the Old School Revival, Renaissance, or possibly Rules. Coming at this from an indie games perspective, he said he had never encountered any sort of theory behind the OSR, any attempt to provide an explanatory framework for what… Continue reading OSR Theory 1: Introductory Thoughts
Gary Alan Fine and I have co-authored “Soft Communities and Deviance in Dungeons & Dragons” which will be included in the upcoming anthology from MIT Press, entitled Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons. This volume, edited by Premeet Sidhu, Marcus Carter and José P. Zagal, “explores and celebrates the game’s legacy and its tremendous impact on… Continue reading 50 Years of D&D, from MIT Press
My first roleplaying game was Original Dungeons & Dragons. I started playing D&D sometime in 1975, and I recall buying my first copy of the game at the Little Tin Soldier Shoppe in south Minneapolis, shortly afterwards. At the time, D&D was the only roleplaying game around, and that created an interesting moment in this… Continue reading The Origin of My Viewpoint
When I was much younger (like in my teens), I was an avid wargamer and role-player. One of the things that made this much easier for me was the existence of three different gaming clubs: the Conflict Simulation Association (CSA), the Fantasy Role-Playing Game Association (FRPGA – pronounced “ferp-gah”), and the 6th Precinct Wargaming Club.… Continue reading Gaming Clubs
