I am now at that exciting point in the semester where I have chosen a research topic and can begin to gather my information! WARNING: If you think this is too nerdy now, turn back! It will get much worse! I'm really enthusiastic about my chosen research topic, and I spent a good chunk of Thursday night into Friday morning (till about 1:30 a.m.) beginning the hunt for reliable sources to use for my project. My super-exciting-top-secret research topic is...the history of roleplaying games. ( I warned you all...)
I want to cover the history of these games, from the beginning of their development up to current times. Let me clarify what I mean by "role playing games". The term "role playing game" or RPG, for short, gets tossed around a lot and can be used or abused to cover anything from Dugeons and Dragons (and similar dice-roll and pencil and paper games) to a genre of video games (and a subset called "MMORPGs"--massive multiplayer online RPG, such as World of Warcraft and others) to LARP (Live Action Role Play, basically acting out anything from being a society of vampires to being engaged in medieval battles). I strictly want to cover the first kind of RPG, the "tabletop", dice-rolling, writing down a character and giving him a personality type of role playing game.
I have already found some really great information (links to sites are to come, I am not on my own laptop now, where the bookmarks folder currently resides). For example, the first role playing games were military strategy games. There were ancient versions and variations in China and Sumeria (I think, I need to check on the second one), and a later version developed for the rulers of Prussia (now Germany) centuries later. Similar games hit the U.S. much later, but the common tie between all of the military-themed games was that the emphasis was mostly on the dice rolls and the strategic movement of the miniatures in battle.
Role-playing came later, with parlor games in the 1900s. These games were meant for dinner parties, and the guests would act out things such as "whodunit" murder mysteries.
The history, creation, and evolution of Dungeons and Dragons (aka D&D) and its similar games is a saga unto itself. That's most likely going to be its own post. I also want to shed a little bit of light on the religious opposition surrounding the game (I say "a little bit" because there is a great deal of opposition!) and discuss how Dungeons and Dragons specifically has evolved on its own. D&D as we know it today has been around since the '70s, so there's a lot of game history there!
I want to cover the history of these games, from the beginning of their development up to current times. Let me clarify what I mean by "role playing games". The term "role playing game" or RPG, for short, gets tossed around a lot and can be used or abused to cover anything from Dugeons and Dragons (and similar dice-roll and pencil and paper games) to a genre of video games (and a subset called "MMORPGs"--massive multiplayer online RPG, such as World of Warcraft and others) to LARP (Live Action Role Play, basically acting out anything from being a society of vampires to being engaged in medieval battles). I strictly want to cover the first kind of RPG, the "tabletop", dice-rolling, writing down a character and giving him a personality type of role playing game.
I have already found some really great information (links to sites are to come, I am not on my own laptop now, where the bookmarks folder currently resides). For example, the first role playing games were military strategy games. There were ancient versions and variations in China and Sumeria (I think, I need to check on the second one), and a later version developed for the rulers of Prussia (now Germany) centuries later. Similar games hit the U.S. much later, but the common tie between all of the military-themed games was that the emphasis was mostly on the dice rolls and the strategic movement of the miniatures in battle.
Role-playing came later, with parlor games in the 1900s. These games were meant for dinner parties, and the guests would act out things such as "whodunit" murder mysteries.
The history, creation, and evolution of Dungeons and Dragons (aka D&D) and its similar games is a saga unto itself. That's most likely going to be its own post. I also want to shed a little bit of light on the religious opposition surrounding the game (I say "a little bit" because there is a great deal of opposition!) and discuss how Dungeons and Dragons specifically has evolved on its own. D&D as we know it today has been around since the '70s, so there's a lot of game history there!
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