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Analog Game Studies has been commenting on the social politics of D&D -- including dynamics of ideology, racism, sexism, disability, and other aspects -- for over 6 years.
A list of D&D-related greatest hits, for those interested
Thread:
A list of D&D-related greatest hits, for those interested
Thread:
Dungeons in D&D themselves were a product of a specific set of Cold War fantasies, as @aarontram argues. Caves and bunkers became early sites of game design fascination and mapmaking, with thermonuclear war as a lurking backdrop. http://analoggamestudies.org/2014/08/from-where-do-dungeons-come/
The act of playing D&D, argues @nickmizer, involves rapid frame switching between many different modes of attention and storytelling. http://analoggamestudies.org/2014/08/179/
Here, @aarontram looks at the awkward early attempts of men D&D gamers to "include" women gamers by mechanizing the female body in certain ways. Didn't work so well. http://analoggamestudies.org/2014/10/constructing-the-female-body-in-role-playing-games/
Representation of queer bodies and sexuality have been with #TRPGs from the very beginning, argue @LizardEnigma and Tanja Sihvonen. As the 21st Century bursts with new queer content, it is useful to look and see how far we've come. http://analoggamestudies.org/2015/07/out-of-the-dungeons-representations-of-queer-sexuality-in-rpg-source-books/
D&D has continuously exoticized non-western countries, feminizing and Othering their peoples and cultures in favor of a white, Eurocentric notion of historical accuracy. @aarontram uses Said to deconstruct Oriental Adventures. http://analoggamestudies.org/2016/01/how-dungeons-dragons-appropriated-the-orient/
In Curtis Carbonell's viewpoint, games such as D&D create "analog realized worlds" in which players then make powerful associations with genre fiction as well as their own technological being. http://analoggamestudies.org/2016/11/tabletop-role-playing-games-the-modern-fantastic-and-analog-realized-worlds/
Our most popular article ever has been @shellyjansen's thorough analysis of D&D's Curse of Strahd module, in which uncomfortable power dynamics within the game reflect and reproduce larger societal dysfunctions around abuse. http://analoggamestudies.org/2017/01/the-psychological-abuse-of-curse-of-strahd/
A closer look at queer and disabled characters in D&D reveals a fraught engagement with discourses of the body in society, Michael Stokes writes. http://analoggamestudies.org/2017/05/access-to-the-page-queer-and-disabled-characters-in-dungeons-dragons/
Got a D&D rules lawyer at the table? @Dashiellsteven argues that such a role actually highlights fundamental power asymmetries and prejudicial behaviors. Social capital in games is often not willingly surrendered.
http://analoggamestudies.org/category/tabletop-role-playing-games/page/9/
http://analoggamestudies.org/category/tabletop-role-playing-games/page/9/
D&D is very much a game about the able-bodied, as @shellyjansen argues. Both its visual and mechanical representation of disability reveal fundamental misapprehensions about the day-to-day lives and skillsets of anyone who has a disability. http://analoggamestudies.org/2018/03/blinded-by-the-roll-the-critical-fail-of-disability-in-dd/
D&D has had a popular media presence for decades. Alex Chalk lays out the chronology of D&D's appearances in pop culture, relativizing the game's success after Critical Role & Stranger Things. http://analoggamestudies.org/2018/06/telling-stories-of-dungeons-dragons-a-chronology-of-representations-of-dd-play/
Control over algorithms in D&D has a big impact on the kind of social capital that players seek, writes @Dashiellsteven. http://analoggamestudies.org/2018/09/rules-as-written-analyzing-changes-in-reliance-on-game-system-algorithms-as-shifts-in-game-capital/
Computer games themselves emerge from D&D. @Nick_Lalone re-writes the history of games to include D&D as a kind of platform, same as an Atari or a Nintendo Switch http://analoggamestudies.org/2019/09/a-tale-of-dungeons-dragons-and-the-origins-of-the-game-platform/
. @DoktorNick does an excellent job of breaking down a #TRPG character sheet as a material and narrative artifact of play. http://analoggamestudies.org/2019/12/archives-of-role-playings-personal-pasts/
. @JoseZagal pulls out the older #TRPG from the 1980s to look at a corpus of definitions of RPGs. Zagal's work exhibits the diversity and range of early Role-Playing definitions, often orienting players along the lines of a boardgame (not a wargame). http://analoggamestudies.org/2019/12/an-analysis-of-early-1980s-english-language-commercial-trpg-definitions/
Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed tells of a little-known chapter in RPG history: D&D's arrival in Colombia in the 1990s. Uribe-Jongbloed shows how subjects navigated and twisted the language of the rules text to make it work in Spanish. http://analoggamestudies.org/2020/03/playing-with-translation-translanguaging-role-playing-games-in-colombia-in-the-1990s/
D&D is passionately discussed online -- has been without fail since the Internet took off in the early 1990s. Analog Game Studies is proud to contribute to that discussion as it progresses.
