Thread by @AnalogGameJrnl

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:

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.

analoggamestudies.org/2014/08/from-w…

The act of playing D&D, argues @nickmizer, involves rapid frame switching between many different modes of attention and storytelling.

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.

analoggamestudies.org/2014/10/constr…

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.

analoggamestudies.org/2015/07/out-of…

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.

analoggamestudies.org/2016/01/how-du…

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.

analoggamestudies.org/2016/11/tablet…

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.

analoggamestudies.org/2017/01/the-ps…

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.

analoggamestudies.org/2017/05/access…

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.

analoggamestudies.org/category/table…

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.

analoggamestudies.org/2018/03/blinde…

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.

analoggamestudies.org/2018/06/tellin…

Control over algorithms in D&D has a big impact on the kind of social capital that players seek, writes @Dashiellsteven.

analoggamestudies.org/2018/09/rules-…

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

analoggamestudies.org/2019/09/a-tale…

.@DoktorNick does an excellent job of breaking down a #TRPG character sheet as a material and narrative artifact of play.

analoggamestudies.org/2019/12/archiv…

.@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).

analoggamestudies.org/2019/12/an-ana…

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.

analoggamestudies.org/2020/03/playin…

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.