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An Intro to my Dissertation
The online game design community I planned to study was originally based around The Forge. They established a series of role-playing game (RPG) subgenres, initially called: gamist, narrativist and simulationist (GNS). I developed a working definition of what a genre is, but I had no idea how to study genres. I've had to discover how to do that by reading the work of others.
Despite GNS being an important feature of my proposal, I actually failed to define how each subgenre differed from one another. For example, a narrativist RPG incorporates an open-ended question into both its play and its rules. Gamist RPGs were competitive, but they may or may not incorporate winners and losers. Simulationist RPGs were, well, they were complicated, so I'll leave that explanation for a future post.
Instead, I wanted to explore all the special types of rules which became commonplace within The Forge community and its diaspora, such as scenes or fruitful void. The exact definition of those terms varies a bit from designer to designer, giving me more topics for future posts.
Yes, I still plan to study these features, but I believe that the GNS subgenres caused certain rules to become more commonplace, while minimizing or eliminating other rules. Now that I'm no longer involved in the PhD program, I can also study the OSR genre, despite its origins being in another community.
More posts will follow as I figure out new things about this topic.
Despite GNS being an important feature of my proposal, I actually failed to define how each subgenre differed from one another. For example, a narrativist RPG incorporates an open-ended question into both its play and its rules. Gamist RPGs were competitive, but they may or may not incorporate winners and losers. Simulationist RPGs were, well, they were complicated, so I'll leave that explanation for a future post.
Instead, I wanted to explore all the special types of rules which became commonplace within The Forge community and its diaspora, such as scenes or fruitful void. The exact definition of those terms varies a bit from designer to designer, giving me more topics for future posts.
Yes, I still plan to study these features, but I believe that the GNS subgenres caused certain rules to become more commonplace, while minimizing or eliminating other rules. Now that I'm no longer involved in the PhD program, I can also study the OSR genre, despite its origins being in another community.
More posts will follow as I figure out new things about this topic.