The Next 8 Months of My "Life"
A few hours ago, it all made sense, finally.
Now... not so much.
All I know is, between my two supervisors and myself, we managed to turn my thesis on its head. Again. First, I was doing D&D and how it influenced computer games. Then, I was doing D&D and its history. Now, I think I'm doing D&D and its audience, and somehow, sometime, someone mentioned fandoms. I hadn't been going to touch this, except I accidentally started a rant which was apparently relevant. It did, however, get me a thesis title. Yay for rants.
The term hasn't quite started yet, and I'm not going to get too hasty and excitable about getting books from the library just yet. However, the vague horror of realising that I now need to go and find and buy v1 and 2 D&D books is starting to sink in.
History: find the history of D&D, ie who wrote which version when and what that entailed and who it was being marketed to and how. I can do that.
Influence: try being asked by two really intelligent women who are about to oversee your life for a year what you meant by "influence" and if you could use another word. It's not easy. My answer was a full two minutes of silence and an eventual groan. It basically got nutted out to : the game changes over time to attract a range of (intentional) target audiences. (basically, I have to go and find all those articles I read vaguely without realising I was going to have to make it academic months ago) What aspects of the game has changed, how do the target audiences get redefined... do supplementary books cater to, or define, a smaller player community than the main game does?
I know a great deal of people are happy with the changes being made in v4. I also know there are some people who aren't. For a few months, I was too busy to really pay attention, so I got the shock of my life when I discovered the changes intended for the FR setting, and also discovered a nice little cache of people who really really aren't happy, to the point of already speculating when Wizards will realise its ultimate mistake and release v5. Hence, I am led to start looking into fandoms and the possession these rabid (yes, that includes me) players have over their beloved game.
This is really kind of simple, and I haven't really looked at it much, but my first impression is that the new mechanics are making people happy, but the roleplayers are tying themselves in knots of unhappiness. Which is kind of related to the above fandom point, about having a possession and love for something, and a sense of belonging and having it pulled out from beneath your feet, painted purple and then thrown over your head. It also made my supervisors send me out into the world with an extra addition to my mission: discover the difference between the roleplayers and the rollplayers (and along the way, please unearth the history of the word "munchkin".... I'm serious.) and if the middle ground has perhaps gotten bigger. And something about the whole... doing vs being, aka male vs female gamers.
Unholy frag. That's a lot of material and ideas.
Somehow, that's all got to fit into a nice little exegesis, because there's a couple of feature articles I'm meant to write as WELL. It seemed like a nice idea at the time. Liz seems to suggest general audience pieces and I tend to agree, because it's damn hard to find and pin the specialist demographic. I'd really like to write one about the violence of female players (via their characters) because everyone thinks we're lovely figure-out-the-problem-in-peaceful-flowery-mannered-ways players. Otherwise... I just don't know. There are so many topics. And I only get to choose three.
*rubs head* And this is better than it was yesterday...
Now... not so much.
All I know is, between my two supervisors and myself, we managed to turn my thesis on its head. Again. First, I was doing D&D and how it influenced computer games. Then, I was doing D&D and its history. Now, I think I'm doing D&D and its audience, and somehow, sometime, someone mentioned fandoms. I hadn't been going to touch this, except I accidentally started a rant which was apparently relevant. It did, however, get me a thesis title. Yay for rants.
The term hasn't quite started yet, and I'm not going to get too hasty and excitable about getting books from the library just yet. However, the vague horror of realising that I now need to go and find and buy v1 and 2 D&D books is starting to sink in.
History: find the history of D&D, ie who wrote which version when and what that entailed and who it was being marketed to and how. I can do that.
Influence: try being asked by two really intelligent women who are about to oversee your life for a year what you meant by "influence" and if you could use another word. It's not easy. My answer was a full two minutes of silence and an eventual groan. It basically got nutted out to : the game changes over time to attract a range of (intentional) target audiences. (basically, I have to go and find all those articles I read vaguely without realising I was going to have to make it academic months ago) What aspects of the game has changed, how do the target audiences get redefined... do supplementary books cater to, or define, a smaller player community than the main game does?
I know a great deal of people are happy with the changes being made in v4. I also know there are some people who aren't. For a few months, I was too busy to really pay attention, so I got the shock of my life when I discovered the changes intended for the FR setting, and also discovered a nice little cache of people who really really aren't happy, to the point of already speculating when Wizards will realise its ultimate mistake and release v5. Hence, I am led to start looking into fandoms and the possession these rabid (yes, that includes me) players have over their beloved game.
This is really kind of simple, and I haven't really looked at it much, but my first impression is that the new mechanics are making people happy, but the roleplayers are tying themselves in knots of unhappiness. Which is kind of related to the above fandom point, about having a possession and love for something, and a sense of belonging and having it pulled out from beneath your feet, painted purple and then thrown over your head. It also made my supervisors send me out into the world with an extra addition to my mission: discover the difference between the roleplayers and the rollplayers (and along the way, please unearth the history of the word "munchkin".... I'm serious.) and if the middle ground has perhaps gotten bigger. And something about the whole... doing vs being, aka male vs female gamers.
Unholy frag. That's a lot of material and ideas.
Somehow, that's all got to fit into a nice little exegesis, because there's a couple of feature articles I'm meant to write as WELL. It seemed like a nice idea at the time. Liz seems to suggest general audience pieces and I tend to agree, because it's damn hard to find and pin the specialist demographic. I'd really like to write one about the violence of female players (via their characters) because everyone thinks we're lovely figure-out-the-problem-in-peaceful-flowery-mannered-ways players. Otherwise... I just don't know. There are so many topics. And I only get to choose three.
*rubs head* And this is better than it was yesterday...
posted by Daebereth at 12:38 am
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