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Postcards from the 2025 BIPOC Game Studies Conference
This collaborative essay brings together seven participants to reflect on their observations and experiences at the 2025 BIPOC Game Studies Conference at The Strong National Museum of Play in...
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Getting in Good Troubles with Mancala
On March 1, 2020, John Lewis, a United States congressman and Civil Rights hero encouraged a crowd in Selma, Alabama to “speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble…”...
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Defining the Miniatures Wargame: Five Pillars
Miniatures wargaming is underrepresented within game studies, lacking a settled, cohesive definition. My goal is to start the process of defining miniatures wargame rather than providing the final...
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Transmediation and the Marvel Super Heroes RPG
Introduction: How Rules Mediate Transmedia Narrative in TTRPGs Tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) remediate and remix various media and genres, and they are often part of larger transmedia...
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Approaching Controversial Conflicts: Tabletop Simulations as Museums
Introduction Historical simulation and games-based learning have demonstrated over the last two decades that they are mediums that support learning about the peoples of the past. In ways, they are...
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The Case for Chaos: Leveraging Contingency in Taskmaster and in Mental Health
“Make the best picture in the sand of a former Taskmaster contestant using one of these implements. You must roll the dice to choose your implement. Nothing but air may touch the sand at any point....
View Article80 Games with 20 Students: A Review and Case Study
Du Sautoy, Marcus. Around the World in Eighty Games. New York: Hachette Book Group, 2023. 369 pages, Paperback w/ color illustrations. ISBN 978-1-66-863312-0 Around the World in Eighty Games (hereafter...
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A Queer OS Powered by the Apocalypse: Feminist Platforms and TTRPG Engines
Since its release in 2010, the post-apocalyptic tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker has inspired hundreds of games, hacks, homebrews, and playbooks...
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Fluid Dynamics: Precarity and Porousness in Ecological Solo Journaling Games
Content warning: Trauma, precarity, self harm, climate change anxiety. Introduction: Solo Journaling Games as Critical Intervention The game tells me I probably will not survive, and I do not the first...
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Is There Room for Queer Chaos at Yazeba’s?
Cozy Aesthetics and Queer Domesticities “Once upon a time, the world was cruel, and there was a witch who knew it well. And so, she sold her heart away and built a house in the woods where the world...
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liches, lampreys, and the moon: an incantation for trans life & lyrical play
the witches gather A candle’s flame winks out as the last of the wax burns down, leaving Percy alone on his bedroom floor surrounded by chalk smudges and crushed peppercorns. It’s November 2020; Percy...
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Postcards from Role-Playing the Humanities
This collaborative, retrospective essay weaves together the reflections of fourteen participants at the Role-Playing the Humanities event at the University of Cincinnati (UC) on March 31 and April 1,...
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How to Re-Configure the Social Interaction Among Danish Lonely Young Adults...
Introduction Loneliness is considered a significant societal problem in modern western society. Even though Denmark is regarded as one of the happiest nations in the world, a large part of the...
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Book Review: Von bierbrauenden Mönchen und kriegerischen Nonnen Klöster und...
Lukas Boch, Anna Klara Falke, Yvonne Püttmann, Sebastian Steinbach, eds. Von bierbrauenden Mönchen und kriegerischen Nonnen: Klöster und Klerus in analogen und digitalen Spielen. Stuttgart: Kohlmann...
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Roll to Hit: Comparative Mathematical Probability in Tabletop Role-Playing Games
Tabletop role-playing gamers tend to have an affinity for their dice. From their unique colors to fancy towers, and specialty bags, dice are a key material object in a genre whose vast majority of...
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Mechanical Storytelling in D&D: Strahd in Relation to the Gothic
D&D is a deeply mechanical game. The DM has countless texts at their disposal, including lengthy rules related solely to their role within the game. On the other side of the table, the players...
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It’s All Fun and Games ‘Till Somebody Loses an I: Ethnomethods of Bleed
Live streamed tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) are doubly mediated experiences. Susana Tosca describes tabletop roleplay games as a “hybrid entertainment form” that is “highly intertextual and...
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The Rule Book: The Building Blocks of Games [Book Review]
In The Rule Book: The Building Blocks of Games, Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola masterfully “untangle the mangle of play” using their seminal constructionist ludology approach. This approach explores...
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Constitutive Factors of Mega-Campaigns in TTRPGs: A Systematic Literature Review
Introduction All analog games describe a standard set of rules, mechanics, and periods of play in which players engage in actual play activities termed sessions, matches, games, encounters, etc. Some...
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Role Playing Games as an Educational Stimulation
Introduction Gamification was investigated to motivate students to encourage their learning and retention in school. This technique uses games and a reward system to increase students´ motivational...
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