Lecture: The Ironies of Role-Playing: A Research Program

Description
What scholarly ideas about communication can be brought to bear on understanding RPG play as a special kind of language use, and what implications do those ideas have for play, design, and further research? This presentation explores those questions, extending the observations from the Knutepunkt 09 book chapter, "The Ironical Rhetoric of the Real in RPGs." It invites discussion of the criteria for defining an RPG research agenda.

Who
Bill White is an associate professor of communication arts & sciences at the Altoona campus of the Pennsylvania State University, where he teaches courses in public speaking and mass media. He is also the designer of the forthcoming small-press tabletop RPG "Ganakagok." He is interested in the scholarly exploration of role-playing as language use and social interaction.

Signups closed for this Event