Analog role-playing games (tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, larps [live action role-play], etc) provide opportunities for formative and educative experiences for players. The game’s elements of role-play demand a level of imagination, participatory commitments, self-reflection, creative problem solving, and collaboration from players that most leisure activities do not. This proposed volume will focus on analog role-playing games and their educative capabilities. We are interested in how people learn and are formed by these games, both in and outside of formal educational environments. The volume seeks to examine how these games do (or do not) facilitate educative growth both through theorizing as well as concrete analysis of practice. Both theoretician-oriented and practitioner-generated pieces are welcome, but all pieces should seek to examine broader themes and questions around education, knowledge, and growth through the lens of analog RPGs.
The editor gladly invites proposals for chapter submissions on, but not limited to, the following topics:
Theories of education, knowledge, and pedagogy in analog role-playing games:
- RPGs and theories of learning, construction of knowledge
- RPGs and experiential/active learning
- RPGs and vicarious experience
- Bleed and education
- RPGs and civic / democratic education
- The role of AI in RPG play
Analog role-playing games and education broadly through:
- Education around conceptions of race, gender, sexuality, neurodivergence, etc
- Social participation, group membership, social mores
- Conflict resolution and violence in games
- Identity formation and self-discovery
- Transgressive play and education
- Consent practices and boundary setting
- RPGs and depictions of colonialism and exotification
Challenges/Benefits of utilizing RPGs in formal educational settings in regards to:
- RPGs and critical thinking, literacy, social emotional learning, etc
- RPGs and neurodivergent students
- RPGs as distinct from simulations or case studies
- RPGs and math education
- “The dice tell a story” - RPGs and data visualization
- Ethics of usings RPGs in the classroom, especially when dealing with sensitive or controversial subject matter
- Challenges around time management, assessment, and participation
- Considerations/Benefits when using RPGs with specific populations (i.e. children, seniors, ESL, etc)
- Pre and post game practices & reflection
- RPG practices of consent as practiced in a classroom
- Teacher as GM / GM as Teacher
Interested authors should send chapter abstracts of 250-500 words (excluding sources cited), a paragraph author biography, and a CV or resume to educationrpgpedagogy@gmail.com.
The call for chapters ends July 1st, 2024. Authors will be notified of accepted proposals on July 15th, 2024. Authors will submit their accepted chapters of a minimum of 4500 words in length by October 1st, 2024.
All contributors should engage with the existing academic literature on role-playing games. While the editors will not prescribe particular sources or methodologies, proposals should reflect acquaintance with current scholarship on role-playing games.
The project will be submitted for consideration as part of the Education and Popular Culture series. The series is unique as it equally values practitioner-generated pieces on using mass/popular culture as it does theoretician-oriented pieces on studying mass/popular culture, as well as works that exist in the intersections between these worlds. Works in this series take up issues surrounding popular culture in education broadly through pedagogical, historical, sociological, and critical lenses.
Dr. Susan Haarman
Loyola University-Chicago
