The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies

This Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to the latest research on role-playing games (RPGs) across disciplines, cultures, and media in one single, accessible volume.

Collaboratively authored by more than 40 key scholars, it traces the history of RPGs, from wargaming precursors to tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons to the rise of live action role-play and contemporary computer RPG and massively multiplayer online RPG franchises, like Baldur’s Gate, Genshin Impact, and World of Warcraft. Individual chapters survey the perspectives, concepts, and findings on RPGs from key disciplines, like performance studies, sociology, psychology, education, economics, game design, literary studies, and more. Other chapters integrate insights from RPG studies around broadly significant topics, like worldbuilding, immersion, and player-character relations, as well as exploring actual play and streaming, diversity, equity, inclusion, jubensha, therapeutic uses of RPGs, and storygames, journaling games, and other forms of text-based RPGs. Each chapter includes definitions of key terms and recommended readings to help students and scholars new to RPG studies find their way into this interdisciplinary field.

A comprehensive reference volume ideal for students and scholars of game studies, immersive experiences, and looking to learn more about the ever-growing, interdisciplinary field of RPG studies.

José P. Zagal is Professor with the University of Utah’s Division of Games. He has edited and authored numerous books and articles on game ethics, games education, game design, and more. He most recently co-edited Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons and co-authored Seeing Red: Nintendo’s Virtual Boy. He was honored as a Distinguished Scholar by the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) and named a Fellow of the Higher-Education Videogame Alliance (HEVGA) for his contributions to games research. He also serves as the Editor-In-Chief of DiGRA’s flagship journal Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association (ToDiGRA).

Sebastian Deterding is Chair with the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London, UK. He serves as founding Editor-In-Chief of ACM Games: Research and Practice, and co-editor of The Gameful World. He has been an RPG player and designer for more than 30 years, and has published ethnographic portraits of the German pen-and-paper RPG subculture.