Humanities vs. Social Science

As I remember, most of my first level classes in university started off quite dull.  For example, 1st Year Psychology, course number 201, wanted us to be sure what psychology covered, what words were used, what theories and research had been developed in the past and how to think in terms of those advances.  The goal, basically, was to baptise students into the notion that psychology represented a distinct field of study, that it had been ongoing, and that students were expected to understand the field before advancing ideas about it.

Or, if you prefer, English 201.  Again, the students begin hearing the message that styles, tropes and techniques have already been established in different periods and cultures.  Since the easiest element of those tropes to grasp for newcomers to the field is the short story, it is treated as a microcosm of the field.  So we track the progress of the short story, we have the students read short stories, we deconstruct the short stories and we ask the students to compare one deconstruction of one type of genre/culture with other genres and cultures.  As before, the students are expected to open their minds to what they can learn - and not to give them rein to express their own ideas, feelings or prejudices.

There is a distinct difference between these two approaches ~ in large part because one, psychology, is a social science, while the other is part of the humanities.  Before we begin anything, we'd need to determine which the study role-playing falls under.

I think if we wanted to teach a course in role-playing, the hardest thing would be to explain to the students, "Whatever you think you know about role-playing, or whatever opinions you have, leave them at the door."

I also think that many who would approach role-playing from a theoretical point of view would feel duty bound to discuss the history of role-playing, so that most of the course work would follow the English model above, and not the Psychology model.  Most would-be course would be spent reading and deconstructing role-playing games, in order to compare them with other role-playing games.  This would be the humanities approach and, in some degree, it's valid.  Just as English and other humanities is a methodology for causing people to deconstruct and think at a level of the best humans who have lived to date, exhaustive game deconstruction could lead to a greater understanding of how games are put together, and how to do it yourself (once the theory was fully understood).

This approach does not, however, evaluate how players respond to game-play.  It does not discuss the motivation for game play, or game theory and game research.  It's fine to learn how games are structured; we also want to learn how games behave ... and that requires evaluation of game-play during the process of gameplay.

Unfortunately, to date, no such evaluation has taken place, not to my knowledge.  If there is some social scientist group studying role-playing games as they manifest at the game table, it is keeping awful quiet about it's research.  And this is why I think a professor creating a lesson plan would run to the "history of role-playing games" as the practical, data-rich option.

But were I taking such a course, I would feel let down at the moment of being told we were going to start by reading and evaluating the White Box set, only to move onto Advanced D&D, then Moldvay's version, then how Tunnels and Trolls handled things, then Chivalry and Sorcery, then Rolemaster, followed by the supplement Ice Law, only to then move onto Gurps and Second Edition and the plethora of other games that exploded into the market in the 1980s, from Top Secret and Paranoia to Cthulhu and the Masquerade.  And so on.

Gawd.  What a boring, boring class that would be.  Someone would get something out of it, I'm sure, but a lot of us just spent 30 and 40 years taking this course already.  I think we're done.

I'd rather if we could start with three years of research that first established [a] what works as a DM/Player participation driver, regardless of the quality of the DM; and [b] what preparation best feeds point (a).  From there, we could then evaluate: [c] where do deviations from (a) lead, for good or ill; and [d] what forms of (b) reduces negative deviations that have come to light from research into (c).

That's as far as we dare go.  Any more and we'll probably be wallowing in our own conjecture and that is definitely not what we're searching for.

Let's look at [a] for a moment, acknowledging that we shouldn't attempt to establish an answer for what works regardless of skill at this time.  We can, however, argue against things that clearly do depend on skill: emotive role-playing for one, and player immersion for another.  These things clearly rely on some kind of inborn or acquired skill ... and therefore can be separated from the theoretical structure of the game in the 1st degree, as we try to understand what the game is.

This, already, is a lot to take in.  Theory always is.  Whatever impression I may have made so far, I don't know.  I do intend to keep thinking on this subject along these lines, and see what happens.  The more I hear from readers, the more focused my thinking is bound to be, as the process of explaining myself seems to trip switches in my head that opens doors.

And remember ... any one could get a PHD.  Get tested.