Further Coursework

30 classes.  And more than seven months of thinking to put them together.  I could stop here.  There's content left, starting with how intuition creates the necessary leap that enables subject proficiency over competency ... and then an exploration, somehow, of the pathway between proficiency and expertise, which I admit right now I don't see clearly.

Like all my serial posts, I learn just as much as the reader does.  Before starting this, I hadn't considered anything from Dreyfuss before, I hadn't read any of Zittouns works, I couldn't point to knowledge about ruptures and reconstruction ... seven months ago I was ignorant of a great deal that I can see perfectly clearly now.  That is how research is supposed to work.  Have a goal, investigate the goal, then order it in our thoughts until it makes sense.

If I took those thirty classes and re-examined the material from my present perspective, I'm sure I'd have a lot more to say and a lot of other directions to research.  I could put together a pretty hefty tome, I figure.  Most likely bigger than How to Run.  Worth the effort, I think.

I've been thinking on other courses.  RPG 203 would have to be the History of Role-playing Games.  I'm definitely not up for that, not now.  I'd have to read the more popular books on the subject ... and then put the material together in a way that explored what choices were made in changing the game, and why.  And ultimately, ask which were the right ones.  I'm not up for it, and not anytime soon.  There's a lot of prejudice in the material, mostly from thousands of people who each know a tiny slice of the truth.  Getting ahead of them, from a place where I am far less informed than they are, would be a vicious uphill climb.  Not one that I think I'd like, either.

RPG 205 is Game Theory and Role-playing Games.  I'm up for that.  I've got half the work done, lying around, from a series of posts I wrote in 2017.  I'd go back to the beginning, start again from pure game theory and then re-examine each point I made, with an eye to supporting it with outside material.  That's certainly worth considering.

RPG 207 stumps me a little.  It should probably be something along the lines of Social Culture and Role-playing Games, discussing group dynamics, passion, reasons for interest, personal evolution and practical applications of RPGs, from childhood and up through late adolescence into adulthood.  Collaborating with an anthropologist or a sociologist would be key, I think.  It would need someone ready and able to do the field work; I'm can't trust any field work that's ever been done and I'm not the sort to do it myself.

From there, it's in depth stuff.  RPG 300 (and possibly RPG 301) could be a full term course on  Worldbuilding ~ theory, practice, fundamentals of design, functionalism and ultimately redesigning for participant behavior.  That's a tall order, but certainly one that's wanted.

RPG 302 is, naturally, Narrative Development ~ taking the principles of the 29th class and expanding them forward, concentrating heavily on examples and decontruction of same, understanding the fundamentals.   I think I could manage that, with a minimum of unpleasantness, and it would likely do a great deal for my writing.

And RPG 304 would be Drama and Role-playing Games ~ following the proposals made in the 28th class.

From there, I'm sketchy.  Writing a course on worldbuilding would undoubtedly create another 300-level course, and probably a 400 level.  I can't say for sure what other courses might be inspired ... but then, seven months ago I knew a lot less than I do now.

I can hear the mouths watering as the reader considers this.  That, to me, is a point by itself.  These 30 courses that I've written demonstrate that such work would be more than a bunch of unsupported advice, which is all we generally see when anyone proposes creating a text on worldbuilding or creating a narrative.  We've all read material such as this page:

"Mapping And Plot

"Sketch a rough outline of the world. Not anything detailed, but just the basics - what countries or kingdoms there are, obvious geographical features, such as oceans and major mountain ranges, etc. Fill in only the capitols of each kingdom, and maybe a major city or two.

"If you plan to choose a starting area for your players, even the above information is unnecessary. Skip the broad outlines and settle on the place where your party's adventure will start. Either way, this area will need the most detail. If you do choose to start with a rough map, and the players hail from different areas, add a few details to those places as well.

"If your players need more information to flesh out their backgrounds than you've provided, consider a bit of collaborative world-building. Your bard wants to be from a small island nation? Throw one in that empty patch of ocean off the coast. The party's fighter trained at a monastery in the mountains? Sure. There are now three different monasteries in that small range to the north; which one is he from?"

Johnn Four is a regular reader here, so I want to be gentle.  The text means well, but we need more than a rough outline of a world.  The players will not be intrigued by obvious geographical features, the existence of capitols or a city.  Telling us to settle on a place to start is an invitation to our frustration.  Which place?  What does it need?  And why?  What's a good place to start.  If we say "any place," how does that remotely help me?  Don't tell me the place needs more detail.  Tell me which details it needs. Specifically.  Give me a list.  Don't make it a few items, but do focus on the two or three hundred critical things.  We're all for giving the bard a background because its wanted, but don't forget this means at some point, we have to make a small island nation out of whole cloth.  The same goes for the monastery; and I presume some religion and/or philosophy it follows.  Do I simply let the player invent that?  What part of the monastery's background, in the world that I have to run, am I allowed to dictate over the player's expectations?  Help me out here.

It is not far from someone saying, if you have a barbecue and a neighbor says he wants crab meat, well hell, ditch your guests and get that crab meat for him!  He wants it.

There has to be a better approach to worldbuilding than this.  An ordered, rational, logistic approach, where the work ~ however much there is of it ~ offers clear cut paths to effectiveness, so that as I start on that long laborous road I know I'm not wasting my time.  I can't learn things from vague, sweeping gestures.  I can't see how "adding a few details" produces solid, positive results from my players during the course of my campaign.

Academic course work is not about suggestions or tips.  It is teaching, the process whereby we invest others with knowledge, competences and values.  This dictates that there must be a right and a wrong; a correct way, based upon a tried and true curriculum, based on accepted theories and established methods.  When the course is done, it must be a fact that the student, if they have done their coursework and followed along, will know how to worldbuild when the course ends.  Q.E.D.

I'm not there yet.  I'd need to do my research first.  But I feel from the coursework I've provided so far in the creation of this course, RPG 201: Practice and Method in Role-playing Games, a sense of confidence that the correct material does exist and can be applied across all the proposed courses outlined above.

There's a lot of work to do.