Car News

Gregory, S. & Masters, Y. (2012). Real thinking with virtual hats: A role-playing activity for pre-service teachers in Second Life. In M. J. W. Lee, B. Dalgarno & H. Farley (Eds), Virtual worlds in tertiary education: An Australasian perspective. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 28(Special issue, 3), 420-440. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet28/gregory.html

Abstract: Role-plays in a virtual world hold tremendous potential for higher education because they allow synchronous, immersive participation by students located across the globe. They also have the added advantage of allowing students to adopt roles and carry out tasks that are not possible in the real world. In this article, a project that involved pre-service teachers carrying out role-plays based on de Bono's Six Thinking Hats framework is presented. A pilot study was carried out over two years with on-campus students, who performed the role-plays both in a real-life, physical setting and within the virtual world of Second Life. The activity has since been extended to off-campus students exclusively using Second Life. The authors report selected quantitative and qualitative survey data from the pilot study that provide insight into students' perceptions of this style of learning, and discuss the challenges that were encountered and how they were overcome. The future of virtual world-based role-playing as a strategy for teaching and learning is discussed, with a focus on its application to distance education contexts.

Felan Parker: The Set-Up, the Tilt and the Aftermath: Role-playing the Caper-Gone-Wrong Film in Fiasco
Presented at the 2012 Film Studies Association of Canada annual conference
https://www.academia.edu/4530327/The_Set-Up_the_Tilt_and_the_Aftermath_Role-playing_the_Caper-Gone-Wrong_Film_in_Fiasco
(again, if PDF download doesn't work for you, I can help out)

Brian Ballsun-Stanton, Ernest Mueller, C. Roll Eskridge: Clerics, Magic Users, Fighters and Thieves: Theoreticals Approaches to Rules Questions on the Role-Playing Games Stack Exchange
https://www.academia.edu/5690703/Clerics_Magic_Users_Fighters_and_Thieves_Theoretical_Approaches_to_Rules_Questions_on_the_Role-Playing_Games_Stack_Exchange
alternate link: http://bit.ly/RpgSeCaseStudy
So far, this seems to be an online publication independent of any magazines.

ABSTRACT: Many different approaches to the understanding of RPG rules exist within the gaming community. The rules as written conflict with the player’s urge to mimic reality. The freedom of a game
master’s imagination fights with the reassuring weight of authority of established sources. From these axes, a design space emerges. We label the quadrants of the design space with the classic archetypes of RPGs. Clerics (Jurists) find answers to rules questions within the rules as written. Magic Users (Innovators) invent new rules to complement the sourcebooks. Fighters (Realists) use external reality to inform the rules-as-intended. Thieves (Imaginatives) obey the rule-of-cool and consider that anything goes in the pursuit of entertainment. We apply this design space to a case study of interesting questions and answers found on the RPG.stackexchange.com site, and apply archetypes to the answers we found.


Brian Ballsun-Stanton, Samuel Russell (2012) Constrained Optimization in Dungeons and Dragons : A Theory of Requirements Generation for Effective Character Creation.
http://bit.ly/ConstrainedOptRPG

ABSTRACT
The articulation of effective character requirements during the
process of character creation in a RPG can provide for more
interesting, functional, and rewarding characters for all players at
the table. This document explores a theoretical model of character
interaction that relates a character’s mechanical and narrative
components to the underlying game and applies that model to the
practice of character creation in D&D. This model includes three
levels: the mechanical-theoretical, a design space of potential
choices; the mechanical-functional, an articulation of instantiated
choices within the rules, and the story-expression level, providing
links between the desired character narrative and the earlier
levels. With these requirements, we then provide methodologies
for individual and group character creation using the theoretical
model.