|
Main
> Resources
> Recommended Reading
RECOMMENDED READING
The Escapist touches upon many subjects
that can be explored to a much greater depth - role-playing
games and LARP, the role of violence in entertainment, moral panic and
Satanic panic, urban legends, and more. Collected here are
links to books that can help you explore some of these subjects
further.
ROLEPLAYING HISTORY AND CULTURE
|
 |
|
Confessions
of a Part-time Sorceress: A Girl's Guide to the D&D Game - "...a
smart, humorous examination of the Dungeons & Dragons
roleplaying game from a female gamer's point of view. The book delves
into the myths and realities of gamer stereotypes. It explains how to
build a character for a D&D game, how to shop for gear, how
to play, and how to find the perfect gaming group, all the while
exploring the things that make the D&D game a rewarding and
recurring social experience for both men and women."
|
|
The
Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange - "As
a 12-year-old in England in 1976, Barrowcliffe (Lucky Dog)
made a fateful choice: he started playing Dungeons and Dragons.
Role-playing games were just beginning their rise, and Barrowcliffe,
along with 20 million other socially maladapted boys, spent his
adolescence in dining rooms and basements as a druid, warrior or
magician, throwing oddly shaped dice and slaying monsters. While
D&D allowed Barrowcliffe to escape his mundane, much-bullied
existence in an all-boys school, it also threw him into an equally
cruel nerdiverse of Nazi wannabes, boys with nicknames like Rat and
Chigger, and his polymath, Falstaffian best friend who once ate a
still-frozen chicken pie on a bet. Barrowcliffe, whose own schoolboy
nickname was Spaz, wonderfully captures the insensitivity, insecurity
and selfishness of the adolescent male. His eye for the oddities of
1970s British life is equally astute."
|
|
The
Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible 2nd Edition -
"'Everything
you ever wanted to know about gaming... but thought you'd be a geek if
you asked.' Hailed as the best source of information ever created about
Roleplaying games, this is the single most important book any gaming
fan- or anyone who wants to understand RPGs- could hope to own." |
|
Second
Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media - "Games
and other playable forms, from interactive fictions to
improvisational theater, involve role playing and story—something
played and something told. In Second Person, game
designers,
authors, artists, and scholars examine the different ways in which
these two elements work together in tabletop role-playing games (RPGs),
computer games, board games, card games, electronic literature,
political simulations, locative media, massively multiplayer games, and
other forms that invite and structure play."
|
MYTHS
AND MISCONCEPTIONS
|
|
|
Innumeracy:
Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences - "Why
do even well-educated people understand so little about
mathematics? And what are the costs of our innumeracy? John Allen
Paulos, in his celebrated bestseller first published in 1988, argues
that our inability to deal rationally with very large numbers and the
probabilities associated with them results in misinformed governmental
policies, confused personal decisions, and an increased susceptibility
to pseudoscience of all kinds. Innumeracy lets us know what we're
missing, and how we can do something about it."
NOTE: The author
uses the imagined connection between D&D and
suicide as an example of how statistics are misunderstood by almost
everyone. |
|
Killing
Monsters: Why
Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe
Violence - "Violent
entertainment is good for kids, and demonizing it can do great
harm to their emotional development, claims Jones (Honey, I'm Home!) in
this provocative and groundbreaking work. Drawing on his experience as
a parent and as a creator of children's cartoons, as well as interviews
with dozens of psychologists and educators, Jones forcefully argues
that violent video games, movies, music and comics provide a safe
fantasy world within which children learn to become familiar with and
control the frightening emotions of anger, violence and sexuality. He
debunks studies linking violent media with violence in society and
argues that children clearly understand the difference between pretend
and reality." |
SATANIC
PANIC / MORAL PANIC
|
|
|
Devil's
Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three - "Arkansas
Times investigative reporter Leveritt explores the 1993 West
Memphis Three murder convictions, which have been the subject of two
HBO documentaries. The book is arranged chronologically, from the crime
through the trial, and dispassionately dissects the prosecution's case
against three teens who were convicted of the grisly murders of three
eight-year-old boys. Leveritt interviewed the principals, reviewed the
police file and trial transcripts, and leads the reader to conclude
from her exhaustive research (430 footnotes) that the case was botched,
improperly based on a single confession from a retarded youth and the
defendants' alleged ties to satanic rituals. Well written in
descriptive language, the book is an indictment of a culture and legal
system that failed to protect children as defendants or victims."
NOTE:
This case is not directly associated with RPGs or LARP, but it is a
classic case of Satanic Panic. |
|
Satanic
Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend - "Sociologist
Victor began his involvement with satanic-cult phenomena by
investigating a local panic centered in southwestern New York state.
After an introductory section, his book begins with a description of
this research, then proceeds with an excellent general review of recent
fear about satanic cults in the U.S. He concludes that there is no
evidence for the actual existence of organized satanic cults." |
(These links go to amazon.com - and if you
purchase
books from those links, a portion of the proceeds will go towards the
site!)
|
|
