Author: Jukka Särkijärvi
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The Library of the Unmourned
RPG tie-in novels are an underappreciated genre.
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When a Role-Playing Game Looks at Itself
In the best tradition of brecht, a RPG can comment itself. In his paper ”The Self-Reflexive Tabletop Role-Playing Game”, Evan Torner studies three different tabletop role-playing games and the ways they reflect upon themselves as games, highlighting the mechanisms of a role-playing game through the mechanisms of play. Self-reflexivity is the quality of an artwork…
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Delta Green: A New Way to Be Uncomfortable with H.P. Lovecraft
Is there a need for cosmic horror when Trump is the President?
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Group Sex – Game or Play?
Despite the explicit rules and limits, group sex is closer to play than a game.
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Critical Ops, the Off-Brand Counter-Strike
Playing a shooter on a smartphone feels like all thumbs.
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Review: This War of Mine
Cold, hunger, depression and fatigue are the only resources you don’t lack in This War of Mine
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Fandom and Game Studies at a Crossroads
Fandom studies and Game studies have a lot to learn from one another
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The Hermeneutics of the Storm Tribe
Jonne Arjoranta’s paper “What does it mean to be Orlanthi? Hermeneutic Challenge in King of Dragon Pass” examines the game King of Dragon Pass and the ways the player must internalize the beliefs of the Orlanthi tribe in order to win the game. He starts with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, the theory of how we…
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The Hegemonic Masculinity of Rules Lawyering
Rules lawyering as an expression of masculinity.
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Madness and Shadows – Darkest Dungeon
In Darkest Dungeon, you direct a party of four adventurers onwards through the dungeon in the dwindling light of their torches. They wade through blood and corpses to put an end to the darkness beneath the ruined estate where they’ve come, at the cost of their own lives and sanity. The gameplay is simple. Though…
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The Rolls-Royce Was the Least of It: Fairweather Manor, 1917
Larping upstairs and downstairs in an English manor.
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Mordheim
Warbands skirmish in a ruined city, Mordheim is a hard town to kill.
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Dungeons & Dragons & Deleuze
In the article “Tabletop Role-Playing Games, the Modern Fantastic, and Analog ‘Realized’ Worlds”, first published in the 2016 “Role Playing Games” special issue of Analog Game Studies, Curtis Carbonell explores the expansive worlds of tabletop role-playing games as ‘realized’ worlds and their position in the discourse of posthumanism.
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Review: Starfinder
Starfinder serves up high fantasy adventure in the stars. #starfinder #review #rpg
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Knutepunkt 2017 – Two Decades of Art, Design, and Scholarship
The Nordic larp conference turned 20. This is how it was.
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Review: Legend of Grimrock
Legend of Grimrock is old school. The kind where bullying is encouraged.
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Fear and Loathing in Barovia
Curse of Strahd as an exploration of trauma and abuse.
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Teaching German Literature Through Larp
Edu-larps may be just the thing for making German Studies more hands-on.
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Review: Marvel Avengers Academy
Marvel Avengers Academy is a peculiarly addictive little mobile toy.
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Through a Shot Glass, Darkly: The Study of Games in the Light of Drinking Games
Drinking games have been long overlooked in the field of game studies, despite what their study has to offer.