Nicholas Mizer is a doctoral student in the Anthropology Department at Texas A&M. His research has looked at storytelling, play and modernity in roleplaying games – topics I’ve also been looking at from a literacies and education perspective. I talked with Nicholas about his current research and about his Kickstarter to fund parts of his dissertation research. Called “The Greatest Unreality: Story, Play, and Imagination in D&D,” this Kickstarter allows gamers and a general audience a bit more of a behind-the-scenes look at how the dissertation-sausage is made: backers get a copy of his final dissertation, gaming materials, and regular updates from Nicholas. Please consider backing here.
Below, we discuss Nicholas’s Kickstarter, his research topic, and RPG gaming trends. Links to things we discuss follow.
Related & Discussed Links:
- Nicholas Mizer’s Academia.edu page
- PlaGMaDA
- Ethnography and Virtual Worlds
- A layperson’s guide to Old School Renaissance (OSR)
- Playing at the Worlds by Jon Peterson
- Serenity Role Playing Game
- Dungeon Crawl Classics
- Gygax Magazine
- Nerd Poker
- Fate Core