Tabletop Office Hours with Dr. Emily Friedman - Week 11: Game Geneologies
Channel: Critical Prof
Date: 2023-10-24

This fall, as I have for the last several years, I am teaching a college course on Tabletop Roleplaying Games as Narratives. www.ecfriedman.com/gamecourse  My students play games in and out of class, watch Actual Plays, do scholarly reading and research, talk to all kind of folks involved in TTRPGs, and ultimately, get to design their own final "UnEssays."

It's an active learning classroom, so when students are absent, there's no lecture to go back and watch. So in the past, I've come home, recorded short recaps, & posted them on this channel. My students didn't use them much, but many of my fellow educators (and awesome TTRPG nerds) did.

This time, I'm trying something a little different: I'll be recording my recaps live (usually about 15-20 minutes), and answering any questions I've gotten on my socials, in comments, or from chat.

Today we discussed the creators, communities and inspirations around their "adopted" TTRPGs, including:

    Who are the creators of this game? (if there is a very large team, project leads are key, but you'll want to let us know if the team was very large)
    When was your game published?
    Who are the publishers?
    Is the game built on a system initially designed for another game? If so, by who?
    Does THAT game have a game it was building upon?
    Is the game a licensed game of an established IP (such as Avatar, Marvel, etc)?
    Are there inspirations that the designers mention outside of other games?

And then of course, I'll be taking questions live!

You can check out my syllabus here: https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:58941/