Almost 50 Years of Academic Research on Tabletop Role-Playing Games: Historical Evolution and Bibliometric Analysis

Almost 50 Years of Academic Research on Tabletop Role-Playing Games: Historical Evolution and Bibliometric Analysis

https://pmartinolli.github.io/JDR50bibliometrie/index-english.html

This descriptive study offers an in-depth historical and bibliometric analysis of academic research on tabletop role-playing games. It examines the evolution of publications across various academic formats (conferences, monographs, theses, peer-reviewed articles) and explores new trends in scientific dissemination, including preprints and literature reviews. The analysis reveals a marked growth in scientific output since the origins of role-playing games, with a notable acceleration over the past decade. While research remains primarily based in North America and Europe, new hubs are emerging in Latin America and Asia. Several major themes are explored: the dominance of Dungeons & Dragons, the moral panics of the 1980s and 1990s, therapeutic applications, issues of diversity and representation, as well as the phenomenon of actual plays. The study also includes an analysis of theoretical reflections developed by the gaming community outside of traditional academic publications. It examines how these high-quality, para-academic contributions might be integrated and validated by scholarly institutions. Finally, it highlights the influence of academic practices and values, particularly in terms of citation, on role-playing game culture.  

This translation is to be submitted to a journal. It is a translation of the presentation in French made in the colloquia “Vous êtes dans une taverne…” Retour sur cinquante ans de jeux de rôle (27-28 mars 2024, Metz, Université de Lorraine) that will be published as a chapter in a monograph. The translation relies heavily on Claude 3 Haiku by Anthropic and ChatGPT 4o by OpenAI.

On the Shoulders of Cloud Giants: dataviz with JavaScript in Observable

 

My project On the Shoulders of Cloud Giants which attempts to describe citation practices in tabletop role-playing publications is a bit dormant at the moment. I am testing a new technique which consists of creating automatic citation indexes but it takes time.

Here it is : https://observablehq.com/@pascaliensis/on-the-shoulders-of-cloud-giants

• The code queries Wikidata and returns the data in a structured manner in the form of (mainly) a series of pairs between a citing tabletop role-playing game and a cited TTRPG.

• The data exists in Wikidata thanks to property P2860 (cites work).
• The code is in the appendix (at the very bottom of the Observable page) in the variable query=
• Other data is repatriated along the way: date of publication, “movement” to which the role-playing game belongs (The Forge, OSR, etc.), publishing house and game mechanics.

• This data in the form of a table is encoded in JSON format. This is important because as we are going to do JavaScript visualizations, we need to structure the data in this format so that it is absorbed correctly by the JavaScript visualization libraries.
• Then this JSON table is transformed into a JSON hierarchy, this is an organization of information specifically designed for network/relationship visualizations.
• Basically, the structure of this JSON hierarchy is divided into two parts: a part describing each game independently (nodes part) and a part listing each relationship (edges part).
• The transformation was done by a function named table2hierarchy
• The variable containing this file is located in data_citingCited
• From there, most of the work is done because the JavaScript libraries do all the rest of the work. You just have to modify them a little each time to have the desired effect (like filtering the data or coloring it). Several visualizations are thus made:
•         Undirected graphs
•         Chord diagrams
•         Classic bar charts, etc.

https://observablehq.com/@pascaliensis/on-the-shoulders-of-cloud-giants

Working with literary epigraphs in Wikidata

This post is part of the series on epigraphs. Many tabletop roleplaying games use this literary technique.

In 2019, a new property named epigraph (P7150) was created in Wikidata to index epigraphs in literary works*. This is a very interesting initiative as it proves that Wikidata can have a rich ontology with precise qualitative descriptions. For the moment, the property is quite little used (most of the contributions come from me**).

I dream that one day the data will be complete and meaningful enough to produce interesting results in digital humanity. This would be a nice topic for a thesis. 

Hypothesis (developed in a future post): Perhaps fantasy literatures are more referenced than the "normal" literary works, in the sense that they contain more diverse references to other works or sources.

Some examples of use

In speculative fiction

• Foundation: the intra-diegetic epigraphs reveal the success of Hari Seldon's Encyclopedia Galactica project and thus frame the narrative.
• In Dune, the epigraphs come from characters such as Princess Irulan, who will become central character later in the work. In general, they create a chorus style (before it was fashionable).
• The Lord of the Rings: with its famous epigraphic poem that synthesizes past history, present situation and issues. Partly in the words of the main antagonist. Brr.
  
• The Handmaid's Tale: with sourced epigraphs that reveal the conflict of values at play in the novel.
• The King in Yellow contains one epigraph per chapter/novella, as well as an epigraph for the collection: some epigraphs refer to existing works, others to fictional ones. This creates an effect of confusion and surreal proper to the decadent movement, as well as a playful effect with the reader.

In the tabletop role-playing games

• Dirty Secrets
• Ryuutama, Natural Fantasy Roleplaying Game
• The Ultraviolet Grasslands
• See discussions in post 1 and 2.

In videogames

• Uncharted (Naughty Dog 2007, 2009, 2011, 2016)

Some SPARQL queries

•     To find all the epigraphs in speculative fictions
  
•     To list the works containing the most epigraphs
•     To count how many epigraphs are indexed in Wikidata

How to contribute ?

Indexing example

For indexing specific epigraphs

• P7150 (epigraph) =
  
• Typing the body of the epigraph. No quotation marks like « » or "" "".
• Indicating the language of the epigraph : en or fr or la (latin) or others. In case of multiple languages : mul. In case of unknown language : und.
• Qualifiers of P7150 :
• P1545 (series ordinal) : in case of several epigraph : 1, 2, 3,…
• P5997 (stated in reference as): the reference of the epigraph as written in the work.
  
• P1552 (has quality)
• = Q96102813 (in-universe perspective) : in case of an epigraph from a fictive work in the work (true in the fiction). (Example : the poem at the beginning of the Lord of the Rings).
• OR Q96102813 (fictional quotation)
   
• = Q112046597 (made up quotation) : in the case of a false, invented, apocryphal quotation (Example : false quotation of Eleanor Roosevelt in Talladega Nights).
• References of P7150:
• P248 (stated in): QID of the work from which the epigraph is taken.
• P50 (author) : QID of the author of the epigraph.
• P792 (chapter) : where is the epigraph in the work (if not at the beginning : in this case don't indicate the location). Or P958 (section, verse, paragraph, or clause).

For indexing multiple epigraphs (without indexing specific ones) : 

• P2283 (uses) =
  
• epigraphs (Q669777)
• has quality (P1552) = referenced value (Q71536081)
• quantity (P114) = number of sourced epigraphs from existing other works 
• fictional quotation (Q18011336)
  
• has quality (P1552) = in-universe perspective (Q96102813)
• quantity (P114) = number of forged epigraphs for this work  

Exampleemple de code Quickstatement pour une importation en lot :

qid,P2283,qal1552,P2283,qal1114,P2283,qal1552,P2283,qal1114
Q105349656,Q669777,Q71536081,Q669777,1,Q18011336,Q96102813,Q18011336,24

______________________
* I have also clarified the ontology and other definitions of the term epigraph (in archaeology, mathematics, etc.).
** I have indexed the 84 crazy epigraphs of Moby-Dick for example.