20210731.0430

Again I long to hear the dice
Roll and clatter among lies
Told with friends as we all fight
The challenges with our feigned might
That others yet to us present--
And that we might actually win.

20210715.0430

How I miss the clattering dice
Shining stonelike things singing
Falling from my fingers
Their percussion beating out the tempo of
Adventures in the mind!
But how much more do I miss the friends
With whom I play such music!
The band is often better than the gig.

20210414.0430

Even in my fantasies
When I can do what I would do
And consequences not accrue
Choking out the flow
I end up poring over books
While others have their fun
And though I enjoy reading
That I imagine doing it
Instead of doing it
Is likely no good sign

20210303.0430

I read a thing
When you call for delivery
You're an NPC
Sending someone in a fetch quest for coin
But when I did the delivery
I was still the NPC
Rattling the same lines off
Again and again
In one short scene
Someone else's story
I would not offer many XP
Though then I might have been worth looting

20190808.0430

Even after all this time, I still find myself rolling dice and telling lies as one of my main forms of entertainment. The dice may more often be digital than dimpled at this point, and the table at which I sit to sling them a computer desk rather than some plastic or metal-and-wood contraption under fluorescent tube lights, but the idea remains the same; I get together with people to make up stories about made-up places and people and to chat outside of doing that about what I do with the rest of my life. And it remains good.
I'm not sure I had anything to say about it, other than that.
Maybe that's enough, though. I know we're in a cultural moment that admits of things like D&D and, if still recognizing their nerdiness, does not single them out for opprobrium as once they were. But I do remember the Satanic panic, in which people were convinced that playing such games was a deal with the devil and a surrender of control to ghastly or infernal powers. I remember when a polyhedral die was taken as an invitation to harassment and bullying--and not always from peers, because even the cubes that might could pass were seen from on high as gambling tools. And they were, to be fair, but not with money, but with story outcomes.
A stock portfolio is no less gambling, but it somehow does not strike others' eyes as objectionable.
I will not attempt to sing a paean to the RPG here. I do not need to, and my voice is not one that does well to be lifted in song, anyway. Nor have I the time to say all the good about such games that I could say. For now, it is enough to say that it has been good and is still good, at least for me and others I know.
Maybe more people should try it.

20190629.0430

I have posted to this webspace on this date in each of the last several years: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. As has been the case for many of the days in the month now nearly done, the later posts have been poems, the earlier prose. I find myself drawn again and again to composing verse; characters I play in the various RPGs in which I am involved seem ever to put their minds to thoughts in lines, in alliteration or in rhyme, or neither but following formal rhythms and syllable counts. And in reflecting on the years past in this month, I have come back to verse again and again, whether considering the lines I have written before or adding to them in one way or another, giving sequels that may or may not be epilogues for pieces I have put together.
Today is no different. As I look at the 2014 piece, one of the many asides I make stands out. I note "that ether is a good term" for internet-work, as "the online environment does wonders as a sedative." (I know I make many asides. It has been remarked upon as an oddity in my writing; I've been accused of putting my best points in throwaway footnotes or parentheticals such as this one. Such is how my mind works. Here, at least, I need not worry about it. My readers will either read the words or not. But that is always true.) As I think on it, I begin to think the note might serve as the genesis of a poem. To wit:

Sitting amid the too-blue glow
That causes waking by stopping sleep
The scented cloth still covers nose and mouth
Vapors seeping out and filling
Not just lungs
But heart and head
Leaving not sleep
Though the smell is still soporific
Inducing a lingering dream that needs no unconsciousness to arise
And in the minds of many
Stifling many others
The immaterial thought the fifth material
Spanning now from place to place
Suffusing all anymore
Making itself felt
By numbing feeling

Some things do well to not be felt so keenly.

I do not know if it is obscure enough to be "good," as such, even aside from having its source announced earlier in discussion. There are enough clues, I think, to puzzle out the meaning even aside from the earlier note, but I also know that I write from a particular set of experiences that make things clear to me that are not necessarily so to others. Still, I can but write from where I am, as my readers, however few, read from where they are. And I can hope that we make some connection, my readers and I, through that un-thing that seems anymore to mean every thing.

20190628.0430

Of the six posts in this webspace I've made in previous years on this date--2011, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018--that from 2014 seems the most relevant to me at the moment. In that piece, I offer an amateurish review of the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game fourth-edition supplement, Sword and Fan. Now, while the game has since progressed into a fifth edition, and with a different company holding the rights to the intellectual property, I find the supplement--and the line of which it is part--still of some use. I play and administer games in it, and am gearing up to help run yet another game that will make much use of the materials in the book. Revisiting the review, therefore, seems like a useful thing to do.
There are problems in the piece, of course. As I note, it is amateurish, overly brief and skimpy on details that would likely make for a better piece of writing. (Indeed, the scholar that is still within me chafes at the lack of specific textual detail and explication thereof. And I was a scholar then, or at least was trying to be so, so the lack is even less acceptable from then than it would be from now, when I am more or less out of academe.) Too, certain features expected of book reviews are flatly absent; I do not give the ISBN or the MSRP, for example, both of which are standard features of book reviews. (I see enough of them, both in my pleasure reading and in the scholarly reading I should have done more of when I was trying to be a scholar. I ought to know better.) Neither is a point in favor of my writing's quality.
But I do follow the overall form of a review, giving a brief synopsis of the contents before identifying problems I found in the text and expounding on what it does well. And, following a form I learned while doing freelance writing I still miss--largely because of the pay, yes, but also because of the ways in which it forced me to sharpen my writing and to expand my skills with it (including working in AP style and beginning to learn HTML coding)--I spend more words on what Sword and Fan does well than what it does poorly. My overall notion is that the book is a good one, and it helps to have subtle textual features align to that idea. Neglecting problems is a foolhardy thing, but if the overall idea is that a thing is good, it makes sense to put more words into noting how it is good than how it is bad. It's not paratext, as such; it is in the words themselves. But it is not in the denotations of those words--or even the connotations of the individual words. It is in the connotations of perceived effort as indicated by the number of words. So that much is to the good in the review, at least.
Written reviews are not particularly prized for RPG products at this point--or even at the point when I wrote my review of Sword and Fan. I should be making videos, probably, or at least including graphics to encapsulate and condense my prose for ease of reading. In another webspace, I likely would. But in this one, I remain bound to text (and with some light attention to paratext, I admit). Whether that is a good thing or not, I am not at all certain.

20190330.0430

In a recent conversation I had, the comment was made that "if you didn't do anything wrong, you've got nothing to hide." It's far from the first time I've heard such a comment, of course; I was in college when 9/11 happened, and I remember the fracas surrounding the drafting and passage of the so-called Patriot Act, with its surveillance mandates &c. And I remember one of my responses to it, even at the time, was that "I'm not ashamed to take a shit every day, but I don't want an audience when I do." (For the record, that's still my go-to response, even if I am more likely to have such an audience now, whether I would prefer it or not.) There are others that would apply now, of course, but the general thrust remains the same; there are things I do that I am not ashamed of, but I do not want them observed by non-participants quite so closely as all that.
One of them is likely obvious, I know. I'll leave it at that level of obviousness; those who do not know or cannot guess do not need to.
As I think on the matter, though, because I seemingly must think about the things I encounter, there are a number of things I shouldn't be ashamed of that I seem still to be, or to be closer to that than I feel ought to be the case. For all my noting that I play tabletop roleplaying games in person and online, for example, I still often shy away from discussing it, and I only rarely foreground my doing so (as I've noted). I am still reluctant to admit to certain of my media consumption, typically styles of music and a few things that I read (and no, I'm not going into them here and now, despite the removal and anonymity of being online). I have some ideas about why, of course, and there are some ways in which I work against the tendencies, but they remain in place.
The thing is, I do know that there is no shame in my spending leisure time gaming, or reading the things that I read, or listening to the music I want to listen to--just as there's no shame in my taking a shit once or twice a day. Unlike the last, though, the former examples still make me blush about them; even now, I feel my face reddening at the thoughts, and no, not all of what I'm referencing is lewd (though some of it is, I admit). And I am certain I have caused some others to feel similarly about their own idle and harmless tastes in things; I have more often been an ass than I've not, which is not to my credit and perhaps means I merit feeling bad when and about what I do.

20190328.0430

One of the people with whom I play an online version of a tabletop roleplaying game commented recently that a number of the characters s/he is drafting in preparation for an upcoming game are done to avoid addressing the personal anxieties s/he has. Another commented that escapism isn't a bad thing--which is true, on the surface of it, though it can become a problem in some circumstances--and received in reply questions about whether the escapism "to be a badass that hunts evil" or "to be a genial fellow who is liked by many, if not most" would be so healthy. As someone whose characters tend to be, at least in part, reifications or pseudo-reifications of attributes of personality and deportment I might wish I had, I found the questions telling--and decidedly worth considering in my own cases.
The characters I play are, for the most part, upright and honorable people, given to being dutiful and diligent. There are some exceptions, of course; I do occasionally play a sneaky git or a selfish ass. Most of the time, though, I play "good guys" who may have some flaws but generally try to find the right thing to do and to do that thing once they've found it. And if it is the case that those of us who build characters tend to build ones we see as reflecting what we want to be and do not believe we are, then I would seem to be in trouble; if I fantasize about being a "good guy," just as my comrade fantasizes about being either an agent against evil or someone well liked, then it must mean that I do not think myself such a person. I do not know that I can argue against that assertion; I have a decent view of what goes on in my head, and it is not the kind of thing that always makes for the most pleasant viewing.
I am sure the same is true for many other people, though. Most or all of us have facets of ourselves we share with few or none. Most or all of us have things we done and are not proud to have done, or things we did not do and are not proud not to have done. (I have more of the latter than the former, I think.) But I do not think that most people think they are not good for more than moments at a time; I am not convinced that most people introspect quite so often or so deeply as that. It seems a less desirable action, which I note as someone who does more of it than should be, and to less effect. In the games, though, I do not feel compelled to look so far inward or so often as is the case outside the game. If I could transfer that lesson outside, I wonder if I might not be better off.

20190326.0430

It should come as no surprise that I am involved in another iteration of the Legend of the Five Rings Roleplaying Game; I have played since my first year of undergraduate study, and I've come back to the topic time and again in this webspace and in others. My affection for and engagement with the material, then, should be clear. When another opportunity to play in such a game arose, then, I was almost compelled to seize upon it; that it has done so in such a way as the current game, which situates itself in the deep canonical history of the game as a whole, only served as a greater allure. I'm sure I'll have more to say on the matter in the coming weeks, as the game progresses, but there is something that emerges as a point of interest for me in the present moment.
A common feature of the online play in which I've engaged for some time, and which is present in the game I've joined, is out-of-character chat. While tabletop RPGs themselves depend for their effect upon the immersion of the players in the play--hardly unique to them, I know, though such games are notable in that their audiences are their performers in the moments of the performance--it is also the case that any group of people gathered for a common purpose will engage in side-conversations and other activities that are themselves enjoyable but are also distractions from the main game, the unifying purpose. Such things are unavoidable; the online games in which I've played set up places to put them, places which come to function strangely liminally as the games get going and continue.
The specific webspaces are described as out-of-character areas; the players are not obliged to narrate as if in character. Yet most of them will do so. Early on in games' lives, the out-of-character spaces serve as workshops to find and refine characters' voices; in one case, I found that I needed to apply a particular accent to a character to fit the concept, and I am far from the only example to be found of such things. And while the discussion in the out-of-character spaces do not affect those of the in-character spaces, the reverse is not true--and the players tend to discuss outside matters in the voices of their characters. In short, the out-of-character space is a play-space, one that does not affect the main story but does involve the players playing as their characters. That liminality seems an interesting thing to me; I wonder what someone better at looking at such things than I am might make of it.

20190324.0430

To follow up on what I posted yesterday, I am having trouble thinking of myself as something other than my job first. I suppose it is because I am as habituated to the working world as I am--and since I've had a job for more years than I've not, nearly as many years as I was in school, it makes sense. Certainly, when I introduce myself to people, I give my name, but I give my professional affiliation immediately thereafter, and I think it is the latter that sticks with people. It matters more what I do than who I am; the job matters more than the person who holds it. And while there might be some good in that--the work gets done, no matter by whom--it does tend to skew my view, and I do not think I am alone in having such a perspective.
The thing is, I do more than my job. Even if a focus on deeds rather than being is appropriate--and I am not making the argument that it is or it is not--that does not mean that a focus on professional position is the most important one. It does not mean it is what should be presented early on, forming the impression against which all that follow is assessed. As I continue to puzzle out who I am outside my work, I wonder what impressions I make in the minds of others if I introduce myself as, say, my wife's husband or Ms. 8's father, as the son of my parents or the brother of my brother--and I was the son of my parents before I began school, the brother of my brother before I began work, and the husband of my wife and father of my daughter before I started working the work that I work now. But the work has supplanted even the earlier identities, and the later ones have grown only with that particular manure spread upon the soil; it has changed the fruit somehow, though I do not know how, having no standard against which to compare the produce I can harvest.
Too, what impressions would form did I introduce myself according to other things I do? Did I lead off with my name and my being a gamer--"Hi; I'm Geoff, and I play tabletop RPGs"--what would I come off as being? If I led off with announcing myself as a member of my family, as in a particular relationship with specific other people (and foregrounding one over the others), that would be something people would easily understand; it might read strangely, but it would read. Naming myself a gamer, and a specific type, might well not read at all, even if it is as true a statement as "Hi, I'm Geoff, and I help direct a Hill Country nonprofit." But calling ourselves our recreational activities, though they may be more truly who we are than our jobs or even our bloodlines, strikes the mind as strange. (And privileged, as well, but that's a discussion to have at another time, if at all.) Perhaps it ought not, but it does.

20190307.0430

In yesterday's post to this webspace, I comment that I have had several reasons to hoard printed pages. It must be the case that I have had them; I've dragged more than a ton of them across states and time-zones, and that kind of investment of time and effort has to have some justification. In earlier times, my doing so might have had to do with my work trying to be a scholar and teacher in the academic humanities, chiefly English languages and literatures. Even now, knowing that I ought to divest myself of some of the printed pages I have accumulated over the years in favor of electronic reading and library work, and knowing that I should get rid of some of the others because they represent connections to parts of me that I ought to relinquish--growths or vestigial organs that serve no purpose but threaten to grow septic--there are a fair few pieces that I mean to continue to keep. They continue to matter to me in ways that go beyond the words printed on their pages.
I've addressed some of the reasons why, to be sure. There are copies of works my wife and I have that are for display, and, yes, there is some snobbishness in having fancy ones that do not get opened often if at all. There are some that I keep for their sentimental value, because they were given to me by people for whom I cared and care. My copies of Asimov's Foundation novels are among them, for example, as is my grandfather's copy of an old edition of Shakespeare. There are some, too, that I still use, whether because I continue to play RPGs such as L5R or because I still flatter myself that I do a bit of research people might occasionally want to read or to hear me present at a conference now and again. (Did I mention I've got another one coming up in May?)
One thing that gives me some pause as I consider getting rid of some of the books I have but no longer use, or the academic journals I've gathered over the years, is that I make many notes in the margins of the books from which I study. The fancy and sentimental copies of my books are exempt from that, of course; the pretty ones should probably remain pretty, the ones that matter should get no blemish, and my pen-hand remains poor despite the practice through which I put it time and again. But my working books, the ones from which I've taught or to which I've gone time and again for materials from which to write what I write in the most formal venues where I write, are bestrewn with my notes, both interlinear and marginal. It is because owning copies of the books allows me to make the notes that I have continued to buy books as I have, and it is because there are little bits of me thrust into those pages through the guided work of my hands upon cylinders that trail something behind them that I am loath to part with so many of the pages I've acquired.
I worry that I will be diminished.

20190129.0430

I've noted that I continue to teach, despite my protestations that I will be withdrawing from academe. I've also noted that I am and remain involved in some roleplaying games. That I note the two in close conjunction should suggest that I'll be discussing the two in relation to one another--upon which suggestion I will be acting presently. To wit:
While I was in graduate school, I ran a roleplaying game with some thirteen players at the table at once. Those who are familiar with tabletop play will know already that the usual size of a game is four to six, so a game of thirteen is quite an undertaking. And, to be fair, there were problems at that table. Some of them were the faults of the players themselves, such as one who would habitually attend game sessions intoxicated in one form or another (and while the game was in a part of the world that encourages drunkenness, and while I did not and do not abstain while at the table, there's enjoyment and then there's being shit-faced...) or another who would not or could not pay attention. Some of them were my fault, such as some gaps in storyline and wildly inconsistent character advancement/development.
But there were many good things at that table, too. The story we told together has lived on in one form or another, and one of the games in which I now am is, in fact, an outgrowth of an outgrowth of that story. (A later part of the game, or another game in the same storyline, will be returning to the old table's game more overtly.) I remain in contact with several people from that table, and if we are not as close now as when we were seeing each other for several hours every week, still are we friendly with one another. And there were techniques for cooperative play I developed that helped promote cohesion at the table, which is always to the good.
Those last have occasionally appeared, in some form, in the classes I have taught. When I've taught public speaking or similar classes--and I have done so on more than one occasion, to be sure--I have tended to deploy both the general presentation of problem and persona that tabletop roleplaying games demand and the cohesion-prompting actions my earlier gaming showed me, and it has helped students to be more involved and engaged in the class. In courses where I've been obliged to assign group work--which I do not normally like--I've had similar success, requiring students to report on one another's progress with an eye towards who else in the group has done best. While students in my classes are often reluctant to inform on one another's misdeeds, they are generally happy to talk one another up--which I take to be a good thing.
I might return to this idea in time to come, and I might well do so in a more formal setting than this--but not too formal a one. I am trying to bow myself out of academe, after all...

20190125.0430

Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate, I treated roleplaying games for coursework and a curricular requirement I still make tongue-in-cheek reference to from time to time ("I got into grad school off of D&D"). While doing the reading to do that work, I came across arkelias's "Dice Obedience School" on Gamegrene.com, a site that gets occasional updates but seems not to be terribly active anymore. It's a shame, because the piece itself is an interesting read, one I might return to for one of my more "teacherly" posts, in which I summarize and respond to article others have written. (I've had reasonably good luck doing so with "non-standard" pieces in the past. I can expect that I would again.) But that's not the point of things this time.
No, this post looks at a strange thing. As I've noted, I think, I'm taking part in two online roleplaying games. Both emulate tabletop games in that they are primarily narrative, using paper-and-pencil rules to adjudicate what needs "impartial" adjudication. Those rules call for dice rolls; the online games use electronic dice rollers. And those dice rollers appear to be immune to such prescriptions as arkelias and others make--and which, in my experience, have some value. That is, I've put them into practice with my own physical dice, and they have tended to roll better than average for me--and not for others whom I have allowed to use them. Electronic dice cannot be punished for their failure; they are bits and bytes stored on computers far removed from the rolling done, so they cannot be found by hammers for smashing, and they are not present to watch their fellows suffer. Nor can they be stored in comfort, not being things. Nor yet can they be kept with their preferred faces up, so that they get used to the position and seek to return to it for comfort and familiarity.
No, other methods must be found, and not to command the virtual dice, but to appease the mighty figures that are embodied in them. Pantslessness is recommended when approaching one roller affectionately referred to as the Fortune of Dung. Movements of Carmina Burana are played as audible and outward signs of veneration and the acceptance of fate's machinations and the randomness of outcomes in an attempt to persuade the randomness to greater favor. Ritual readings of Camus cannot be far behind, and I can see my way clear to pantsless incantations recited and set contrapuntally over Orff as the Fortune of Dung is appeased--or not, for the fickle fortune's false factota flail about freely, as they will or not, but never as we would have them who are subject to their power in the small and secluded spheres where we roll dice and tell lies online.
Pray for us sinners, now and in the hours of our characters' travails, and deliver us from the evils set against us, that we might enact others of our own choosing, for our amusement. Amen.

20109121.0430

There are times I find it harder to write than others. Some days, I can sit and hammer out thousands of words without any trouble. Others, I struggle to write a single sentence. And this is a problem because as much of my jobs depend on writing as do, and many of the leisure activities I undertake--if they can be said to be "many"--similarly rely on my putting words together in order on pages. Today, as I work to write this bit in this webspace, is more the "others" than the "some," although I've already put together no few emails and composed a short rumination in the other webspace I maintain, and I am like to write another bit for yet another webspace I seem to manage. So I do not know why it is that I feel I am having such trouble when, to all appearances, I am not actually having it.
I suppose some of it comes from the fact that the writing I do seems not to go anywhere. Yes, the emails and documentation I develop for my day job go on record, and the work I do commenting on student papers might be of some help. The writing I do for the games I play, narrative constructions that they are, seem also to help. But I am not in a position where I can simply be a writer, and I really do not know how to break into the market of doing so, or at least doing so under my own name. I can pick up freelance work without much trouble, but most or all of that is ghostwriting, and I am not sure that that kind of work is the kind of work I can claim. And so, perhaps, I find myself feeling as if I have trouble putting words together; I feel I have not got much of anything to show for the time and effort I've spent on doing so across the years.
I am not unaware of the irony of bemoaning such in this venue. At least in the other webspace, I outright ask for money, and I might at some point follow through on the plan suggested by a friend of mine to monetize it in the usual fashion. In such an event, I am like to move the writing I do in this webspace to that; I will need to align my work to a single venue in that event. But I feel as if I ought to be working on some larger project more than I am, and doing so seems to escape me. I do not always have time that I can focus on such work, certainly not when I have the energy I might devote to it. The reverse is also true. And I am not at all convinced I have the scope of vision to carry such a thing out. Nor yet do I think I am able to connect with people in such a way. My narrative persona is a bit too uptight for easy relating, and that relation is needed.
All I can do, really, is to keep plugging away and maybe stumble into something that will give me a bit more time and freedom to do what I need to do to write at length and well. But that will be a long time coming, I think, if ever it comes--no matter how hard I might work at the task of bringing it about.

20109120.0430

I noted in yesterday's post that looking at roleplaying games as narratives--which they are--would take a fair bit of doing, though it would likely be a rewarding endeavor. (Given the generally non- or pseudo-scholarly nature of this webspace, I am not going to go to the trouble of finding playership numbers, but I have the sense that there are a lot of people in a lot of places who play such games, and something that takes up so many people's time and resources seems to invite attention.) And I remarked that one necessary step in doing such would would be to develop an approach to it, since the typical analytical practices with which I am familiar do not seem to suffice. (I will admit, though, that it's been a little while since I've been in school, and it's been a bit since I've been more fully connected to academe, so it's possible there is such a tool in place and I am simply unaware of it. I'd be happy to see it--but it won't change the thrust of what I'm doing in this bit of writing.)
I do know that one of the common claims against academic humanistic study is the reliance on and emphasis of theory in the work. That is, much humanistic study concerns itself with asserting and refining approaches to the human works being studied, rather than attending to the works themselves and connecting them to the commonly perceived concerns of an imagined general public. There is some validity to such claims; there is a damned lot of theory, and the theory is not the thing to which the theory is applied, so that discussions of that theory become exercises in comparative erudition that a less generous person might call pissing contests. And no matter who wins a pissing contest, there's still a bunch of piss on the floor that needs cleaning up.
But that does not mean that there is no place for theory. A detailed disciplinary history is, of course, out of place here, and looking into it makes for some interesting reading, but it will suffice for the moment to note that having a reasonably consistent, discernible approach to things helps in making sense out of them. Humanistic study is, at root, interpretive work, and having a rubric or guide for that interpretation, having an external structure to which reference can be made, is of help in performing interpretive acts and in explaining them to others. There is always the danger of being too restricted by the theory--the old adage about having only one tool comes to mind--but, as with any tool, it is far easier to do the work that needs doing with a more amenable tool than without.
I continue to look forward to having a tool amenable to use in interpreting roleplaying games. I do not know that I have the skills to develop one, myself; I rather expect that I do not, else I might be in a different line of work than that were I now find myself. But I know I would be able to use it, were it ready to hand...

20109119.0430

I am once again amid an online roleplaying game--two, actually, playing in one and helping to administer another, both of which concern the exploits of magical samurai. I am once again immersed in creating stories collaboratively, working with others to present and negotiate challenges, developing characters and pushing forward plotlines--and, given the online media, leaving behind me and my fellow players records of what is being done and how. It marks a difference from what Daniel Mackay describes as an ephemeral performance, which also opens the possibility that the games I'm in could be studied by later researchers.
I've worked on such things before, whether in reviewing products (as here and here) or acting in a pseudo-scholarly fashion (such as here, here and in preceding work, or here and in its predecessors). And I've received at least a little favorable feedback on the work I've done so far; some of the players I'm with now have seen at least some of the work that I've done, and they've approved of it, for which I am grateful. Consequently, I have some idea that more such work might be done well, and I've opined about it in previous posts, noting my desire to return to doing such things, since I have not the burdens of formal academe under which to labor anymore. (This is not to say that I would do the work well, of course; did I do such things as well as I might like, I'd likely still be in academe. But that's another matter entirely.)
What approach might inform such work is not clear to me, however. Considerations of medium and content development obtain. While the narrative in the games I play starts at a fixed point of in-milieu time and moves forward from that point, it does not do so consistently. In the game I am helping to administer, days begin linearly, but they do not end in linear fashion. Additionally, motion through the days themselves is not linear; bits of gameplay do not start in the in-milieu morning and move smoothly forward, but begin at various points in the in-game day and fill in from those beginnings. And there are many people starting and adding to narrative threads throughout. As such, while each narrative thread is linear in itself, the emergence and development of those threads is not so neat, and following the lines of narrative from structural and related perspectives is therefore more complicated than might otherwise be the case.
Addressing each narrative thread as a separate work would not work, however. The threads are too interconnected to permit of such easy untangling. They might be regarded as being analogous to chapters in a book, each treated as such, but that would also run into problems as threads run into and emerge from one another. Nor can one character's progress be taken as a focal point, given the relatively egalitarian nature of most such games. But even the notion of coming up with a rubric or apparatus to make sense of the game as a whole would be quite an accomplishment...I hope to see such a thing someday.

20181127.0430

In conversations with my wife over the long weekend just past, I had occasion to remark about my involvement with various intellectual properties. In my younger years, I spent quite a bit of time, money, and energy consuming such narrative milieus as the Star Trek and Star Wars universes, of Middle-earth, of Asimov's sprawling future history that now looks so quaint even though the clarity of writing remains in force, of Donaldson's chronicles of unbelief and their turgid prose (and I am sure that one shows in what I write more than I might want it to--for several reasons), of Hobb's Elderlings corpus that led to my master's thesis, of Legend of the Five Rings and of roleplaying games more generally. And I am aware that most or all of them have surpassed my ability to access them fully; they are surrounded by critical and fandom apparatuses that exceed me (in most cases; fandom is largely beyond me, though I have a handle on criticism of one of the properties I've listed, at least).
I am not sure how I feel about the matter. I've noted in other places that I'm glad to be free of the dick-wagging that accompanies so much community engagement with the intellectual properties I've engaged with and those similar to them. I've also noted that I miss being able to devote myself to them as I once did--even though I know that engagement is far harder now than when I was young, given the proliferation of nostalgia and the products that cater to it, as well as increased access through various media technologies. There are not enough hours in the day to attend to them all even if that is all that gets attention, and I am not in a position to be able to give myself fully over as I used to be able to do. I cannot afford to be so selfish.
I am also not sure anymore that I want to be. Aside from the simple matter--but important to the kind of little shit that I was and that many people still very much are--of a sex life (which I do not discount), family life is fulfilling in ways that fandom never was for me. To be fair, I've been lucky in my direct experience of fandom; the communities in which I participated were relatively supportive, but part of that support came only because I had a place enforced upon me, and my challenges to it were in the forms accepted by those communities. Those in which I am still engaged are far more casual and more broadly supportive--but, again, I know I am lucky in finding them. Each of us within them has horror stories of others that were...not, and they do not except the "official" fandoms, those associated most closely with or outright endorsed by the owners of the intellectual properties involved.*
My family, though, my wife and daughter, particularly, are far better for me to have than a place among the various fandoms. I am an expatriate of those fandoms no less than of academe, and I return to them as I may, but I do not think I will seek to emigrate from that smaller, greater nation in which I now dwell.

*I am aware, at least peripherally, of the challenges of fan-work and, indeed, of fandom itself, to ownership of intellectual properties in a moral and ethical sense, though not so much in a legal one. The latter seems to be the common understanding, though, and given the general audience I presume to address in this webspace, it is the one with which I am working in this piece.

20181119.0430

In my post yesterday, I make reference to "legitimate" scholarly topics. The specifics I refer to--and which I know I do not name--are those of my medieval studies work. My dissertation was on Malory and the process through which Le Morte d'Arthur became the canonical piece of Arthurian legend it is recognized as being. My conference papers have tended to address Malory, with a few ranging back into Old English works and a few others going in different directions entirely. My publications, few as they are, do not show up any kind of consistent agenda, except perhaps looking at locations and practices of teaching.
I did enjoy doing the work to make those things happen, to be sure. There is a certain amount of love for the thing that has to go into doing the work of writing theses over months or a dissertation over years. There is a certain amount of joy that inheres in finding places where knowledge is lacking and, through careful investigation and argumentation, correcting that lack. (Among others, and as I tell the students I reach in my expatriation, being the first to know a thing is rewarding.) But, as I noted yesterday and have noted elsewhen, the fields in which I tried to work as I sought to make myself a "real" scholar, one who has the luxury of living a life of the mind as a primary occupation, are not those that got me into scholarly work. They were, as it were, covers for the work I wanted to do--but I stopped doing the work I had hoped to use the "legitimate" work to enable. The cover became the primary thing--as much as research ever did for me. (I know part of why I was unable to get a full-time college or university gig was my too-short publication list.)
No, it was looking at things that many will deem silly that awakened in me the desire to make more knowledge. The roleplaying games that secured my undergraduate honors, the Robin Hobb novels I studied for my master's thesis, always seemed to me to need defending as objects of scholarly inquiry; I still struggle against the idea, just as I struggle with the notion that the work I do for the Tales after Tolkien Society needs defending. Such work may, but not for the reasons typically advanced, that the objects of such study are not worthy of such study. As much as anything else people do, they are--and I am not the only one of that opinion, else there'd be no other resources than those I've made. (I flatter myself that I've done pretty well with Hobb, though.)
If there is a benefit to the end of my pursuit of full-time scholarship to my scholarly work, it is this: I no longer need to work to hide my interests under "legitimate" work that I am increasingly unequipped to undertake. "Legit" work takes resources I no longer have easy access to--or much of any access. I keep what I can, but there's only so much I can do on that score. But I can do the kind of work I've done with RPGs and other pop-culture stuff still, and it's more of what I wanted to do, anyway...

20181118.0430

In a few of my recent posts, as well as in others throughout the span of my writing in this webspace, I've made reference to roleplaying games. Traditional writerly advice is to write what you know, and I've spent enough time rolling dice and telling lies to claim to know about RPGs, at least a little. It's part of why I return to them again and again, both in the writing I do (here and elsewhere) and in the recreational time I have. The other part, really, is that I enjoy the work; I like the material, I like working with the material, and I like sharing that love with others. Some others, I can reach through the table itself, whether physical or virtual. Some others, though, I can only reach by way of the writing I do, here and elsewhere.
I took the opportunity to look back over some of the writing I've done about RPGs in this webspace. Often, I merely make a glancing comment about them, speaking to my then-current involvement with one or another, or relating some then-present experience to something I recall from one of the several games in which I've taken part. There are a few times I've taken things more seriously, whether reviewing RPG products or going off on what might be called liberal-arts screeds about one thing or another I find in them. (Here and here come to mind as offering the main examples.) Those entries join my undergraduate thesis (I'm glad it's not online) and a number of papers I wrote prior to that, as well as selected bits later on, in a relatively minor line of work I've done throughout and outside my abortive career as a scholar.
Thinking back over that line of work leaves me feeling a bit strange. There's still relatively little work done on RPGs, at least the tabletop variety that have attracted most of my attention, although I'm not up on as much of it as I used to be. Not being a full-time scholar accounts for part of that. Not having focused on it when I was trying to be a full-time scholar also accounts for part of it; despite my prevailing interest, I felt compelled to dedicate my "real" work to "legitimate" topics. It was folly for me to do so, I realize. I had focused on "legitimate" topics in part to afford me better academic job prospects; the results of that focus should be obvious. (I'm not a full-time scholar.) If I was going to fail in my goal, I might as well have had some more fun along the way--but I wonder, now, if I might not have had better success looking into the strange places that attracted me, rather than into the staid ones that, while meriting examination (and I wonder if I will ever return to that project...), put me in direct competition with many others whom I know to be better scholars than I am. At least, in a smaller field, I might have stood out more.
It is too late for me to make such a change now. I am, as I've noted elsewhere, an academic expatriate (I can still visit, so I am not an exile, but my visits back to the country I sought to enter are fewer and fewer); I do not think that I would be able to build up my credentials as I would need to to be able to repatriate. But my case might well be a bit of a warning for others. If they need any more warnings than they already have.