I’m often asked by colleagues who know my interest in games in education to suggest a game students can play that will teach them some particular set of knowledge or skills. “Do you know any iPad games that can teach quadratic equations?,” or “Has anyone made a game about conjugating Spanish verbs?” While these games may...
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The cat’s meow in tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) for the last several months has been Monte Cook’s Numerera. Set one billion years in Earth’s future during a time known as the Ninth World, Numenera is a Kickstarter-funded science fantasy RPG that embraces as its core concern one of the fundamental dynamics of most tabletop...
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Three week ago, I set off with some gaming buddies on a five hour road trip to Indianapolis, Indiana, to attend Gen Con, the largest RPG gaming convention in the United States. Billing itself as “The Best Four Days in Gaming,” the con is a gigantic gaming whirlwind of crowds, cosplay, and commerce that takes over central...
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I have spent much of my free time lately poking through the core rulebook for Adventurer Conqueror King (ACKS for short), a new fantasy RPG published by a company called Autarch LLC. ACKS is what I like to think of as a classic Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) retro-clone on steroids. Mechanically it tries to emulate the rules set,...
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In my introductory post for this series on tabletop role-playing games (which dropped last December), I sketched out a brief portrait of my background with RPGs and laid down a marker for my main goal. To quote from the previous post, I want “to turn a more thorough and critical historical eye on the varied ways tabletop RPGs like...
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Collaboratively edited and authored, Play the Past is dedicated to thoughtfully exploring and discussing the intersection of cultural heritage (very broadly defined) and games/meaningful play (equally broadly defined). Play the Past contributors come from a wide variety of backgrounds, domains, perspectives, and motivations (for being interested in both games and cultural heritage). More information on all of our contributors can be found here. A full rundown of our community and commenting policy can be found here. If you are looking to get in contact with us (for whatever reason), point your browser here and drop us a line.
