Posts tagged participant observation

This morning while I waited for my laundry to dry (underwear is miraculous, did you know?), I STUDIED my way through D&D players handbooks like these. For Learning from Peoples, an anthropology course on participant observation and qualitative interviewing with Mirka Prazak, I’m studying the small group of students on campus who will be playing D&D this term. And because the whole focus of this anthropology course is learning participant observation, I’ll actually be playing with them. Right now all I know is that my character is a moon elf, level 5 druid level 1 lore master, and that I’m really glad I read Dragonlance books in high school or else I would be so lost in this process. Bennington may have a reputation for being home to moody broody artsy hipsters, but there is also a fairly big gaming population as well. For the same class, my friend Brittany will be studying the players of the Magic card game. Some of the players will overlap in our studies, so it will be interesting to compare our ethnographies of two different subsets of the Bennington RPG community! - Meg ‘12

This morning while I waited for my laundry to dry (underwear is miraculous, did you know?), I STUDIED my way through D&D players handbooks like these. For Learning from Peoples, an anthropology course on participant observation and qualitative interviewing with Mirka Prazak, I’m studying the small group of students on campus who will be playing D&D this term. And because the whole focus of this anthropology course is learning participant observation, I’ll actually be playing with them. Right now all I know is that my character is a moon elf, level 5 druid level 1 lore master, and that I’m really glad I read Dragonlance books in high school or else I would be so lost in this process.

Bennington may have a reputation for being home to moody broody artsy hipsters, but there is also a fairly big gaming population as well. For the same class, my friend Brittany will be studying the players of the Magic card game. Some of the players will overlap in our studies, so it will be interesting to compare our ethnographies of two different subsets of the Bennington RPG community!

- Meg ‘12