Based on demand and the fast-approaching limits of scheduled events in April: the same courses as the previous term in January, People and Play and Situation and Story. We’re beginning about a week from now, which isn’t ideal but I hope you’ll consider it.

Quick review: courses are five weeks long, one two-hour meeting per week. Click the images to find out more about the courses, dates & times, and sign-ups.

Testimony from the previous term: The class brought together many concepts I have been learning about and discussing at Adept Play over the past couple years, holistically and coherently. Chief among them is really clarification on what the medium is; I’ve felt that I’ve understood this fairly well for the last year or so, but have been unable to clearly articulate it to myself when I try to poke holes in it with counter-examples that come from miniature wargaming friends, i.e., what’s the difference between a roleplaying game and “narratively” linking your Warhammer 40,000 games.

Getting that point across in nitpicky conversations is one thing, and ultimately not very important, but being able to really talk about my understanding has made me internalize it on another level, and here’s the kicker: right now I feel like I did in my earliest days in the hobby (“hobby” as “leisure activity”, not “roleplaying industry”), right after my second session of anything ever, when I saw what I said change my character sheet and from there change how others spoke and did things in the game. I left that session with my head on fire. I still remember the sensation: like, this is something. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something, and some of the potential that attracted me to the activity in the first place was fundamentally realized.

I tried to describe the experience to my best friend (a non-gamer) afterward and I had no language for it. He could not understand and I could not transmit. Even after fifteen years of roleplaying I have not acquired much more language for it, until now. I have recaptured an intuitive understanding and made it explicit. In doing so, I have recaptured that initial excitement: this activity is indeed something, something fresh and bizarre and exciting and full of art like my just-graduated-with-an-art-degree-ass felt in that session, and that a subsequent decade mired in the “hobby”, in some important ways, eroded.