Enter the Labyrinth, meet the Librarian
Friends, adventurers, gamemasters, denizens of library land, wanderers of the web… Hail and welcome to Labyrinths & Librarians! This blog and related media (forthcoming, stay tuned) are broadly dedicated to tabletop adventure games and role-playing games (RPGs) and specifically focused on two special topics near to my professional, scholarly, and personal interests.
The first special topic, as the title suggests, is examining connections between RPGs and libraries; more specifically, practices for implementing tabletop RPG programs and collections in (public) libraries. I am blessed and privileged to be able to incorporate gaming into my work as a librarian, both as collection developer for our print RPG collection and co-organizer/co-Dungeon Master of our popular “Old-School D&D at the Library” program. My colleague and I have learned a lot over the 2 1/2 years we’ve been running this program, lessons which could be helpful to librarians looking to implement similar programs or, more generally, anyone looking to run an “open table” game of Dungeons & Dragons or other RPGs. As an extension of this, I’d like to have conversations with folks running games in other libraries to learn about their processes and practices.
The other special topic lies adjacent to the scholarly field of ludomusicology, the research and analysis of game music. Whereas this niche field is generally dedicated to video game music, my focus is on the role of music in “analog” games. This interest has been developed over 25+ years of seeking out interesting-but-ignorable ambient music to enhance my own gaming experiences and conducting broader musicological research into ambient music and related genres. There won’t be any scholarly treatises here, but readers can expect periodic forays into explorations of on “table music,” that is, music to be played at the table during a game session with the intent of enhancing the play experience through adding ambience and atmosphere.
Finally, there will be some other fun RPG-related stuff in here: actual play reports (when I have time enough to write them up!), product reviews, gamemaster advice, and so on. A lot of this will be related to old-school, 70s-80s “Gygaxian” Dungeons & Dragons (through which I was first introduced to the hobby in 1983) and its modern simulacra such as Swords & Wizardry. Other games will get some representation as well, most notably Barbarians of Lemuria and its offshoots — a more modern game with old-school feel that is one of my all-time favorite game systems.
Looking forward to the journey, and I hope it will be helpful and entertaining. Drop me a comment if there’s anything in particular you’d like me to address within any of these topics and I’ll try to respond promptly. Onward and upward, friends, fight on!
