Ideas for D & D and Philosophy book

Mark Silcox and I are thinking about proposing either a "D & D and Philosophy" anthology to either Blackwell or Open Court. Basically while doing the two RPG chapters in our book we were forced to think a lot about D & D. In the Artificial Intelligence chapter we ended up posing the problem of AI in terms of what a human Game Master can do versus what a computer can do in the same role. In the chapter on the self we had to think deeply again about the differences in ways that humans Game Masters allow your character to do things that you can't do and the way computers allow you to do this (This theme is roughly one third of our forthcoming paper on Nozick's experience machine and World of Warcraft in the WoW and Philosophy anthology that Luke and John are editing.)

For a D & D book we'd like: (1) a person with no experience in philosophy or D & D to be able to read it and get a historically informed equivalent of an intro to philosophy class, (2) the issues covered to be ones that naturally arise from reflection on D & D,  (3) to be such that players and game masters actually find improvement with their game-play from reading the book,  (4) some of the papers to contain non-trivial philosophical theses. Here are some possible chapter ideas I've got.

Pre-Socratics- What metaphysics is and weird metaphysics of planes in 4e D & D.

Plato- Two critiques from The Republic: (1) role playing in the arts as epistemically bad compared to the kind of learning that leads to apprehension of the forms, and (2) role playing as morally corrupting.

Aristotle- (1) Four causes and kind of metaphysics presupposed in medieval university system (that fantasy novel universities tend to be based on). Possibly Weberian claims about "disenchantment of the world" when everything becomes efficient causality. (2) Virtue ethics and game-play basic stats as a theory of human nature (Silcox has cool ideas about this).

Medievals/very early moderns- (1) Polytheism in light of medieval arguments that God is one necessary being. (2) What medieval universities were actually like and how learning worked in them, (3) how early alchemy actually works and informs magic in fantasy novels.

Hobbes and Rousseau on the "state of nature" and how to model these things in fantasy world-building.

Hume and Logical Positivists- (1) Critique of miracles and how magic is supposed to work in fantasy RPG universes. (2) Critique of notion of "God" and RPG divinities.

Leibniz/Kripke/Lewis- Possible worlds as a way to make sense of what an RPG is. Also appeal to possible worlds within D & D universe.

Kant- Another critique of role playing as bad because consistency is necessary to moral development.

Mill and Kant- History of alignment in various versions of D & D (I think that law/chaos predicates a characters motives towards Kantian right and good/evil predicates a characters motives towards Millean good/bad.)

Kant/Cassirer- Transcendental Idealism sans necessary constitutive powers of the mind justifying new agey approaches to magic (this ends up being a critique of Transcendental Idealism sans necessary constitutive powers of the mind).

Marx and Marxists on class struggle and how to model this in fantasy world-building.

Turing- Game Masters versus Computers on the Turing Test (there's lots on this Mark and I didn't go into in the book).

I'll add some more to this list later in the day. Any other ideas? There has to be room for aesthetics proper.

Comments

[Luke Cuddy]

Hey guys, great idea! I think there are definitely some relevant issues there... I'm going to think on it.

[Paal]

On the idea of discussing D&D within a modal framework, there are several topics that could be interesting, such as: (i) what kinds of worlds that are relevant for D&D worlds? (taking into account the non-physical possibility of some creatures), and (ii) how one evaluates counterfactuals within a D&D environment (given the lack of a factual basis, most courses of actions seem to go along the lines: if A were to happen, then B would also). The evaluation of such counterfactuals is tricky, especially since the DM needs to evaluate the consequences of the players actions with non-arbitrary restrictions.

Another is in the philosophy of mind, given that D&D (and most RPGs in general) makes use of dualism (having souls with particular properties that interact with different planes and are targets for spells, even after death, etc.)

Good topic for a book by the way. Why are you focusing solely on D&D, is it because of personal interests and experience? RPGs like Vampire and Call of Cthulhu would also provide a host of fun topics.

[Jon Cogburn]

Great ideas!

The focus just on D & D would be in part for marketing reasons. (1) It's the only RPG to be sold in Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Books a Million. (2) The only popular culture and philosophy books that are selling in these stores are ones that are narrowly circumscribed. Me and Mark's book on video games or our friends book on Science Fiction isn't on any of these chain's shelves.

But restricting it to D & D is beneficial in a couple of other ways too. Since this is not a written book, but rather a collection of essays, having it be about a narrower area will make it easier to have them organized in a thematically helpful way. Since the essays together only have to explain one game, someone who doesn't know that much about D & D can still learn a bunch of philosophy while reading it. Also there is a benefit with exploring one thing really deeply.

All this being said, I think you are right that the broader domain of RPGs has to be considered, just because so many the philosophical issues arise when you compare how different RPGs handle different things. Hopefully getting all the stuff out in terms of D & D will yield essays which are helpful for players of other RPGs. Also some of the essays will end up comparing how D & D handles things to other RPGS. For example Silcox's possible essay on virtue theory and stats and experience points can then argue that each RPG presents a distinct theory of human nature; you'd have to compare D & D to other RPGs that are more innovative in this regard.

Mark Silcox was on the design teams for Asheron's Call and also Earth and Beyond. We worked really hard so that each chapter of "Philosophy Through Video Games" would have content useful to people who did or wanted to design video games. This isn't so crazy; one can teach philosophy of art in ways that are helpful to actual artists. Our ideal would be that an edited D & D anthology would also be such that each essay would have something useful for GMs of different RPGs.

[wow gold]

That would be totally cool. Perhaps it's a bit complicated to do this for WoW but there's no harm in trying. Aside from that, you'd be able to reach more players since WoW has more subscribers than any other game.