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GeniusCirno
October 2nd, 2018, 15:11
Good morning (as it is morning as I write this),

My name is Bradley Foxx. I'm a Graduate Student at Eastern Kentucky University and I need the help of some players and a good DM. I'm focusing my research on the rhetorical situation in D&D between the players, the DM, and the "texts" (the rulebooks, the dice, stuff like that) and the tools and obstacles participants will run into during the cooperative storytelling/gaming process. I need some primary source research for my Thesis and I have limited experience with 5E, but as I'm writing to an audience unfailiar with D&D and 5E is the most recent iteration of this beloved game, that's the one I'm using.

As such, it would be very helpful to have a game or two under my belt to use as primary source documentation of how the cooperative narrative process works in D&D. I would be participating as a Participant Observer in 1-3 sessions of a new or ongoing campaign. The campaign setting can be homebrew, but I am looking for as standard a setting as possible with a few rule changes as possible. I will need to reference the 5E PHB as part of my Thesis, so altered rules would require further explanation to an audience that's already unfamiliar with how this works. In this case, I'm also not looking to play a 5E conversion of another narrative universe, so I would not participate in a game in the Witcher universe, for example.

I would use recording software to capture the audio from the campaign, possibly using screen capture software to take video, but any recordings I made would be deleted when I transcribed the necessary data to text. Noone would be mentioned by name save for the Player Characters, so any refernces to the game would look like, "Player 1's character Raistlin demanded the party rest for the night so he might regain his spells." My intention is to simply take up this 1-3 sessions to get enough data to work with, but if I enjoyed the campaign and the group enough I would consider requesting to stay on as a player.

I'm aware that this is a lot to take in, so please think this over amongst yourselves. Any and all groups interested in participating in my research can contact me privately or respond to this post with some contact info or if you still have questions about how this would work I can answer them here or privately. I am primarily looking for a game to happen Friday night after 4 pm EST or Saturday at any time. Any other day is pretty much a no go for me. I appreciate your interest in this matter and hope to hear from you all soon.

- Bradley Foxx

DealBreaker
October 2nd, 2018, 23:12
As a fellow graduate student (and one with fairly extensive experience with 5e just not on this particular platform) the basic premise of your research sounds interesting. However, I do not think you will be able to find a group that runs the game strictly RAW (i.e., rules as written). In my experience playing, speaking with other players/DMs, and watching or listening to streamed games, every group I know of has houseruled or handwaved at least one rule for clarity, convenience, or out of ignorance. That said I would assume that research on the "rhetorical situation" (not at all my field of research so I could totally be butchering your definition) would entail some understanding of the interaction between players, DM, and "the rules" (i.e., such as would be the case with a group or DM houseruling something).

Another note/question/food for thought: Unless you are specifically interested in observing a developing/developed relationship among players and DM that you would see in a campaign, you may want to look at D&D Adventures League play. D&DAL is standardized play that is officially supported and sanctioned by Wizards of the Coast and therefore is likely the best place to find games that are as close to "the rules" as possible. The problem is/may be that for any adventure's league DM there may be a revolving cast of players that come and go on a session by session basis as opposed to the consistent group of a typical non-AL campaign.

I am joining a game that plans to start this Friday with a session 0 (a session in which we do not start the adventure but instead focus on setting the ground rules for play [social contract], create characters, and share expectations) and I could ask the DM and other players if they would be okay letting you join to 'pitch' your research. No guarantees of course, but let me know if you would like that.

zarzgalom
October 3rd, 2018, 00:54
I could speak with my players.

I run a small group every other Friday (this week being an off week) from 8:30-midnight EDT (UTC -4).
It’s The Sunless Citadel, which is a classic DND adventure from the early 2000s (3e, I think) reworked into 5e. I placed the adventure in The Forgotten Realms, which is arguably the most well-known setting for D&D to date. The Sunless Citadel is also heralded as an excellent starting point for those new to D&D for both players and DMs (hence why I chose it for the new player).

I haven’t homebrewed a lot of rules, as one of my players is completely new to TTRPGs and I wanted to give him the ‘vanilla’ experience.

The only variant rule I’m running is ‘Slow, Natural Healing’. That’s a fairly minor rule change. If you’re unfamiliar, it just makes it so you have to spend HD to heal after a long rest the same as you would need to do after a short rest; you don’t just magically go back up to full HP after a good night’s sleep.

We use Discord for chat. And ZeroTier as a sort of VPN client (not technically a VPN, but it behaves like one). Unfortunately my ISP double NATs, so I have to utilize some kind of VPN software to make connections to my FG session possible.

Let me know if this works for you, and I can ask my players.

GeniusCirno
October 3rd, 2018, 01:48
DealBreaker,

That's a good point, and I realize that asking for unchanged rules might be a bit much, though in my experience in other systems at least, the rules do not change much. In my DMing experience I have also done very little rules alteration. This isn't to say I wouldn't play a game that has homebrew rules and, in fact, this would be somewhat beneficial to my research. An option that D&D has always pushed is modularity in the rules and the setting the players want to run in which, in a rhetorical sense, is the participants of the game changing the text to better fit their narrative and gameplay needs. It will mean extra work on my part but, still, I appreciate you reminding me I should be open to and expect that concept.

As for seeking other games, it does look like a lot of people have expressed interest in having me on. I would appreciate you asking your players, even if I may end up going with another group. One thing I did not mention in my original post is that I need to be at Professional Development on Fridays from 2-4, after which I'm pretty much free until I need to pick up my roommate from work between 11 at night and 1 in the morning my time. I can't know for sure what group I will end up with, but it may even be useful to have multiple groups to work with. Thank you again for your input and interest.

GeniusCirno
October 3rd, 2018, 01:50
Zarzgalom,

You're absolutely right on the Sunless Citadel. That's the module I got started on and I still have my battered and worn down copy of it along with my other 3.5 books. I'm curious to see what the conversion to 5E has done for the overall narrative feel and the encounters especially. In case you're concerned about me using Player knowledge, I've honestly kind of forgotten most of it save for some of the hooks, the enemies, and the "villain" of the module, which all may or may not be changed. Even if I did know, I would not consciously use that to gain an advantage. If you could ask your players, that would be great. Thank you.

GeniusCirno
October 3rd, 2018, 03:02
Zarzgalom,

You're absolutely right on the Sunless Citadel. That's the module I got started on and I still have my battered and worn down copy of it along with my other 3.5 books. I'm curious to see what the conversion to 5E has done for the overall narrative feel and the encounters especially. In case you're concerned about me using Player knowledge, I've honestly kind of forgotten most of it save for some of the hooks, the enemies, and the "villain" of the module, which all may or may not be changed. Even if I did know, I would not consciously use that to gain an advantage. If you could ask your players, that would be great. Thank you.

dulux-oz
October 3rd, 2018, 04:04
You might want to do a quick search of Twitch as well - for context, secondary research, and comparisons. We've just strarted steaming our game on Twitch (the link's below) and while its not 5th Ed. D&D it is an early (c.1986) RPG from the same publisher - TSR's Star Frontiers. There are, f course, quite a few other Twitch streams available for other games, and with 5E being so popular there are plenty of 5E Twitch games.

Just the $0.02 from a fellow academic :)

zarzgalom
October 3rd, 2018, 15:36
I sent you a PM, GeniusCirno

The High Druid
October 3rd, 2018, 16:17
I don't know if there's any Adventurer's League rules that might prevent you from doing this in an AL game, but they are *supposed* to strictly follow the rulebooks (a scan of the AL facebook groups will quickly tell you this is not always the case). There's a discord server for Adventurer's League in Fantasy Grounds, no idea how active it is, though.