 All right, so you think wiki data is cool. I'm here to tell you that role-playing tabletop games are really cool I'm Hannah, I'm the cartoon librarian at the Turnbull which leaves me to be really interested in cartoons and comics and geek culture and how we capture that within collecting institutions Which is kind of tangentially how I come to be here today telling you about oral history of Dungeons and Dragons in New Zealand And I'm Chantelle and by day I'm a librarian at the Alexander Turnbull library, but by night I call myself a gamer girl I play all games, board games, card tabletop and video games But also I'm really fascinated by researching the history of the everyday person And that's why I'm really excited about our project So I'm gonna talk to you about the history of the project and what actually made us sort of think about it So for me, I find it fun thinking about how future generations will look at back at our lives of people today And what aspects of it they will study because I surely don't think they would have thought about what we're studying back of the 1900s, but there are multiple ways of researching this However, Hannah and I both know the importance oral histories play when it comes to understanding social aspects of lives We thought about our own lives and saw a gap in trying to understand why people play games To interview people who play any game would be too hard and might not be useful as you may not find any themes So we decided to focus on one particular game and one game came to mind pretty much straight away There are a couple of reasons we chose Dungeons and Dragons or D&D for short First even though the game is over 40 years old We both knew a lot of people of various ages in our lives who still play it There's also been a resurgence of the game lately because of its portrayal and popular culture Where you might have seen it in shows like Stranger Things and the Big Bang Theory Among other ones as well, but there are also podcasts now in online series being created Which actually feature the game for example critical role the spin-offs water deep mountain high and the grognard files Neither Hannah or myself had actually played D&D before at this stage So we asked an experienced player to lead a campaign for us with a group of our colleagues who some are in this audience today So we could get a better understanding of how to play it in all the terms that came that come with playing it And boy, do we understand it now But it was fun. It was really fun At the same time we were researching the history of the game. We used lots of online resources There were even books in the National Library collection on it and we used our local public libraries And we spoke with lots of people who actually know about the game to give us of that history And this really did give us a better understanding of the popularity and the controversies that have come with playing the game All right, so we've currently we've finished a pilot of three interviews with a few more lined up for the end of the year I was going to exaggerate that number, but Chantel's a very honest person So, Lindy Linda Evans at ATL suggested starting with the pilot when she saw how gung-ho we were to get started with interviews It's been really useful taking a bit of pressure off us and Allowing us to tweak the questions and the focus of the interviews as we've gone along The interviews have also so far provided so many interesting insights that I'm really convinced of the value of the project so some of the kind of Learning so far While we were focused on D&D for about the first week. We so became obvious that RPGs can't be understood in isolation So the conversations we've had so far have all started with people talking about their initial introduction to Dungeon the Dragons and then kind of moved into other role-playing games other tabletop games and how that relates to their online gaming experience as well I'm Gaming person gaming lives are deeply personal So going into an oral history project, you're aware that you're asking people to talk about their lives We both work with oral histories on our day jobs So we had a lot of an understanding of the privacy and respect that kind of goes into that pop up But I never anticipated how personal Or how much of a person's life could be tied up or kind of go on adjacent to their gaming life Now difficult even kind of traumatic for some people it could be to relive those stories Players Kind of geek out about the stuff as much as we do which is really it's really awesome And there's been infinite goodwill for this kind of a project in the community One of our interviewees was so keen that he took time off work and actually brought flights down to Wellington to be interviewed Which just completely blows my mind I'm the players fashion for the game sisters can be a bit of a blessing and a curse It's been a lot of time in the interviews kind of guiding that conversation away from like a potted history of Dungeons and Dragons everything that's ever happened in the last 40 years to actually talking about your personal story and Encouraging people that that's that's really where the value is for us I went into this project committed to diversity and expecting that gender was going to be the issue lots of Like it's a really common question. Have you found any women to talk to yet? But the reality is that she genders Only one part of diversity and it hasn't really been the main issue So lots of women have come forward and gender diverse people and we're really thrilled about that, but There's a certain privilege that comes along with these kind of games and particularly I understand in New Zealand It's quite strong sort of a university crowd. So trying to break away from that is something we want to focus on in interviews going forward And on a lighter note, if there's one constant in all the interviews It's that special place that players have in their hearts for their first character which Which some of you know is very relatable to me We won't talk about the tattoo I think it also it speaks to the depth of meaning of role-playing in gay men's lives So there are a couple of reasons that we hear talking about the project today For one, I'm confident there are lots of role-players past present and future in the audience And if you're interested in being involved, we'd really love to hear from you Even during the breaks or after the conference More importantly though, we'd love to encourage others to get interviewing or find other ways to engage with the history of gaming culture in New Zealand Irony of talking about analog medium at NDF is not lost on us but one of the reasons We hear is that there's so much potential for capturing gaming history and gaming culture using oral histories And it clearly extends to the digital Kids like us who grew up in the 90s can talk about our consoles of choice Likewise, you know, I mean I was like World of Warcraft really huge often undocumented part of undiscussed part of people's lives That's not a new idea Internationally a number of interviews have been conducted with game developers and gaming history is a small but growing part of academic study Megan Wingert argued back in 2008 for the importance of addressing the socio-cultural aspects of gaming with particular Reference to oral history and there are sites like play the past that are still publishing regularly on the subject I want to argue For the particular importance of oral history in this space games exist to be played and cannot be fully understood without hearing from their players So for us the next steps are more interviews should be going on throughout the next year and then hopefully deposited at EL So they'll be accessible for researchers. So yeah, if you want to be involved to talk about it Just don't hesitate to get in touch