Optimizing the RPG Experience Overview

By W.A. Hawkes-Robinson (Hawke Robinson)

Original draft (c) 2006

See modification for these documents for most recent revision.

RPG Research is also aggregating documentation on considerations for optimizing the RPG experience, whether you are a researcher, professional, or layperson just wishing to have the best gaming experience possible.

Here is a summary of many observations made over the decades through various experiments in trying to optimize the RPG experience. This is from a huge pile of hundreds of documents I (Hawke Robinson) have written, spanning over 15+ years of intentional research (and over 40 years of general RPG experience). It will likely take me a year or more to finish integrating all that information into this document. All of the placeholder topics I currently have documents to fill in the blanks, but I time is the challenge in doing so. Bit by bit I am uploading all that content here.

UPDATE: 20180910, there is a planned book publication underway for a more organized and complete version of these documents some time in 2019. Watch the RPG Publishers website for publication details and release date.

Much of the information in these RPG Optimization documents begins with preludes of personal experiences and observations of gaming since the 1970s onward, then later focuses on more semi-formal and formal research efforts (though not fully formalized IRB research).

Use the table of contents to jump to the sections you are most interested in.