The Escapist Issue #36 Now Available

The thirty-sixth issue of Escapist Magazine offers five new gaming-related articles, one of which focuses on "roleplaying theory" for those of us with short attention spans. A snippet:
Roleplaying theory springs from the commonsense observation that gamers roleplay for different reasons.

Many online gamers know about UK professor Richard Bartle's 1990 classification of MUD players as achievers, explorers, socializers or killers. Many analysts have followed Bartle, notably Stanford doctoral student Nicholas Yee and his Daedalus Project. In paper games, the idea of classifying players dates to 1980, when Glenn Blacow suggested four basic motives of RPG players: roleplaying, storytelling, powergaming and wargaming.