The Academic study of RPGs

Alexis has just finished writing his 201 series in the style of an academic university class. This was very well done and thoroughly researched. I didn't treat it with the same seriousness or dedication I would were I take this at an actual college, but I learned quite a lot just from reading it.

In this post he outlines a series of courses on DMing and RPGs that would expand on and really fill the traditional academic structure of a university degree. While I think a university level course about RPGs or DMing would be great, I don't know about an actual degree program at a University; maybe a MOOC would be a better method of delivery. One upside of MOOCs is that Alexis, or anybody really, doesn't have to wait for someone else to adapt his work.

In regards to Academic rigour, I'd like to discuss something that Alexis wrote pertaining to DMing and these college courses. 

"This dictates that there must be a right and a wrong; a correct way, based upon a tried and true curriculum, based on accepted theories and established methods."

I agree with this statement wholeheartedly. This doesn't mean that there is one answer that always applies to how to DM, or world build, etc. It means there are common accepted good practices. Moreover, there may be multiple answers to a single question that are equally valid. What that answer is will be dictated by circumstances as much as standard methods. Example: In one GIS cartography course we spent weeks talking about color schemes and typology. When to use a diverging, sequential, or qualitative color scheme depends on the type source data used and what you are trying to emphasize on the map. On a map of population you may use sequential colors because a qualitative color scheme would be inappropriate and confusing to the reader, but which colors used and what exact values they represent are up to your discretion as long as you account for color blindness and ability to distinguish the different gradations of color. My point being, that when Alexis, or I, or other people say that there is a right way to do things, we aren't talking about specific choices you must make (such as using the real earth as the basis for your setting), rather we are speaking of the ordering and following of general methods, how and why you make decisions.Academia, through study and trial and error, usually develops common methods and comes to a general consensus on subjects of their field.

I had written most of the above and decided not to post, but then Alexis followed up with this workshop.

The responses he got, while interesting and not inherently bad, still bother me. The general character of the responses he received really irks me. The descriptions tend to to be oh so familiar, like they come right out of an osr module's boxed text. They don't characterize how this room would actually be presented to the players. Is this actually how you would describe a room to players?or is it the descriptions from which you would run the room? Actual dialog tends to be short and choppy. Generally at the table the DM doesn't have time to think of all these creative adjectives. The only time I have witnessed a table of players let a DM describe something in more than one or two sentences without interruption/questions/taking action is when the DM is clearly reading boxed text and the players are letting him out of respect. Granted I understand the workshop is limited to the format of the blog, it's just the given descriptions feel so rehearsed. Again I think the content of the descriptions is just fine and Alexis does a good job at pointing out the possibilities and conundrums presented by them, I just feel the way they are presented is flawed.

What I have seen of this workshop reinforces my initial idea that a MOOC would be a great way for Alexis to deliver these academic courses and begin to develop the idea that the role of a DM can be taught and a subject for study.