Academic
Joshua Goldfond is a writer who has written before and will write again. You may use this to your advantage.
ACADEMIC PORTFOLIO
An analysis of H.P. Lovecraft’s influence on Dungeons & Dragons, as seen through the inclusion of the Kuo-Toa, an antagonistic species of humanoid fish that were introduced in Gary Gygax’s 1978 Shrine of the Kuo-Toa. The creatures are a clear analog to Lovecraft's "Deep Ones"; the degenerate, antediluvian fish-men featured in The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1936). Lovecraft biographer Leon Sprague DeCamp wrote that the story was influenced by the author's well-documented racism and fear of miscegenation.
The Kuo-Toa have remained in use for over 40 years and five editions of Dungeons & Dragons, acting as a bellwether for the game’s treatment of race, mental illness and the ‘other.’ As the role-playing game has come to rely less on traditional monster tropes, its treatment of the Kuo-Toa has become more complex. Concurrently, more diverse and nuanced characters have been encouraged, fostering a more inclusive attitude towards the public. Indeed, while Dungeons & Dragons still has a debt to Lovecraft’s visionary brilliance, its rejection of the author’s notions of racial determinism have broadened the game’s appeal.
This article was published Analog Game Studies’ special issue The Fiend Folio.
This paper investigates whether the temptation for anti-social behavior provided by Internet gaming personas undermines the ability to make meaningful relationships online, and what these findings presage for a global society emigrating onto the web by the billions. The work employed tabletop roleplaying games and online roleplaying games as tools to examine the effects of anonymity on psychological introspection and interpersonal relations. Survey participants were asked to self-identify their own personality traits, the traits of a favorite character that they played online, the traits of one they played offline, and the evolution of their real-life relationships with other players over time.
This master's thesis was written and presented for the completion of NYU's Steinhardt program for "Media, Culture & Communication."
Postmodernity arose in mid-to-late 20th century Western thought as a response to modernity's apparent failure to usher in a utopian "end of history" through its various political theories, -isms, cultural output, and technological products. The atavistic horrors of World War II struck a lethal blow against the theories of progress and civilization that lay at modernity's core. Postmodernity explored the implications of this disillusionment, peeling back layers of ideology and deconstructing the grand narratives of the Western culture.
However, in order for Western culture to effectively confront the enormous ethical, scientific, cultural, and environmental challenges that it faces in the 21st century, a new Modernism, with new narratives and aspirations, must be constructed from the components of the old. Disillusionment alone will not save the world.