I’m in the final stretch of writing up a paper on applying human-computer interaction to the Adventurer Conqueror King system, but I’ve realized that I don’t quite know how to cite it. Going on APA, I have this:
Macris, A., Allison, T., & Tito, G. (in press). The adventurer conqueror king system: Rules for roleplaying in a world of swords, sorcery, and strongholds. Autarch. Retrieved from http://www.autarch.co
Have I cited the correct “authors” (read: designers) for this? I just want to make sure that credit’s given properly.
Some good questions here!
Non-geeky: Is the long-form title
The adventurer conqueror king system: Rules for roleplaying in a world of swords, sorcery, and strongholds
Let it be noted that one way to abbreviate this is The ACKS: RRWSS.
Geeky: Use the self-designation in the OGL section 15 for how to cite us, and cite the source as the OGL publication itself.
When I was more geeked-out about the OGL, it used to drive me nuts that it was so hard to do scholastic citation under it. I am thus very happy to see it working the other way around and making it easy for you do academic work!
Share the paper when it’s ready for enthusiastic commenters!
Please please please share this paper!
My own post-grad degree was in interaction - studying how two humans interact when one of them is remotely ‘inhabiting’ a robot proxy. I love this kind of Psychology + Geekery!
Thanks, Tavis! Section 15 was indeed useful, and I will alter my citation to properly reflect deserved credit. I’ll just leave it “in press” instead of 2011 since right now, it’s not exactly printed with totally open access to the document. Also, your abbreviation is missing a third S. =P
I will share the paper once after I’ve submitted and presented it on Thursday.
The extra S is for more RWSSS!
OK, now that the submission deadline has passed, here’s my paper. It’s not going to be the most entertaining, but you already knew that, it being an academic paper.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B2SXpKzN17zYNmI4YjA0YTMtODQyZi00MjQ0LWE5Y2ItYTlhZTc2YzFlMDM2
What a neat paper! You are speaking to issues that are near-and-dear to Tavis Allison’s heart, actually. Tavis is a huge proponent of simplifying and streamlining presentation.
I, for one, feel that our game’s high cognitive load is how we keep the riff-raff out. 
I feel like we have started with Advanced, where you not only have all the details but can also congratulate yourself on your mastery. Given how enthusiastic I was as a kid to leave the blue box behind and move on to the big book, I think this was a wise starting place!
With this under our belt, we can go on to distill our own Basic and then create a crack-like nugget of three-booklet Original before finally de-evolving back to a primal set of Arnesonian unwritten understandings that run great games using only mimeographed tables and price lists.
Alex: I can totally see it both ways, and they each have their own benefits. I think as long as we have fun, we don’t have to be all Hipster Cat about it. “I liked ACKS before it was cool.” =P