The RPG Museum:

History, Research, and Experiences.

Role-Playing Game

Hands-on and Experiential Learning RPG Museum

and RPG Community Center

 
 


About RPG Research
 | Our Staff | Mission | Vision | Impact | Volunteer | Donate | Events | Schedule | Museum

Non-profit Listings for RPG Research: Washington State Government Lookup | Guidestar.org Rating | 


Send museum item donations to:
RPG Research Attention: RPG Museum
1312 North Monroe Street
Suite 114
Spokane, Washington USA
99201

Donate Money


DONATE YOUR SPACE
We currently have a 1750 square foot space, that unfortunately we can't give community/public access to (only online access).
We are searching for a property with a minimum of 4,000+ square feet of space in the greater Spokane area. We would like to be able to open it to the public as an experiential hands-on learning museum (in addition to the online options) and RPG Community Center. If you have property you are willing to donate/lease for our use (a not uncommon practice for non-profits), please contact us ASAP.

The goal of the non-profit RPG Museum and Community Center, by the 501(c)3 non-profit RPG Research, is to provide an accessible, welcoming, online and in-person, historical and research museum, and community center, that provides experiential learning on all role-playing game formats: tabletop (TRPG), live-action (LRPG & larp), electronic (ERPG), and hybrids (HRPG), and provides all the inherent benefits that participant in RPGs provides.

RPG Research and the RPG Museum are run by 100% unpaid volunteers. No one at RPG Research, especially the founders, is paid. We do what we do for the good of the communities we serve around the world.

The museum will have several "pathways of exploration" you can take:

  • Non-gamer layperson (from 2 years old on up) wanting to learn about RPGs.

  • Gamer layperson (from 2 years old on up) wanting to learn more about RPGs.

  • Recreational professional looking for methods to incorporate RPGs into their programs.

  • Entertainment professional looking to use RPGs to entertain their audiences.

  • Educational professional looking for a means to use RPGs to improve learning.

  • Historical professionals looking for more information and rare RPG-related artifacts.

  • Researcher / academic professionals studying various aspects of RPGs.

  • Therapeutic / healthcare professional looking to incorporate RPGs into their practice as an effective intervention modality to improve the lives of their patients.

  • Others as demand indicates and resources allow.

* One of the first experiential pathways we will implement is based on Shannon Appelcline's Designers & Dragons books. He graciously gave us permission to use his books outline in our museum programs!

Museum Catalog (a work in progress - no public access yet)

For our public research archives see www.rpgresearch.com/research

RPG Museum Cataloging, indexing, scanning, and storage upgrade processing station #1.

This is where our archivists are receiving donated museum pieces, and literaly giving white glove treatment as we open, catalog, index, scan, metadata entry,  and move to safer (against water damage) storage. 

Pictured is part of the 25 box (1,000+ pound) donation of the Paul Cardwell Jr estate (donated by his widow Gladys).



Here you see one of our Archivist volunteers, Amber, processing the Cardwell Legacy, scanning and uploading into our digital catalogue, while other Archivist online double check the work, work on further metadata, online location organization, and more!




Our volunteers are working as quickly as we can to get the vast quantity (over 10,000 content items and counting!) of research and historical content we have ingested into our catalog system to make available to the public as soon as we can.

Update 20200701: We now an additional 25 boxes of additional donated content to add to the RPG Museum historical catalog from the Paul & Gladys Cardwell estate.

Our volunteers are evaluating different opensource museum catalog software platforms right now. UPDATE: We have decided to use CollectionSpace as our catalog back-end technology tool.

We plan to start broadcasting live the "unboxing" of the more than 1,000 pounds of contributions from the Cardwell Estate as soon as we have a large enough facility. We will be streaming live on youtube.com/rpgresearch. 

If you would like to ship additional physical donations to the RPG Museum, either to be added to the museum itself, or (if duplicated) sold/auctioned to raise funds for the museum, please send them, along with any attribution you would like listed with your donation to:

RPG Research

ATTENTION RPG Museum

1312 N. Monroe Street, Suite 114.

Spokane, Washington 99201, USA


You may also donate finances to help us pay for rent, utilities, display cases, etc.

DONATE MONEY TO THE RPG MUSEUM


If you would like to donate funds explicitly for use by the museum:

CONTACT US TO DONATE ITEMS TO THE RPG MUSEUM


If you would like to volunteer as an archivist or museum curator, please sign up via our Volunteer application process: rpgresearch.com/volunteer

Volunteer to help


Here is an older version of the beginnings of the RPG Museum outline:  https://w3.rpgresearch.com/research/archives/public/museum


Join our Discord Chatroom: https://discord.gg/u8fqtVg 
Here are some photos of the content we need to go through, itemize, and digitize for the museum so far:

Or join our Role-Playing Game Social Network (RPGSN) at rpgsn.net



Example RPG Museum & Community Center Layout 


Note that the semi-trucks represent the RPG Trailers, the coach bus represents the RPG Bus, and the Van represents the RPG SUV, all part of The RPG Mobile fleet. These are also actually usable when at the facility as additional game and activity rooms.











Note that the semi-trucks represent the RPG Trailers, the coach bus represents the RPG Bus, and the Van represents the RPG SUV, all part of The RPG Mobile fleet. These are also actually usable when at the facility as additional game and activity rooms.












Video Virtual Walk Through & Fly Over


This is a rough draft, an improved, edited, sped up version will be replacing this rough draft in a few days.

 
 






RPG Museum & RPG Community Schedule


Depends on volunteer availability to run each program. Most of these are programs we are already running to some degree. Having the dedicated facility will enable us to run more of them and more frequently.

We already have all of the supplies, furniture, and other materials necessary to fill this facility. We would need glass cases for the visual museum, and we can always use more bookshelves for our lending library (loaned only for on-premise use). Otherwise everything pictured in the diagrams and on the schedule we can already cover the moment we are moved to this facility!

Specific hours vary based on specific volunteer staff availability at that time, but this is a pretty typical schedule for us (not counting the museum parts since we can't do that until we have the facility), though it varies week-by-week based on volunteer staff availability.

During the summer, if we have sufficient volunteers, we would keep the community center and library open from 8 am to 10:00 pm 7 days a week if possible.


Timeslot Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Notes Notes
8:00 am - 9:00 am Researchers & Archivists 
Training &
Meeting





RPG Community Center
&
RPG Staff Training


9:00 am - 10:00 am
Researchers & Archivists 
Training &
Meeting





RPG Community Center
&
RPG Staff Training


10:00 am - 
11:00 am
Researchers & Archivists 
Training &
Meeting


Staff, "Hiring", Interviews, & Community  Administrative Meetings


RPG Community Center
&
RPG Staff Training


11:00 am - 
12:00 pm
Researchers & Archivists 
Training &
Meeting


RPGs for Senior Adults Programs
&
Staff, "Hiring", Interviews, & Community  Administrative Meetings



RPG Community Center
&
RPG Staff Training


12:00 pm - 
1:00 pm
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs
RPG Community Center
&
RPG Staff Training


RPGs for Senior Adults Programs
&
Staff, "Hiring", Interviews, & Community  Administrative Meetings


RPG Visual Museum Tours (only, no hands-on)
&
RPGs for young children programs
&
RPGs for Senior Adults Programs


1:00 pm - 
2:00 pm
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs  & 
RPG Community Center
&
RPG Staff Training
RPG Visual Museum Tours (only, no hands-on)

RPGs for Senior Adults Programs
&
Staff, "Hiring", Interviews, & Community  Administrative Meetings

RPG Visual Museum Tours (only, no hands-on)
RPG Community Center
&
RPGs for young children programs
&
RPGs for Senior Adults Programs
&
RPG Training Workshops
&
RPGs for Deaf & HoH


2:00 pm - 
3:00 pm
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs & 
RPG Community Center
&
RPG Staff Training



Staff, "Hiring", Interviews, & Community  Administrative Meetings


RPG Community Center
&
RPGs for Senior Adults Programs
&
RPG Training Workshops
&
RPGs for Deaf & HoH


3:00 pm - 
4:00 pm
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs & 
RPG Community Center
&
RPG Staff Training


Staff, "Hiring", Interviews, & Community  Administrative Meetings

RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs
RPG Community Center
RPG Visual Museum Tours (only, no hands-on)
&
RPG Community Center
&
RPG Training Workshops
&
RPGs for Deaf & HoH
&
RPGs for Blind & Visually Impaired


4:00 pm -
5:00 pm
RPG Visual Museum Tours (only, no hands-on)
&
RPGs for young children programs


RPGs for young children programs
&
Staff, "Hiring", Interviews, & Community  Administrative Meetings

RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs & 
RPG Community Center
&
RPGs for young children programs
&
RPGs for Deaf & HoH
&
Blind & Visually Impaired
RPG Community Center
&
RPG Training Workshops
&
RPGs for Blind & Visually Impaired



5:00 pm - 
6:00 pm
RPG Visual Museum Tours (only, no hands-on)
&
RPGs for young children programs



RPGs for young children programs
&
Staff, "Hiring", Interviews, & Community  Administrative Meetings

RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs & 
RPG Community Center
&
RPGs for Deaf & HoH
&
Blind & Visually Impaired
&
RPGs for young children programs

RPG Community Center
&
RPGs for Blind & Visually Impaired


6:00 pm - 7:00 pm RPG Community Center
Staff, "Hiring", Interviews, & Community  Administrative Meetings
RPG Staff Training

RPG Museum Tours &
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation  & 
RPG Community Center
&
RPG Training Workshops
&
RPGs for Deaf & HoH
&
Blind & Visually Impaired
RPG Museum Tours &
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation  & 
RPG Community Center
&
RPGs for Blind & Visually Impaired


7:00 pm - 
8:00 pm
RPG Community Center
RPG Visual Museum Tours (only, no hands-on)
&
RPG Staff Training
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs 

RPG Community Center

RPG Staff Training
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs  

RPG Community Center
RPG Museum Tours &
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation  & 
RPG Community Center
&
RPG Training Workshops
RPG Museum Tours &
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation
RPG Community Center
&
RPGs for Blind & Visually Impaired


8:00 pm - 9:00 pm RPG Community Center

RPG Staff Training
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs  

RPG Community Center
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs  

RPG Community Center
RPG Museum Tours &
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation  & 
RPG Community Center
&
RPG Training Workshops
RPG Museum Tours &
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation  & 
RPG Community Center



9:00 pm - 10:00 pm RPG Community Center

RPG Staff Training
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs  

RPG Community Center

RPG Staff Training
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs 

RPG Community Center
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation (no tours) & Hands-on Programs & 
RPG Community Center
&
RPG Training Workshops
RPG Museum Tours &
RPG Museum
 Open Hands-On Participation  & 
RPG Community Center

















Picking up the Cardwell Collection from North Texas June 2020

Boxes in U-haul trailer attached to RPG SUV:







About RPG Research | Our Staff | Mission | Vision | Impact | Volunteer | DonateEvents | Schedule | Museum

Non-profit Listings for RPG Research: Washington State Government Lookup | Guidestar.org Rating | 

FAQ

Why is the RPG Museum considered experiential?

Hands-on and Experiential Learning. Hands-on Learning is is the process of learning through experience. Experiential Learning is the process of hands-on learning with reflection upon the doing.

The intent is that user will go through many hands-on experiences as they go through the museum, rather than just walk through passively viewing. At some phases they will be asked to reflect upon their experiences.

For example, at the door they start out with different pathways to explore (Adventure) depending on their background, such as layperson, professional recreator, entertainer, educator, therapist, or researcher. They will undergo different experiences and optional activities, that will vary upon their different choices, and impact the next experience. They will have the option at the end to participate fully in hands-on RPGs, including tabletop, live-action, electronic, and hybrids (as well as cooperative music options for learning the basics of cooperative interactions in a group).

This approach to the museum entails a hands-on approach to learning that moves away from just the teacher/guide at the front of the group imparting and transferring their knowledge to students/tourists. It makes learning an experience that moves beyond the more passive tour/classroom and strives to bring a more involved way of learning.

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