Related Standards

Related schemas

I have chosen to include here only very general XML schemas that I either leveraged directly, or that inspired some elements of the design.

The Dublin Core Terms¹ schema is referenced directly for domain-agnostic metadata such as creator, date, rights, and so on. However, certain elements that might appear similar to elements from Dublin Core Terms, such as <identifier> and <rights>, are defined separately in order to allow for more structure than the simple string values of Dublin Core.

The use of an <alt-title> element to represent abbreviations, nicknames, and so on, and an associated attribute @alt-title-type to represent the semantics of the alternate title, is inspired by the <Title> element and @titleType attribute from DataCite 4², but I decided against incorporating the DataCite element and attribute directly in order to separate main and alternate titles, and to be able to incorporate additional (alternate) title types.

I also considered including MODS³ to represent bibliographic references for specific game publications, such as the game book in which a particular system was introduced, or later games based on the same system, but in the end decided to keep bibliographic information minimal, pro tem.

Other related work

I found no previous work on representing tabletop role-playing game systems or rulesets, and only a limited amount of work on representing the games themselves, or even related works such as boardgames; what I did find was generally not oriented toward XML, e.g. McCulloch⁴, on cataloging boardgames with MARC, or Franco et al.⁵, on representing semantics of either computer or tabletop role-playing games in UML. There is a considerable if scattershot literature on representing video games, including computer role playing games, and some on representing rules or game semantics, including again Franco et al., and also e.g. Zagal et al.⁶ on identifying game design elements and their relationships; but again, none of it is XML-based (most, in fact, seems to give very little consideration to interoperability or reuse at all).

That said, there is also a rich if informal literature among gameplayers and designers discussing game systems, rules, and mechanics, and essays like Edwards⁷ on the relevance of mechanics to gameplay or Mary Kuhner’s “threefold model”⁸ seem likely to provide fruitful avenues for developing taxonomy and vocabulary.