Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games - Jennifer Grouling Cover [10]
In addition to asking about their role-playing habits, I asked participants if they were familiar with the classic D&D story The Temple of Elemental Evil, and, if so, asked them to recall the story. To these qualitative samples I add textual analysis of this well-known D&D adventure in chapter 3. The Temple of Elemental Evil is a name commonly recognized among gamers as a famous adventure and, in fact, only 6 percent of my respondents had never heard of it. Thus I sought out the many different versions of this adventure in different mediums to see how the text changed over its many iterations. I look at the original adventure by Gary Gygax, cocreator of D&D, as well as the videogames and novel versions of The Temple of Elemental Evil. This type of textual comparison mixed with accounts from actual gamers allows me to comment on narrative and genre across media as well as in different types of gaming interactions.
My aim with multiple samples and methods is to allow for a more complete overview of TRPGs and the way that they compare with other texts. However, no analysis can be complete. This study focuses primarily on D&D. Looking at other RPGs such as the White Wolf series may illuminate additional difference between games. Nevertheless, as the origin of the TRPG, a focus on D&D is foundational to our understanding of the genre.
Methods of Analysis and Overview
Just as multiple research samples are important to gain a broader view of TRPGs and how they are played, I believe that multiple methods of analysis are useful for looking at this complex subject. As I have mentioned, no one discipline has claimed the TRPG as an object of study and even many of those who research games wish to limit that study to videogames. Thus, part of my aim in producing this book is to test which methods of analysis prove useful when studying the TRPG.
I begin historically by looking at the rise of interactive narrative in the 1970s. I use comparative analysis to show the similarities and differences among these early models for interactive storytelling. Chapter 1 compares the gamebook, text-based adventure game, and TRPG. In chapter 2, I employ genre theory to discuss the way that the TRPG functions as an antecedent genre to computer games that have followed from this initial push for interactive storytelling. I take my definition of genre from rhetorical studies (Miller, 1984; Swales, 1990; Russell, 1997) and argue that in order for a text to represent a new genre, it must serve a new rhetorical purpose. This chapter gives an overview of the rhetorical approach to the RPG genre and explains the exigency of narrative agency that is present in the TRPG. I argue here for a distinction between TRPGs and CRPGs on the basis of rhetorical need rather than formal structure.
In chapter 3, rather than looking at the influence of D&D as a whole on other genres, I turn to one specific D&D adventure—The Temple of Elemental Evil and follow this story through its multiple versions. I use textual analysis as well as survey data to look at how this adventure started as a D&D module and became a videogame and novel. I hereby engage not only with the definition of a genre, but with the definition of a medium, as well as the interaction between these two terms.
After establishing the importance of studying the TRPG as a different kind of text from other games, I turn more closely to developing a model for studying it. I turn here to narrative theory. In particular, I look at narratology as employed by linguists and media scholars. Chapter 4 engages with the debate between narratologists and ludologists over whether or not games should be studied within the framework of narratives or whether their unique form necessitates new methods of analysis. Because this debate has largely focused