• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 438 0

expand beyond its structuralist origins, it is important to look at narrative not just as a cognitive framework, but as a social one. Rather than asking if a certain text is a narrative, we might shift the question to ask if a certain text offers the audience a narrative experience. And we might go on to define what such an experience might look like. In this case, I have shown that the structure of the TRPG incorporates multiple levels, which have varying degrees of narrativity. However, the immersion that players feel in the TRPG provides them with a narrative experience. When I hear players talk about their gaming sessions, I rarely hear them recounting the off-record speech and the conversation they had about the latest movie coming out. Instead, they tell tales of what happened in the gaming session—how they beat the monsters, how they found the clue they needed, how they saved the world from evil. The actual text of the TRPG session is ephemeral. It exists in the moment of face-to-face interaction and then vanishes. Yet what is preserved are stories—write-ups like the Blaze Arrow narrative that show no signs of the complex interaction involved in creating it. While we could study these narratives that exist after the fact as we would any other story, I believe there is something to be gained by also studying the experience of collaboratively creating that narrative through game play.

Likewise, I believe game studies, as an emerging discipline, has much to gain by focusing on the experiences of the players rather than the structure of the game. A perspective that focuses on audience experience rather than formal characteristics will allow game studies scholars to bring in important theory from narrative studies and other disciplines while continuing to form a discipline of their own. It is possible to claim a unique status for games while still acknowledging their narrative characteristics. My study on the TRPG shows that they exist as their own genre, with their own form, but that they do not exist in a vacuum. TRPGs emerged from both a literary tradition and a game tradition and both draw from and influence fantasy literature as well as other types of games. Thus, I feel it is needlessly limiting for ludologists to study only videogames. This perspective does not fully account for the historical progression of games or for the many games that exist outside of computer-mediate environments. While videogames may represent the most mainstream form of gaming, TRPGs as well as LARPing, board games, card games, and miniature wargaming all continue to be popular.

Finally, I offer some possible directions for research in my home discipline of rhetoric and writing. Just as in games studies, I have seen a tendency here to focus on the way authorship has changed because of digital technology. I challenge us to look beyond this to texts like the TRPG which challenge views of authorship in media (like oral communication) that have always been within the purview of rhetorical studies. I do not feel that we should ignore the influence of digital environments, but too often I see us making assumptions that these are the only environments that challenge traditional views. In addition, the TRPG is a prime example of collaborative writing and although I have not dealt with it here, pedagogical applications are sure to arise from further studying of the way gamers work together and write collaboratively. As one of my survey participants explained, “Eventually, though, I began to want to tell a story with my characters, and as I blossomed into a writer, I found that telling a story using roleplaying media was what I most enjoyed doing.” What potential do games have for developing the writing abilities of those involved, for making them “blossom” as writers? Furthermore, the TRPG offers an interesting opportunity for both technical and creative writing scholars to connect. Game designer Monte Cook calls TRPGs an “interesting mix of both technical writing and fiction.” Although the modules he writes are designed for players to come up