Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games - Jennifer Grouling Cover [19]
Ultimately, then, it is the collaborative nature of the TRPG that allows for its narrative structure to be different from something like the gamebook. Both structures could be represented in a tree-like form with starting points that branch out into nodes. There is so much in the TRPG that can not be seen on a model like this. If we were to map out only the dice rolls in a D&D game, we might see the either/or decision points like this. Yet, the player has no real control over how these dice rolls go and which path is followed. In addition, there are multiple decision points that simply cannot be represented as nodes—ones where the players themselves come up with the possible options and plan the narrative by working collaboratively.
In some ways it seems that Aarseth’s (1997) cybertext model fits more clearly with the structure of TRPGs. In particular, negotiation describes the way the group uses social interaction to decide how the events will progress in the narrative. In the case of the TRPG the player states a proposed action aloud to the group, while in the text-based adventure game it is typed as a command on the computer. In both cases, there is a measure of success. Is the action allowed to proceed by the DM? Is a dice roll successful? Does the computer recognize the prompt and proceed with the story? In this way, the plot is decidedly more linear than in the gamebook in that once an action is attempted there is success or failure with no turning back. That physical ability to turn back the page and pick another option does not exist.3 Thus, negotiation is a process of reaching a point that successfully lets the story progress.
However, negotiation in the TRPG is far more interactive than in the adventure game because of its social nature. An actual person has greater capacity for interpreting actions that may not be standard. Also, the complex game mechanics and the player and DM’s ability to question and change those rules allows for more flexibility. If, to use Aarseth’s (1997) example from Deadline, a player in D&D said, “I hit Leslie with the roses,” the process to determine the result of this action would be more complex than in the text-based adventure game. The DM might not see this as a legitimate attack action and might interpret it as a joke instead. If the DM did consider that the player was serious when declaring this action, he or she might turn to the rule book for guidance. However, like in the computer game, roses would not be listed in the rules as weapon with statistics on how much damage they would do. Rather than this leading to failure, if the group decided this was a legitimate action, they would need to negotiate what such an attack would mean. Would the thorns do some damage or would the only injury be to Leslie’s wounded ego as her gift was thrown in her face? The computer seems only to have recognized “hit” as an attack and calculated the only ending it knew as a result of the action “hit”—the death of Leslie. The difference between the computer and the live DM is especially pronounced here due to the nature of these very early text-based games, but serves to show that the structure of interactivity and the nature of negotiation vary between these two media. Again, a quick look at Aarseth’s (1997) model for cybertext appears to apply to the structure of the TRPG, but it can not account for these differences.
Narrative Reward and Punishment
Much of the difference between TRPGs and gamebooks or adventure games comes down to a system of reward and punishment. In D&D, veering off the expected path is often rewarded with a more interesting story, but doing this in an adventure game is either impossible or results in narrative punishment. Aarseth (1997) finds that in adventure games, “noncooperation and free play result in narrative punishment, which equals the end, death” (p. 121). We have seen examples of narrative punishment in both gamebooks and adventure games. When the reader