Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games - Jennifer Grouling Cover [2]
What do you do?
The passage above is very similar to one that was told on a Sunday afternoon around a kitchen table during a session of the Sorpraedor Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) role-playing campaign. Yet, it fails to represent the complexity of tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs). No one passage can represent the complexity of player interaction, textual manipulation, or cultural significance of the TRPG. For those of you who are familiar with the game, this passage might bring up memories of your own gaming session. For those who are less familiar with gaming, you may be wondering how this story is different from any other story told in any other medium. Whatever your relationship to the game, this book is intended offer a scholarly look at TRPGs that highlights both their complex narrative and social structure.
If you are unfamiliar with TRPGs, you may first be wondering what exactly happens in a gaming session. As the book progresses, we will see that the answer is more complex than it first appears; however, I offer a brief introduction here. As suggested by the name, TRPGs are played faceto-face (around a table, most likely), and involve players “acting out” a role. This acting is not always literal. Players do not arrive in costume or speak exclusively in-character—something that differentiates TRPGs from live-action role-playing games (LARPs). Instead, players develop characters based on certain rules and are responsible for deciding what those characters do over the course of the game. The DM, or dungeon master— now called the gamemaster (GM) in some TRPGs—develops a setting where the game takes place, a basic storyline, and any characters not being represented by the players of the game. The DM presents the players with situations, such as the one above, and asks the players, “What do you do?” at which point the players offer up actions for their characters. Many of these situations, referred to as encounters, involve fighting a monster or an evil villain. Most TRPGs also involve rolling dice to see whether certain actions succeed, and some involve positioning miniature figures on a battle map. Games may be played over the course of years, where a group continually meets to extend the same story with the same characters time after time, or they can be played over a few hours (usually at least four) as a one time endeavor. There is no “winning” in a TRPG, although characters do gain experience points for completing certain challenges, and in an ongoing game, these experience points allow the player to continue building his or her character. However, these challenges are met as a group, not as individuals.
TRPGs were introduced in 1974, and by the year 2000 they comprised a two billion-dollar industry (Dancey 2000). In addition, they have influenced countless other enterprises from other games to novels and movies. Despite their widely recognized influence, there is limited scholarship specifically on TRPGs. Gary Fine’s ethnographic study Shared Fantasy (1983) lays a useful foundation for studying the TRPG and gaming culture, but is now outdated. In the past 27 years, there have been changes to both the D&D game itself as well as the community of gamers. Daniel Mackay builds on Fine’s study in his 2001 book, The Fantasy Role-Playing Game, and shifts to view the TRPG as performance art. Mackay’s study is useful in terms of looking at the TRPG as an aesthetic text and as a process-performance but does not include a specific discussion of the TRPG as a genre or relate it to other games. More recent work has continued to place the TRPG alongside other fantasy games in terms of cultural significance. Gaming as Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games (Williams et al., 2006) features several essays that focus on aspects of the TRPG from gender and identity issues1 to specific