Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games - Jennifer Grouling Cover [22]
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ROLE-PLAYING GAME GENRES
Although it would be a stretch to say that Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is directly responsible for the development of computer games, its influence on early games in undeniable. As noted in chapter 1, early text-based games, such as Zork, were clearly influenced by D&D. Since then, more direct attempts to port the face-to-face game system to a digital medium have continued with varying degrees of success. As of D&D’s 25th anniversary, Gamespot reporters Allen Park and Elliot Chin (1999) counted more than twenty computer games based on D&D. Five years later (2004), GameSpy’s Allen Rausch added to the list in his extended “A History of D&D Videogames.” While Rausch (2004) notes that some of these games are great videogames, he also comments that “they have yet to capture the open-ended magic of a simple D&D session with a creative Dungeon Master.” The chase to capture some of the same type of interactivity afforded by the face-to-face medium continues. Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO), a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), was released on September 9, 2009, at the time of this writing. It is still too early to tell what influence this will have on the gaming industry, and the 2006 version of the MMORPG has not proved to be overly revolutionary. However, the 2009 DDO release operates on a new business model, with the basic game being offered to users for free. It is also a part of larger changes within the D&D community and follows the new fourth edition rules (4.0), released in 2008. Although change is occurring quickly in both computer and tabletop games, earlier versions of both games continue to be played. Single-player computer role-playing games (CRPGs), for example, may not necessarily be representative of the cutting edge of the gaming industry, but like the tabletop role-playing games (TRPG), should be studied on their own merits in terms of current and historical importance. Scholarship can not hope to keep up with the speed at which these genres are changing, but it can look back at the way these genres have influenced each other.
Genres have increasingly been recognized as “forms of action or modes of activity” (Jasinski, 2001, p. 275). As forms of activity, current rhetorical theory has come to recognize that genres are not stable forms, but living entities that change over time. They spawn new genres. They die out. They shift in purpose and in form; all of which makes the study of genre infinitely more complex. This definition of genre raises a number of questions which the study of the TRPG, as a genre, may prove useful in addressing. These shifts in genre can be seen in both D&D as a pen and paper game and in the videogame genres it has influenced. What happens when a text like D&D is ported to a new medium? When does that text become a new genre, and when does it merely shift? In this chapter, I address the relationship between D&D as a tabletop game and D&D as the basis for some computer role-playing games (CRPGs). A look at the tabletop game as an antecedent genre for later computer versions proves useful in explicating the relationship between these two forms. These games often draw on the same basic rules and settings; however, I argue that, rhetorically speaking, they represent not only different media, but different genres.
The TRPG as an Antecedent Genre
Genre affects both the author and the audience’s expectations; our experiences with other genres will influence how