Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games - Jennifer Grouling Cover [36]
Several things stand out about this entry. The first is the motivation of the player characters as greedy mercenaries only looking for treasure. As I will later explain, both the module and the computer game give multiple motivations for characters, so this part does not seem universal by any means. Another key feature of this response is the focus on location—the village of Hommlet, the moathouse, and the temple are all settings that remain constant in the multiple versions of the text, and here they seem linked to narrative progress. The story, as told by this participant, progresses by moving from one locale to another.
Another participant who played both the original module and the computer game explains the story in a very different way:
Long ago, a demoness (Zuggtmoy, the Demon Queen of Fungi) was sealed away in the temple by a coalition of forces including adventurers, soldiers, and a council of wizards. Now, evil once again stirs in the temple, taking the form of bandits and evil humanoids stalking the surrounding countryside. When the heroes investigate, they find a vast tunnel complex beneath the temple, inhabited by priests of various elements, all ostensibly worshiping the same deity, but pitted against themselves to weed out the weak. Eventually the heroes discover that the servants of other gods—Iuz, I think, and/or Lolth—have been duping the lower-ranking priests and using the energy from their worship to make the deceptive gods stronger.
This telling differs significantly from the one above, despite this participant having experienced the same texts. Instead of focusing on location, this respondent focused more on plot and character. The plot relayed here is the general background story present in all versions of Temple—the sealing of Zuggtmoy in the temple and the rise of evil under Iuz. The names mentioned here, though, are not the player characters. The player characters are referred to more generically as “the heroes,” a different take from the greedy mercenaries in the previous response. The names mentioned are key non-player characters (NPCs), mostly deities who are the ultimate powers behind the adventure. Zuggtmoy, Iuz, and Lolth appear in all versions of Temple while player characters are obviously more variable across versions.
Several players who had only played the videogame were also able to give a report that included details about Temple. One might suppose that having been written by participants who only experienced the story in the computer game format, these accounts might have more in common than the two accounts above, yet that is not the case. One participant tells the story this way:
To the best of my understanding ... The temple, located in Emridy Meadows, once was a location where Zuggtmoy (the demon queen of fungi) attempted an attack on the material plane. The temple was sealed and Zuggtmoy imprisoned in the temple. Years later Zuggtmoy attempted another escape. Also in the temple were elemental nodes; points of power being used by cultists of Thurizden (an imprisoned ancient deity of wanton destruction sealed away by the other gods for the protection of the world). It is my understanding that the character Lareth the Beautiful was partially behind both incidents, and the hero, Robilar, was at the original battle of Emridy Meadows where the temple was first sealed.
Several key locations, such as Emridy Meadows and the temple come up in this account as well as key characters—Zuggtmoy and Lareth. Although this respondent had only played the computer version,