Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games - Jennifer Grouling Cover [43]
This larger picture expands beyond just the iterations of Temple in different media. One participant, in addition to relating the story of Temple, explained:
My personal exposure not only included the “Return to Temple of Elemental Evil” PC game but also casual references to it in the 3.5 edition module “Expedition to Castle Greyhawk” and minor references to it with the Lareth the Beautiful miniature stat card for D&D miniatures.
This participant refers to other texts; those that are not direct retellings of Temple, but that draw on the larger textual economy of Temple. The TRPG module exists within the larger campaign setting of the world of Greyhawk. Thus, other adventures within that setting may reference what occurred at the temple as it became a part of the history of that storyworld. Similarly, the miniature figures that Wizards of the Coast puts out often include specific characters from famous campaigns, such as Lareth from Temple. Thus, it is not surprising that many of the participants in my survey had heard of Temple without having played it themselves.
While the question of what makes up a particular genre or medium and how texts transfer between mediums is still an important question, it appears that a question of equal or greater importance has to do with the way that textual systems draw on multiple texts within multiple genres and media. Temple exists culturally, not as a single text, but as a textual system that draws from a common universe and some common characters with some of the same storylines. Each iteration within the textual system may add to or change the universe; each player will create new characters and the story may change. The media and the genre shape each telling. However, these texts cannot be seen in isolation.
In our current culture, we find more and more that games are made from movies or books and that movies and books are made from games. No longer do we encounter a particular story in only one format. Jenkins (2002) explains that “increasingly, we inhabit a world of transmedia storytelling, one that depends less one each individual work being self-sufficient than on each work contributing to a larger narrative economy.” The idea of a narrative economy is one that warrants further discussion in both genre and narrative studies. Rather than assuming that we transfer a story between media, this chapter shows how an audience might take bits and pieces from several related narratives told in multiple media in order to form a full view of a particular story. As audiences, we increasingly decide which versions of stories to accept—do we hold to the view of Harry Potter in our heads from reading the book or do we replace it with an image of Daniel Radcliff from the screen? Perhaps we can do both. Temple shows that while each medium gives us certain advantages, certain affordances that shape the telling of a story, texts work together to form a more complete view of a storyworld, characters, and even plotlines.
4
THE RECONCILIATION OF NARRATIVE AND GAME
So far we have seen that the stories play a key role in role-playing games; both tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) and computer role-playing games (CRPGs). However the question of whether games should be considered narratives or not and, thus, whether they can be studied using narratological tools, has formed the basis for a heated scholarly debate. Marie-Laure Ryan (2006) gives a thorough explanation