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often a constraint. In the game I observed, sessions were scheduled for six hour blocks and DMs were expected to wrap up the module in that time period. As the group I watched got sidetracked, partook in a dinner break, and generally took their time working through the adventure; the DM was forced to speed through both the exploration of space and the storyline. Because he was expected to get to a certain point in the story by the end of the session, it was very important for players to only explore locations that were key to the story. As time was called for the gaming session, he quickly gave an overview of what the group did not get to. The group quickly switched from an interactive narrative experience to direct narration by the DM. In a home campaign, the session would have gone longer or been resumed at another time. However, the constraints of the RPGA convention meant that the DM needed to convey certain information about the world and the story for these players to move on to other games during the course of that weekend that would build on this adventure. Therefore, rather than exploring whatever areas of space and elements of plot interested this particular gaming group, there was a pressure to cover certain storylines.

We see that space is important to the TRPG, so much so that entire books are written only to describe storyworlds. Nevertheless, the actual exploration of that space within the game is almost always connected to narrative. Just as a narrative aesthetic may be grounded in a history of linguistic and print texts, the idea of spatial aesthetics seems more appropriate for digital environments with strong visual elements. While it may take hours of gameplay in a CRPG of exploring space to find the right location and that gameplay may be satisfying because of the visual display involved, often in the TRPG the players can skip ahead to important locations. For example, when playing the Temple CRPG, I had to go into every building in town in order to ascertain its purpose. As a player, I needed to keep notes on which building was which so that I would know where to return. While a TRPG could certainly be run like that, more often players make statements such as “I go to the tavern,” and the DM then assumes that the players are able to locate the tavern and begins describing the scene there.

Explicating these differences in the use of space between CRGPs and TRPGs shows the difficulty with turning to a spatial aesthetics to study the TRPG. As previously noted, the majority of current studies have focused on videogames and thus do not account for the way these concepts might or might not apply to other games. Because space is virtually unlimited in the TRPG, spaces are only revealed as they have relevance to the story. This is very different from playing a CRPG where a storyline may be complete, but the player continues to explore space because there is still a black unexplored area on the map. However, this player also knows that there will be boundaries to his or her exploration and that a point will be reached where their exploration is complete and can go no further. No such point exists in the TRPG, even a module can be added to by a knowledgeable DM. Thus, on the point of games as spatial exploration, we find that an analysis of the TRPG neither falls on the side of the narrativists or the ludologists. They are neither narratives in their entirety, nor are they journeys of social exploration. Rather TRPGs represent a combination of space and narrative in a way that may be specific to their medium.

Narrators and Narratees

The other main objection that ludologists have to viewing games as narratives is the lack of a clear narrator and narratee. Again, this perspective does not account for various types of games. Even within videogames there are often scenes with more direct narration or logbook features, where character actions are listed in narrative fashion for review. In the TPRG, the DM most often acts as a narrator. In addition to the descriptive passages like those seen in this chapter,