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By Root 451 0

a narrative of its own” (p. 95) is ultimately not at odds with studying games as a narrative experience, only as a narrative form.3 The insistence of ludologists that narrative does not exist as a form in games needlessly restricts us to a formalist view that limits the study of games, rather than establishing a new lens for their study. In contrast, a rhetorical perspective allows us to bring the study of narrative into the study of game by focusing on the experience of the players, thus reconciling the either/or debate between ludologist and narrative perspectives on game studies. This perspective is especially important to the TRPG because of the social nature of the game.

5

FRAMES OF NARRATIVITY IN THE TRPG

The tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) does and does not fit traditional definitions of narrative. A narrative is a frame through which the audience sees that world. It is that act of re-framing that constitutes a narrative act. Linguist William Labov (1972) explains that the abstract, which begins an oral narrative, is a way of re-centering to a narrative world; and the coda, which ends the narrative, is a way of returning to the actual world (pp. 363–365). Traditionally, linguistic narratives have been described as longer turns of talk by one individual. The re-centering to the storyworld occurs, the story is presented, and the conversation returns to the actual world. However, gaming groups frequently shift between conversation about the storyworld, the game, and the actual world. Thus, the linguistic structure of the TRPG is necessarily different from that of oral narratives. It is clear that re-centering to multiple worlds takes place during the gaming session, but these worlds may or may not be story-worlds. I analyze the different frames of the TRPG, the types of speech in the TRPG, and the degree that narrative is present in each.

To date, there have been very few studies of the TRPG that focus on narrative, yet nearly every analysis features a look at the multiple layers or frames in the genre. Gary Fine (1983) uses frame analysis to talk about gamers as people in a social world, players in a game world, and characters in a fantasy world (p. 186). Sean Hendricks (2006) accepts Fine’s three frames, but focuses his own analysis mainly on the fantasy frame (p. 43). Daniel Mackay (2001) splits Fine’s game frame category into three frames for a total of five frames:

[T]he social frame inhabited by the person, the game frame inhabited by the player, the narrative frame inhabited by the raconteur, the constative frame inhabited by the addresser, and the performative frame inhabited by the character [p. 56].

A key move that Mackay makes in his redefinition of Fine’s frames is use of the term narrative. Fine, instead, seems to conflate the narrative world with the fantasy world, a separation that both Mackay and I find important. As shown in the previous chapter, a fantasy world is not always a narrative world. Mackay (2001) also focuses on the dramatic aspects of the TRPG and thus it is important for him to separate out constative utterances; which include description that becomes the narrative, and performative speech that involves participants speaking in-character (p. 55). I, too, find this distinction useful. However, I argue that both constative and performative speech work to form the narrative and are thus both part of a narrative frame. As constative and performative are terms that are fairly specific to drama and speech theory, I will instead refer to narrative speech (which is constative) and in-character speech (which is performative). I use the term narrative frame to distinguish between the fantasy world and the narrative as told during the gaming session. Like Fine (1983), however, my model separates the TRPG into three frames. In addition to the narrative frame, there is the social frame of the actual world and the gaming frame.

The Creation of Possible Worlds in Fiction

Because of the many different worlds referenced during the course of playing a TRPG, there is an obvious connection