Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games - Jennifer Grouling Cover [64]
While Whisper was waiting in the cottage attempting to sleep, as a player, I was temporarily removed from the rest of the Sorpraedor group. As I awaited my turn, I wrote the following in my personal blog: “For those that don’t play, I can’t really explain it to you. But I’ve had a total adrenaline rush going since about 4:00. The tension, the excitement ... all maxed out. It’s amazing. And the story. Oh, my god ... the story is so good” (Jan. 11th, 2004, at 7:40 P.M.). The game that continued that evening was one of the ones I remember most from my time during the Sorpraedor campaign. It continued as follows:
I had barely drifted off when I heard voices, familiar voices. The party had found me. I prepared for the inevitable confrontation, perhaps even death. David entered the cottage and immediately called me out. I tried to leave, but he pulled out his sword as if to attack me. Gareth was next, and seeing the situation, immediate attempted to come between us. Fletch also stepped between us, his sword drawn. Suddenly, Gareth’s magical viola was casting a spell, though I couldn’t tell what spell it was. Fletch seemed to recognize it though, and attacked the viola, at which point, Gareth grabbed his musical instrument and informed the party he would be back in town.
But it only served as a momentary distraction from the larger conflict between David and me. Cuthalion was in the doorway, pointing his bow and arrow, and instructing us all to lower our weapons.
“I don’t know what she’s done to you,” said David, clearly indicating me, “But you know as well as I, this can’t go on.” With that the halfling lunged at me with his sword, while I attempted only to disarm him.
In the back of my mind I thought, “I have my claws. No one knows about my dragon claws. Even with no spells, I can defend myself. But I mustn’t fight my fellow party member. For the sake of the rest of the group, he cannot die by my hand.” And indeed he did not. I continued to dodge his blows, while Fletch and Cuthalion sided with me. An arrow landed in the halfling’s back and he slumped over. The conflict was over.
This personal example was an extremely immersive gaming experience for reasons that I outline in this chapter. However, my own experiences are well supported by the comments of other players, and this chapter will draw on both my experiences and the comments made by other roleplayers in online forums and on the online survey I distributed. These combined experiences show that the TRPG is valuable to players because of the way it immerses them in a narrative experience.
One of the key features of the TRPG is its ability to immerse the players in the world and story that the game creates. As we have seen, examples of narration from Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) adventures often address the readers in the second-person, pulling them directly into the storyworld, situating them in a place, and immersing them. Yet, not all of the TRPG is spent being immersed in the story. In fact, a character is sometimes the strongest immersive feature of role-playing because of the players’ direct connection with their avatars. Spatial, temporal, and emotional immersion work together in the TRPG to give the player a narrative experience.
In order to understand the overall significance of immersion as part of the TRPG form and the way in which it contributes to the ability of TRPGs to respond to the needs of their players, we must first define what it means for a text to be immersive.