Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games - Jennifer Grouling Cover [66]
Despite the lack of a visual element, the setting of a TRPG still appears to immerse players. As we saw in chapter 4, TRPGs often include elaborate oral descriptions of locations that players can then imagine. Roleplayers who explained the draw of TRPGs in my survey often mentioned setting, although it was rarely mentioned as the sole reason for playing TRPGs. For some participants, the genre of role-play does not make a difference, so long as there is an interesting fantasy world. One participant explains, “I enjoy exploring fantasy worlds in any type of game.” Another feels that there is less pressure surrounding the exploration of a TRPG world than might exist in other genres. “I like tabletop because it enables me to spend some time with my friends and explore these different worlds without too much worry,” this participant says. Another explains, “I enjoy tabletop games because of the interaction with good friends to share a tale or imagined universe together,” while a forth lists “to explore new places” as one of several reasons to play the TRPG. While spatial immersion seems to be a key reason for some players to engage with the TRPG, it alone does not seem to create the narrative experience that players desire.
Temporal immersion relates to plot (Ryan, 2003, p. 121). It is therefore the type of immersion most characteristically associated with narrative structure; however, there are types of temporal immersion in games that also seem unconnected to narrativity. When the reader or player is engrossed temporally, there is the suspense of what will happen next. Ryan (2003) explains that temporal immersion is most suspenseful when situations have “diverging, but reasonably computable outcomes” (p. 141). She goes on to elaborate by explaining that situations become more suspenseful, and therefore more immersive, as the range of possibilities decreases (Ryan, 2003, p. 142).
This sort of suspense figures significantly in gaming but, again, may not be the most powerful draw of the TRPG. In many situations in the TRPG, multiple possibilities exist, and therefore the amount of suspense is limited. In the single session game I attended at the NC State Game Day, a member of our party used an extra powerful spell to blast to the bottom layer of the dungeon to where the treasure lay, completely bypassing the obstacles or clues the DM had intended for the party to run into, had they taken the standard method of following the stairs. Similarly, if the Sorpraedor party in the orc adventure had decided to go straight to Barrenstone and bypass Black Tower, the story would have had a very different ending because they would not have received the clues at Black Tower. In either case, there was no real anxiety or excitement about which option would happen next because many multiple options were possible. In contrast, the scene involving the conflict between Whisper and David was extremely suspenseful because the number of paths seemed significantly reduced. The relationship between these characters had degenerated to the point where it seemed clear that one of them must go, but not knowing which one or how the confrontation would go down was incredibly suspenseful for those involved.
However, in some ways the greatest temporal immersion and the greatest suspense does not come from the story surrounding the TRPG, but from the gameplay itself. Thus, temporal immersion may not always be linked directly to narrative elements. In Ryan’s (2003) terms, complete temporal immersion exists when an action has only two possible outcomes (p. 142). The most suspenseful situations in D&D involve dice rolls, which are either/or situations. Players have a great deal of control over their characters’ actions; however, they often have to roll dice in