Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games - Jennifer Grouling Cover [76]
In fact, the Sorpraedor group frequently used a message board and email to interact outside of regularly scheduled gaming sessions. These additional forums added significantly to the story and character development possible in the game. While individual character and player needs can be addressed in face-to-face arenas, and sometimes were by the DM taking a player to another room for confidentiality or passing them a private note, these moments would take time away from the group as a whole. Using email allowed the Sorpraedor group to engage in these type of interactions without interrupting the entire group session. However, the DM still maintained his relationship with the group members rather than being limited by the use of computer technology. Thus, I agree with Aarseth (1997) when he states that “the politics of the author-reader relationship, ultimately, is not a choice between paper and electronic text, or linear and non-linear text ... instead it is whether the user has the ability to transform the text into something that the instigator of the text could not forsee or plan for” (p. 164).
Like Aarseth, Murray (1998) indicates that the author-reader dynamic changes only when the text can somehow be steered in an unintended direction. Again, Fish might argue that a reader will always steer a text in an unintended direction. In my interview with Mark from the Sorpraedor group, he indicated that he was working on writing a fantasy novel and explained that he saw a parallel between the reaction the DM often gets when players pick up on a minor detail and pursue it and the initial reactions he got to his fantasy manuscript. In his novel, Mark described a sign that hung over a village. Upon receiving his first bout of reader feedback, he was surprised that several readers asked very specific questions about the sign. This example reminded me of my previous example from the Sorpraedor campaign where Alex (playing David) focused on the details of the labels on the scroll tubes at Blaze Arrow, a detail that Scott threw in off the top of his head that was not initially important. In both cases, the reader focused on something that the author had not intended.
However, in a more traditional textual relationship, the reader’s interpretation of the text would only change for that individual or group of individuals. Because Mark was blogging his manuscript and asking for feedback, he was able to change the story based on feedback. However, if his novel had been published and printed, the detail of the sign would only be envisioned within the mind of the individual reader, not changed in the actual physical text.1 Again, this is much like Carr’s (2006) example of playing an evil character in a computer role-playing game (CRPG) that did not adequately account for alternate paths—the “evilness” of her character existed in her own mind, but the physical artifact, such as the visuals of the game, did not change. Murray (1998) argues that unless “the imaginary world is nothing more than a costume trunk of empty avatars, all of the interactor’s possible performances will have been called into being by the originating author” (p. 152). Yet, “a costume trunk of empty avatars” is very much the way TRPGs can be run, and this is what allows for a less traditional relationship between author and reader. The details of the story of the TRPG game are not directly found in rule books, modules, or campaign settings; rather, they are formed in the course of the gaming session. As we have seen, characters are created almost exclusively by the players, and players cannot only choose