The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games Part 2

There is also a great excess of information in the module. There are areas that the players will never explore, characters they will never meet, treasure they will never find. Yet, it is all detailed by Gygax and Mentzer on the possibility that it will be a direction that players choose to explore. The village of Hommlet alone includes 33 locations, some of which are extremely mundane. Other locations serve as points of initiating action where players gain important information that leads them to a quest or meet NPCs. However, no one location or character is key to putting together the story as a whole, nor can it be because there is nothing to make players go to each location. For example, the character of Elmo is detailed in area two, where he lives, but Elmo is just as likely to be met at the inn where he spends a good amount of time. It is up to the DM where the party encounters Elmo. In addition, in the print version of the module, the information about the ruined moat house does not appear until after the detailed descriptions of the various buildings in Hommlet, and the clues are not specific to any one building. Instead, it is simply noted that athe following information may be gleaned, piece by piece, through conversation with the villagers of Hommleta (Gygax & Mentzer, 1985, p. 21). It is up to the DM exactly where and how this information is obtained, allowing for flexibility in where the players go and who they talk to.

In fact, there would be nothing to stop a DM from actually starting the story at the Temple itself and ignoring the towns of Hommlet and Nulb completely. Gygax and Mentzer encourage DMs to adapt the adventure to their campaigns. In part two, aNulb and the Ruins,a a note states that it is aabsolutely necessary for the DM to personalize his or her mapa (Gygax & Mentzer, 1985, p. 30). The DM is also encouraged to aadjust details to suit your own concept of a fantasy milieua (Gygax & Mentzer, 1985, p. 28). Interestingly, it is also in this section of anotes for the DMa that the backstory of the temple and Zuggtmoy and Iuz is told. It is not read aloud to players at any given point, but provided to the DM as background to be added in when he or she sees fit. Although it may have gained a reputation for hack and slash combat, it seems clear that Gygax and Mentzer intended DMs to adapt the module to their own campaigns, not follow it to the letter.2 One partic.i.p.ant in my survey explained that such a variation was indeed how their experience with Temple had come about. This respondent explained: Ours was ... different. We ran Temple in an historical fantasy game, prior to the building of the Cathedral of Mont St. Michel in Normandy. In our version, the aElemental Evila was the remains of a Celtic polytheist wors.h.i.+p resisting Christianity. Instead of Zuggtmoy we used Cernunnos with aelementala friends. Apart from that, however, we used the general plot trajectory of a small village, the political subterfuge etc. that is typical of T1a"4. It was just less agood versus evila and more aChristian versus Pagan.a This example shows that the Temple module can indeed be used as a manual; as a tool for creating a story rather than as a story itself. In this version, the DM changed the overall setting of the temple, to put it in more of an actual historical context, as well as significant NPCs. Nevertheless, the DM was able to use the module and its story about the rise of a temple and the political maneuverings involved with it to form his or her own adventure. Taking the CRPG or the novel to a new setting like this is an obvious impossibility, as the narrative details are more deeply embedded in the structure of these media. Yet, even this example kept the same basis for setting in the small town and the temple itself. Certain elements remained the same even when major changes were made between the print text of the module and the text of the actual gaming session.

While the flexibility to completely alter the world is only found in the TRPG, the medium of the computer game consists of its own affordances. In particular, the options of visual representation of the narrative are key to the CRPG. In the computer game, cut-scenes serve a similar purpose to the description pa.s.sages read aloud in the TRPG, but add more visual interest. Cut-scenes are moments in a videogames where the gameplay is interrupted by a visual scene. The player has no control over these scenes, except to skip them, and is presented with visual and often audio narration. These scenes will often reflect events in the story behind the game, and often come at the beginning of a new game and at key intervals. One way that cut-scenes can be used is as narrative rewards. As the player completes key steps in the game, more of the narrative is revealed. Cut-scenes can also be more purely descriptive as the read aloud text in the module. The opening of the computer game is a fairly elaborate cutscene that shows the battle at Emridy Meadows where the original forces of the temple were defeated and Zuggtmoy was imprisoned, thus establis.h.i.+ng the back-story and history of the temple. However, the scene is purely visual. In contrast, the end cut scene is not as visually appealing but is narrated more orally. It shows a book and candle; and brief, ill.u.s.trated, narrative scenes as the story of what happens after the game ends. The final cut-scene also varies depending on the actions the player takes in the game. If, for example, the party helps a n.o.ble trapped in the temple, the narration will explain that he knights the party in return. If the party allies with Zuggtmoy, the narration will describe her overthrow of Hommlet. If they defeat her, it will describe the way that Hommlet prospers. Unlike the human DM in the TRPG, however, the computer does not recognize which elements of the ending are compatible with other parts. I joined forces with Zuggtmoy and Hommlet was destroyed, nevertheless I still received knighthood from a grateful n.o.ble I had rescued, a somewhat illogical pairing of endings. Both the opening and closing cutscenes capture important stories for Temple. Another cut-scene, the entrance into to the temple itself, has no narration at all but serves more to set the mood and visual image of the temple in the playeras mind. The medium of the CRPG allows for these important scenes and images to be represented visually while the TRPG players will have to picture them in their imaginations based on the text read orally by the DM.

Another key affordance of the CRPG is the ability to go back to a previous point in the game. When I played Temple, a NPC named Otis joined my party for a while; however, once he discovered that my party was evil, he refused to keep adventuring with them. In fact, in one version of my game, he turned on me and attacked. As with other unwanted plot twists, I was glad that I had saved the game before that happened and was able to go back to a prior point, although Otis still left the party. The TRPG might allow for the player to negotiate with Otis rather than fight him, but whatever the outcome, there would be no redoing the scene.

Character is another story element that plays out differently depending on media affordances. NPCs tend to remain the same between versions of Temple as well. Zuggtmoy, Iuz, and Cuthbert are part of the pantheon of the G.o.ds and demons that run the universe. Hedrack and Lareth are their p.a.w.ns in the temple. Elmo and some of the characters in Hommlet remain the same also. Again, even in the extremely different version presented by the partic.i.p.ant quoted above, the general types of characters remained. However, the player characters are far more variable. Both the TRPG and the CRPG version offer some flexibility in terms of the player characters involveda"from heroes to greedy mercenaries. At the beginning of the computer game, the player chooses the alignment of the party, such as whether they are good or evil. The opening narration offers two potential sequencesa"a good sequence and an evil one. Interestingly, the scene entering Hommlet is the same visually for both the good and evil openings; only the narrated text differs. The player characters have highly different motivations in these two scenarios. However, the entire party, controlled by one player in the CRPG, is given the same motivation. In the module, as with TRPGs in general, the player controls only one character within the game. Thus, each character and each player may have different reasons for embarking on the campaign.

Naturally, in the novel the reader has no control over the point of view that is presented, yet this medium also brings its own affordances. The heroic characters are those that would be player characters in the TRPG or CRPG. We are introduced to, as our primary protagonist, Shanhaevel, a mage and elf; as well as his love interest, the druid s.h.i.+rral. The novel presents a good deal of depth in terms of character emotions and interactions, as the reader sees the relations.h.i.+p between Shanhaevel and s.h.i.+rral develop and is also privy to many of Shanhaevelas thoughts. Naturally, in the TRPG, relations.h.i.+ps such as this one could also be developed, but all of that material would come from the players rather than the pre-written module. The novel does something else that is a s.h.i.+ft from both the TRPG and the CRPGa"it shows the point of view of the opposing side. Although it is clear that Shanhaevel is the main protagonist, the story s.h.i.+fts between his point of view and Hedrack, the head of the temple. We become privy to Hedrackas interactions with Iuz and Zuggtmoy in a way that we never see in the TRPG or CRPG, where they are simply villains to be fought in combat or powers to be allied with. In fact, it is completely possible to play either the TRPG or the CRPG with no real understanding or explanations of the forces in the temple. In the TRPG, much of the inner workings of the temple must be discovered by players asking the right questions. For example, if the party captures Senshock (Zuggtmoyas emissary) and uses ESP to interrogate him, they will find out a bit about Iuz and his plans (Gygax & Mentzer, 1985, p. 99). However, if the party kills Senshock or misses this encounter altogether, that information may never be obtained or the DM may need to incorporate this information elsewhere in the game. From some playersa comments about the political maneuvering in Temple, it is clear that the motivations guiding the NPCs can be a key part of the intrigue. However, from other playersa comments, it is probable that not everyone who plays the TRPG learns these details of character development. One of the affordances of the novel, then, is the ability to provide multiple points of view where the reader can s.h.i.+ft perspective throughout the novel.

Each medium offers something to the story that the others cannot. Each shapes the story in a different way. In the TRPG the audience has more control over the framework of the story. The DM may choose to reveal information as he or she sees fit or adapt the story to fit within a different campaign world. However, short of incorporating additional media (such as video) into the gaming session, the DM would have a hard time representing the visual scenes in the story the same way that the CRPG does. The computer version also offers the chance to return to an earlier point in the story and begin again with the hope of a new outcome. The novel offers the least flexibility, but it also gives the reader more insight into different characters, allowing for a more complete perspective that is not achievable in the other media.3 Transmedia Narrativea"The Nexus of Stories.

It is apparent from the examples presented here that there are multiple differences among the experience of the TRPG module, the CRPG, and the novel all called The Temple of Elemental Evil. What is it then that allows us to recognize all three as the Temple of Elemental Evil? How might these texts and others work together to inform our understanding of a particular textual universe?

First and foremost, it appears that structuralist narratologists notion of story as separate from medium does not hold true for the transfer among the TRPG, CRPG, and novel. One very important reason for this is that story in the TRPG exists primarily in the oral discourse created by the gaming group as they play through the module. The module itself has some backstory, but it neither reads like a story nor determines what part of the story the audience will hear. Instead, each gaming group will individually access certain storylines and ignore others. As weave seen, some groups may ignore story altogether and focus more on combat and game mechanics.

What was perhaps not accounted for in the structuralist categories of story and discourse were the ways that elements of story, such as characters and setting, can be removed from the story itself. My study of Temple shows that it is not necessarily narrative that transfers between media. Rather, it is narrative elements, particularly the setting and key characters that transfer across media. In all three version of Temple, the setting remained constant. They all involved the town of Hommlet, the moathouse, and the temple, in that order. Furthermore, the backstory seems intact. In all three versions, there is the demoness that was trapped in the temple before the current adventure begins. Thus, it seems that main NPCs (clearly Zuggtmoy and Iuz as well as Lareth, Hedrack, and even Elmo) transfer to the most versions of Temple. The degree of that each of these characters is important to the narrative, however, may vary in the TRPG, CRPG, and the novel. For example, Elmo is a ranger and agent of the Viscount, but pretends to merely be a drunk. I found his character to be a necessarily ally in the computer game as he is initially a higher level than the player-run characters, and this allowed me to succeed in challenges that were otherwise unplayable. He also figures as a prominent character in the novel, where more of Elmoas story comes out. We find that he only pretends to be a drunk, but instead knows a great deal about the temple and the story behind it. Thus, in some versions of the story, Elmo may only be a drunk encountered in Hommlet, in others he may be a crucial aid to the party.

Another factor that transfers from the module to the CRPG has more to do with gaming than storytelling; the CRPG is based on D&D rules.4 The player characters in both versions have the six ability scoresa"strength, dexterity, const.i.tution, wisdom, intelligence, and charisma. Characters have a cla.s.s (such as fighter or wizard) and a race (such as elf, dwarf, or human). They have hit points, gain experience, and go up in level. As discussed in chapter 2, these are the type of game mechanics that made D&D so influential to other games, and they are the same core ideas that transfer between the TRPG and CRPG. As the novel is not written as a game, one might suppose that these features do not transfer. However, that does not appear to entirely be the case. A good deal of the book revolves around combat, and the characters clearly belong to a distinct cla.s.s and race. In the battle scenes, a D&D player can recognize familiar spells and skills being used. When Shanhaevel and his companions encounter the illusion of the basilisk, one can almost hear dice being rolled as Ahleage fails his saving throw and is thus deceived by the basilisk and temporarily petrified. Of course the book does not talk about dice or saving throws, but even a casual D&D player will recognize this familiar game mechanic.

It seems, then, that the audience for this book is not intended to be significantly different that the audience for the TRPG or CRPG. In fact, the book was released by Wizards of the Coast and is likely meant be read by D&D players already familiar with their products or by those with an interest in gaming to begin with. Likewise, the CRPG version held certain advantages for the player who was already familiar with D&D and the Temple story. A GameSpot review of the videogame by Greg Kasavin (2003) calls it aone of the most authentic PC Dungeons & Dragons experiences of the past few years.a The problem with this, he notes, is that when advancing a character, a nona"D&D player may be completely bewildered. The game draws on previous knowledge of the both the antecedent genre and the story and seems designed best for those who want to relive the Temple adventure in digital form.

Furthermore, I found that because I was reading the book and playing the CRPG at the same time, I was able to make valuable connections between them. Because I remembered in the book that Shanhaevel and his friends had entered the temple by a secret entrance in a well, I recognized a well I found in the CRPG as an entrance to the temple. In addition, when I encountered Hedrack, I knew right away that he was a major player in the temple, connected to Iuz and Zuggtmoy. I also knew that I needed to find the gems to go in the Orb of Golden Death to defeat Zuggtmoy. Finally, from reading the module, I knew that there was a good chance when Iuz came down to join in the big battle scene, so would his opposing G.o.d, Cuthbert. While I experienced each media differently, they worked together for me to form a more complete picture of the Temple story, setting, and characters.

This larger picture expands beyond just the iterations of Temple in different media. One partic.i.p.ant, in addition to relating the story of Temple, explained: My personal exposure not only included the aReturn to Temple of Elemental Evila PC game but also casual references to it in the 3.5 edition module aExpedition to Castle Greyhawka and minor references to it with the Lareth the Beautiful miniature stat card for D&D miniatures.

This partic.i.p.ant refers to other texts; those that are not direct retellings of Temple, but that draw on the larger textual economy of Temple. The TRPG module exists within the larger campaign setting of the world of Greyhawk. Thus, other adventures within that setting may reference what occurred at the temple as it became a part of the history of that storyworld. Similarly, the miniature figures that Wizards of the Coast puts out often include specific characters from famous campaigns, such as Lareth from Temple. Thus, it is not surprising that many of the partic.i.p.ants in my survey had heard of Temple without having played it themselves.

While the question of what makes up a particular genre or medium and how texts transfer between mediums is still an important question, it appears that a question of equal or greater importance has to do with the way that textual systems draw on multiple texts within multiple genres and media. Temple exists culturally, not as a single text, but as a textual system that draws from a common universe and some common characters with some of the same storylines. Each iteration within the textual system may add to or change the universe; each player will create new characters and the story may change. The media and the genre shape each telling. However, these texts cannot be seen in isolation.

In our current culture, we find more and more that games are made from movies or books and that movies and books are made from games. No longer do we encounter a particular story in only one format. Jenkins (2002) explains that aincreasingly, we inhabit a world of transmedia storytelling, one that depends less one each individual work being self-sufficient than on each work contributing to a larger narrative economy.a The idea of a narrative economy is one that warrants further discussion in both genre and narrative studies. Rather than a.s.suming that we transfer a story between media, this chapter shows how an audience might take bits and pieces from several related narratives told in multiple media in order to form a full view of a particular story. As audiences, we increasingly decide which versions of stories to accepta"do we hold to the view of Harry Potter in our heads from reading the book or do we replace it with an image of Daniel Radcliff from the screen? Perhaps we can do both. Temple shows that while each medium gives us certain advantages, certain affordances that shape the telling of a story, texts work together to form a more complete view of a storyworld, characters, and even plotlines.

4.

The Reconciliation of Narrative and Game.

So far we have seen that the stories play a key role in role-playing games; both tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) and computer role-playing games (CRPGs). However the question of whether games should be considered narratives or not and, thus, whether they can be studied using narratological tools, has formed the basis for a heated scholarly debate. Marie-Laure Ryan (2006) gives a thorough explanation of the opposing sides of this debatea"the ludologists and the narrativists. Ryan (2006) notes the disagreement often comes down to the different definitions of narrative and the politics ascribed to by scholars following different disciplinary traditions. As she points out, the position of the ludologists1 to study games (videogames in particular) as unique artifacts is an important one for establis.h.i.+ng their work as a new discipline (Ryan, 2006, p. 181). These scholars resist subsuming games under forms of literature and using means of a.n.a.lysis originally designed for the study of literary narrative to look at games.

Yet, the link between narrative theory and the field of literature or literary theory has itself begun to dissolve, allowing for a broader perspective of the study of narrative. Ryan (2006) explains that athe trend today is to detach narrative from language and literature and to regard it instead as a cognitive template with transmedial and transdisciplinary applicabilitya (p. 184). In addition to seeing narrative as a cognitive template, I would add that seeing it as social and rhetorical force further opens the door for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of all genres and media with narrative elements. I maintain that games and narratives have been seen as incompatible, in part, because of a limited view of what const.i.tutes either. Thus, I revisit the narrative versus game debate with two new perspectives in mind. Ludology, or games studies, has focused almost exclusively on video gaming which, as we have seen, was highly influenced by tabletop role-play but did not replace it. I thus bring to bear on the narrative versus game debate the inclusion of the TRPG as a game genre. Furthermore, the debate hinges on concepts from structuralist narratology; a perspective that warrants challenge from both post-modern and rhetorical theory. I argue here that a rhetorical approach to narrative offers a valuable framework that explains the narrative nature of gaming without discounting its other important features.

Games Versus Narratives.

In order to understand the position that games (even those that seemingly have a storytelling element) are not narratives, we must look at the definition of narrative that has been appropriated by many ludologists. This traditional definition comes from early linguistic studies of narrative that rejected anything other than oral storytelling with a clear narrator and narratee. Linguist William Labov (1972) defined narrative as aone method of recapitulating past experience by matching a verbal sequence of clauses to the sequence of events which (it is inferred) actually occurreda (pp. 359a"360). Gerald Prince echos this definition in his Dictionary of Narratology, originally published in 1987 and revised in 2003. He defines narrative as athe representation of one or more real or fictive events communicated by one, two, or several narrators, to one, two or several narrateesa (p. 58). Prince accounts for collaboration here as well as fiction, but still defines narrative in terms of representing (rather than creating) an event and in terms of having narrators and narratees.

To separate them from other types of speech for linguistic a.n.a.lysis, narratives involve longer turns at talk, where an interlocutor recalls the events of the past in an order that shows the cause and effect relations.h.i.+p necessary for the progression of the story. When we hear statements such as athe king drank from the poisoned cupa and athe king is dead,a we know that the second statement is a result of the first statement. Cognitively, we have a sense of the linear progression of narrative; thus, we are able to establish a connection between these two events as a story. This sense of causality and linearity from the study of oral narrative persists, even in studies that examine new media. Objections to viewing games as narratives are based often on the non-linear progression of games2 and the fact that the story is created through play rather than a retelling of the past (Ryan, 2006, p. 186). In addition, Eskelinen (as cited in Ryan, 2006) rejects that games are narratives even if they involve stories because they do not always have a clear narrator (p. 185). By using such a limited definition of narrativea"one that was intended for the linguistic study of narrativea"schol- ars have been able to argue that games should not be seen as narratives because they do not fit with this linear or causal model or because they do not have a traditional narrator.

The use of the concepts of story and discourse, and the positioning of the concepts as separate, is another way that ludologists have used narrative theory in order to argue against a narratological approach to games. Espen Aa.r.s.eth (1997) makes this distinction when he talks about fiction versus narrative. For him, fiction pertains to content while narrative pertains to form. The form of a narrative must be linear. Thus, he insists that a game or a hypertext can be a fiction without being a narrative (Aa.r.s.eth, 1997, p. 85). For these particular ludologists, a story (or at least a storyworld) can exist without an actual narrative. Narrative is seen as the particular way that discourse unfolds, and it is seen as separate from the plot of a story. However, as I have shown in the previous chapter, story is not as separable from discourse as one might imagine. To aseparatea a story from the medium is to change the story.

The strongest point from the ludology camp is that games represent something new, something that cannot be explained simply with our old methods for studying narratives. Aa.r.s.eth (1997) articulates this point clearly saying that ato claim there is no difference between games and narratives is to ignore essential qualities of both categoriesa (p. 5). He criticizes scholars for ascribing to the aspatiodynamic fallacy where the narrative is not perceived as a presentation of the world but rather as the world itselfa (Aa.r.s.eth, 1997, p. 3). It is easy to see where such criticism comes from when we look at scholars at the other end of the spectrum. The enthusiasm of Janet Murray (1998) for games as narratives extends to games such as Monopoly, which she regards as aan interpretation of capitalism, an enactment of the allures and disappointments of a zero-sum economy in which one gets rich by impoveris.h.i.+ng oneas neighborsa (p. 143). Even Tetris, she says, has a aclearly dramatic contenta (p. 144). While she may have a point that Monopoly or Tetris can be constructed into a story by the gamer or may tap into cultural metanarratives, there is no obvious narration within these games. Murray clearly takes things too far and, in light of this, one can see where the instinct to find a new perspective on games emerges. Not only does she blanketly apply the idea of narrative to games, she does very little to separate different types of games from one another.

Unfortunately, in trying to find a unique lens through which to study games, some scholars have ignored the important role that narrative plays in many games altogether. Along with Aa.r.s.eth (1997), Jesper Juul (2001) and Bernadette Flynn (2004) reject the aspatiodynamic fallacya and argue that games often involve an exploration of a world without involving a narrative structure. Flynnas (2004) article on aGames as Inhabited s.p.a.cesa suggests that games should be seen through an aesthetics of s.p.a.ce, which she states is agrounded in immersive aesthetics, maps, tours, modes of navigation and geometric landscapes,a rather than in narrative aesthetics (p. 54). However, in Flynnas attempt to avoid conflating game and narrative, she makes her own reductive moves. Her argument avoids placing games into the narrative pigeonhole only by ashoehorninga them into a new slota"one of spatial exploration. To consider every aspect of the game as narrative, is indeed to try to fit something expansive in a restrictive and inappropriate structure. Yet, the same holds true for reducing them only to an aesthetic of s.p.a.ce. To recognize that games can fit in both a narrative and a spatial aesthetic is to acknowledge their diverse and complicated nature. Furthermore, the degree to which a spatial versus a narrative aesthetic applies to games depends on the game in question.

Both Jenkins (2002) and Ryan (2005b, 2006) offer possible conciliatory positions in this debate between game and narrative scholars. One of the problems that Jenkins sees with the entire argument is that it deals with games in binary terms, looking only at whether a game is or is not a narrative rather than at what narrative elements might exist in a game. Ryan (2005b) explains that there is a difference between being a narrative and apossessing narrativitya (p 347). A text that possesses narrativity is aproduced with the intent to create a response involving the construction of a storya (Ryan, 2005b, p. 347). Many games, including the TRPG, appear to fall into this category.

While Jenkins (2002) is careful not to equate the storyworld with the actual telling of a narrative, he does see the potential for what he calls aspatial storytelling.a What he means by this is that storyworlds are created in games that either provoke previously known stories or provide the potential for creating new stories. For Jenkins (2002), games are as.p.a.ces ripe with narrative possibility.a Similarly, Ryan (2006) talks of games as amachines for generating storiesa (p. 189). In these more recent studies, we see that the earlier debate suggesting that games must be viewed either through a narratological or a spatial aesthetic falls to the wayside when we think of the way that s.p.a.ces create the potential for narrative experience rather than sticking to a strict structural a.n.a.lysis of narrative forms.

What we have seen throughout this debate on whether or not games should be studied as narratives is a disciplinary and methodological struggle. As new texts emerge, we have been forced to test whether or not our old methods for studying texts are still applicable. Thus, a discussion of traditional narratological definitions, such as that found in Labovas 1972 study, has been warranted. When videogames first came on the scholarly scene, this debate caused a separation between those who wished to create new methods to study them and those who wished to apply and adapt already existing methodology. This split is only now beginning to be reconciled as scholars work to expand both the definitions of narrative and games. Yet, the majority of the discussion of games still revolves around videogames. If we keep the discussion focused only on new games and emerging technologies, it seems we will never get past this continual reevaluation of older methods in the face of new texts. Videogame technology is evolving at a pace that moves much faster than our scholarly debates about it. It seems to me, however, that there is value in looking at the debate not in terms of new technology, but in terms of longer existing genres that may also challenge our methodological views. I thus present the TRPG, rather than videogames, as a test case for the argument surrounding defining games and narrative. Showing that a game nearly as old as Labovas definition can present a challenge to these definitions may very well prove to shake the foundation of narrative and games studies in a way that a more modern critique cannot. It is one thing to say that our definitions of narrative and games must change to account for new technologies; it is another to say that they have never completely accounted for existing ones. The social and rhetorical elements of narratives did not enter the scene with digital technology, but have always been a neglected part of our narrative worlds.

Campaign Settings in D&D.

One clear objection to seeing games as narratives is that games draw on vast s.p.a.ces, storyworlds that players explore with or without an actual story present. With seemingly endless maps of dungeons, to what degree is Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) about an exploration of s.p.a.ce? To what degree is it about creating s.p.a.ces that serve as storyworlds for potential narratives, but not about the narratives themselves? The next section looks in-depth at how worlds are created in D&D during gameplay and by Dungeon Masters (DMs) and game designers. First, I look at spatial exploration during gameplay. I argue that while TRPGs involve a degree of spatial exploration, this aspect is far less important than it is in most CRPGs. The D&D storyworld is filled with unrealized narrative possibilities. Nevertheless, the argument that games should be considered in terms of spatial rather than narrative aesthetics does not hold up when we look at the TRPG.

Jenkins (2002) mentions that before collaborative story development can take place, the DM must create the s.p.a.ce for it. In order to know more about how world building works in D&D, I talked to both the DM of the Sorpraedor campaign and well known game developer, Monte Cook. In particular, I discussed with Cook the way that he developed the Ptolus campaign setting. Rather than a module that is meant to be played in one setting, Ptolus is a published campaign world. It involves the details about the city of Ptolus and the world surrounding it. Furthermore, it involves a set of adventures for players to engage in and non-player characters (NPCs) for players to interact with. Both Sorpraedor and Ptolus are considered campaign settings. In other words, they are settings for the adventures in a D&D campaign to take place in. The major difference between these two worlds is that Sorpraedor was created for a home campaign by one gaming group and DM, while Ptolus has gone on to be published for multiple gaming groups to use.

Sorpraedor, like Ptolus, is based on the rules from the D&D rule books, yet, as a creation, it stands as a text on its own. Scott created multiple maps that visually laid out the world. Much like Earth, Sorpraedor has continents, bodies of water, countries, cities, mountain ranges, etc. The DM must create more detail about the world than he or she conveys in the narrative. However, while the world exists independently from the way the characters and players progress through it, the partic.i.p.ants of TRPGs do influence the development of the world. For example, Scott created a town named Lugyere that had twin brothers as rulers. He knew that that one brother was good and the other was evil. However, it was not until the party decided to visit Lugyere that he fleshed out the motives of the two brothers and their city. Any part of the Sorpraedor world can be fully created as the partic.i.p.ants express an interest in it.

In addition, players may influence parts of the world as they determine the background for their characters. The way that Ptolus evolved as a storyworld is very similar to the way Sorpraedor evolved. Monte Cook explained to me that he created Ptolus as the world for his own home run D&D campaign. Like Scott, Cook added certain elements of the world based on player interest. He explained that one of his players really wanted to create a character with an Arabian sort of background, so Cook incorporated a setting where this was possible in the world of Ptolus (personal communication, June 30, 2009).

The interests of the players and the questions they ask also affect the world in more detailed ways that more directly influence the narrative. For example, the following section of the Blaze Arrow story shows the way the players both explored the spatial environment, but also added details to that environment.

I slide the message down the tube and a whoos.h.i.+ng sound carried it away. I then composed a message to Gateway, aOrcs took Blaze Arrow, 12 dead. Orcs after Skullbash group in the mountains near Barrenstone. We told them to leave humans alone. So far they have complied.a As I dropped this message in the tube, it made a sputtering sound like it had gotten stuck. I looked at David. We decided to send a atesta message to the Black Tower tube asking them to confirm receipt. About three minutes later a note arrived back saying the message was received. I replied that the tube to Gateway seemed not to be working and asked them to forward my message and ask the magistrate to reply directly to me.

While we were waiting for a response, David began examining the machine. He discovered that the label for Gateway was loose. aPerhaps it has been switched,a he suggested. We decided to try a test message through the third unmarked tube. Almost immediately we received a letter back, aMessage received. What status?a I repeated the story once again and told them the tube had been mislabeled. The operator on the other end replied that they had been attempting to connect the tubes to Barrenstone but so far had been unsuccessful. We were of course suspicious as to why the labels had been changeda"that someone was purposely trying to screw up communication.

In this sample story, the detail that the labels on the message tubes were switched was not included until Alex (playing David) asked about the labels. This fact was added in by the DM on the spot as a response to the playeras question, and it changed the way the characters interacted with that encounter. My party was entirely convinced that the labels being switched meant that someone had purposely tried to disrupt communication at the Blaze Arrow outpost, when in fact this was simply a detail added at the whim of the DM to answer Alexas (playing David) question. From reading the final narrative, it is impossible to tell which details were created beforehand and which were added during the gaming session (although my interview with the DM revealed this). Some stories, then, come not from the s.p.a.ce created before the beginning of the game, but from questions asked and directions suggested by the players during the game.

Many details of the world get fleshed out only as the players (characters) progress through them; however, certain events in the world progress regardless of the charactersa involvement with them. For example, my interview with Scott revealed that once the party had moved on from their encounter with the orcs, the Blood Fist tribe continued on to fight the Skullbash tribe and win. This storyline is one of many in the world that was not narrated (at least not until my interview), but it clearly shows that an expansive world exists outside the narrative. In this way, we see that the storyworld itself does not mean that any given story will become a part of the game.

Campaign settings are designed not to tell stories, but to create s.p.a.ces for stories. Monte Cook explained that he consulted travel guides in order to get a feel for the layout and format he wanted for the published version of Ptolus (personal communication, June 30, 2009). He wanted his manual to read like a travel guide to a fictional world. While he did include a set of adventures that DMs could run within the Ptolus world, Cook also created a s.p.a.ce with the potential for many stories, not just those he engineered.

Manuals for Stories.

In addition to ready-made campaign settings, gaming companies also publish ready-made adventures, or modules. These modules give the DM a setting, NPC characters (complete with motivations and suggested actions), and a plot outline. As we have seen in the case of The Temple of Elemental Evil (Temple), which is part of the Greyhawk campaign setting, the form of these modules often reads more like an instruction manual or report than a narrative. For example, there may be an overview of the entire adventure at the beginning, like an abstract. Then, there might be a list of characters, or a list of locations. These characters may be given certain motivations, and certain events may be triggered at certain locations. However, the players may never visit certain locations or may visit them in a different order than the DM antic.i.p.ates. It isnat until the DM arranges the features in the process of the game that the text begins to resemble a narrative format.

Often these modules are intended to be one-time adventures, although a DM may string together a series of them to create a more coherent campaign. In doing so, the DM often adapts these modules to fit his or her needs and, thus, takes a degree of authors.h.i.+p over these textsa"a point I engage more fully with in chapter 7. For example, although the world of Sorpraedor was created by Scott for his campaign, he continually took aspects of this world from already existing modules. These modules might provide a map of a city, or an interesting NPC, or a plotline that Scott found appealing. However, he would only take that one piece of the preexisting text rather than the module as a whole. These practices are common among gamers and accepted by the gaming industry. Modules are not published with the expectation that they will be read exactly as written, rather, that they will act as a guide for a DM.

However, modules can also be played in their entirety, and they offer some narrative pa.s.sages within the preprinted text. Most modules have sections of text that are meant to be read aloud to players, and it seems that this might be a good place to look for a more narrative structure. Returning to the idea that in linguistic narratives the narrator takes a longer turn of talk, we might be tempted to say that these sections set aside for DMs to read aloud are narrative pa.s.sages. An a.n.a.lysis of these pa.s.sages finds that they are often almost exclusively description. The following excerpt from one of these pa.s.sages in the module shows the detail often used in the description of s.p.a.ce: As you approach the Temple area, the vegetation is disconcertinga" dead trees with a skeletal appearance, scrub growth twisted and unnaturally colored, all unhealthy and sickly looking or exceptionally robust and disgusting. The ruins of the Templeas outer works appear as dark and overgrown mounds of gray rubble and blackish weeds. Skulls and bones of humans and humanoids gleam white here and there amidst the weeds. [...] Everything surrounding the place is disgusting. The myriad leering faces and twisting, contorted forms writhing and posturing on every face of the Temple seem to j.a.pe at the obscenities they depict. The growth in the compound is rank and noisome. Thorns clutch, burrs stick, and crushed stems either emit foul stench or raise angry weals on exposed flesh. Worst of all, however, is the pervading fear which seems to hang over the whole areaa"a smothering, clinging, almost tangible cloud of vileness and horror [Gygax & Mentzer, 1985, p. 35a"36].

The deliberate break from gameplay for oral description calls attention to setting in the TRPG, but does it create a narrative?

Just as these descriptive interludes may be considered a break from normal gameplay in the TRPG, descriptive utterances have often been considered separate from narrative. This claim exists on the premise that description does not seem to need to follow a particular order, whereas in narrative there are causal connections between events. However, as Meir Sternberg (1981) points out, the relations.h.i.+p between description and narrative is extremely complex. According to Sternberg (1981), adescription is no more doomed to disorder than a narrative of eventsa (p. 65).

Often, the descriptions given by the DM in D&D are chronologically organized. If we return to the story of the orcs from the Sorpraedor campaign, we find that the order of the description does establish a narrative order.

You approach the Blaze Arrow outpost. The bastion that guards the frontier of the city of Gateway is silent except for the distant cry of gathering carrion birds. You notice that the ground around the outpost has been scarred by the hobnailed feet of dozens of invaders. The three story tower is surrounded by a now broken gate. The smell of burning orcish flesh, the smell of death, profanes the air. As you enter the gate, you find the remains of a ballista that once defended the outpost. Another rests farther in, still fully loaded, its human operator dead beside it. All in all, twelve human bodies lie around, evidence of the attack that took place only hours ago. It appears the victors have suffered losses as well, but their dead have undergone the cremation rituals known to exist in orcish societies. There are also orc bodies piled up and smoldering. Yet the process seems to have been done quickly and was perhaps not completed. Some remains of orcish clothing and some s.h.i.+elds have been left behind. They are marked with the symbol of a b.l.o.o.d.y hand, which you recognize as the sign of the aBlood Fista tribe of orcs.

First, there is the order of progression followed by the reader. At the time of the gaming session, this description was presented in the general order that the party came upon Blaze Arrow. First they would see the footprints leading to the tower, then the broken gate, then the bodies inside the gate. Had the party approached Blaze Arrow from a different direction, the description might have been different. Furthermore, the way in which the DM constructs these descriptive pa.s.sages also clues the party in to the events that happened previously. Orcs advanced on the tower (the footprints), they broke down the gate, breached the tower, and killed the soldiers. Stories like this are rarely narrated directly by the DM; rather, he or she will present the evidence in a descriptive form that allows the group to formulate an event sequence in their minds. The cognitive power of narrative is still present here, and it allows the audience to establish connections between the descriptive details that form a sequence of events. Sternberg (1981) claims athat spatial features are subject to chronological or even causal sequencing, which explains their order of presentation in terms of some order of occurrence, is no paradoxa (p. 72). Description and narrative are not necessarily at odds, even when we limit the definition of narrative to the progression of causal events. The descriptive accounts in D&D, while immersing the player spatially, do not necessarily negate the progression of plot.

Descriptive pa.s.sages offer the ability for players to reconstruct past events in narrative form. As we have seen with the Temple module, though, players may never completely uncover the story embedded within the modules. In terms of looking at the TRPG as a narrative, the print sourcesa"both campaign settings and modulesa"are used as reference materials and can not be seen as narratives any more than an authoras notes for his novel can be. On the point of spatial exploration, looking at the TRPG seems to support ludologists claims that a narrative perspective does not account for all aspects of gaming. Both campaign settings and modules are written more as manuals, devoid of narrative form; nevertheless, they create a storyworld.

However, the TRPG is not simply an exploration of this storyworld. Unlike a computer game that may be focused on graphic and visual elements of game design, TRPG s.p.a.ce seems to revolve more around its narrative potential. While a skeletal outline for the world of Sorpraedor exists, only parts of interest to the narrative become fully developed s.p.a.ces as they are enacted in the gaming session. Similarly, areas of a module may not all be explored and, thus, may never be developed or narrated. Spatial exploration does not seem to drive the TRPG narrative as much as the narrative drives the spatial exploration.

Any game (whether it uses a module or not) allows for some flexibility, but games played as one time events or in the context of conventions may be more limiting. Where players in a home game may have greater freedom to explore whatever parts of the world they choose, gamers at a convention have to stick more closely to the chosen module. However, I would argue that the exploration of s.p.a.ce in more restricted games is even more driven by narrative progression. The Role-Players Gaming a.s.sociation (RPGA) is an official gaming organization run by Wizards of the Coast. They hold tournaments and events both on a local and national level for gamers to get together and play adventure modules in worlds such as Living Greyhawk and Living Forgotten Realms. Because members of the RPGA move from one adventure to another, often with different DMs or players, there must be some attempts to maintain consistency in the world and the plotlines experienced. Thus, the DM of an RPGA game does not have the same flexibility that other DMs enjoy. In addition, time is 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce and elements of plot interested this particular gaming group, there was a pressure to cover certain storylines.

We see that s.p.a.ce is important to the TRPG, so much so that entire books are written only to describe storyworlds. Nevertheless, the actual exploration of that s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 aI go to the tavern,a and the DM then a.s.sumes that the players are able to locate the tavern and begins describing the scene there.

Explicating these differences in the use of s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce is virtually unlimited in the TRPG, s.p.a.ces 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 s.p.a.ce 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 fas.h.i.+on for review. In the TPRG, the DM most often acts as a narrator. In addition to the descriptive pa.s.sages like those seen in this chapter, the DM may recap what players suggest for their characters to do. The player may articulate the desire for their character to complete an actiona"I take out a dagger and cut through the rope to escape from the orcs. The DM may then narrate the success or failure of that actiona"You feel the ropes loosening as your dagger slips between the knots. The story goes back and forth between the player and the DM, both of whom narrate key parts. The other players serve as narrattees listening to the story as it is being told.

At other times, the DM may take full control over the story. The following pa.s.sage is from Maureenas story. It was narrated exclusively for Mary through a private message. Although this particular pa.s.sage transpired via email in order to keep Maureenas experience secret, similar narrations frequently take place orally in the face-to-face game setting. In this story, Maureen had decided to take the blood suckle drug, a drug that caused a metamorphosis over which Maureen (played by Mary) had no control. Scott, as DM, completely narrates the scene: You lie down, though you feel energy coursing through your veins, and close your eyes for a second. Then the visions. .h.i.t you, and it is a strange dream where you feel like you are running through fog and everything seems blurry around the edge of your vision.

You are sleek. Muscular. Darkly beautiful. You see a few peoplea" some thieves, some guards, a few stragglers coming homea"and you see them playing a game of cat and mouse as they try to catch their prey and escape from their predator. They are so fragile, these peoplea"you see this now. So puny, and so weak. But almost none see you; you seem to be able to melt into the shadows, and fast. Oh yes.

On a whim, you leap to a roof of a building and move closer, just to see what someone will say when they do see you. You drop into the alley behind someone dressed in soiled black clothes. You can smell the fear on him even before you see him turn in slow motion and his eyes widen. He holds a rusty blade in one hand as you advance and makes a feeble attempt to stab you.

You smack the weapon from his hand and knock him across the alley with hardly a thought. You hear his heart stop beating and you realize that he dies before the scream on his lips even had a chance to come out.

You start getting confused and then everything goes black. When you open your eyes from the dream with a start, you still feel powerful but very tired. You also notice that your sheets are completely ripped to shreds and your fingernails have a little blood on them. Probably yours, seeing the condition of the bed, and you must have cut yourself in tearing the sheets as you acted out your dream.

Unlike the descriptive pa.s.sages from the module, there is clearly action here. One event leads to another. Maureen takes the blood suckle drug, she transforms, she jumps from the rooftops in her panther form, is confronted by an a.s.sailant, kills him, and returns to her room, unaware of what has transpired. Or we could interpret the entire story as a dream sequence that Maureen hallucinated after taking the blood suckle drug. Despite a clear chain of events, this narration is still somewhat unusual because it is in present tense and addresses the narrattee in second person. Monik Fludernik (1994) explains that asecond person texts frequently undermine this story-discourse dichotomy by the very nonnaturalness of their design, telling the narrateeas or addresseeas story.a As such, she sees second person narratives as post-moderna"they reformulate the relations.h.i.+p between narrator and narratee from traditional structuralist terms. In the sense that a story is told to one person (a narratee) by another person (a narrator), this pa.s.sage clearly fits the definition of a narrative. However, even in these pa.s.sages that consist clearly of storytelling, the story is far from traditional.

Furthermore, while the DM may act as narrator, this is not the only role that the DM fulfills within the gaming session. He or she also rolls dice to determine actions, voices the parts of NPCs, and maintains social order to the group. Again, no single perspective can account for the multiple layers of the game. A narratological stance would a.n.a.lyze the DM as narrator, but might not provide a framework for the DM as world builder or as rule enforcer. Although the TRPG cannot be excluded from narrative status on the grounds that it does not have a narrator, it also must not be limited to only studying this one aspect.

A Social and Rhetorical Approach to Narrative.

When I say that the TRPG apossesses narrativity,a I mean that it contains narrative, but is not exclusively a narrative. The game does appear to favor story over exploration of s.p.a.ce, and does consist of narrative interludes with a clear narrator and narratee. More importantly, whether or not ludologists or narrative theorists would consider games such as D&D narratives in terms of their formal structure, many gamers feel that their experience with the TRPG is a narrative experience. Rather than dismiss the views of gamers for not using the careful terminology as defined by scholars, it is our obligation to reconcile the actual gaming experience with our scholarly accounts, even those produced by scholars who are themselves gamers.

If we take a social rather than a formalist approach, we quickly see that narrative is an important element of gameplay for many role-players. Ed Stark from Wizards of the Coast, the company that now owns D&D, comments that apeople often say playing D&D is like writing your own moviea (as cited in Waters, 2004). When asked by BBC News Online to comment on their memories of D&D for its 30th anniversary, partic.i.p.ants noted the feeling of controlling a storyworld. James Dodd of the UK states that D&D provides aa chance to star in your own subjective version of any film or novel.a Paul Grogan also says that D&D gives you a chance to arecreate cinematic moments, kinda [sic] like being in a film where there is no defined script.a Diana Thirring agrees, noting that ait is like writing a story without knowing the outcomea (as cited in Waters, 2004). Whether or not a formal a.n.a.lysis reveals a story in narratological terms, it seems clear that those partic.i.p.ating in the TRPG are aware of a story behind the game.

Furthermore, narrative can be seen not as a form, but as a response. When talking more broadly about rhetoric and the rhetorical situation, Lloyd Bitzer (1968) argues that awe need to understand that a particular discourse comes into existence because of some specific condition or situation which invites utterancea (p. 6). Bitzer talks of discourse here in terms of speech, but his basic idea has more widely applied. The argument that a situation is rhetorical and that such a situation calls forth a particular response is also the basis for the rhetorical definition of genre applied in chapter 2. Something about the TRPG invites a narrative response, and it seems that narrative theory, whether or not it can elucidate all aspects of the gaming genre, can help us explain why we respond to this form as a narrative.

This notion of experience rarely factors into definitions by ludologists or narrativists, although Ryan (2006) opens the door for such an approach. While she doesnat argue that retelling what happened during a game makes the game a narrative (in a structural sense) as it is being played, she does say that athe greater our urge to tell stories about games, the stronger the suggestion that we experienced the game narrativelya (Ryan, 2006, p. 193). We see an important move here away from Aa.r.s.ethas (1997) view of narrative as a form to see narrative as an experience (whether that be a cognitive experience, a social one, or both). That we can experience something as narrative, regardless of its form, is an important s.h.i.+ft in perspective when looking to explain the comments of gamers that they see themselves as a playing a role in an ongoing movie or novel. Aa.r.s.ethas (1997) notion that in hypertext (as well as in games) the areader must produce a narrative versiona and that the text adoes not contain a narrative of its owna (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 establis.h.i.+ng 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 const.i.tutes 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. 363a"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 s.h.i.+ft 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 a.n.a.lyze 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 a.n.a.lysis features a look at the multiple layers or frames in the genre. Gary Fine (1983) uses frame a.n.a.lysis 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 Fineas three frames, but focuses his own a.n.a.lysis mainly on the fantasy frame (p. 43). Daniel Mackay (2001) splits Fineas 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 Fineas 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 partic.i.p.ants speaking in-character (p. 55). I, too, f