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Literary Studies and Role-Playing Games

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DOI: 10.4324/9781315637532-14

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This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in
Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations on April 4, 2018, available
online: https://www.routledge.com/Role-Playing-Game-Studies-Transmedia-
Foundations/Deterding-Zagal/p/book/9781138638907

Please cite as: Jara, David and Evan Torner (2018). “Literary Studies and Role-
Playing Games.” In Zagal, José P. and Deterding, S. (eds.), Role-Playing Game
Studies: Transmedia Foundations. New York: Routledge, 265-283.

14 Literary Studies and Role-Playing Games

David Jara; Evan Torner

Literary Studies is an academic discipline that involves the systematic study and

analysis of literature. But what is ‘literature’, and to what extent can role-playing

games (RPGs) be counted as such?

‘Literature’ refers to written language (from the Latin littera meaning ‘letter’).

Traditional notions of literature have been greatly informed by print media and

the book as a cultural artifact (Vandenthorpe 2008). Although contemporary

notions of textuality have expanded the scope of literary studies, it still focuses on

verbally encoded and usually printed or otherwise affixed language. Ensslin

(2007), for example, states that the adjective ‘literary’ refers to the emotions,

meanings, and similar experiences stoked by words. Any RPG player will be
readily familiar with this: in tabletop RPGs (TRPGs), live-action role-play (larp),

or online freeform RPGs, spoken or written language is often the main substance

of gameplay.

Literary works are also often described as texts (from the latin textum, fabric or

web), that is, as systems of interconnected signs. Since all human action arguably

involves signification (Barthes 1957), ‘text’ has come to include verbal language

and languages of other media such as film, comics – or arcade games (Cornis-

Pope 2014). Any set of signs that can be interpreted or ‘read’ count as a

(potentially literary) text: a tabletop or live-action role-playing game book is a

text. A play report is a text. A 70-hour computer RPG (CRPG) is a text.

In literary studies, literature is commonly defined by a specific use or form of

language. “These lives flee from us like gossip and gestures,” a line by the poet

Gryphius, is presumably literary. “Can I roll an attack to see if my bow hit?”

presumably is not. ‘Literature’ implies a quality, termed literariness or poeticity

that, in theory, helps distinguish between “literary” and “non-literary” texts. It

refers to some or all of the following:

● Defamiliarization: Literary language deviates and distinguishes

itself from everyday language, both in use and form.

 ● Fictionality: Literary texts refer to something that doesn’t exist

outside of the work.

● Ambiguity: Literary texts afford different interpretations by

extending the possible meanings of the words or signs that compose a text.

● Context: Works of literature do not have a function or use in the

same way a cookbook or a map has.

RPGs are edge cases for literariness and poeticity. The TRPG Unknown Armies

opens with an technical description: “Unknown Armies is an occult game about

broken people conspiring to fix the world.” But it ends the section with a literary

statement interwoven with a practical instruction: “Without you, the world ticks

on as it always has. Your job is to create a character for whom that is intolerable.”

(Stolze & Tynes 2016, 5) This oscillation between instructive, descriptive, and

literary language is a feature of many TRPG rulebooks. Similarly, fantasy CRPGs

such as Diablo (1996) use the trope of scroll-shaped or book-framed text boxes to

afford players a readerly moment, before returning to the standard avatar view.

Literary scholarship has also worked towards identifying, sometimes prescribing,

the features of ‘good’ literature, reflected in literary ‘canons’ or lists of ‘great’

literature considered to possess special aesthetic, moral, cultural, and material

value (see Chapter 21 for ‘canon’ in the context of fandom). 20th century

theorists challenged these distinctions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, replacing them

with broad definitions of text that can all be fruitfully subjected to interpretation

(Knellwolf and Norris 2001). Thus, RPGs become literature when we choose to

read their texts in a literary fashion.

Overall, Literary Studies, as a discipline, attempts to understand what texts mean

(hermeneutics) and how they evoke these meanings (poetics). Analogously, past

RPG studies have chiefly adopted two major manifestations of Literary Studies:

textual analysis, concerned with the meaning and interpretation of RPGs, and

narratology, more interested in formally describing how RPGs and their stories

are constructed.

Literature and RPG Studies

Early 20th century authors and scholars explored play and games in relation to

literature and established an important precedent to current game studies. In fact,

the notion of literature as a form of play is almost as old as literature itself (Sutrop

2000). Grounded in examples of French avant-garde literature like Mallarmé and

Oulipo, poststructuralist theorists cast literature and indeed all meaning-making as

an inherently boundless free play of texts and their readings (e.g. Derrida 1978;

Iser 1980).

Fictionality and Role-Play

In the 1950s, Gibson already conceived of reading literary fiction as a form of

role-play, stating that “[e]very time we open the pages of another piece of writing,

we are embarked on a new adventure in which we become a new person”:

“[T]here are two readers indistinguishable in every literary experience. First, there

is the “real” individual upon whose crossed knee rests the open volume […].

Second, there is the fictitious reader – I shall call him the ‘mock reader’ – whose

mask and costume the individual takes on in order to experience the language.

[...] A bad book, then, is a book in whose mock reader we discover a person we

refuse to become, a mask we refuse to put on, a role we will not play.” (Gibson

1950/1980, 1–5)

Gibson’s “real” and “mock” reader are closely related to Fine’s (2002) distinction

between the enactment of “player” and “character” identities during TRPG

gameplay. Sutrop similarly speaks of “imagining in first person” as the defining

characteristic of the literary experience and the source of our emotional

involvement with fictions in general (Sutrop 2002, 226). To summarize with

Brandes (2009), reading fictional literature and gameplay are both:

● cultural practices,

● enabled by social frames,

● defined by rule systems,

● voluntary activities,

● done for pleasure or fun,

● assume a social distinction between play and seriousness.

Literary Play

Literature itself has constantly staged its own playful nature. Game-like contests

between poets featured prominently in early literature such as the Greek eclogues.

The Baroque pastoral genre was notorious for its self-referential focus on the

relationship between literature and reality, foregrounding the idea that art in

general was a form of play with meaning (Iser 1991). Authors of early gothic and

detective fiction from the 18th and 19th Centuries, on the other hand, consciously

utilized markers of non-fictionality – footnotes, fake newsletter or scientific

reports – to enhance the emotional effect on the reader by making texts seem
realistic. As a result, the texts emphasized an understanding of fiction as a form of

make believe and role-play.

Literature that requires more than a trivial effort from the reader to traverse the

text is called ergodic literature (Aarseth 1997). This is generally taken to mean

that the reader must actively make decisions in order to generate and/or read

the text. Early text-based multi-player online RPGs like MUD1 and TinyMUD

are considered ergodic literature.

Callout 14.1: Ergodic Literature

Although print media are often seen as non-interactive, early 20th century writers

were keenly interested in interactivity and the deconstruction and playful nature

of literature. Tzara’s “To Make a Dadaist Poem” (1920), for example, is a simple

set of instructions the reader can use to assemble her/his own work from random

scraps of language. Similarly, Cortázar’s novel Hopscotch (1963) includes

additional chapters and instructions for the reader to reorganize the book, thus

creating alternative versions of it. The French literary movement Oulipo

“gamified” literary production by establishing playful constraints for authors to

overcome. For example Perec’s novel La Disparition (1969) was written without

using the letter ‘e’––and therefore of any words containing it.

RPGs' “Literary Heritage”

Nephew argues that “th[e] pre-generated background afforded by a literature-

based setting is a boon to roleplaying games […] because [it] fulfills that wish on

the part of the readers of a book, or the audiences of a movie, to take the story

beyond the ending the original writer provided” (Nephew 2004, 67). Saler (2012)

argues that the fan communities that developed around the public discussion of

fantasy, detective fiction and early science-fiction texts in magazines, clubs and

conventions, provided a form of social network based on the “willing belief” in

fictional worlds. By encouraging the continuous participation of the public in the

construction and interpretation of the worlds of these texts, this form of shared

pretense not only heightened people's sense of emotional investment and

immersion, but transformed relatively “static” fictional worlds into persistently

inhabited “virtual” ones. Such fan communities evolved into those that would

produce Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs (Peterson 2012). Seeing RPGs as

a form of literary-based fan culture, Punday also suggests that RPGs allow players

to establish relationships between literary subgenres such as fantasy and science-

fiction. As he observes, “[role]play is less a matter of escape or story than a

matter of sifting through the relations between genres and what it means to be a

fan. In this regard, RPGs are exemplary artifacts of fan culture and reflect the

cultural work done by objects that achieve ‘‘cult’’ status.” (Punday 2005, 128)

RPGs reflect the importance of literature as a form of social practice and human

interaction. Not only do these games allow us to become involved in fictions but

they allow us to do so simultaneously as a group, therefore establishing fiction as

a place of “real” encounters.

Hyperfiction

The “Literary Studies” approach to RPGs is tied to the discussions surrounding

the emergence of hypertext fiction (“hyperfiction”) in the mid-1980s.

A Hypertext is a system of information organization based on discrete elements

known as ‘lexias’ connected with each other via links. Almost any webpage on

the internet is considered a hypertext. Hyperfiction is a literary text form based

on a hypertextual organization principle. Although there are some notable

exceptions, hyperfictions are mostly ‘digital born’.

Callout 14.2: Hypertext and Hyperfiction

As a result of their often complex “branching structure,” hyperfiction narratives

lacked fixed (‘linear’) plots or clear endings (‘closure’). Instead of turning pages,

readers choose among a number of ‘links’ in order to “navigate” through a text,

thus creating their own textual trajectory or “path” through it. These features

revealed a new form of textuality––both in its production as well as reception––as

an emergent process of decision making and interpretation that took on

increasingly game-like qualities (Wardrip-Fruin 2007).

Interactive fiction (IF) is a form of fiction that reacts to the input of a reader or

audience (Montfort 2003). As a consequence, IFs require the active

participation of the reader in order to produce a text. It is an umbrella term

covering anything from “choose your own adventure” to hyperfiction, to role-

playing games.

Callout 14.3: Interactive fiction

The study of hyperfiction laid the foundations for studying other digital

phenomena, including CRPGs and MORPGs. In the case of TRPGs, it became

apparent that these, too, were complex “ergodic” texts based on collaborative and

interactive narration and, as such, were unprecedented in the way in which they
destabilized “the notion of a cohesive, central creator of a work” (Nephew 2004,

166).

[Box insert 14.2]

Analyzing RPGs

To apply textual analysis to RPGs, we need to define what the ‘text’ in question

is. RPGs comprise superimposed layers of discourse and different instances of

authorial control and agency. Also, “it is not clear where to draw the line between

game and non-game, between ‘the game’ and its ‘surroundings.’” (Rockenberger

2014, 260)

TRPGs may feature large amounts of written text in rulebooks, scenarios or

adventure sets. CRPGs, on the other hand, often include accompanying booklets

with instructions for playing the game and information related to the game’s

setting or narrative premise. These texts, however, are not always necessary for

play: A D&D group could ignore a location in a scenario, a CRPG player could

not read the manual, etc. Furthermore, player interaction during gameplay is often

verbal, gestural, aural and can involve other media. Few of these textual elements,
however, are ever transcribed, existing only momentarily or ‘ephemerally’ within

the game session. And yet they are an essential part of the game. This is

especially notorious in the case of TRPGs and larp. MORPGs and CRPGs are

meanwhile constructed as “vast” or “encyclopedic” narrative worlds. This means

that they are “open ended” texts which can develop––often uninterruptedly and

over extended periods of time––independently of the actions of individual

players. This makes it even more difficult to speak of a contained or unique

“text”.

RPGs combine pre-established textual structures and emergent performance.

Scholars call this condition “emergent” because the way in which play (and,

correspondingly, the game’s narrative) is constructed and experienced cannot be

predicted a priori. More importantly, many RPG’s aspects are only temporarily

available during gameplay, making retrospective analysis difficult.

Traditional media texts are described as linear because they typically present

audiences with a single, pre-established, sequence of events. Non-linearity

occurs when the sequence of events depends on the reader/player’s choices.

Multi-linearity is when the same textual artifact can offer several different

paths or “storylines”. This is relevant in RPGs as individual players decide how

to “navigate” through the gameworld and can even create events on the fly if

they choose to do so.

Callout 14.4: Linearity, Non-linearity, Multilinearity

Thus, delineating what RPG “text” one is discussing is important. Padol’s (1996)

definition of the TRPG text as “the session itself, transitory, existing only for the

duration of the session” marginalizes the rules and manuals. Yet including

“everything” without a specific focus threatens to muddle even the most well-

meaning of studies. As Stenros writes: “Searching for meaning in role-playing

games is a worthwhile process, but it is important to enunciate properly what it is

exactly that is being analysed” (Stenros 2004, 78). A narrower definition of which

RPG text is meant allows for a more capacious application of literary studies

techniques on the object itself: the meta-fiction in a rulebook, the dialog script

from a CRPG, the character database for a larp, the play report of an MMO guild,

etc.

Hermeneutics and Textual Analysis

RPGs create a fictional reality which is “embedded” in the real world. When

communicating within the fictional world of the game, the language we use

functionally “mimics” everyday language. As characters, we ask NPCs to give us

items or tell us where a treasure is located. Literary language, however, speaks to

reality indirectly: through metaphors, personifications, flourishes, and so forth.

Textual interpretation, therefore, involves understanding a text beyond its “face-

value”. But where does a text’s meaning come from? Is it defined by the author

or the reader/player? Is it external or intrinsic to the text itself? These are some of

the questions traditionally discussed by literary theory that are relevant for RPG

analysis.

Interpretation in RPGs

Playing an RPG involves many forms of interpretation. First, we “read” the signs

used to “represent” or simulate the fictional world of the game: a verbal

description of a tavern in a TRPG; the body language of other players in a larp;

the on-screen interface in a CRPG or MORPG. These elements allow us to

generate a mental image of the game world and to (inter)act coherently with and

within it. Second, we use language to communicate as characters within that same

game world. Third, we may relate the game to our knowledge of other texts

(intertextuality) and to our real-world ideas and experiences. This can be

described as the difference between understanding and interpreting a game (cf

Kücklich 2006). The latter involves going beyond what we could call the ‘literal’
understanding of the game in order to make observations that relate to its

“deeper” meaning. But where does such a “deeper” meaning come from?

Early approaches to textual interpretation viewed meaning as something that was

“encoded” into the text by the author. These forms of ‘historical criticism’ tended

to favor the idea that a “correct” interpretation could only be obtained by knowing

or discovering the intentions of a work’s creator. Later theories refuted the

‘author-centric’ perspective arguing that the meaning of a text could not be

ascribed to a source beyond the text itself. Because they were built from basic

semantic units such as literary motifs and tropes, literary texts were ‘intrinsically’

meaningful. Thus, interpretation was less a question about what a text meant as to

how it worked. In order to explain the latter, a methodology called “close-

reading” was developed that involves the detailed examination and formal

analysis of individual texts. Close-reading made it possible to “dissect” and

understand the “mechanics” behind literary works but has been criticized for

excluding relevant contextual information. For ‘Marxist’ criticism and the later

‘New Historicist’ approach, on the other hand, context was decisive in conferring

meaning to a text. Literature, they argued, was a product of its time and was to be

seen as symptomatic of the social, economic, historical and ideological contexts

surrounding it. Yet another perspective was taken by the so-called ‘reader-
response’ theories. These emphasized the active participation of readers and

audiences in cognitively constructing and conveying a text’s meaning. Although

subjective, meaning was not random, but rather a “negotiation,” between the

reader––their knowledge and expectations––and the semantic structures present in

the text. Finally, poststructuralist theories––in particular, Derrida’s

deconstruction movement– questioned the enterprise of interpretation as a whole,

arguing that since the meaning of language is arbitrary and differential, it is

impossible to speak of any stable meanings in a text.

A wide range of approaches to textual interpretation are on offer. While many

developed historically as a reaction to each other, RPG studies allows us to

integrate them in a useful manner. For example, author-centered approaches

manifest through Ian Bogost’s (2007) notion of “procedural rhetoric,” a term that

describes how videogame rules and mechanics are a form of encoded discourse

and, therefore, are conveyors of “authorized” meanings. Text-based approaches,

on the other hand, can be observed in ‘close readings’ of an RPG’s pre-generated

or ‘scripted’ texts (e.g. Jara 2013; Torner 2016). This can be useful to understand

the mechanisms and structures of meaning “objectively” available in the text.

Additionally, RPG scholars often use the term ‘close-playing’ to describe a

reader/player-based methodology centered around the subjective experience of

gameplay. This kind of approach is typical of TRPG analysis where “[t]he reading

done by a participant, and the special case of a reading done by the game master,

are the second most common starting-points of analyses of role-playing games.”

(Stenros 2004, 76–77) However, as Grouling-Cover (2010) observes, it is also

important to be aware of the fact that our particular experience of the game might

be idiosyncratic and non-generalizable. Finally, poststructuralist and

deconstructionist theories can be used to demonstrate/discuss the extent to which

gameplay may also be a space for subversion and re-appropriation. For example,

when participants engage in activities which have not been explicitly

contemplated by the designers as forming part of the game (e.g. Ensslin 2014).

Hermeneutic Circle: Play and Re-play

The hermeneutic circle in interpretation theory describes the paradox that in order

to make sense of a text, we must already have a (pre-)understanding of it; one that

is influenced by information such as the title; genre; knowledge about its creator;

the hype about it in the newspaper, etc. Contexts and expectations allow us to

make sense of the elements that compose a text. Conversely, as we make sense of

it, our interpretation of the text as a whole changes, making us reassess our

understanding of its composing elements. Realizing at the end that a character is a

blood-relation, for example, might completely change our understanding of the

events in a game. This may, more likely than not, require us to play it again. As a

result, interpretation is conceived of as a ‘circular’ movement between our overall

and particular understanding of a text and, as such, as always incomplete and

ongoing process.

For RPG studies, the hermeneutic circle helps highlight the importance of playing

(“reading”) and re-playing a game (interpretation). Re-playing, however, is

complicated, since most games do not allow re-play in the same sense that print

media allows re-reading. Every time we encounter a game, we may engage with it

differently, not only cognitively but also from a very practical perspective: we

might encounter other situations and characters; we might fail in accomplishing

the main task and “lose,” and so forth. Nevertheless, playing a game repeatedly

allows us to understand the text more deeply because we will be more aware of

the differences between one playing and another, and thus of how different,

individual elements of a game may affect our experience of it as a whole.

Conversely, the more we understand a game as a macro-textual structure, the

more nuanced our observations of its individual elements becomes.

Intertextuality

Intertextuality refers to the way texts affect each other’s meaning. Typical

examples of intertextuality are texts that explicitly parody, imitate, or quote from

others. A text may also covertly allude to another, either in content or structure.

Readers can also establish personal intertextual relationships when making

connections between texts. The fact that the author of a work might have not

“seen” or indeed intended such a connection is irrelevant, because intertextuality

is concerned with how texts affecting each other’s meaning. For example, the

MORPG The Secret World (2012) alludes to a number of locations and character

names from fiction horror authors H.P. Lovecraft (Kingsmouth) and Steven

King (Maine, The Overlook Motel) among others. By doing so, it taps into the

fictional and figurative imaginary of these authors, calling our attention to themes

such as helplessness and social decay. We might then develop allegorical

interpretations of the game: e.g. The Secret World can be read as a reflection of

modern-day fears in an increasingly globalized and de-personalized society.

Similarly, Fallout 3 (2008) includes allusions to classical literary works such as

Elliot’s The Wasteland (1922), Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and Dante’s Divine

Comedy (1320). Thus, the text makes a claim as to its aesthetic and “literary”

value. More importantly, these references emphasize the game’s themes of

morality, redemption and damnation, hinting that the protagonist’s plight can be

seen metaphorically as an everyman’s deliberation on the issue of free will.

Ilieva (2013), on the other hand, has demonstrated how intertexts and other

'literary codes' are sometimes used as clues to help players resolve in-game

complications or “riddles”. The literary code itself is thus also a mode of

communication in RPGs.

Paratextuality in RPGs

The worlds, events, and narratives of RPGs in all their forms do not occur in a

vacuum. Genette (1987/1997) coined the term paratext to refer to elements in

print media that “surround” the “main text”. Additionally, there are peritexts

(appended to the main body of a work) and epitexts (texts outside the main body).

In RPGs, game titles, packaging, cover and back cover, and so forth are peritexts

and accompanying media like trailers, reviews, and walkthroughs are epitexts.

Paratexts inform, mediate and influence what we expect from, how we interact

with, and how we make sense of a game and the stories it produces.
Consider The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002). Its title establishes it’s a

sequel– immediately foregrounding narrative progression as a priority. It

reinforces its kinship to the preceding titles in the series via the subtitle “The

Sequel to Arena and Daggerfall” so as to claim to its own value based on the

latter’s success. Additionally, the (pseudo-)diegetic text on the back of the box

frames the game as a source of ludic and narrative pleasures, portrays the CRPG

as storytelling medium, and evokes the language of traditional analog RPGs:

Snatched from prison by the Emperor's decree, you arrive at the port of Seyda

Neen with nothing but the name of a contact in Balmora... completely ignorant of

the Prophecies of the Incarnate, your mission and the role you are to play in the

Morrowind's history.

Will you play an heroic warrior or a stealthy thief?

Will you join a mages guild or the assassin guild?

Will you explore in the huge open-ended world or will you complete all the quests

and find the Truth?

You're the only one to answer those questions. You write the story. (Bethesda

Softworks 2002)
Paratexts also influence the production of text during play. Call of Cthulhu’s

cover (1981) emphasizes that it is supposed to be a game about ‘horror’ based on

H.P. Lovecraft. The illustration evokes the appropriate themes, genre and mood. It

is, however, up to the players to include these elements in gameplay. Indeed, even

the extensive information in the manual is only potentially diegetic. Jara (2013)

recognizes the unique and unconventional use of texts and paratexts as a way of

generating––not merely mediating–– fiction. RPGs are fictions that beget more

fictions and paratexts are an important source of knowledge for our

understanding. By “provid[ing] further layers of interpretation,” paratexts allow

us “to understand how [video games] become complex media artifacts.”

(Fernández-Vara 2014, 379–87)

RPG Canons

The notion of corpus of core texts (canon) around which a field revolves, is also

closely related to the idea of intertextuality. For example, Shakespeare’s Hamlet

belongs to the canon of English literature, given how much it is referenced and

studied. Canon can be found in two contexts in the study of RPGs: the corpus of

texts that form the presumed literary basis of an RPG, and the corpus of RPGs

thought themselves to be canonical for a specific medium.

Gary Gygax’s now-famous Appendix N “Inspirational and Educational Reading”

from the 1979 AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide suggests many literary

inspirations for the system: the works of Lord Dunsany, Poul Anderson’s The

High Crusade (1960), Jack Vance’s Eyes of the Overworld (1966), and so forth.

“The most immediate influences upon AD&D,” Gygax writes, “were probably de

Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A.

Merritt.” (Gygax 1979, 224) Other TRPGs; including Cyberpunk 2020 (1991), In

Nomine (1997) and others; incorporated bibliographies to document texts that

might inspire play. Literary interpretation might point out specific works’

influence on D&D’s rules, for example, or it might describe common tropes and

language between early fantasy RPGs and these genre texts.

The RPG canon itself – what are the must-play RPGs of an era, genre, etc. – is

naturally contested, but perhaps less that one might imagine. For TRPGs,

Dungeons & Dragons (1974) would count as canonical: references to its systems

(e.g. saving throw) might be made without forewarning or introduction. For larps,

Vampire: The Masquerade may be considered canonical, since it was likely also

an average player’s gateway into the hobby. For contemporary CRPGs, games in

the Final Fantasy series could be canonical, given their vastness and overall
cultural reach. For MORPGs it would be undoubtedly World of Warcraft. In

analyses of these bodies of work, literary scholars can spot patterns emerging

from the interaction between RPGs and the texts that followed them.

Narratology

Narratology studies the forms, structures and mental processes involved in the

generation of narratives. Narrative can be described as the rendering of a set of

events (story) in a way that discloses a relationship of causality between them

(plot). The specific way in which story and plot are conveyed is called

discourse. Originally, narrative was defined as the verbal rendering of a story via

a narrator to a narratee (Prince 1987). Scholars, however, have contested this

notion, arguing that narrative is a mental/cognitive construct. As such, it can be

produced by or derived from any form of semantic encoding/decoding (e.g. Ryan

2006; Domsch 2013). RPGs are of interest to narratology because they use games

as a medium for telling stories and display unique features such as simultaneity,

interactivity, emergence and collaboration.

[Box insert 14.1 here]

Future Narratives: emergence, interactivity and authority

The story, plot and even discourse on an RPG are at least partially dependent on

player action, decision-making and direct creative input. Because of this, Bode,

Dietrich and Kranhold (2013) have described RPGs as ‘future narratives’. They

argue it is the ‘nodal situation’ (or ‘node’) rather than the ‘event’ that becomes the

defining element and minimal narrative unit. As players of such texts we

negotiate the narrative by taking action and making meaningful decisions, and are

also made aware that “'what happens next' may well depend upon us, upon our

decisions, our actions, our values and motivations.” (ibid.) Nevertheless, different

RPGs allow for different forms of interactivity and thus various “degrees” of

narrative potentiality and emergence. Game designers and players may therefore

use different strategies to “harness” narrative content and confer it with meaning.

Whereas classical narratology attempted to reduce narrative discourse to its basic

components, the qualities of RPG storytelling often require an approach from an

inverse perspective: identifying in retrospect the elements used to generate

meaningful narratives during gameplay.

Improvising narratives in analog RPGs

Analog RPGs allow participants to directly affect or modify a game’s basic

“architecture.” Tabletop players may point out inconsistencies in a location’s

description or request additional information during an ongoing scene. Larpers

may ignore a game rule while interacting with another player to maintain the

narrative and immersive ‘flow’ of the moment. In narratological terms, these

forms of role-play generally make it easier for players to affect the discourse (how

the narrative is conveyed) of a game’s story, rather than merely the plot (what the

character’s do).

An author is the creator of a work or text. Authorship is often seen in relation

to authority, which refers to the power of enforcement and responsibility over a

text in terms of its production, content, use and even interpretation. Game

designers have a more limited amount of influence over the game text: players

can both create content as well as devise ways of interacting with a game which

were not predicted its creators. Thus, players share authorial control over the

text. Consequently, RPGs can generally be seen as being multi-authorial. Many

games purposefully leave their “architecture” open to player modification by

explicitly inviting players to adapt and make changes. For example CRPGs

often include tools for building ‘mods’ based on the original game program.
“Top-down” and “bottom-up” forms of authority refer to authority exerted by

designers and players respectively.

Callout 14.5: Authorship and Authority

Literary motifs, tropes, and themes are semanting units that also form a basis for

developing and negotiating a game’s narrative. Daniel Mackay (2001) describes

these semantic units in terms of “fictive blocks” because they enable players and

game designers to “build upon” each other’s input in real time. Fatland (2006)

explains their essential function of triggering “improvisation patterns” in order to

make coherent 'in-game' player interaction possible and fluent. As Montola (2008)

notes, “every player’s performance can be a conscious manipulation of tropes and

conventions or an unconscious replay of fictive blocks to which players have been

exposed.” (28). This allows for multiple players to collaborate within the game-

world without having to resort to “out of game” dialogue.

Motifs: The basic semantic structures of a text. In narratives, they are often

recurrent and well-recognizable elements such as ‘the family secret’ or ‘the

broken promise.’

Theme: A more abstract, general notion of what the text is about, for example

‘generational conflict’ or ‘the power of friendship.’

Tropes: Figures of speech such as metaphor, allegory or irony. More recently,

‘trope’ has gained colloquial use as a synonym for ‘motif’.

Callout 14.6: Motifs, tropes and themes

Multi-linear storytelling in CRPGs

Player involvement in CRPGs is generally more limited with player agency often

reduced to aspects related to the character itself. When playing Skyrim, for

example, players can determine the gender and aspect of their character at the

beginning of the game, but they cannot create or modify the available choices

themselves without creating a “mod” using programming scripts. From the

perspective of narrative generation, Thon (2007) distinguishes between a “virtual

designer story”––the possible actions offered by the program––and a “player

story”––what a player actually does during gameplay. Similarly, game scholars

make a distinction between what they call "ludic" and "narrative" phases of play

(cf Thon 2007; Neitzel 2014). While the former concern player activity related to

the simulative aspect of the game, the latter are pre-determined and best

exemplified by the use of "cut scenes" or “scripted” events. The elements that do

not allow player interaction are considered distinctly separate from play. Game

designers use them to drive the linear narratives of the game. Neitzel (2014)
describes adventure-themed CRPGs as being generally composed of “numerous

short linear action lines” (21) following the mythological structure of the 'quest'.

Nevertheless, while these pre-determined narrative structures “provide players or

their avatars with a clearly defined aim that marks the end state of the game (e.g.

“Rescue the Princess!”), players are generally able to choose the order in which

they complete the different tasks (Neitzel 2014, 17–18). Indeed, the information

processing capabilities of computer-based games allow them to present players

with multiple plotlines and complex branching structures. Players create their own

stories as they follow different, multi-linear narrative paths through the game.

Furthermore, Neitzel also recognizes an underlying narrative structure in these

games characterized by “not provid[ing] the players with a clearly defined aim”

(23). As a result, CRPGs may also incite “exploratory narratives” where players

may search for knowledge and meaning within the game world. This mode of

interaction with the game means that the ending “is unforeseeable from the

beginning of the narration and tends to point back into the past.” (ibid.)
Vast Narratives in MORPGs

Digital role-playing games become a stage for “vast narratives,” thanks to the

capacity of computers in processing huge amounts of information (Harrigan &

Wardrip-Fruin 2009). This marks one of the major differences between digital and

analog forms of role-play. While the “advantages” of a human game master or

referee lie in their capacity to read the emotions and desires of their fellow players

and adapt to them (Chinn 2015), they are also often limited by their previous

preparation for a session and their capacity to convincingly improvise new

material. TRPG players, for example, may perceive that a character in a game is

important based on the accuracy and consistency of their portrayal. A CRPG, on

the other hand, “can afford many more intricately designed characters” (Murray

1997, 6). Furthermore, MORPGs present narrative worlds that can be explored

and developed simultaneously by a nearly unlimited number of players. This last

feature, in particular, greatly increases these games’ potential for narrative

emergence. Players can form alliances and explore the world in adventure groups;

they can engage in conversation or battle each other, generating events and plots

that could have never been envisioned by the game designers. Eve Online (2003)

is a notable example of this, having produced some of the biggest battles among

player groups ever documented (e.g. Groen 2015).

Narrative Levels, Focalization and Character Representation

Narratology is also concerned with the discourse level of narrative representation

(how a story is told). For example, in verbally encoded media, different narrators

or narrative instances can be recognized based on their relationship to a text’s

storyworld. A narrative instance which is not part of the storyworld is called

extra-diegetic. An intra-diegetic narrator is a recognizable character who is part

of the fictional world of the narrative. Most RPGs offer at least some instances of

verbal storytelling. Indeed, are constantly encountering characters who tell them

stories. This feature serves the purpose of giving players new goals (e.g. quests)

and of making sense of the world of the game. For example, in an early quest in

the CRPG The Witcher III (2015), Gerald must retrieve information from a hunter

who lives at the outskirts of town. During their initial encounter, the character ––

previously described by another NPC as a ‘freak’ ––reveals the reason of his

exile: his homosexuality. The character’s tale therefore gives us important

perspectives into their intra-diegetic values and beliefs such as homophobia and

superstition. In narratological terms, we call this an embedded or ‘hypodiegetic’

narrative because the hunter’s tale occurs within––and thus a level “below”––the

main spatio-temporal world or ‘diegesis’ of the game. In contrast, ‘frame’

narratives occur on a level which is ontologically or narratively “above” it. At the

beginning of Dragon Age II (2011), players witness a Dwarf being interrogated as

to the whereabouts of “the champion” (the player-controlled character). This is

not merely an introduction to the game’s narrative but, as it turns out, it is a frame

narrative that accompanies the player’s progress throughout the game. The

diegetic level of gameplay is itself contained within the Dwarf’s recollections.

The notion of diegetic levels allows us to isolate and analyze aspects of a

narrative’s representation, even if it does not involve an actual instance of verbal

narration or narrative ‘voice’. Music is a good example of this: the soundtrack of

a game can influence our perception of it, e.g. adding a feeling of suspense or

excitement to a scene or situation. However, the music as such is often not heard

by the character itself and is therefore ‘extra-diegetic’. On the other hand, if a

character in the game switches on a radio which, in turn, plays a song, the music

is (intra-)diegetic, as it is part of the narrative world.

Since the diegesis of a video game is mostly rendered visually, cinematic

terminology offers another possibility for describing narrative representation.

Neitzel (2007), for example, makes a distinction between subjective, semi-

subjective and objective points-of-view (POV). These POVs are important

because they may also affect our emotional experience of the narrative. For

example, a subjective POV means that players encounter the world through the

simulated eyes of the character, a feature that heightens our sense of immersion in

the game world (Denisova & Cairns 2015). Also, by constraining our (visual)
“knowledge” of the surrounding environment to equal that of the character, the

game makes us aware of our lack of power and our relative vulnerability. This

may increase our sense of fear or suspense, making us more careful of the

decisions we make in the game. In semi-subjective POVs (also called “over the

shoulder”) players are granted an advantage over the character’s: e.g they can

notice creatures sneaking up from behind. This allows players a “higher level” of

strategic gameplay in order to overcome in game obstacles while at the same time

maintaining a feeling of immersion and connection to the character. Examples of

this approach includes games in the Witcher series or World of Warcraft. In

contrast, an objective POV gives us a broad view of the game world, distancing

the player experience from that of the character. This POV is typically used in

isomorphic-view RPGs in which players control a number of different elements

within a large game space, such as party members in Planescape: Torment

(1999).

POV helps describe the relationship between our visualization of the game world

and our experience and interpretation of it. Focalization, on the other hand,

conceives of narrative representation in terms of our knowledge (or lack thereof)

of characters’ emotions and thoughts. “Focalization defines how narrative

information is selectively presented relative to the knowledge and experience of

one or more characters within the story. The concept is similar to perspective, but

whereas perspective describes the position from which a story is observed,

focalization describes what can be observed as compared to a character.” (Fraser

2015, 2) Broadly, there are three forms of focalization: internal, where we have

access to the character’s thoughts and emotions; external, where we follow the

character’s actions without being granted access to their internal aspects; and zero

focalization, where we are not tied to a single character’s perspective. Arjoranta

introduces the notion of “embodied focalization” to describe an “additional”

perspective where players are given control of a character and a “physical

perspective inside [its] body” but simultaneously lack “access to that character's

mental landscape.” (Arjoranta 2013, 9) Schröter and Thon (2014) observe that

games offer three basic modes of character representation; narrative, simulative

and social. Characters can be described as fictional entities, with their own

thoughts and emotions; as tools for play with specific properties and possibilities

of (inter)action; or as avatars which are tied to actual people in the case of

multiplayer games. Understanding how these representational modes relate to

each other allows us to have a deeper understanding of these games and our

experience of them (ibid.).

Further Approaches

We have examined how literary studies can help us understand RPGs. However,

how can our understanding of RPGs help us understand or re-situate literature?

This is rarely discussed in RPG studies, and yet may offer a vast field to expand

critical inquiry. For example, many analog RPG source texts could be read as a

literary poetics in themselves. Indeed, they consistently combine rules and setting

information with reflections on what “good” storytelling or role-playing is; how

to communicate intentions and interpret the desires of the players during the

game, etc. How do these notions apply to traditional print literature? What do they

tell us concerning questions of aesthetics or our emotional involvement with

fiction? Can a TRPG sourcebook be seen perhaps as literary theory in the sense of

a poetics of knowledge? (Brandes 2009)

Similarly, can the notion of “becoming the monster” in White Wolf’s Vampire

(1991) give us a new perspective on the genres of “horror” or “gothic fiction” via

its rules and mechanics of character creation? Can John Wick’s notion of

‘tragedy’ from Houses of the Blooded (2008) help us discuss Shakespeare?

Another interesting area is the analysis of RPG adaptations of literary works

(Westerling 2008; Torner 2016). What aspects of the original texts are
problematized, changed or reflected? Can we see the RPG as a form of “reading”

a canonical text?

Inversely, on a more philological level one could ask to what extent have RPGs

informed and influenced contemporary works of print fiction? It is, for example,

no secret that many authors have been creatively influenced by the playing of

RPGs (see Chapter 9). Is the influence of the games recognizable in the narrative

strategies, structures and themes of these works? Does a novel based on a D&D

campaign possibly also offer us a reading and interpretation of the RPG?

Finally, despite the fact that there have been ongoing discussions on the question

of meaning in RPGs, we understand too little about the production of poetic

meaning in these texts. This has been partly due to the structuralist focus of much

of the current scholarship as well as the idea that, due to their functional

requirements, RPGs “tend to use extremely limited allegorical communication.”

(Loponen & Montola 2004, 50–51). While the idea of RPGs as a source of

“procedural rhetoric” (Bogost 2007) is important in understanding how these texts

can confer ideological meanings, a broader understanding of their semantic

potential is necessary if we want to appreciate them as an art/literary form in their

own right. In other words, realizing and studying RPGs as a medium that allows
polysemy and exploits multiple readings will enable us to appreciate them truly as

a medium for human expression and figuration (cf. Jara, forthcoming).

Summary

Literary studies and RPG studies go hand in hand. RPGs are texts that produce

other texts, and once the scholar has narrowed their focus with regard to which

text is in question––the rulebooks, the session itself, player procedure, etc.––then

the same questions can be asked of it as one might ask of a novel. RPGs also

invoke many similar questions to those of literature. Literary fiction has

playfulness built right into it, and to artificially separate literature from play is a

mistake. RPGs, too, are inspired by literary fiction, even using comparable

framing devices and tropes. CRPGs and MORPGs also evince traces of this

literary heritage. In analyzing and interpreting RPGs, we can therefore draw on

earlier methodologies in the analysis and interpretation of literature.

Further Reading

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Ensslin, Astrid. 2014. Literary Gaming. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
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and story in games and playable media. Cambridge, Mass. ,London: MIT Press.

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Box Inserts

Box Insert 14.1: Games against Narratives?

Can games be considered narratives or are games and narratives mutually

exclusive? This is one of the most well-known discussions in game studies; the

so-called ‘ludology vs. narratology debate’. Recognizing ‘storytelling’ as an

important element in the design and appreciation of many contemporary games,

‘narratologists’ were interested in describing and analyzing the particular ways in

which these and other interactive media could integrate and/or produce narratives.

Early game researchers or ‘ludologists,’ on the other hand, argued that the main

feature of narratives was that they were predetermined and therefore ‘linear’ in a

way that precluded the ‘essential’ quality of games; namely their interactivity. As

Costikyan put it, “[t]o the degree that you make a story more like a game – with

alternative paths and outcomes – you make it a less effective story. It’s not

merely that games aren’t stories, and vice versa; rather they are, in a sense,

opposites. [emphasis added] (Costikyan 2007, 13) The main problem with the

ludological position was that its arguments were mostly ideologically/politically

motivated. At a time when game studies were only beginning to develop as a

specialized field of investigation, narratology - originally a subfield of literary

studies - was perceived as a potential ‘threat’ to game studies’ chances of

‘emancipation.’ Correspondingly, as Grouling Cover has pointed out, the

ludological understanding of narrative was artificially narrow and obsolete.

Indeed, by the early 20th century, narrative theories were already being applied to

cinema, drama and even poetry (Weedon 2001). Despite the initial conflict of the

two perspectives, the present understanding of games in general and RPGs in

particular acknowledges them as a medium that affords storytelling albeit in

different degrees (Ryan 2006). Consequently, current approaches are less

concerned with whether specific games are narratives as to how they are so. Thus,

both in their analog as well as digital forms, RPGs present the challenge of
analyzing narratives which “are simulative rather than representational, emergent

rather than scripted, participatory rather than receptive, and simultaneous rather

than retrospective." (Ryan 2006, no. 173)

Box Insert 14.2: Gamebooks, Solo Adventures, and RPG Gamebooks

Gamebooks are texts whose story is experienced by reading a series of numbered

sections. At the end of each section the reader is offered a choice, and then based

on that choice, moves to the next corresponding section (Costikyan 2007). They

are also called “choose-your-own-adventure” (CYOA) and branching narrative

books.

Solo Adventures differ from gamebooks in that, in addition to reading and

decision-making, they require players have knowledge of, and experience with,

the rules of the game they were designed for (generally a TRPG). These rules

were not included in the book. Early solo adventures were published for the

TRPG Tunnels & Trolls.

RPG Gamebooks are a hybrid in that they represent the “addition of rules and

game mechanics to the CYOA format” or “the design of a pencil and paper RPG

system simple enough that it could be self-contained in an RPG solo adventure.”

 (Zagal & Lewis 2015). In other words, they are like solo adventures with rules

included in the book. Popular RPG gamebooks include those in the Fighting

Fantasy and Lone Wolf series.

Source: (Zagal & Lewis 2015)

List of keywords defined in callouts at the end of the document

Ergodic literature, gamebook, interactive fiction, RPG gamebook, solo adventure,

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