ANYTHING CAN BE ATTEMPTED:

TABLETOP ROLE-PLAYING GAMES AS

LEARNING AND PEDAGOGY

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment o f the

requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

to the faculty of the department of

ENGLISH

at
ST. JOHN’S UNIVERSITY
New York
by

TIMOTHY WOODS

Date Submitted: g lnl q Date Approved: nl.i j n

Timothy Woods Granville Ganter, PhD

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 ABSTRACT

ANYTHING CAN BE ATTEMPTED:

TABLETOP ROLE-PLAYING GAMES AS
LEARNING AND PEDAGOGY

Timothy Woods

Play and learning have always been closely interrelated ideas, with games

historically being utilized as social constructs that are simultaneously pedagogical and

entertaining in intent. This dissertation will examine an underappreciated element of

gaming's pedagogical history through thinking about English composition education as a

kind of gaming. Whereas much recent research about gaming has focused on the

promises of digital games, I will focus on an older and more fluid type of gaming

represented by Tabletop Role Playing Games. In the modern day, Tabletop Role-Playing

Games (TRPGs), like the well-known game Dungeons & Dragons, represent a

combination of traditional and innovative play that foreshadows where and how

educators might make use of play-based learning.

In my first chapter, I will present the evolution and history of TRPGs from

strategic wargaming into a higher and more complex form of general interactive

simulation and gameplay. In so doing, I will demonstrate that games and play are an

inherently educational form of activity, and have always been so in almost every

manifestation.
 In my second chapter, I take a closer look at gameplay, and what makes it

motivational, social, and effective as a form of pedagogy that could be readily

incorporated into the classroom. I highlight the three most pertinent advantages which

TRPGs can offer to modern students and educators: the harnessing of student

engagement, the encouraging of role-play and personal agency-driven learning, and the

creation of authentic contexts within which learning may take place.

In my third chapter, I offer the composition classroom as a perfect example of a

learning context wherein game-based learning can be of use to students and educators. I

note the ways in which TRPGs benefit compositional learning, particularly in the case of

the First-Year Writing and genre-based composition courses in higher education.

In my fourth chapter, I present a model for introducing TRPGs into the

composition classroom, using The Quiet Year as a structural example for a First-Year

Writing course activity. I conclude by describing my own experiences running TRPGs in

educational environments, and the benefits which such a game-based approach can offer.
 ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION v
CHAPTER ONE: A PEDAGOGICAL HISTORY OF TRPGS 1
Early Learning-Games 3
Riddle-Games 3
Early Games and Society 7
Chess, Kriegspiel & Wargames 8
Chess and Chess-like Variants 9
Kriegspiel and the Birth of Wargaming 11
Advanced Wargame Design 13
The First TRPG, Dungeons & Dragons 17
A Collaborative Construction 20
The “Tolkien-based Game” 22
Digital RPGs 25
Early Digital Games 25
Social Digital Gaming 26
Digital Games and Role-Play 29
Digital Games and Choice 31
Digital Games and Flexibility 32
The Game Master 33
Gamification within Education 39
Misuses of Gamification 45
Developing Definitions of Gaming 49
CHAPTER TWO: TRPGS AS LITERATURE AND PEDAGOGY 54
Creating Engagement 57
Learning and Fun 58
Situated Cognition 60
Engaging Dynamics vs. Gaming Mechanics 62
Dynamics of a TRPG 63
TRPGs and Assessment 69
Encouraging Role-Play & Agency 70
 iii

Origins of Role-Play 71
“Let’s Pretend” Role-playing 73
Role-play and Education 75
Reacting to the Past: Role-Playing History 79
Role-play in Video Games 87
Creating Participatory Learning Contexts 94
Affinity Groups and Affinity Spaces 95
Inclusion and Exclusion within Affinity Spaces 97
Authentic Participation 100
TRPGs and the Playground Dynamic 103
Codification and TRPGs 106
Emergent Learning 109
CHAPTER THREE: TRPGS AS COMPOSITION 112
Gaming as New Media 113
Social Media and Gaming 113
Games as Multimodal Compositional Forms 117
Gameplay and Rhetorical Ethos 120
Facilitating Play Experiences 121
Constructing Discursive Identities 122
Playful Identities 125
Writing “through” Games 128
Game Design as Composition 133
Design-based Compositional Affinity Spaces 135
Gaming and Genre 137
CHAPTER FOUR: THE TRPG CLASSROOM 145
First Year Composition and Gaming 146
Emergent Learning in the TRPG Classroom 148
Content in the TRPG Classroom 150
Technology and the TRPG Classroom 152
The Quiet Year: A Collaborative Storytelling Game 153
Gameplay Overview 154
Teaching the Rules 156
Contempt 157
 iv

Conclusions about The Quiet Year 160

The Quiet Year in the High-School Writing Classroom 161
The Quiet Year in the FYC Classroom 167
Step 1: The Question 168
Step 2: The Action 169
The Quiet Year in the Classroom: Analysis 171
The Quiet Year in the Classroom: Conclusions 176
CONCLUSION 178
APPENDIX: HANDOUTS 183
BIBLIOGRAPHY 190
 V

INTRODUCTION

ED: You see a well-groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill, you see a gazebo.
ERIC: A gazebo? What color is it?
ED: [pause] It's white, Eric.
ERIC: How far away is it?
ED: About 50 yards.
ERIC: How big is it?
ED: [pause] It's about 30 ft across, 15 ft high, with a pointed top.
ERIC: I use my sword to detect good on it.
ED: It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo.
ERIC: [pause] I call out to it.
ED: It won't answer. It's a gazebo.
ERIC: [pause] I sheathe my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it respond in any
way?
ED: No, Eric, it's a gazebo!
ERIC: I shoot it with my bow. [roll to hit] What happened?

“Eric and the Gazebo,” better-known simply as “The Gazebo Story,” is a slice of

early anecdotal gaming history which has been retold within the gaming community for

decades. Throughout the 1980’s and 90’s, this comical exchange was circulated amongst

the amateur gaming press and early Internet forums, becoming one of the most

noteworthy additions to the developing “canon” of personal game-based experiences. The

activity in which Ed and Eric were participating was a Tabletop Role-playing Game

(TRPG), specifically an early edition of the game Dungeons & Dragons. However, to the

unfamiliar observer, it might be a surprise to learn that they were playing a game at all.

I offer the first part of “Eric and the Gazebo” primarily as a concise and contained

view into the inner workings of a TRPG. Unlike a traditional board or video game,

TRPGs do not necessarily include a strong visual or manual component. Most of the

gameplay consists of verbal inquiry, statement of action, and further inquiry. The above

question-and-answer format between a player—typically one of several— and a

storyteller, known as Game Master (GM) or Dungeon Master (DM), is thus a fair

representation of the TRPG experience. A game session usually will consist of players

assuming the role of characters, and through the verbal statement of actions that are often

coupled with dice rolls or other mechanical resolution systems, to overcome the

challenges presented to those characters by the Game Master or generated by their own

actions and motivations. In the above example, Eric, the player, is perplexed by the

apparent ineffectiveness of his strategies against the “challenge” presented by the Game

Master— a challenge which, in fact, consists of nothing more than a missed vocabulary

cue. Without understanding the meaning of the word “gazebo,” Eric unsuccessfully

attempts to infer the nature of the object confronting him, and resolve the scenario

accordingly.

This anecdote highlights several of the most important elements that make TRPGs

meaningful objects of study— their pedagogical history, their role as a unique and still

emergent literary form, and their potential use as modern educational tools. Games utilize

the dynamics of play to engage students and dramatically alter the way failure and

learning is handled in the classroom. I have chosen to divide this piece into four chapters,

each dealing with one aspect of the TRPG as it relates to education. The first chapter will

discuss the pedagogical roots of TRPGs in other forms of gaming and education,

revealing that they (and arguably all games) are in fact educational at their most

fundamental level. The second chapter will detail the aspects of games and gaming that

are conducive to effective learning, and why TRPGs in particular are representative of the

best that gaming has to offer. My third chapter details the specific application of TRPGs

to the field of composition education and how it can impact the ways that writing and
learning are handled in the classroom. Finally, my fourth chapter will cover the specific

curriculum I would recommend for a composition instructor looking to implement

TRPG-based learning in their own course.

In many ways, “Eric and the Gazebo” reveals many of the layers of the TRPG

experience which I will be unpacking over the course of these four chapters. For

example, from the historical standpoint, the account is immersed in the rich history of

TRPGs’ foundations. It is a relatively well-known story within the community, first

appearing during the genre’s inception in the early-to-mid 1970’s. Later, in my first

chapter, I will discuss the early forms of TRPGs, which were generally being played

among hobbyists in an almost competitive tradition. The antagonistic nature of the

exchange between Eric and his Game Master suggests part of this playful intellectual

rivalry, a cross between a strategic simulation and a Socratic dialogue. I argue that the

“competitive learning” seen in these early TRPGs— featuring the Game Master as both

teacher and gatekeeper of hidden knowledge, which only those who prove themselves

worthy shall have imparted upon them— reflects a more traditional mode of pedagogy

which was still prevalent within the education system during the early years of the hobby,

and particularly during the centuries of game design that led to the creation of the TRPG

as a form.

TRPGs today have developed far beyond these rudimentary beginnings, into

complex simulations which are at least on par with digital video games available today;

yet even the earliest iterations of the TRPG genre, demonstrated in the above story, seem

to carry a significant level of complex didactic interaction. In my first chapter will

discuss how important it is that these games seem to have been pedagogical tools— and
incredibly innovative ones, at that— from the very moment of their conception, and how

they have since evolved to embrace new forms of pedagogy in a way that has consistently

remained ahead of the curve of mainstream education. Within this first chapter, I will

trace the historical origins of the genre so as to highlight the quiet yet present educational

motive behind games such as the TRPG.

Besides its historical value, the anecdote of “Eric and the Gazebo” gives us a rare

example of a TRPG-based text. The performed nature of the narrative in most TRPGs

and the improvisational means by which a player’s agency may be inserted indicates that,

as with a theatrical or improvised performance piece, the “text” lies just as much, if not

more so, in the instance of the performance itself as in any script or staging instructions.

In Eric’s story, a narrative emerges out of a largely unpredictable miscommunication, a

miscommunication which in turn becomes the focus of the “scene.” The layers of

interaction within the game-narrative intersect with the performance that is taking place

outside the game— between the player, who is both controlling a character and

participating as co-storyteller, and the Game Master, who simultaneously takes on the

roles of narrator, referee/arbitrator, and fellow performer.

Many of these multifaceted roles, and the unique nature of the interactions which

they generate, can be evidenced in the story above. The ability of the players to utilize

game mechanics, as well as the underlying interpersonal and social dynamics of the

game, in order to grab and direct the narrative reins is a fundamental part of what makes

TRPGs unique as games, and why their impact on the narrative-creating process is

noteworthy. These dynamics ask interesting new questions about authorship itself. The

Game M aster’s job becomes something closer to that of a director than an author, but in
 ix

fact the most appropriate analogy— and significant, for my purposes— is that of an

educator, specifically the teacher as “facilitator” of a learning/narrative space. In my

second chapter, I will discuss the nature of TRPGs as a unique blend of narrative

storytelling, theatrical performance, and cooperative social reimagining that could have

an enormous impact on the way students engage and learn from literature, language, and

almost any other subject material. I will describe the aspects of games and of TRPGs in

particular which are of pedagogical value in the classroom, and why; including the role of

the Game Master, and how it can serve as a model for the classroom educator. The

example of “Eric and the Gazebo”— a text truly unique to the TRPG form— shows how

these games encourage a process of cooperative narrative-making which is almost

entirely distinct from any other art form, even as they also provide the means to resist and

find agency within an overarching narrative that is not one’s own.

“Eric and the Gazebo” presents an interesting example of what TRPG-based

learning looks like, and why such a simple social interface creates such high levels of

engagement. The anecdote highlights a player’s “failure”— he repeatedly does not

succeed in understanding the nature of a gazebo— and the inherent playfulness of this

perceived setback. This example of a failure of pedagogical method seems to parallel the

same issues which plague classrooms: a “student” is afraid to seem foolish by asking an

obvious question, while a “teacher” jeers at their ignorance. Yet, in the midst of apparent

failure (on both the part of the player and the “educator”), and with the absence of any

obvious extrinsic educational goals, we can nonetheless see a memorable and engaging

vocabulary lesson presented for our consideration. The player persists where, in a non­

game context, they might have lost interest, because the game system privileges trial-and-
error-based critical thinking rather than knowing the answer in advance. Failure is viewed

differently within the context of the game; looking foolish in a game, a low-stakes threat,

becomes the catalyst for a form of learning that is social, context-based, and

entertaining— all factors which, I will argue, demonstrably point to the effectiveness of a

TRPG-based methodology. In my third chapter, I will outline why this low-stakes form

of content-creation is particularly valuable within the context of the social learning of the

composition classroom, and how TRPGs can be best used in such an environment.

While TRPGs may have emerged from pedagogical roots, new games like The

Quiet Year, which I argue would translate easily and effectively into the classroom

setting, show the direction in which they can stretch to their full potential. Eric’s learning

experience is one that reveals both the effectiveness and the limitations of learning from a

simple, entertaining TRPG like Dungeons & Dragons. Newer TRPGs eschew such

limitations in order to become simultaneously more pedagogically effective, and more

engaging. I believe that as educators, learning specialists, and game innovators continue

to treat TRPGs as the pedagogical and discursive tools which they can be, we will see

more game designers adopting overtly pedagogical goals— as well as more schools

adopting game-like strategies— for the purposes of engaging with a new generation of

students for whom games are already a familiar and common part of everyday life. In my

fourth and final chapter, I will discuss some of the methods and applications by which

games have been, and could be, brought into the domain of the composition classroom.

Games, including TRPGs, already occupy a place within the educational and

compositional space, whether we as educators and scholars recognize is or not. With the

advent of mainstream and digital gaming, this is more true than it has ever been before.
Yet it is important to remember that games have always occupied this essential role

within composition and compositional pedagogy. By recognizing the central role of play

within education, we allow games to take their natural place as pedagogical resources

within the educator’s toolbox. In the current era of engagement-based education, it is

entirely possible that games might be the most useful, versatile, and effective tool at our

disposal.
 1

CHAPTER ONE: A PEDAGOGICAL HISTORY OF

TRPGS

The concept of games as learning tools is far from new or revolutionary, as I will

demonstrate in this chapter. The last 50 years has seen a resurgence in the popularity of

games, largely as a result of the advent of mainstream digital gaming. This has led to

games and gameplay largely being considered by academic scholarship, and handled by

educators, as a recent development, in the tradition of other “new media” like film and

digital modes. While I argue that the recognition of gameplay as a form of pedagogy is

beneficial, it is important to note that games have been a form of pedagogy for as long as

they have existed. In this chapter, I would suggest that learning through games dates back

to the earliest instances of human play, indicating a strong pedagogical foundation for

gameplay in general which can be built upon and expanded, rather than invented from

scratch.

In this chapter, I will highlight a history of games, and of TRPGs in particular,

dating back to the earliest forms of play and interaction, and demonstrate how these

experiences were fundamentally educational in nature and intent. TRPGs in particular, I

will show, emerged from a common historical root of simple learning-games and, later,

more technically advanced strategy war-games with pedagogical foundations. My

intention with this abbreviated history of gaming is to show that the underlying impulse

common throughout early game-traditions, and perhaps throughout all gaming activities,

is education.
 2

Following this history, I will document the rise of the first TRPG, Dungeons &

Dragons. I will especially focus on how, beginning in the 1970’s, games like D&D set

the foundations for the vast majority of digitally-based video games, and have in many

ways surpassed the potential of even the most technically advanced examples of this

modern mainstream industry. TRPGs, I argue, while lacking the technological

complexity, cost, and graphical intensity of digital games, nonetheless represent much of

the distilled value of gaming and its social elements, particularly as they apply to

learning. Even in the midst of a digital gaming revolution, I contend that the TRPG

design model of social, instructional gaming is still ideal for educational uses.

Finally, I will briefly discuss the current state of games in education, focusing on

problematic aspects such as the “gamification” movement. I argue that many of the

mistakes and obstacles of bringing games into designated educational spaces stem from a

misunderstanding of the value of games, and a focus on the supposed value which digital

games in particular are perceived to offer—digital immediacy and simplicity, combined

with engaging and technologically advanced visual graphics. TRPGs, I argue, are a much

better (or at least clearer) representation of what games have to offer the field of

education, largely due to their focus on social and interpersonal dynamics rather than on a

technological requirement.

The phenomenon of modern gaming, which has grown into one of the largest

global entertainment industries in a remarkably short span of time, is greatly elucidated

by this cultural context. If games can be understood primarily as tools for learning about

the world— rather than as forms of entertainment, distraction, or escapism— then

 3

educators will quickly see the pedagogical value which has always been present in the act

of gameplay.

Early Learning-Games

As far back as 1938, which saw one of the first anthropological studies of early

and modern human play in John Huizinga’s Homo Ludens: A Study o f the Play-Element

in Culture, it has been clear that games and game-like activities have been an essential

part of human learning and development, both on the cultural and individual level.

Huizinga, a Dutch historian and one of the founding influences of cultural game history,

viewed the anthropological history of play as suggestive of its role as the primary

formative element in human culture. He argued that gameplay has always functioned as a

means of learning. Indeed, the history of play-based pedagogy seems to predate

formalized games themselves.

R iddle-G am es

In Homo Ludens, Huizinga describes how, before the earliest game boards or

physical game components came into existence, keepers of “sacred knowledge”— the

early scientists, philosophers, and religious leaders of their respective cultures— would

embed ritualized question-and-answer competitions into their ceremonial work. These

interactive rule-described challenges may represent some of the earliest forms of serious

human play. Such early verbal games, Huizinga argues,

are deeply rooted in ritual and form an essential part of it. The questions

which the hierophants put to one another in turn or by way of challenge

 4

are riddles in the fullest sense of the word, exactly resembling the riddles

in a parlour-game but for their sacred import. (107)

Despite the religious associations inherent to many of these activities, Huizinga argues

that they were first and foremost pedagogical constructs, even considering them some of

the earliest examples of educational assessment. Huizinga cites specific Vedic hymns as

examples of riddle-posing based around “cosmogonic” questions (“What makes water

run? Where does the wind come from? What is dead?”), the same style of questions that

psychologists find commonplace amongst six-year-olds attempting to formulate an image

of the world around them (107).

Riddles are noteworthy predecessors to modern games, and TRPGs specifically,

not least because they demonstrate the fundamental interconnectedness of human

knowledge, language, and play. Janet Murray, a professor in the School of Literature,

Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology and expert in digital

media, highlighted such interconnection in establishing her own cultural theory of the

origins of gameplay. She suggests that both early narrative and early games played a

major role in the development of rudimentary societies due to their function as “joint

attentional scenes.” Prior to the advent of theater or artistic representation, gameplay

would have been one of the most productive ways to practice the act of unifying

community effort around a central idea, challenge, or competition. Early games served to

“provide a framework for watching and critiquing iterative activities, and working

collectively for improved performance,” which she argues may have been one of the most

crucial steps toward a development of human cognition (191).

 5

TRPGs in particular seem to harken back to this early mode of riddle-like

gameplay— note the implied riddle (“What is a gazebo?”) built into the “Eric and the

Gazebo” story, and the manner in which Eric pursued the answer. The verbal exchanges

necessary to facilitate a TRPG are themselves a game-within-a-game, with the goal being

not only to correctly assess the nature of the challenge being faced, but to then describe

the appropriate response to such an encounter, a response which will depend entirely on

the goals and motivations of the player. Both riddles and TRPGs reward the possession

and application of knowledge, and simulate the effect and consequences of this

knowledge-use through reward and punishment. Huizinga cites instances, both in

historical culture and in mythological accounts, of riddle-contests in which correct

answers would purportedly cause the crops to grow, while in other examples, incorrect

answers (or the lack of an answer) would result in a penalty or even death (109). The

dramatic, performed nature of these ceremonial games demonstrates their primary

intention: to educate the spectating community members, and to offer a pantomime of the

effects of education, and the presence or absence of specific knowledge, upon the

individual and the community.

Significantly, verbal games like riddles and TRPGs engage not only logical

reasoning and critical thinking, but also often require a grasp of the symbolic vocabulary

of the questioner. The player’s success depends on their achieving inclusion into or

understanding of a preordained set of metaphors and images, the particular linguistic and

cultural context of the challenger. Games, as I will show later, are particularly helpful for

facilitating a student’s ingression into a literacy culture, to understanding how to talk, act,

and think like a citizen, a priest, a scientist, a scholar, or a military general. More
 6

important, perhaps, is their capacity to facilitate subversion and reimaging of the very

literacy culture into which they are speaking. These traditions reveal how literacy itself is

a game in its own right, with such riddles being lessons in its particular kind of

constructive play.

For example, riddles allow for multiple answers within the limits of the stated

“rules,” and indeed the highest awards are given to those who provide an answer that the

questioner did not expect. By the same token, many games and game players would put

greater value on an innovative or non-traditional means of achieving victory rather than a

conventional one—just as chess players who discover an entirely new way to win at

chess would be touted as the foremost players of their time. This suggests that gameplay

is uniquely equipped to encourage a multiplicity of knowledge and allow students to

adopt a proactive, engaged role within their own education, an idea I discuss further in

Chapter 2.

Over time, the riddle-game would evolve into other didactic forms, some literary

in nature: the interrogative discourse, the litany, the catechism, and other methods of

play-like, interactive knowledge transmission. The well-known cross-cultural narrative of

King Solomon being visited by the Queen of Sheba “to prove him with hard questions” is

one of many such described contests by which one ruler or wise figure would judge the

worth of another using riddle-questions. In turn, such legends themselves became

narratives which in turn may be used to educate the reader (Huizinga 113). These

narratives and traditions embody their own cultural views of knowledge and its role in

society, and the function of riddle-games as lessons that teach not only knowledge, but

the methodology and meaning of epistemological pursuit.

 7

Early G am es and Society

While Huizinga was one of the earliest scholars to look at the nature of games and

play, he is now far from alone. French scholar Roger Caillois, rather than focusing solely

on play as an anthropological feature, took a more comprehensive sociological

perspective. In his 1961 book Man, Play, and Games, he made one of the first attempts at

defining exactly what constitutes a game (7). Caillois was an expert on the relationship of

games and gameplay to the sacred and the serious, synthesizing literary criticism,

sociology, and philosophy to achieve an understanding of the true context of games in

society. Like Huizinga, Caillois recognized a social element at the core of play, which

was carried through into formal gameplay. However, in attempting to define games, both

he and Huizinga focused on a defining “separateness” from the real world and “un­

productivity” of games, compared to other human activities.

These early definitions, which I would argue were reductionist, represented the

traditionally prevailing viewpoint of modern games. Jesper Juul, an associate professor at

the Danish Design School and a video game studies designer and theorist, on the other

hand, cites numerous examples of games that are neither “separate” from the real world

nor “unproductive” in terms of generating value (even economic value). Indeed, both

Huizinga and Caillois recognized that the phenomenon of gambling, one of the most

popular ways in which the border between play and the “real world” is complicated,

deeply problematized their definitions. While they disagreed on exactly how to solve this

problem, Juul argues that both of their definitions are flawed insofar as they focus on

establishing clear categories between games and the “real world,” under the assumption

that gameplay must somehow be distinct from all other “real” human action. Juul argues
 8

that gameplay itself resists such attempts to demarcate “what interactions are possible

(and allowed) between the game activity and the rest of the world” (5).

I argue that this attempt to define games by their “separateness” is a flawed

perspective, one that serves to highlight a fundamental misunderstanding about gameplay

that many modern societies have carried into the 21st century; namely, the view that

gameplay is something fundamentally distinct from “real life,” and that life and gameplay

do not interact in a great many meaningful ways. In fact, gameplay may represent one of

the most important and powerful tools for learning and interpersonal interaction that

humans currently possess, a tool that only grows more powerful as technology and its

simulacra of images and social media become more embedded and ever-present in our

lives.

Chess, K rieg sp iel & Wargames

While TRPGs might look to an outsider like an unlikely return of the ancient oral-

tradition riddle-games, the genre’s closer historical roots are more recent, emerging in the

1970s from the relatively insular community of wargaming hobbyists in the United

States. Wargames, from their earliest examples in Egyptian and Chinese history (Fine 8),

have attempted to simulate the strategy and circumstances of the battlefield to variously

detailed degrees of realism. Jon Peterson, a historian who thoroughly explores the origins

of wargames and role-playing games in his deep historical look, Playing at the World,

notes that scholars have difficulty differentiating the “proper” wargame genre from game

variants, such as “the ceaseless ephemeral innovations of chess enthusiasts,” as well as

from the practice “of merely representing military powers with tokens for the purposes of
 9

strategizing and or diversion” (205). In reality, it was difficult to say where the game

variants ended, and the serious military training tools began.

C hess and C hess-like Variants

The ambiguity described by Peterson highlights the problem of differentiating

games as entertainment from any other form of simulation or training. It also describes

the fluidity of the border between games and even between game categories. Wargames

generally followed the pattern of evolving in small, incremental steps from more ancient

games, just as chess evolved from the earlier Indian prototype chaturanga (Peterson 207).

Player-based modification (colloquially known today as “modding”) and other forms of

“playing with” the dynamics, mechanics, and aesthetics of game itself were both crucial

to and a common part of the development of innovative games and genres, such as

wargaming and role-playing games. The essential and universal nature of modding also

indicates a correlation between the playing of games and the act of criticizing, modifying,

and reimagining those same games. Gary Gygax, the creator of the first and best-known

TRPG Dungeons & Dragons, partly began his game design career both as a historian of

early forms of chess, and an inventor of new variations of that game.

Peterson’s argument that the earliest forms of the game of chess are difficult to

distinguish from purely “practical” means of historical strategic battlefield representation

is telling, especially considering that this ambiguity seems to be as old as chess itself. In

the first German-language manual for the game, entitled “The Game of Chess or Kings,”

(1616) the author (Duke Augustus the Younger, writing under the pen-name “Gustavus

Selenus”) explained that chess was “a model of politics and strategy” which could

educate the player on lessons of military and political leadership, which in turn would
 10

provide a wide range of valuable life skills even for an apolitical individual. The later

variations and successors to chess, such as Christoph W eickmann’s “Great Game of

Kings” (1664) are likewise marked by the “aspiration to use chess to instruct rulers about

conflict.” Peterson notes that the rulebook for W eickmann’s game mostly consists of

lessons and observations (citing ancient and Classical authorities of governance in a

typical Renaissance fashion) regarding how the game’s lessons might be transferred to

real-world applications (212).

The militaristic-political emphasis of early wargaming pedagogy partly explains

why so many games, including the latest digital video games and TRPGs being released

today, seem to cling to simulation of the particulars of warfare and combat. Modern

games, digital and otherwise, have had to contend with the framework of violence and

dominance which they often seem to uncritically perpetuate. While many of these games

can be reduced to the concept of a high-tech shooting gallery, I will be arguing that this

focus is the result of the limited game design technology and opportunities within gaming

until recently. The later arrival of games that deal with content beyond the scope of

warfare would suggest, I argue, that the close connection between gameplay and war is

largely incidental.

For example, the historical context of chess and similar wargames shows how

they emerged from a heavily European tradition in which military strategy was viewed as

the most effective route to a broader education and a successful career. Rather than

historicizing an inherent link between gameplay and warfare, I would argue that this long

history of warfare-simulating games suggests, rather, an inherent link between gaming

 11

and education, albeit within a culture that prioritized battlefield strategy as the most

desirable and effective pedagogical subject matter.

As these games continued to grow and change, and began to simulate a wide

range of new experiences, the inclusion of non-military elements and factors was not only

inevitable, but in turn gave rise to a variety of much deeper gaming experiences.

Wargaming, once synonymous with gaming itself, is now one small genre within the

wider world of gameplay options. Such “deeper experiences,” I would argue, have

become the hallmark of the TRPG genre especially, which I would contend occupies a

place at the forefront of gaming innovation in this regard.

K riegspiel and the Birth o f W argaming

As wargaming technology, means of production, and interest gradually increased,

the hobby moved away from abstract strategy games like chess into true attempts at

verisimilitude. The first attempts can be traced back to 1780 when the game “W ar Chess”

was developed by Johann Christian Ludwig Hellwig in the German duchy of Brunswick.

This new game introduced ideas such as terrain, realistic movement, and combat strength,

as well as incorporation of the relatively new and politically exciting technology of

accurate topographical maps. Peterson notes that accurate maps, above all else, changed

the core gameplay of the wargame genre away from abstract into concrete gameplay. He

argues that “with a consistent scale, the game ceases to be an abstraction like the game of

chess, and begins to evolve toward something entirely novel: a simulation” (220). In

1811, the game was revised by Herr von Reiswitz and his son— both being veterans of

the Prussian military— into the better-known kriegspiel, or “war-game” (Fine 8).
 12

Kriegspiel was used by the Prussian and German militaries to instruct officers in

the execution of battlefield tactics and strategy. This game “fulfilled a long-recognized

need for an inexpensive and easily repeated means of training officers for command,” and

was originally published under the title Instructions fo r the Representation o f Tactical

Maneuvers under the Guise o f a Wargame, a descriptor that clearly argues for the

seriousness of the “game” and its pedagogical intentions. The surprising military

successes of Prussia in the Austro-Prussian W ar led to widespread adoption of kriegspiel

and its variations as a training tool by the French, British, Italian, Austrian, Russian,

Japanese, and American militaries (Peterson 246). Even today, kriegspiel-based

simulations are still utilized by modern militaries, notably in the U.S. Navy's use of the

wargame Harpoon and other such tools used by U.S. armed forces (MacNab 1).

Some features of the original kriegspiel remained unrecorded and can only be

speculated at. Many of the rules were most likely extremely fast-and-loose structures by

today’s gaming standards, which are now based around the ability of anyone (in theory)

to learn and enforce the clearly-specified rules of play put forth in a rulebook. Thus the

ambiguity of the kriegspiel rules was necessarily turned into a pedagogical opportunity: a

superior officer would be required to “preside” over the game as an umpire, a role which

in this case served as something between a referee, an advisor, and a game designer. This

facilitator would be present alongside the two players, in an impartial observational

position (Barton 16). The umpire would resolve events within the game based on input

from both players, typically transmitted to him via secret orders, and by applying his

ostensibly superior knowledge and experience to the scenario at hand to infer the most

realistic battlefield result.

 13

The degree to which dissenting opinions and arguments were entertained by this

impartial (but politically high-ranking) judge can only be guessed. However, the nature of

the referee-mechanic suggests that, as with any judicial ruling, attention would be given

to the referee’s explanation and the justifications for their decision. Thus, even at the

inception of wargaming, there appears an educator-role, similar to that of the TRPG’s

Game Master, or the teacher-as-facilitator in a modern classroom.

Advanced W argame D esign

An increasing variety of kriegspiel designs and “mods” gave rise to increasingly

complex, and increasingly realistic, rule systems. Simultaneously, industrialization made

the personal ownership of mass-market miniature sets into a more affordable luxury, and

so wargames gradually made their way into the world of mainstream hobbyist recreation.

They became further demarcated from abstract strategy games like chess by their use of

dice to introduce elements of chance and unpredictability into the simulation, just as one

might expect to deal with in a real battle. The science fiction author H.G. Wells is

credited with the first written rules for a civilian-aimed, miniature-based game system in

1915, with the publishing of Little Wars (Fine 9). This shift away from military into

civilian use of wargames is also marked by the first significant argument that these games

could actually teach the value of pacifism, rather than encourage or glorify political

conflict. Wells noted that the proponents of “Great War” as a means of resolving global

conflict could, alternatively, make use of a game as an outlet for their strategic fantasies.

In the game rules for Little Wars, Wells even went on to describe some of the

effects of game-based role-playing. He claimed that mild-mannered authors like himself

seemed to undergo a transformation when placed into the role of military general,
 14

suddenly adopting a more severe countenance and mannerisms. W ells’ description was

likely an allusion to the work of fellow and contemporary wargame-designer and author

Robert Louis Stevenson, who in 1886 appropriately wrote The Strange Case o f Dr. Jekyll

and Mr. Hyde, and who was himself known to take his wargaming hobby quite seriously

(Peterson 16). In addition to foreshadowing the effects of game-based role-playing on the

performance of the individual persona, W ells’ writings display a keen understanding of

the impact such games have upon both the individual who plays them, and upon the

culture which promotes them. Not coincidentally, these popular authors form a part of the

hidden network of literary influences which fed into, and later emerged out of, the TRPG

genre.

In 1952, the first truly mass-market wargame, Tactics, was published by Charles

S. Roberts, further establishing many of the standards and rules that are associated with

the modem wargame. It was also one of the first games to intentionally represent an

outdated era— until this point, wargames had maintained a focus on instructing players in

the most modern forms of warfare. The Zeitgeist of the Cold War, it would seem, was

encouraging a nostalgic look back to pre-nuclear ages of warfare, a form of “role-

playing” that, while foreshadowing sword-and-sorcery TRPGs, further expressed the

growing dissatisfaction with wargames as an uncritical advocacy of warfare. With the

advent of Tactics, wargaming became a truly “household” activity, with a growing

population of middle-class enthusiasts. This transition, from wargaming as the domain of

the military and political elite into that of middle-class hobbyists, also marks a movement

of these games into the hands of an audience whose growing skepticism and

dissatisfaction with the stark dichotomies of global conflict rendered the wargame less
 15

appealing as a tool for merely simulating conflict; instead, it began to become a tool for

the deconstruction and analysis of warfare’s merit.

For example, the Cold W ar politics of the 1950’s and 60’s had the effect of

bringing to the public consciousness the importance of international diplomacy. Games

like Diplomacy, published in 1959, reflected a new understanding that the fate of nations

would henceforth be decided at the negotiating table rather than on the battlefield. Once

again, the natural instinct to simultaneously play and modify games carried wargaming to

a higher tier, where suddenly a new range of non-warfare-based experiences could be

simulated. Diplomacy, emerging from the kriegspiel-based games being designed and

practiced at the RAND Corporation in partnership with the United States Air Force,

involved players taking on the roles of national leaders rather than army generals. Most

significantly, its ruleset allowed for gameplay that focused less on the movement of

troops, and more on the large-scale political scenery of alliances, betrayals, and self-

interested realpolitik. Interestingly, Diplomacy utilizes a very basic ruleset built around

bluffing and betrayal; similarly to games like poker, much of the complexity and depth of

the experience lies in human rather than systemic variables. The educational benefits of

these games were immediately recognized, though still within a similar context (albeit on

a far more elaborate scale) to how chess was seen as training in statesmanship. However,

these diplomacy-games further foreshadow TRPGs by revealing how a fairly simple set

of rules can nonetheless facilitate the simulation of a wide range of human interaction and

interpersonal dynamics, and that such a game could, in turn, be read and studied as

criticism of the social systems which it purports to represent.

 16

Contemporary with these wargames and political simulations, other forms of

game-based simulation were growing in popularity and feeding into the culture that

would produce TRPGs. Games like Strat-O-Matic and American Professional Baseball

Association, which utilize the statistical probabilities of the sport of baseball to simulate

the role of a team manager, had also been rising in popularity since the 1960s. Not only

did these games serve as the predecessor to the popular online fantasy sports leagues of

today, they used a dice roll to generate a range of statistical results— an act which would

become, for many, the defining image of the TRPG (Barton 14). The fact that an

engaging game could be created out of something as dry as numerical statistics was

surprising at the time, but also revealed just how little of the social appeal of wargaming

was still founded upon the “glory of war,” rather than the mastery over a system. Social

industrialization and the post-World-War-II interest in widespread data management (for

census and Social Security purposes) in part contributed to, and was made possible by,

the rise of the formal study of statistics and statistics-based games. And, like wargames,

the traditional masculinity of the activities simulated by these games— warfare and

physical sports— were likely the basis for their relatively easy acceptance into both

mainstream culture, and the intellectual circles within which they became particularly

popular (Barton 18).

Around this time, “Choose Your Own Adventure” literature, in which the reader

makes decisions by turning to different pages of the text and thus altering the content of

the narrative, was beginning to emerge. Tim Bryant, a professor at SUNY Buffalo State

and a researcher of meta-fiction and fantasy, analyzed the use of “adaptive choice” in

such literature and in the games of this period, noting parallels between the shift from
 17

wargaming into TRPGs and the shift from conventional warfare strategy into nuclear

contingency planning. Bryant argues that “Choose Your Own Adventure” literature

emerges from a Cold War culture of if/then contingency planning scenarios. He argues

that the first TRPGs “expressed a countercultural desire to find a new balance among

individual choice, national identity, and conflict resolution in the nuclear age,” rather

than merely continuing the trend of strategic and military education abstracted from the

implications and consequences of modern warfare. TRPGs in general, he argues, reflect a

rising dissatisfaction with the lack of individual agency against the looming fear of

‘Mutually-Assured Destruction,’ and a bid to regain this sense of agency within a world

where nuclear annihilation might at any moment render all other choices utterly moot

(74).

The First TRPG, D ungeons & D ra g o n s

By the 1970’s, “commercial wargames occupied a well-developed m arket... one

that had, over the preceding twenty years, risen from the humblest origins into a niche

industry in the United States” (Peterson 3). After Tactics came numerous commercially-

marketed games, including one medieval-based wargame called Chainmail, made by

Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren in 1971, which included a “fantasy supplement” for

simulating medieval battles using characters and creatures explicitly lifted from the world

of Middle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien’s setting for the Lord o f the Rings series. Perhaps

unsurprisingly given these circumstances, Chainmail would primarily be remembered as

the wargame that led to the creation of the first and best-known TRPG, Dungeons &

Dragons (Barton 17).

 18

After the moderate success of Chainmail, Gary Gygax and fellow game designer

Dave Arneson began to design a new set of game systems that accommodated play

centered around the actions of individual characters rather than entire armies and

battalions, “to create a compelling simulation of reality that went beyond modeling

imaginary armies, and entered the new realm of modeling imaginary people” (Peterson

204). The mechanical interaction in Chainmail between great armies and “heroes,” who

occupy a significantly higher power-level than the average soldier, set the stage for

gameplay based around epic, heroic characters, founded on the fantasy tropes of Middle-

Earth (Peterson 42).

In a TRPG like Dungeons & Dragons, players are tasked with entering into the

role of their character, much like the players of kriegspiel or Diplomacy enter into the

roles of generals and political leaders. While there are rules governing and limiting a

Dungeons & Dragons character’s strengths, skills, powers, and possessions, the scope of

possible actions is nonetheless infinitely larger than that of previous games, such that no

rules could properly cover all options and possibilities. The umpire-role of the kriegspiel

allowed for unconventional strategies to be entertained— locating and destroying an

enemy force’s munitions, for example. But the narrow, limiting framework of the

wargame prevented any true alternatives to straightforward battle, and thus, activities

beyond the scope of warfare were neither entertained, nor valued.

The TRPG maxim of “anything can be attempted” provided the catalyst for a

much deeper and more meaningful connection between the player and their in-game

persona. Immersing themselves in the game, TRPG players must act and make decisions

based on their characters’ beliefs, observations, and understanding of the world around
 19

them. This immersion, or “role-playing,” is now considered such a fundamental part of

these games that it has become the defining feature of the genre. Instead of solving every

problem with battlefield tactics, TRPG players were suddenly given the option to utilize

any manner of problem-solving they could conceive of, including diplomacy, trade,

deceit, or even surrender. Anything the player could imagine could be a viable strategy,

and moreover, could be experimentally tested against the scenario at hand to determine

its viability. While combat continued to play a role in TRPGs, it very quickly found itself

falling to the wayside in many of the accounts of D&D narratives. While never

disappearing entirely, combat in TRPGs largely began to be cast within a context of

larger problems and political issues, much like how Diplomacy raised the wargaming

genre into a larger scope of activity. Simultaneously, D&D became focused on the

immediate role of the individual within this greater narrative.

This new focus on a personal narrative changed many of the fundamentals that

separate the wargaming and TRPG genres. Suddenly, dialogue, characterization, and

empathy became the dominant mechanics for impacting the game-world, rather than use

of weapons. Just as wargamers had been preoccupied with whether the rules correctly

simulated the range of an artillery piece, or the damage inflicted by a particular gun,

TRPGs became focused on realistically simulating people, locations, events, and

situations of all kinds. Furthermore, the complex nature of these questions— whether or

not a particular individual would take a particular course of action, for example— make

them much less cut-and-dry than the questions being debated around the wargaming

table. These questions prompt a debate-like discourse that has become the hallmark of the

thoughtfulness that TRPGs tend to encourage.

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A C ollaborative Construction

Many of the identifying elements of the fledgling TRPG form— the concept of a

continuous story, driven by interactions between characters with personalities, hopes,

flaws, and ideals, within a consistent setting—began to appear in the early versions of the

game Dungeons & Dragons. Yet even these earliest incarnations of the game owed much

not only to the lineage of wargame designers and the innovations of Gygax and Arneson,

but also to a contemporary fanbase that had grown accustomed to the modularity and “do

it yourself’ designer’s attitude prevalent within the gaming community. Peterson notes

one such example of this modularity, when a group of original D&D playtesters first

suggested that a ‘T h ief class be made available to play. Not only did the game designers

immediately incorporate this addition into the core rules— the playtesters who made the

suggestion were completely unsurprised, and continued to volunteer new rules and

additions. From the very beginning, playing with house rules was the “default” for D&D,

as players almost instinctively tweaked and modded the structure of the game to better

simulate “their world.” Peterson argues that this demonstrates “a first data point of the

correlation between the deep investment of players in the game and the creation of

extension to it— the incompleteness of Dungeons & Dragons, its invitation to collaborate,

turned out to be one of its most seductive features” (471). The collaborative, creative

impulse which made D&D a popular game, seems to have also readily transferred into

the way players engaged the game itself.

From a game designer’s point of view, Dungeons & Dragons represents an

interesting case study. As Peterson pointed out, the original rulebook published by Gygax

was “incomplete”— it contained rules for handling the most common and basic scenarios
 21

and circumstances, yet, in a game with the motto “anything can be attempted,” a Game

Master would quickly find themselves facing a situation outside the purview of the rules-

as-written within the course of even the most typical game session. Gygax’s advice to

players was simple: do whatever you judge best. Moreover, Gygax would regularly

incorporate fan-created rules— like the introduction of the Thief class— into later

publications of the official game. He argued that, for any group of players, their own

preferred “version” of the D&D rules can and should take priority over the “official”

rules (if such a term even still applies, in this case). Many attribute the success of the

game, and of TRPGs in general, to this collaborative spirit, arguing that Gygax’s primary

contribution was standing aside and allowing the fans to create the game. In this sense,

D&D may be one of the few (and earliest) instances of a game whose content was almost

entirely “crowdsourced,” essentially becoming a simulation whose verisimilitude is

continually updated and checked against the experiences and knowledge of the players.

During the m id-1970’s, Dungeons & Dragons exploded into sudden popularity,

spreading beyond the wargaming community into that of the “diehard, enthusiastic

devotees of fantastic worlds” that was the growing Los Angeles science-fiction fan

community. It is significant that the first TRPG should spread so quickly into a newer,

developing, and innovative literary community, even one with such a seemingly close

proximity of interests—bearing in mind that previous wargames had tried and failed to

make the same leap into a wider demographic. Much of the credit for this easy transition

can be attributed to the relatively welcoming, collaborative nature of the game, versus the

inherently hierarchical model of wargaming and its relevant communities. However, the

connection between D&D and the literary sphere (as opposed to the
 22

military/historical/political domains associated with wargaming) also played a role in its

comparatively widespread and rapid adoption.

The “Tolkien-based G am e”

While even the most casual observation of TRPGs would reveal that games like

D&D draw from Tolkien’s universe of literary fantasy, the origins of the game

Chainmail, with its use of exclusively “Tolkienian” vocabulary and terminology, show

just how intimate and overt the connection really was. In fact, legal necessities forced the

publishers of D&D to later take steps to obscure this direct literary homage after the

game’s explosion into relative popularity. Nonetheless, Chainmail and D&D can be seen

as two of Gygax’s most successful attempts, among many, to create a “Tolkien-based

game” (Peterson 43). Within the preface of the latest edition of the D&D rulebook, the

Player’s Handbook, game designer Mike Mearls describes the game’s creators as having

been “tired of merely reading tales about worlds of magic, monsters, and adventure. They

wanted to play in those worlds, rather than observe them” (4). The first TRPG can and

should be viewed primarily as an attempt to participate within the shared and exquisitely

detailed literary-fantasy universe of Middle-Earth, in much the same way that wargames

were invitations to participate in tactical strategy of a particular era or historical battle. It

would seem that the feature which unites these two forms of play is not so much an

interest in violent warfare, but an interest in participating within roles— the role of the

general and the role of the author—which are typically seen as solitary and exclusive.

This concept of community and connection through narrative will be dealt with further, in

the discussion of affinity groups and how games promote their formation.
 23

The recursive relationship between TRPGs and their literary roots is revealing,

not least because of the stark departure from simulating a narrative of warfare, to creating

a personal narrative. Wargames evolved first to simulate increasingly accurate and

nuanced forms of battlefield combat, and later, to incorporate aspects of diplomacy,

global negotiation, and even interpersonal bluffing and deceit. This was done not out of a

desire to encourage world peace, but merely as a way to provide the most rich, engaging

experience possible. I would argue that the shift from games simulating warfare, to

simulating a much wider array of human experiences, correlates with the technological

capability of the game to do so (through dice rolling and other systemic design

developments). Once games were able to simulate other aspects of life with the same

verisimilitude and immersion that they could the relatively simple, binary concept of

warfare, players were quick to appreciate and even expand upon this new range of more

complex options. While the modem popularity of various non-traditional board games, as

well as digital games, shows some of the range available now, the sheer limitlessness of

TRPGs places them in a unique position securely at the cutting edge of what can be done,

and taught, with games.

While Dungeons & Dragons may have begun the tradition, it hardly stands alone

among TRPGs as an invitation to participate within an author’s literary space. With

Middle-Earth thus “settled,” numerous spin-off games sought to immerse players in the

pulp stories of Conan: The Barbarian and other popular fantasy worlds. It is certainly not

surprising to find a correlation between TRPG-play and an interest in reading/writing, nor

is it unusual that the hobby gave rise to fantasy novels set in various D&D worlds (must

like modern video game or film “novelizations”). Yet the sheer number of authors who
 24

claim TRPGs as their inspiration, not just for fantasy writing in particular, but for creative

narrative-construction in general, is an impressive list (Barton 18). China Mieville and

George R. R. Martin have produced some of the most innovative fantasy and sci-fi of the

past few decades; Cory Doctorow, Stephen Colbert, and Brent Hartinger are all popular

voices with backgrounds in TRPGs; even critically-acclaimed authors and poets like

Sherman Alexie and Junot Diaz have claimed TRPGs as a major influence upon their

creative output (Gilsdorf 1).

Indeed, of the numerous literary works that would later be adapted into TRPGs,

only some are explicitly medieval fantasy. Over time, TRPGs emerged which allowed

players to participate within a variety of literary worlds, from the xenophobic horror of

H.P. Lovecraft’s New England, to the space operas of George Lucas’s Star Wars

universe. While TRPGs remain primarily associated with the fantasy genre, this

connection, I would argue, is incidental to the medium itself, emerging (like the

connection to warfare) out of the genre’s history rather than its potential. Instead, the

consistent feature uniting these disparate experiences is the detailed attention and sense of

verisimilitude which these authors, such as Tolkien, gave to their literary universes. The

tone of epic moral or personal conflict, the complexity of fantastic societies (down to the

creation of grammatical rules governing fictional languages), and an almost sacred

treatment of internal consistency are all features that not only were drawn into TRPGs

from the literary influences, but would become the defining features of the literary works

which the medium would inspire.

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Digital RPGs

It is hard to ignore that the rise of TRPGs at the end of the 20th century was

largely overshadowed by the explosion of the digital gaming industry, which developed

simultaneously with, and in the wake of, TRPGs. Both phenomena mark the transition of

complex game-constructs from the exclusionary domain of experts into the public eye. In

the case of TRPGs, these constructs are social in nature, while digital RPGS (DRPGs) are

built around virtual constructs. I would argue that this distinction— the social basis of

TRPGs versus the technological basis of DRPGs— made DRPGs, especially at this point

in their development, easier to delineate the boundaries of and understand when

compared to TRPGs. While even the earliest and simplest DRPGs were indubitably

impressive technological feats for their time, TRPGs run on an “operating system” no

less complex than the entire human social experience. Early DRPGs necessarily whittled

this experience down to a manageable level, and even the most intricate and immersive

examples continue to do so today. Thus, the relatively rapid and popular adoption of

DRPGs into mainstream culture is unsurprising.

Early D igital Games

In 1961, the Manhattan Institute of Technology bought the Programmed Data

Processor—one of the most powerful computing devices on Earth at the time— and when

asked to display the potential of this device in a way that the average citizen could

appreciate, engineers designed one of the first computer-based video games (Chatfield

15). This alone speaks volumes to the universal appeal of games, and their

recognizability as inherent forms of engagement. Even among members of the inner

 26

circles of early computer development, games were a driving factor in the advancement

of technology to higher stages, suggesting that this marketing technique goes beyond an

“appeal to the laypeople.”

Just as I showed how literary authors drew from the collective pool of shared

TRPG narrative experiences, early computer game designers drew much of their form

and philosophy from the example of Dungeons & Dragons' “contingency planning.” The

comparison between the contingent systems of board game design and TRPG play, and

the programming of a computer, was influential in ways that extended far beyond

gaming. The large overlap in interest and opportunity between early computer design and

early gaming suggests a philosophical kinship of design. Once computers became capable

of providing even the simplest illusion of human interaction, they began to tread into the

realm of game experiences that thus far only TRPGs had been able to simulate.

Both D&D and early text-based computer RPGs like Zork were unique in their

bold claim to “simulate the universe” or allow “anything to be attempted.” Put more

moderately, these games provide enough verisimilitude and range of action that “the

boundaries of the simulation rarely become apparent in the course of ordinary play”

(Peterson 622). Both forms utilize language and contingency as the building blocks to

construct an internal universe that reacts to the input of the participant, rather than

passively waiting to be experienced. And, in this sense, both types of media offer a new

way of experiencing an environment that is truly immersive.

Social Digital Gaming

Digital video games, it would seem, are a continuation of the same pedagogical

and artistic intention that has suffused almost all historical gaming— enculturation into
 27

otherwise unavailable domains of knowledge and activity. Providing greater levels of

immersion and a wider range of scenarios to simulate has led to many of the

developments in modern video games today. Many digital games accomplish this goal by

focusing on technological advances in graphics, feedback, and realism, such as the

introduction of weather effects— the merits of which are often heatedly debated within

respective gaming communities. However, I would argue that the largest advances in

developing the genre come from not from video games that adopt more advanced

technology, but from video games that strive to adopt more TRPG-like elements into

their gameplay.

For example, DRPGs like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series allow players

increasingly vast options for designing and customizing their own protagonist. For fans

of these games, this character is a figure whose depth goes beyond the concept of an

“avatar.” An avatar is the graphical image of the player-controlled visual game element,

just as the avatar of Pac-Man is the familiar yellow circle— an avatar may have personal

investment on the part of the player, but does not require it. The character-focused

DRPGs like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, however, are often judged on their ability to

simulate meaningful decision-making, and allow the player to feel that their adopted

identity is of consequence to the story. Graphics and combat are valued less than whether

or not the non-player characters in the game universe react differently depending on the

player’s gender, background, and actions. As with a TRPG, players enter into these role-

playing experiences with the goal of acting out a particular persona, rather than merely

acting out the single preordained script of the game.

 28

Other games like Second Life present players with a vast virtual space, and an

apparent lack of objectives— like TRPGs, these digital playground spaces don’t provide a

clear “railroad” or direction of play, instead allowing players to engage the game as a

digital “sandbox” in which they create their own goals and objectives. A TRPG player

can state that their character is “an orphan looking for a family” or “seeking to avenge the

death of their mentor” and then role-play their character appropriately, according to these

pre-established intrinsic motivations. Virtual spaces like Second Life, similarly, allow for

such creative control and guidance over how one participates, and what motivations

guide these actions.

Like many DRPGs, Second Life includes self-designed avatars—however, these

avatars are primarily social tools, vehicles for interacting within the virtual platform.

Digital media researchers Johannes Fromme and Alexander Unger, authors Computer

Games and New Media Cultures: A Handbook o f Digital Games Studies, argue that

Second Life and the virtual worlds it represents are “a hybrid between game and social

network— they offer playful elements, challenge the participants/avatars with various

levels of expertise which can be attained by an experienced member, and offer various

ways of ‘being social.’” They indicate the fact that Second Life was a predecessor to the

now-familiar world of social media, which in turn suggests the game-like nature of the

virtual worlds of social media (discussed in more depth later). Fromme and Unger argue

that “when taking into account that the overriding motives for the participants is of a

social nature... the element of play comes in only secondary in the shape of its

entertainment function” (189). This focus on people over gameplay mirrors, in many

ways, the social and collaborative emphasis of TRPGs, which prioritize the interactive
 29

dynamics of teamwork and negotiation over the mechanics of gameplay. Player-driven

stories, the hallmark of many TRPGs, are the basis of such “sandbox” games.

D igital Games and R ole-Play

The wide range of role-playing possibilities that digital games can simulate is

perhaps best displayed in the 2013 award-winning puzzle-game Papers, Please. This

simple-looking game has the player takes on the role of an immigration officer operating

on the border of the fictional dystopian former-Eastern-bloc nation of “Arstotzka.” The

player must review and process each immigrant passing through customs by checking the

veracity of their passports and supporting paperwork using basic clue-finding and

pattern-recognition strategies. The player is rewarded for processing individuals quickly,

and penalized for making mistakes, while the amount of paperwork, rules, and

regulations to be tracked and monitored steadily grows. Meanwhile, the salary awarded

after each “level” must be used to pay for the needs of your in-game family, including

rent, bills, and emergency requests (i.e. medical needs, or your child’s birthday gift). As

the player becomes increasingly immersed in their character’s dual roles of customs

officer and family provider, the game introduces moral dilemmas, including accepting

bribes, accommodating desperate immigrants without passports, handling un-vaccinated

individuals, and dealing with potential terror threats. The grim tone and unclear

boundaries of the gameplay reinforce the idea that the player cannot always understand

the full implications of their actions— even if they were given enough time to consider

them, which the pressing urgency of looming poverty does not allow. While the actual

gameplay of Papers, Please is, by all rights, a deliberately tedious task, the novelty of

role-playing the serious and stressful decision-making process of the protagonist shows
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the ability of even simplistic gameplay to allow for the role-playing of complex identities

and ideas. Like TRPG characters, the game’s protagonist is given depth and purpose,

such that the player’s actions in the game reflect the emotional weight of the decisions

these mechanics represent.

These digital games, I argue, are symptoms of the same progression visible in

early gameplay advancement of early chess variants and wargames. Often, digital games

and DRPGs in particular are described as a new form of media entirely, emerging in the

wake of cinema and literature, and are critically analyzed as such. However, approaching

video games as a unique and recent development ignores, as Jesper Juul states in Half-

Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional World, the line of investigation

concerning “how [electronic games] borrow from non-electronic games, and how they

depart from traditional game forms” (5). The examples above are only some of the digital

games with obvious similarities to TRPGs. Establishing these similarities and their

distinctions demonstrates why TRPGs, as I argue, are on the cutting edge of modem

game design across all media, and thus might be the preferred game-technology for the

classroom setting.

Juul points out that one of the foremost debates within the fields of game design

and game theory is the nature of how games and their players interact. On one hand, it’s

obvious that different games produce different experiences and thus different results for

the player; on the other hand, different players might play the same game and have

radically different experiences. Digital games, in general, provide a degree of

consistency-of-experience across various groups of players, being more necessarily

restricted by the code upon which the game is founded. A computer program will be, in
 31

most cases, limited to a concrete number of possibilities which can be parsed out and

considered as a whole.

D igital Games and C hoice

Despite such limitations, DRPGs are often analyzed in terms of the meaningful

choices they offer the player-character towards impacting the narrative; essentially, their

value is measured in the number of different narratives that they can offer, rather than in

the quality of a single, linear narrative. “Replayability” becomes a feature of these

DRPGs, with players comparing notes on different “playthroughs” which might involve

making different choices in a black-and-white moral decision, or a series of progressively

branching decisions. Mass Effect, for example, is a DRPG trilogy founded on the concept

of such meaningful decisions, offering a dichotomous moral spectrum, labeled “Paragon”

or “Renegade,” into which the game presents a series of narrative-affecting decisions.

Players can compare and contrast their “Paragon” or “Renegade” playthroughs, which, in

theory, produce radically difficult results as the narrative progresses. Both options can

produce desirable or undesirable results for the character (and sometimes both), and the

player is rarely given all of the information they need to make a decision. The decisions

are designed to make players question their assumptions, their current trajectory of

decision-making, and the nature of their relationships with other characters in the game-

world.

That being said, the game’s morality system, while complex, remains binary, as

are the vast majority of the decisions that can be made. The narrative as a whole

progresses unchallenged by the player—only details are altered. The Mass Effect trilogy

of games represents a push toward versatility in a medium and industry defined by pre-
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coded results, in which flexibility always must come at a cost. In fact, the digital games

that offer the greatest technology and investment, generally, are the ones least likely to

offer multiplicity of choices, as cost of depicting the results of those choices

commensurately rises with the cost of the game’s design. Mass Effect represents some of

the most cutting-edge potential within DRPGs to present meaningful choice, agency, and

versatility. And yet, I would argue, it also shows how far digital games lag behind their

social-based tabletop counterparts in these categories. What Mass Effect, a modern

DRPG, struggles to deliver, TRPGs have assumed as their default since their creation in

the 1970s.

D igital G am es and Flexibility

The inflexibility of digital gaming represents a stark contrast with earlier, more

fundamental forms of non-digital play. Children’s games, Juul argues, are a good

example of gameplay that cannot be reduced to the rules that dictate the game. TRPGs

fall into the same category— games that, in practice, seem to transcend the very rules that

should, theoretically, define them. TRPG players bring their own ideas, assumptions, and

expectations to the game experience, and then collaboratively generate the “game”

together— as we saw with the early editions of D&D, any and all rules, in a TRPG, are

suggestions that can and should be discarded for whatever option the players as a whole

decide is preferable. Higher-quality TRPGs will allow for more of this flexibility;

conversely, the digital games with the biggest budgets and greatest amount of production

value are generally less flexible in their structure, due to the amount of preparation,

planning, coding, and construction required (Juul 19). Digital games task the computer

with performing the role of the Game Master. However, no computer has yet supplied the
 33

range of improvisation and flexibility that a human Game Master can provide—just as

digital encyclopedias have yet to replace live, in-person educators, who can react on-the-

spot to the needs of the learner.

Even today, video games are beset by the same issues that problematized the

claims of early games like Zork to “simulate the universe,” in which “the relatively static

nature of the game worlds rendered most challenges deterministic” (Peterson 624).

Unlike even the best modem simulations, TRPGs have the capability to provide truly

reactive, improvised experiences, which allow the player to take the game, and their

learning, in any direction in which they and the other players can facilitate as a collective.

This reactivity and improvisation is enabled by the presence of the Game Master, a

crucial function within the TRPG.

The Game Master

The role of the Game Master became one of the defining characteristics of early

(and the majority of later) TRPGs. For the purposes of this research, the Game Master

helps to establish the most obvious parallel between learning in a classroom and playing a

TRPG—both seem to benefit heavily from the presence of a human facilitator. Most of

the information in early TRPGs was communicated “verbally, in a dialog between the

referee and the players, where the referee has tremendous latitude in how much or little to

reveal in response to the actions and inquiries of players” (Peterson 309). This marks an

important distinction in the evolution of the “referee” role. Formerly we saw the referee

as the unquestionable authority figure— the umpire of kriegspiel who is the superior of

the players in both experience and, presumably, rank. TRPGs mark the shift of the referee
 34

into a more provisional authority, whose position is derived from the secret information

they possess, and the ability to skillfully present that information in a meaningful and

effective way to facilitate immersive progress through the game.

I would argue that the evolution of the modern educator has followed similar

lines, moving from the role of “keeper of knowledge” into the role of “facilitator of

learning.” This core concept was presented by Paulo Freire in his seminal 1970 work,

Pedagogy o f the Oppressed, in which he argued against a “banking model” of education,

in which the knowledge was perceived to transfer from the information-withholding

authority into the information-lacking student. Later scholars built on this idea, such as

Ivan Illich, who criticized modern education as ineffectual and instead advocated for self­

directed, social- and peer-based “learning webs” rather than hierarchical institutions for

learning. Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers (1973) presents a teacherless

composition classroom which became the basis of the “writing group” model used in

composition courses today. These reinterpretations of the teacher’s role in the classroom

offer interesting parallels to the evolution of wargame referees into the Game Master of

the TRPG model.

TRPGs and their referee-model seem to stem from the same philosophy of

decentralized control and authority that has manifested itself in education through these

scholars. DRPGs, in contrast, have supplanted the role of the Game Master with pre-

coded programming, which, if anything, is more inflexible and unquestionable as an

authority— barring the hacking, reprogramming, or modding of the game in question.

The Game Master is often seen as the defining characteristic that sets TRPGs

apart from other forms of gaming, as well as the unique feature which enables TRPGs to
 35

provide rich experiences on par with (and in many ways surpassing) those of the DRPG.

Enormous leeway is given to the Game Master to provide dynamic feedback. The GM

can alter the narrative, non-player-character reactions, and even the rules of the game as

they see fit. In terms of a DRPG, this would be analogous to having the game designer,

storyboard director, and a team of programmers present and ready to design on-the-spot

improvisational reactions to the player’s desires. The preprogrammed nature of DRPGs

allows them to do many things that TRPGs cannot, as the vividly immersive post-

apocalyptic vistas of the Fallout games (complete with eerie, static-ridden radio music

and strange figures moving in the distance) will attest. These rich experiences certainly

have their own value, as shown in the mainstream popularity of video games today.

However, I will argue that, for the pedagogical purposes I present here, the technological

advances of computer graphics and other DRPG-specific features are less valuable than

the socially immersive features that TRPGs present.

It is worth noting that, just as the best-known TRPG, Dungeons & Dragons, has

become the eponymous example of the genre, the quintessential image of the Game

Master is that the Dungeon Master (DM). The term “DM” is proprietary to D&D, but has

been adapted into almost every other TRPG, most of which utilize the more general term

of “Game Master,” or something even more nonspecific, such as “Storyteller” or

“Referee.”

Despite the similarity of their titles, not all forms of Game Mastering are the

same. For one, there are just as many varieties of GMing styles as there are individual

GMs. Additionally, different games place different tasks and responsibilities upon the

Game Master position. Here I will present two additional examples of TRPGs, outside of
 36

the sphere of D&D and its many editions and imitators, which illustrate the breadth of

variety which is offered by this unique role.

Dungeon World, a TRPG built around the concept of adapting Dungeons &

Dragons into a more fast-paced and easily-manageable system of play, occupies a unique

niche which makes it a valuable tool for teaching casual players and younger students the

basics of a TRPG. The Dungeon World rulebook, for example, reduces the complex role

of players and the vast options they possess in a TRPG into easily-understood “moves”

such as “Hack and Slash,” “Defy Danger,” and “Parley.” Most characters have access to

no more than a dozen moves to choose from. Within this simplified context, GMs are

considered to be players who possess their own set of moves. This reframing of the GM

position not only serves to make the role appear less intimidating, it deconstructs many of

the unspoken, abstract guidelines of GMing into clear options. GMs are instructed by the

game rules to “Ask questions and use the answers,” “Draw maps and use blanks,” and

“Be a fan of the characters.” These “moves” are highly suggestive of a compassionate

and supportive attitude toward the players.

Without delving into the full extent of the written rules of GMing in Dungeon

World, it is clear that the idea of competitive or antagonistic play between GMs and

players is not the essential feature of the role. Dungeon World strongly resists this idea of

competition; the GM is meant to play alongside the other players, not against them. Fun

and forward-driven narrative are prioritized over statistics and strategic challenges. While

this has always been an implied element within almost all TRPG play, including D&D,

having it clearly stated in the rulebook marks Dungeon World as a more modern game, in

keeping with the evolution of gaming in general away from the relatively simplistic
 37

dynamics of other genres, such as competitive wargaming. Dungeon World is a game that

tasks the Game Master with transcending the competitive dynamics between Game

Master and player that are seen in, say, the “Erik and the Gazebo” story, embracing rather

an environment of mutual cooperative story-building.

While very few TRPGs have achieved a reputation anywhere close to that of

Dungeons & Dragons, Sandy Petersen’s Call ofCthulhu TRPG, based upon the cosmic-

horror fiction of Howard Philips Lovecraft, offers one of the most well-known

alternatives. The game Call ofC thulhu is not only a refreshing departure from the fantasy

genre, it also offers a very different view of the Game Master role. The subject matter of

this game, like that of the author who inspired it, skews toward a unique mixture of

“strange” science fiction and 1920’s American pulp horror; yet, in terms of mechanical

gameplay, this TRPG is solidly situated in the “detective mystery” genre.

The implications of this genre upon the gameplay of Call o f Cthulhu is contained

within the game’s GM-title of “Keeper of Secrets.” The Keeper, in theory, has an

identical function to that of other GMs: a “game moderator” whose “job is to present the

mystery and story during play, incidentally playing the roles of monsters and sinister or

ordinary people that the investigators meet.” In practice, Call o f Cthulhu invokes a very

different set of GMing skills than either D&D or Dungeon World. Combat is heavily

downplayed, and battlefield strategy is all but nonexistent; within this mystery-centric

game, clues, evidence, witnesses, and contacts become the primary resources being

negotiated by the players. The Keeper’s job, as their title suggests, is to withhold

information until the players have engineered an effective line of investigation for turning

up the right clue. As opposed to the camaraderie implied in modern D&D, and explicitly
 38

reinforced in Dungeon World, the Keeper and players do work in opposition— not as

competitive opponents in the wargaming sense, but as mystery-presenter and mystery-

solver. This dynamic is similar to the theatrical staging of a “murder mystery,” or the

riddle-games discussed earlier in this chapter.

These examples serve to show some of the variety of roles that a Game Master

may adopt in various TRPGs, demonstrating that, above all, a Game Master must be

flexible. Any game will require the GM to present themselves alternately as friend, foe,

ally, instigator, judge, coach, and countless other roles as the situation and game demand.

This not only shows the flexibility inherent to TRPGs, but also the immense

responsibility a Game Master carries for framing the experience of fun and learning for

the players.

The comparison between a Game Master and a teacher becomes truly apparent

when one considers the multiplicity of roles that both of these community leaders must

adopt. The same flexibility which GMing requires is the foundation of an effective

pedagogical approach for an individual teacher, who must serve as the aid, impetus, and

assessor for student learning. It is a recognition that such a position of power and

responsibility requires the ability to shift between multiple roles, and respond with the

social and verbal tools that are appropriate to the individual needs of the particular

student or player.

TRPGs have the additional advantage over a videogame in that the Game Master,

like an instructor, is present and attentive to the immediate needs of the player. The GM

not only fills in the gaps and explains difficult concepts, but provides constant input to

maintain the game’s progression. In order to understand and react to the scenario
 39

presented in a TRPG, a player’s choices must be preceded by information-gathering—

that is to say, choosing the right action first requires asking the right questions. Thus,

TRPGs create contexts that “can be structured or queued in a manner that the students are

more likely to view their goals in an epistemological manner, encouraging pursuit of

explanatory coherence” (Clark and Martinez-Garza 284). Players in TRPGs come to

recognize that there is no one single solution to any situation; their creativity may exceed

the expectations of the Game Master or even the game designer. Players learn that they

have free reign to approach a problem from their own direction, so long as they remain

consistent with the agreed-upon rules and the context of the game; indeed, both within

and outside of the game, they are often rewarded for doing such “outside the box”

thinking.

Gamification within Education

With the popularity of digital and other forms of gaming on the rise, educators

have not ignored the connection between the engagement these games generate and their

potential application to pedagogy and training. However, the resulting “gamification”

movement has had mixed results bringing gameplay into different contexts. In the

simplest terms, gamification is the introduction of game-like elements into activities

which are traditionally viewed as distinct from, or more “serious” than, games. In these

contexts, gamification has been viewed primarily as a tool for increasing motivation

toward a particular task. This definition, however, leaves much room for interpretation—

especially for those unfamiliar with modern games, or who are used to viewing games as

purely unproductive recreation. From such a perspective, gamification may seem like a
 40

new and skepticism-warranting miracle-cure, rather than a reliable and historically-

founded form of education. This line of thinking has resulted in misguidedly ineffective

and superficial attempts to include game-like mechanics into traditionally “boring”

activities.

A scholar, game designer, and advocate for what he calls “persuasive games” at

the Georgia Institute of Technology, Ian Bogost notes that the term “gamification” is

largely a marketing tool, one in a long line of such tools. In the 1980’s, the term “political

simulation” denoted such Cold-War-era wargames as Diplomacy and the RAND

Corporation’s war simulations, while the 90’s gave us the problematic genre of

“edutainment,” mostly referring to early video games. Bogost argues that “gamification”

is already an outdated term, with more “spin” than substance to the idea, and that the

newer term, “serious games,” serves educators and game designers better, simply because

it juxtaposes two terms that are, often implicitly, held to be opposing concepts. He

suggest that “this contradiction is foregrounded and silently resolved” within the term

itself, which forces those who hear and use it to consider the relationship between serious

and playful activities (166). He argues that, within this context of how the word is

perceived rather than according to strictly accurate definitions of process, “gamification”

is a highly problematic term that oversimplifies the process it purports to describe. For

my purposes, I will continue to utilize the term “gamification” to parse out the

advantages and disadvantages of this market-driven approach.

Karl Kapp, one of the foremost scholars on gamification and instructional design,

and author of The Gamification o f Learning and Instruction, notes that there are already

many examples of gamification demonstrably having an effect on motivation. “Keyboard

 41

stairs” that play music with every step can be shown to encourage commuters to choose

the exercise of taking the stairs over the ease of the escalator. Apps like Zombies, Run!

increase frequency and quality of exercise with audio cues that simulate the experience of

being chased by a horde of the undead while out for a run. Training programs and

classroom quiz-games lead to increased attention and help pinpoint and focus upon

aspects of learning that are usually neglected (6).

Kapp defines gamification as “using game-based mechanics, aesthetics, and game

thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning, and solve problems.” By

avoiding the fallacy that games are a trivial or entirely unprecedented way to approach

learning, Kapp argues that one may avoid many of the common pitfalls of ineffective

gamification. He notes that Cisco, IBM, the U.S. military (inheriting the legacy described

earlier in the chapter), as well as other businesses and various branches of government,

are all utilizing games as a way to drive interest in particular forms of learning and

training (20). The central idea of gamification is that the same elements which keep

players playing are not unique to games, but rather appear in almost all motivational

tasks, and therefore can be adopted as motivational features into other formats, such as

employee training programs, crowdsourced research, and the classroom. He gives special

attention to the argument that gamification is not as simple as adding “points” to an

activity and calling it a game. These surface details are the obvious external cues that

suggest gameplay; however, the fun and engagement which games elicit from their

players is closely related to the deeper dynamics of the game, a feature which I will

discuss in the next chapter.

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The developments of gamification are a form of technology that complements

digital learning while remaining distinct in and of itself. For example, many of the recent

innovations in modern language learning have emerged, not from the tech field, but from

the fields of psychology and interpersonal pedagogy, finding what motivates language

learners. In her demonstration of a new method for learning Chinese, ShaoLan Hsueh

explains how the inclusion of a narrative context into the learning process can enhance

retention of the meaning behind Chinese ideograms. Even programs like Rosetta Stone,

which focus on learning through digital technology, are ultimately founded on these

methods of narrative context which do not inherently require a digital element. Hsueh

argues that the context of the symbolic ideograms— their history, evolution, and the

narrative they tell— helps the learner quickly make connections and recognize patterns

(Berwick 1). This sort of comprehensive understanding is what games promote, both

within and without the digital space. The effectiveness of this method relies not on new

technology, but on a better understanding of how information can be presented in a way

that makes it easier to retain.

Websites like Khan Academy utilize game-like features of reward and

reinforcement to make academic lectures more engaging. Players get to monitor their

progress across various subjects in much the same way they might watch a character in a

game gain skill and experience. Additionally, they can compare their progress with that

of other players, and participate in learning communities built around each course and

each tier of progress. The Quest to Learn school system is built along similar guidelines,

but in a traditionally “live” classroom environment.

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Today, gamification is finding its way into education in new and unexpected

ways. Nicola Whitton, an expert on research in game-based education, points out that “a

games-based approach to learning is being used across diverse curricular areas...and in a

variety of educational settings in pre-school, all stages of formal education, and

workplace and informal learning, but studies with school-age children and college

students dominate...The majority of games are either educational games developed in-

house for the study, or non-educational off-the-shelf games” (19). Gamification is finding

traction among educators who struggle to maintain student engagement in the classroom.

In his text on the use of role-playing in higher education, Minds on Fire (discussed later

in more detail), Mark Carnes paints a picture of a generation of students who are easily

discouraged, distracted, or otherwise unmotivated by the currently reigning modes of

pedagogy (19).

Raph Koster, author of A Theory o f Fun in Game Design, argues that the

cognitive process of learning may very well be the most fun activity of which humans are

capable (33). Treating games like a form of manipulation or a “learning alternative” will

typically result in gamification efforts that are subpar and ineffective. Bogost explains

that “making games is hard. Making good games is even harder. Making good games that

hope to serve some external purpose is even harder... serious games and their ilk had

done a terrible job making games seem viable to create, deploy, and use” (166).

Ironically, the best evidence that games should be taken seriously is the lack of success

met by those game designers who view the creation of games themselves as the “easy”

way to motivate a group of individuals.

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James Paul Gee, Professor of Reading at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,

was one of the earliest advocates of gamification and its uses in education. In his text on

the subject, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, he

describes how a social understanding of learning will be essential to future of reading and

literacy pedagogy. He argues that the view of reading “as a mental act taking place in the

individual’s head” is representative of an issue at the heart of many other fields of

education, the idea that learning is a primarily private affair. Gee argues that “these views

strongly inform how reading is taught in school... we know much less about reading as a

social achievement and as part and parcel of a great many different social practices

connected to a great many different social groups that contest how things should be read

and thought about.” Gamification of education, in Gee’s view, is an opportunity for the

social elements of learning—in his opinion, woefully underrepresented in the modern

education system— to return to the forefront of pedagogy.

Gee’s research shows how the positive use of gamification relies upon a

rethinking of the fundamental nature of education. Much of the excitement, not to

mention the concerns, surrounding game-based learning involves the notion of students

glued to their own private screens, clicking through skill-and-drill problems while

growing increasingly disconnected from their classmates and teacher. Rather, game-

based learning in particular suggests that, for learning to to be “optimized” in the way

gamification advocates seem to desire, learners will need to grow more connected, not

less. Both games and learning are activities that are largely influenced by the

environment in which they take place, and especially the other people who occupy the

play/learning space.
 45

Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken: Why Video Games Make Us Better and

How They Can Change the World has in some ways become the manifesto of the

gamification effort, particularly with respect to the social potential of games and their

ability to affect change. She argues that games, unlike reality, give us clear indications

and benchmarks of our success, explaining the apparent preference players show for

games over the “real world.” She states that the inclusion of powerful and meaningful

feedback into real-world activities, like those feedback mechanisms seen in games, could

be the catalyst for potentially limitless changes to our society, and points to numerous

successes in gamifying activities as simple as noting the locations of public defibrillator

devices in one’s school or office (250), or cutting back on household energy use with the

game Lost Joules (263). Likewise, she shows how these small-scale activities can become

part of gaming “superstructures” that can collaboratively tackle much larger and more

meaningful ventures like converting a nation to renewable energy, providing food

security to at-risk region (336) and organizing large groups of individuals into social

and/or political movements (349).

Misuses o f Gamification

Many of the major questions of gamification are still in the process of being

answered by researchers: how effective is it as a pedagogical method, how practical is it

as an academic assessor, and what are the most common pitfalls of its implementation.

Karl Kapp noted that the mere appearance of gameplay does not satisfy the qualifications

of effective gamification; often would-be-gamifiers simply tack badges, trophies, and

other context-less rewards onto an otherwise ordinary activity. The ideas that hold back
 46

gamification according to Kapp— that it is simple, new, or trivializes learning— are

founded on an understanding of gamification as a manipulation technique, a way to

“trick” people into doing tasks they dislike, rather than a method of restructuring a task in

order to reveal the underlying fun inherent to the activity (15). Avoiding this sort of

“tacked-on” approach to gamification requires an understanding that learning is

something that is always happening within any activity, “rather than a discrete activity

that happens when other activities do not.”

The misuse or ineffective use of gamification is a legitimate concern when it

comes to implementation. In many ways, misuse of gaming is worse than a waste of time

and resources— it may be entirely counter-productive to learning. Francesco Crocco,

director of the Online Writing Lab at Excelsior University and a staunch advocate for

game-based learning, warns that criticism against the “edutainment industry” for

producing “little more than graphic-enhanced extensions of ineffective traditional skills-

and-drills pedagogies and standardized testing regimes” is at least partially justified.

Crocco argues that the view of games as frivolous or morally corrupt actually distracts

researchers from the true harm that games can accomplish, reinforcing outdated

educational norms which should have faded out of our schools long ago (Crocco 27).

I would argue that many of these problematic approaches to gamification are

derived from a desire to embrace games and gaming— either willingly, or out of a sense

of surrender to a new and poorly-understood medium— while simultaneously resisting the

inclusion of their essential building blocks: play and fun. As modern educators attempt to

resist the reduction of pedagogical goals into the teaching of rote test-taking skills and

workforce training exercises, there is a real concern for the role that games will play in
 47

this process. Technology in general represents a force that might alter education for the

better, or, on the other hand, might “merely retool education without challenging its

embedded mission of social reproduction” in newer and more efficient ways (Crocco 29).

In this sense, games are in the same boat as any other form of technology, and pose the

same dangers. TRPGs, as I will argue, are in a unique position simply due to the

interactive structure of their gameplay, to err on the side of critical thinking, as opposed

to unconscious reproduction; yet even they, as a tool, can be misused, or not utilized at

their full working potential.

In her book How Games Move Us, Katherine Isbister explains that avoiding

misuse of games in the classroom, or in any other context, will require an elevation of the

criticism being brought to bear upon games, and specifically a recognition of the wide

range of experiences that gaming offers. She notes that “...we still think about games as if

they’re all the same. We talk about how games could re-energize education, without

having a nuanced conversation about what games and why” (1). This question— “what

games, and why”— lies at the heart of many of the misunderstandings concerning the role

of games in society.

Another criticism leveled against gamification and its potential in education is the

issue of cost. There is a very real concern, whenever technology-dependent solutions are

offered to educators, that such solutions cannot be implemented within the educational

communities that could benefit most from their application. In a recent article on

eCampus News, Meris Stansbury argued that “gaming is still in its research infancy as to

whether or not it provides any major benefits to learning... new to many educators, the

time it takes to vet and properly implement gaming may be more of a hassle than it’s
 48

worth” (Stansbury 1). In terms of both time and money, an educator without any gaming

experience has a high risk of getting little-to-no results out of their investment. And,

often, the option to invest in game-based learning is simply not available, turning gaming

into yet another tool that further deepens the gap of educational inequality.

Again, the issue of technology and cost becomes most relevant to gaming when

consideration is limited to well-known, expensive, high-production-value games.

Conversely, in Greg Toppo’s The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make

Our Kids Smarter, he describes the effectiveness of a single well-placed mechanic upon

students’ developing math skills. The Charles W. Raymond Elementary School, a school

in Washington D.C. where “99 percent of students in 2014 qualified for free lunches

under the federal government's poverty guidelines” and “41 percent... were learning to

speak English and many still struggled with basic skills,” does not sound like a learning

community for which expensive gaming solutions would be an option. Yet the

introduction of “Jiji the penguin,” a simplistic animated graphic who would succeed or

fail at marching from one side of the computer screen to the other depending on the

student’s success answering math problems, “helped the Raymond students post some of

the largest math gains of any elementary school in the city.” After the introduction of the

“Jiji mechanic,” Toppo found that “a larger percentage of Raymond students had moved

into the ‘proficient’ and ‘advanced’ math skill categories than at nearly any other

elementary school, rich, poor, or in between, in all of D.C.” Clearly, while some high-

cost games do risk benefitting only the fortunate learners who can afford to utilize them,

high-cost games are not the only, or even the best solution in the classroom in general.

Jiji the penguin, a two-inch tall graphic with less of an animation range than the original
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Mickey Mouse cartoons, demonstrates that elegance of design can make even the

simplest and most inexpensive of games a powerful tool for ameliorating, rather than

perpetuating, the equality gap in education (6).

Developing Definitions o f Gaming

In establishing a theoretical approach to games, it will be beneficial to at least

briefly explore the concept of “what are games.” As designers continue to produce digital

and non-digital experiences that transcend, complicate, and outright question the common

notions of gaming, it becomes all the more important to establish a working definition of

games and gameplay, in order to demonstrate the features of play from which educators

might best benefit, answering the question of “what games, and why.”

In their comprehensive analysis of the “lexicon” of game mechanics, Rules o f

Play, game researchers Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen define games as “a system in

which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantified

outcome” (80). Zimmerman and Salen both emerge from strong theoretical gaming

background, having pioneered some of the most innovative looks into the modern

“gaming renaissance.” Zimmerman teaches game design courses at NYU and was the co­

founder and Chief Design Officer of the Manhattan-based game production company

Gamelab. Salen is a professor at the DePaul University College of Computing and Digital

Media, and was the co-founder and Chief Designer of the Institute of Play design studio.

Rules o f Play represents one of the most thorough analysis of modern games,

being hailed as the “definitive textbook on game design” (MIT Press). Focusing on

systemic game construction— games as “artifacts” rather than experiences— and insisting
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that all games “embody contests of power,” Zimmerman and Salen carried forward some

of the implicit assumptions that marked the history of gaming. Nonetheless, they do

emphasize the requirement of a strong social element as the core “engine” driving the

game-system and providing meaning. Prior to this definition, scholars like Huizinga and

Caillois emphasized the “separateness” of games, arguing for them as variations of

religious ritual, entertainment, and personal training. The analysis of Zimmerman and

Salen marks the beginning of games being considered as part of the totality of social

behavior, rather than a qualified or aberrant form of socialization.

Later, in Digital Games and Learning, game-based education expert Nicola

Whitton synthesized Salen and Zimmerman’s definition with Huizinga’s anthropological

research to offer a more comprehensive definition of games as “a challenging activity

structured with rules, goals, progression, and rewards, separate from the real world, and

undertaken with a spirit of play,” adding the fundamental observation that games “are

often played with, or against, other people,” but that this is not inherently necessary (5).

This more evolved definition, I would argue, marks two fairly recent and important

realizations that have foundationally altered our understanding of games and what they

mean to a society: first, that games can simulate a diverse array of activities beyond

conflict, and second, that while the presence of other players in competition with each

other is generally held to be the gaming norm, solitary and non-competitive games do

exist. TRPGs in particular represent one of the most well-known examples of a game in

which the majority of players are operating cooperatively, rather than antagonistically.

Even the Game Master, ostensibly the “enemy” of the players, occupies an ambiguous
 51

role— there are no “victory conditions” for the Game Master, aside from the obligation to

ensure a fun time for all.

In Reality Is Broken, Jane McGonigal defines a game by four universal traits: a

goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation (20). Feedback systems, as I

will later discuss, are instrumental to the sense of interaction and engagement that games

engender, effectively allowing games (digital or otherwise) to “react” to player input in

predetermined or random ways. Voluntary participation, McGonigal argues, “requires

that everyone who is playing the game knowingly and willingly accepts the goals, the

rules, and the feedback. Knowingness establishes common ground for multiple people to

play together.” This sort of “voluntary participation” seems to run counter to the demands

of school; McGonigal argues, however, that it is essential factor to creating a “safe and

pleasurable” space of learning. I would argue that much of the disengagement seen in

modem education stems not from boredom but from a lack of common ground for play—

as with any game, the goals, rules, and feedback of modern education must be expressly

laid out, and agreed upon voluntarily, if it is going to help educators and students alike to

productively accomplish any of their pedagogical goals.

These definitions serve to reinforce the notion that games are not best defined by

our current prevalent examples. While the infamous Grand Theft Auto series and the

myriad of action-film-like first-person shooters have become synonymous with video

games as a whole, they are not truly representative of the current state of the medium, let

alone a reflection of the function games can and have served in our society. Concern with

games promoting violence, addiction, or even just simple procrastination, are in fact

primarily concerns with specific games rather than with the gaming medium as a whole. I
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would argue, based on the history of games which I have presented thus far, that many of

the most commonly-held beliefs and assumptions about games pertain rather to particular

video games, or at least particular game genres. If gaming has historically promoted

violence, one might look to the abundance of military-themed and combat-based games

as the explanation, rather than the inherent nature of gaming itself. If certain games cause

players to form destructively addictive tendencies (as with gambling), one might study

the business practices of the companies producing such games, and ask ourselves if the

game has in fact been constructed with the precise (and highly successful) intention of

triggering these habit-forming tendencies. If games are causing distraction among

students, one might ask what the game in question is providing that the classroom is not.

Even the notion that games are educational— which I would argue is one of, if not

the single most common trait they share— is not entirely universal. There is no denying

that some games are simply unsuited for pedagogical purposes, teach bad information, or

are otherwise unproductive for learning goals. Rather than providing verification that

ALL games are good, or bad, I believe that the game-based scholarship of the future will

require a closer look at specific types of games, if scholars are to meaningfully and

thoroughly answer the question of what games can do for our society, rather than just

dealing with the most popular or socially disruptive examples.

I would argue that TRPGs deserve special attention from educators looking to

implement the “right” kind of gameplay in their classroom. While the history of TRPGs

emerges from a culture of highly traditional gaming, that same history shows how these

games have always challenged the clear, traditional boundaries of the genre. TRPGs in

particular, in their ambitious goal of allowing anything to be attempted, and simulated,

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within the scope of their gameplay, represent the cutting edge of game design. Despite

their simplicity when compared to digital video games, this genre is actually at the

technological forefront, when viewed on the timeline of games dealing with larger, more

complex, and more socially relevant topics. In the next chapter, I will present a closer

look at TRPGs themselves, what they do, and how the fundamental nature of these

specific games might interact with the goals put forth in our pedagogical systems.
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CHAPTER TWO: TRPGS AS LITERATURE AND

PEDAGOGY

TRPGs occupy a complex and novel niche within gaming, where literature,

gameplay, composition, and pedagogy all intersect. In this chapter, I will be highlighting

the specific features of games and gaming that promote productive learning goals, and in

doing so, demonstrate how TRPGs embody these pedagogical features better than most

other game structures. They possess three primary features that make them so unique:

engaging and subversive game dynamics, elements of role-play and immersion, and the

ability to generate and sustain meaningful learning contexts. These unique advantages of

TRPGs, I believe, make them the ideally-suited starting point for the introduction of

games into the classroom.

C reating Engagem ent: TRPGs motivate and engage students, encouraging

growth of learning skills and increasing the rate of skill development through good

design, structure, and gameplay dynamics. In this section, I will explore the relationship

between fun, engagement, and education. I also will describe how games motivate their

players through meaningful dynamics, and how that same avenue of engagement can be

brought into the classroom.

E ncouraging Role-play and Agency: TRPGs increase empathy, emotional

resilience, and social learning through role-play, and give students a sense of agency over

their education. In this section, I will look at the history of education-oriented role-play,

and how TRPGs offer a uniquely pedagogical manifestation of this common exercise. I

will also offer an example of how role-playing games are used in the higher education
 55

History classroom as a motivational social tool for promoting a deeper understanding of

the subject material.

Creating Participatory Learning Contexts: TRPGs create meaningful contexts

in which experimental, low-risk learning can take place in an interactive setting, and

knowledge is situated within relevant semiotic domains. In this section, I will describe

how socially and pedagogically valuable “affinity groups” form naturally around

interactive games, encouraging both authentic participation and emergent learning. I will

further explore the “playground dynamic” which is at the heart of TRPGs and their

pedagogical benefits, driving both the engagement and learning of these games.

In the previous chapter, I demonstrated that the tendency to narrowly define

games by conflict-founded strategic gameplay is far from a modem development;

strategic games, emerging from a culture of military training, serve as reflections of that

culture, which a great many games continue to reproduce today. Nonetheless, there has

been a rapid and recent development of non-traditional games, which has included the

evolution of TRPGs away from the simplicity of Dungeons & Dragons and its catechism

of “explore, fight, loot.” The transition from the historical to the modern state of gaming

which I outlined in Chapter 1 shows that the argument for games as “mere entertainment”

ignores the historical context from which they emerge, and becomes a self-fulfilling

prophecy which stifles the medium as a whole. Modern TRPGs manifest many of the

most important elements of the learning experience, a paradoxical mix of real-life

socialization and stimulating collective fantasy which have the potential to engage and

challenge students.
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Newer TRPGs like Fiasco or The Quiet Year ask players to engage with

increasingly difficult and ambiguous concepts like high-level resource negotiation and

economics, creative scriptwriting theory, social thinking, and even personal morality.

Moreover, the recent development of these innovative games suggests that, in the modern

gaming cultures, such games will continue to develop as tools for exploring and

understanding the world. Continuing this process of unlocking the potential of games will

involve not just rejecting their historically-founded military focus, but rejecting a great

many assumptions about games, gamers, and gaming, many of which are deeply

embedded in the video game industry and in current game-based communities.

By rejecting assumptions that all games are merely a diversion, we can pioneer

the next generation of meaningful games that explore ideas as diverse and complex as the

nature of human community-building, communication, and relationships. These games, if

properly constructed and organized, will disrupt the dichotomy of “fun games” and

“educational games,” as they will be built for explicitly pedagogical purposes while

simultaneously providing an even greater level of motivation and fun than even the most

entertainment-centric games on the market today.

Paul Cardwell's “Role-Playing Games and the Gifted Student” lists a variety of

different learning skills that are directly developed when students become involved with

TRPGs, including (but not limited to): following directions, vocabulary, research,

independent/self-directed study, planning, choice/decision-making, mental exercise,

evaluation, cooperation/ interaction, creativity/imagination, leadership, problem-solving,

critical thinking, predicting consequences, figural/spatial reasoning, taking other points of

view, asking questions, ethics, prioritizing, interrelated learning, and continuity of

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learning (6). Any one of these individual areas of growth could be explored at length; I

would merely suggest that the extent of this list demonstrates that the learning goals

inherently built into the gameplay of TRPGs are numerous and largely hidden beneath

layers of gameplay. Over the next chapter, I will bring many of these valuable benefits to

the surface, and examine how TRPGs hold up when compared to other pedagogical

methodology.

Creating Engagement

The most obvious advantage which games bring to the classroom is that of

engagement and enthusiasm. A large part of the struggle of education surrounds the

issues of drawing students in to begin with, and meeting students where they are. It goes

without saying that games motivate their players quite effectively; this observation is the

driving force behind many of the “gamification” movements I described in Chapter 1.

However, these efforts have often focused on the perceived differences between school

and games, and have attempted to achieve engagement merely by concealing and

obfuscating their educational nature.

In this section, I will argue that what makes games fun and motivational has less

to do with what separates games from learning, and more to do with what they share in

common. I will also demonstrate that the engaging elements of gameplay— their ability to

place knowledge within applicable contexts, and to present meaningful dynamics to

players— are not fundamentally unique to gaming, and can be adopted with relative ease

into any educational setting. Understanding this connection, however, first requires a

rethinking of the relationship between learning and fun.

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Learning and Fun

The current thinking on the topic of games as learning tools is best encapsulated

in the work of Raph Koster, author of A Theory o f Fun fo r Game Design. Koster’s

experience with games is primarily in the design field— he and his team were responsible

for the game Ultima Online, one of the earliest examples of the massively-multiplayer

digital spaces which would be the predecessors to the hugely popular digitally-based

online environments like Second Life and World o f Warcraft. While wrestling with the

question of “why do we play games,” and in particular while confronting the still-thriving

tradition of decrying games as unproductive wastes of time, he argues that he stumbled,

almost inevitably, into the observation that gaming— and moreover the concept of “fun”

in general— has always driven learning.

Koster’s original “theory of fun” could be reduced to the statement “fun is just

another word for learning.” He argued that, although our society tends to draw strong

distinctions between “fun” activities and “learning” activities, they are in reality two

words for the same experience. It should be no surprise that such a radical claim emerged

from the field of game design, which necessarily encourages a focus on what game

mechanics generate the most engagement. Koster later refined his theory based on the

ideas of Chris Crawford, a fellow game designer, who stated that “fun is the emotional

response to learning,” which both agreed was a more accurate reflection of the nuanced

relationship. While the equating of fun and learning is a bold argument, the existence of

any connection at all between learning and fun, is, by itself, an important observation

which flies in the face of the truism that learning must be hard work and/or inherently

boring. Learning, even today, is often equated with the opposite of fun. In fact, as the
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history of TRPGs has already demonstrated, play is a necessary and foundational element

of good learning.

According to the thinking of Koster, Crawford, and Sicart, “fun” is best defined

by the sense of play and discovery that accompanies the exploration and understand of a

new system, space, or idea. Therefore, the act of learning should be the single most “fun”

activity available to the human experience. And yet, very often, the educational goals and

expectations set by faculty, institutions, and the students themselves do not seem to

acknowledge this. The responses of both students and faculty to the learning

opportunities which take place in the classroom seem to only further reinforce this basic

assumption.

In Play Matters, Miguel Sicart, a “play scholar” with a background in the

philosophy of technology, literature, and game studies, argues that play is even more

fundamental to the human experience than the emotion of fun, describing it as “a form of

understanding what surrounds us and who we are, and a way of engaging with others.

Play is a mode of being human” (5). While games are certainly a tool for engaging

students into the culture of the classroom and utilizing fun as a motivational tool, the

relationship between play and learning goes deeper than simply unlocking the desire to

learn. Playful activity, as I will show in this chapter, is a mode in which learning and

understanding are ideally optimized.

Raph Koster argues that the main fallacy of modern education is that learning

takes place independently o f other activities. He determined that learning is most

effectively facilitated when situated within a meaningfully contextualizing activity, rather

than detached from one; learning, in other words, occurs as a necessary byproduct of
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other activities rather than as its own standalone activity. Thus, pedagogy is at its most

effective when contextualized in other activities; and games, as I will demonstrate soon,

are embodiments of the concept of contextual activity, given legitimate meaning and

value though the investment of the players. Koster points out that this is an old idea—

Plato, Einstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other well-known philosophers have all

advocated for play as learning (33).

Situated Cognition

Situated cognition, a theory established by John Seely Brown, Allan Collins, and

Paul Duguid in their article “Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning,” is based on

the understanding that learning and the context within which learning occurs are

functionally inextricable. They argue that learning occurs best within the context of

larger, interconnected knowledge systems, rather than along the strict railroads of

formalized, linear lesson plans. All learning, according to this theory, is bound to social,

cultural, and physical contexts, and attempting to isolate material from the context in

which the material operates cripples learners’ ability to achieve meaningful

understanding (33). These scholars offer the example of teaching vocabulary through the

medium of the dictionary, rather than through literature. The former offers definitions of

words, without the context or connotation that instructs the student how to actually make

use of this knowledge. The latter offers context and connotation, and promotes retention

and transfer; and, often, the reader can surmise the definition of the word from this

context without the need for a dictionary. Indeed, the deduction of a “mystery word” and

its meaning, within a literary context, become its own kind of game, in a way that the rote

memorization of a dictionary definition is not.

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The relationship between games and the pedagogy of situated cognition is

addressed by Nicola Whitton, a professor at the Education and Social Research Institute

at M anchester Metropolitan University with a diverse background in business

management, economics, and computing. She states that “the theory of situated cognition

supports the argument that learning needs to be placed in a meaningful context, making

the case that knowledge cannot be something that stands apart from context, but that it is

a product of the environment and culture in which it was created and applied.. .learning,

rather than being about the memorization of facts, is about enculturation into a domain,

taking part in what Brown and his colleagues call ‘authentic activities.’” These “authentic

activities,” she argues, can give students an unfiltered look into a professional domain, a

space typically off-limits to “mere” students. Access to these domains through such

activities allows for learning-by-doing, and Whitton argues that such “epistemic games”

can offer new means to facilitate transfer of understanding from the classroom to other

contexts (48).

Whitton places a focus on “collaborative game-based learning, combining aspects

of game design, interaction design and learning theory.” Her work, I argue, provides

some of the most dramatic and meaningful assessments of gaming in the classroom. In

Digital Games and Learning, she elaborates on the idea of play as fun, stating that there

are two types of fun, immediate (sensual) and long-term (cerebral). While education

tends to benefit from focusing on the latter, and games are traditionally viewed as

primarily enabling the former, Whitton argues that games have the capacity to deliver

both kinds of experiences equally well, when they are designed to do so (116). She

recognizes that the connection between engagement and productive learning has yet to be
 62

fully explored; while there is a clear correlation between gameplay and engagement,

more research needs to be done to establish a link between game-based engagement and

learning (82). To clarify this link, she argues, will require advancements in game design

and structure. Whitton describes a model of game design that synthesizes the thoughts of

many game and education experts, based on a three-tiered system of dynamics,

mechanics, and components originally observed by Werbach and Hunter.

Engaging D ynam ics vs. Gaming M echanics

Werbach and Hunter, authors of For the Win: How Game Thinking Can

Revolutionize Your Business, both began gaming as a hobby before introducing

gamification and technology into their own law careers. In their view, games have an

external presentation that does not necessarily correlate to the game’s mechanical under­

workings, the actual substance of the gameplay. This highlights why the addition of

points and leaderboards alone is an ineffective gamification method, and yet remains the

most common mistake seen in most gamification efforts. Werbach and Hunter argue that

the “components” of a game— things like achievements, avatars, combat, content, levels,

teams, and quests— are really only the surface details of a given game, and can be easily

substituted, replaced, or omitted entirely without changing the fundamental game (for

example, coins could be used to replace the figurines in a chess set with no effect on the

gameplay or “fun” of chess). These components are laid over the structure of the rules

like skin over a skeleton. This under-layer of “mechanics” describes the game itself: its

feedback, challenges, transactions, and win conditions (102).

However, Werbach and Hunter argue that there is a third layer of game structure

underneath the mechanics— the dynamics of the game. Simply put, the dynamics of a
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game describe the human interaction that is occurring within the game, underneath the

mechanics. Described only by their dynamics, chess could be summarized as a game of

war, Monopoly is a game of economics, and Chutes and Ladders is a game of luck. All

three games involve competition, but centered around a very different, often silently

understood, set of dynamics. Dynamics describe the relationship between the players,

such as “we are all real estate tycoons trying to become the last monopolist standing.”

Brathwaite and Schreiber define dynamics, in Challenges fo r Game Designers, as “the

pattern of play that comes from the mechanics once they’re set in motion by the players.”

The dynamics and mechanics of a game define each other; altering one affects the other.

While interesting components may catch a player’s attention, and engaging mechanics

will keep a player’s interest (both examples of immediate, sensual fun), it is the dynamics

of a game— the way they encourage players to formulate themselves in relation to each

other—that develop the intrinsic motivation that leads to sustained engagement and long­

term, cerebral fun. This means that the “narrative” of a game occupies a strange role as

both a “component”— an arbitrary aesthetic feature that can be easily altered, exchanged,

or removed entirely— and as a core “dynamic” that is somehow even more fundamental

than the game mechanics/rules.

D ynam ics o f a TRPG

Dynamics are important to the discussion of TRPGs because, despite their

similarities, TRPGs operate on a very different set of dynamics than most other game

genres. The “components” of a game like Dungeons & Dragons, for example, might

seem inappropriate or irrelevant to most educators (unless they wish to teach students

about the difference between, say, goblins and hobgoblins). Even the mechanics of most
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TRPGs are suspect; many are still too intimately connected to the historical wargaming

traditions and fantastic power-quests reviewed earlier in Chapter 1. But the dynamics of

TRPGs are what sets them apart: a small group of players taking on the role of heroes

who must work together, complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses,

developing relationships, and negotiating their united goals and desires to learn about the

world, defeat enemies, overcome challenges, and tell an engaging story while doing so.

Even the Game Master role, absent in gaming since the decline of the kriegspiel, is a

unique and engagement-generating dynamic.

Taken as a whole, the comparison between the dynamics of a TRPG and those of

an ideally-engaging classroom are uncanny, despite any lack of common ground with

regards to their mechanics or components. A game with engaging dynamics will succeed

as long as the mechanics and components are able to reflect those dynamics well;

conversely, a game with good mechanics and components will offer short-term

engagement, but ultimately feel insincere if the dynamics are superficial or contrived.

Often, gamification attempts result in a game whose dynamics boil down to “memorize

this information” rather than “immerse yourself in this role,” essentially attempting to

solve the issue of engagement with mechanics and components, while perpetuating the

worst dynamics of traditional school. TRPGs offer just the opposite experience, a sincere

and earnest effort to create an experiential space for gameplay and learning.

The fundamental dynamics of TRPGs can perhaps be best described as dynamics

of “subversive participation.” Earlier, I showed that TRPGs expressly emerged from a

desire to participate within literary spaces, allowing players to take an active,

compositional role within domains which were once exclusive to the authorial role.
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Players sought to take the authorial reigns within familiar literary setting such as

Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, Robert E. Howard’s Hyboria, and H.P. Lovecraft’s world of

cosmic horror. Non-literary universes, such as the universe of the Star Wars or

Ghostbusters films, followed shortly after. This sense of subversive participation, of

creating one’s own, personal space within an author’s exclusive domain, is apparent

within this reciprocal literary relationship.

From their origins in wargaming, TRPGs were largely distinguished from their

predecessors by this link to the genre fiction of science fiction and fantasy. The preface to

the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook argues that the game “can help build in you

the confidence to create and share. D&D is a game that teaches you to look for the clever

solution, share the sudden idea that can overcome a problem, and push yourself to

imagine what could be, rather than simply accept what is ... above all else, D&D is

yours” (Mearls 4). The freedom to participate within a literary space, and indeed within

the game system as a whole, is a major part of how TRPGs engage their players.

TRPGs encourage subversive play through their ability to allow the widest range

of action of any game structure— the familiar phrase “anything can be attempted” is the

key here. For example, faced with an axe-wielding enemy, a TRPG player might respond

by fighting back, fleeing the battlefield, calling for help, or even surrendering. However,

there is also nothing in the rules stopping them from taking much more unique courses of

action; hurling a nearby rock as an improvised weapon, performing an amusing jig to

confuse and bewilder the foe, asking the enemy why they attacked in the first place, or

performing deliberately stupid actions for pure comedic effect are all considered equally

legitimate courses of action by the game’s mechanics. In practice, not all of these options
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are tolerated by the Game Master or fellow players— at which point, a discussion will

ensue. Some TRPG groups have their own “codes of conduct,” spoken or unspoken, to

handle such issues and preserve a particular tone of play. In theory, however, the Game

Master is obligated to let all player actions ride and to faithfully describe the

consequences of their actions.

This indicates that TRPGs uniquely allow players to engage the game in the

manner they desire. If a player wishes to play a character who subverts expectations, such

as a pacifist, a pig farmer, or a stand-up comedian, they may do so. This is different from

self-limiting oneself in, say, a game of Monopoly, by agreeing that you will never buy

Broadway even if given the opportunity. First of all, no alteration has been made to the

TRPG’s rules, while the Monopoly example is technically a “mod” of the classic game

with an entirely new mechanic (and consequently altered dynamics)—TRPGs, on the

other hand, are designed expressly to handle such situations within an intentionally open-

ended ruleset. Secondly, the Game Master of a TRPG is equipped with the means to

easily design or even improvise scenarios to theoretically accommodate any playstyle,

even those the game designers did not or could not predict. A Game Master can

determine that the right joke at the right time (perhaps justified by a successful dice roll

or other mechanic) really is enough to calm the angry ogre. Thus, players quickly

discover that the best action is often not the obvious one, or the one intended by the

Game Master or game designer. As with ancient riddle-games, subversive and

unorthodox solutions are supported, and often rewarded. And, once players are immersed

and engaged, they will naturally attempt to garner additional success for their character,

even if the original intent of their subversive decision-making was to disrupt or interfere
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with the game. Thus, TRPGs focus and reward subversive learning, and even turn it to

the group’s collective advantage, prompting other players to reward experimental,

exploratory, and risk-taking behavior, rather than punish or forbid it. Subversive

participation is one dynamic which allows TRPGs to promote engagement, by rendering

all player participation as inherently subversive to the narrative.

Another engaging and defining dynamic of TRPGs is their responsiveness, or

ability to facilitate “flow.” Whereas digital games offer immediate responsiveness within

a narrow band of activity, TRPGs offer immediate responsiveness within a much wider

range of options through the intercession of the Game Master. W hitton’s models of

game-structure demonstrate that engagement can be promoted through any game design

that enables “flow,” a state of ideal learning first described by philosopher Mihaly

Csikszentmihalyi. “Flow” is achieved in any activity that presents a certain balance

between security (what the player knows they can do) and challenge (what the player

cannot immediately overcome). This idea is related to Lev Vygotsky’s “Zone of Proximal

Development,” a theory espousing that the best learning occurs when a student is

challenged by activities on the very cusp of (but still within) their range of capability. A

well-made game, Whitton argues, can maintain the balance between difficulty and ease

by monitoring and moderating the progress of the player. Achieving a flow-state involves

knowing exactly where a student’s capability lies, and challenging that capability just

enough to hold a player’s interest, while avoiding frustrating the player, either by being

too hard to too easy.

A state of flow can be sustained throughout the duration of play by increasing,

decreasing, or maintaining the degree of challenge in proportion to the increasing skill of

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the player. This perpetuates a positive feedback loop of learning: flow enables effective

engagement and learning, which in turn increases the intensity and longevity of the flow-

state, and so on. Many modern games, digital and otherwise, have been designed to

maximize flow, typically through their ability to instantly assess the player’s skill level

and adjust themselves to maintain a difficulty level that is constantly and consistently at

the terminal edge of the player’s capabilities (86). TRPGs, thanks to the presence of the

Game Master, are in a unique position to facilitate on-the-spot adjustments of difficulty,

and maintain an effective state of flow in the player.

The subversive play and responsiveness of TRPGs make them uniquely suited for

eliciting intrinsic, rather than extrinsic motivation. Whitton concludes that the use of

games as extrinsic motivational tools is limited, but adds that extrinsic motivation in

general is not ideal for driving learning in the first place. “Extrinsic motivation has a

negative effect when a user is already intrinsically motivated, but has benefits when the

user is unmotivated, and the task is boring, tedious, and repetitive” (103).

Much of the modern gamification effort has unfortunately revolved around

extrinsic motivation—badges, trophies, leaderboards, and other simplistic metric-based

rewards. Kapp argued that this was a mistake, citing that games are successful insofar as

they are designed to draw out intrinsic motivation— to encourage players to immerse

themselves voluntarily in their gameplay, rather than for an external reward. Whitton

cites character progression— the acquisition of in-game experience, powers, and items—

as one example of an intrinsic rewarding mechanism. While functionally similar to the

idea of a point-based scoreboard, character progression denotes the ability for a player to

distinguish themselves as an individual within the terms of the game’s economy of

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resources. Ultimately, the rewards put forward by a game only have the meaning and

motivational value that the player willingly invests into them. Education has always

wrestled with this problem, and extrinsic reward systems have had a limited effect in

solving it. Games have the potential to facilitate the intrinsic motivation of students,

being tools designed for exactly that purpose.

TRPGs and A ssessm ent

My final point on the engagement which games offer to the learning process

pertains to assessment. Whitton states that she is most interested in “the way in which

assessment could be re-conceptualised, based on the ways in which game failure is seen

as a learning process, which is not the case in terms of assessment failure” (108). While

assessment has traditionally been viewed as separate from learning, the culmination of

the learning process rather than a necessary part of it, games approach assessment in a

radically different way: it is incorporated into every step of the play process. Further

progress into the next stage of game is locked behind content which cannot be overcome

until certain core skills have been mastered. A player who completes a video game will

not, as it were, need to take a test to display proficiency with the game— the game itself

was the test.

The nature of assessment in gameplay relates to how failure is punished in games.

Many games present immensely difficult tasks, motivating players by minimizing

penalties for failure. Many games “punish” failure by merely preventing progress, while

simultaneously promoting further attempts through “respawning” and other mechanics

designed to avoid frustration-based quitting. Failure in games is considered an inevitable

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and necessary part of the learning experience. Rather than something to be avoided,

failure is recognized as a step toward proficiency, not a setback from it.

As Whitton noted, games like TRPGs and digital RPGs have hit upon a powerful

tool for generating states of flow and resilience to failure; the concept of the “player-

character.” Even the earliest digital games recognized that players developed a close

relationship to their “avatar,” the on-screen character which they control and through

which they manipulate the game-world. Yet while video games rush to create

increasingly immersive, engaging, and technically realistic avatars, TRPGs, even today,

maintain a vast creative advantage over even the most versatile and advanced digital

games. Nothing is stopping TRPG players from declaring that their character is an

orphan, a person of color, an idealist, a PTSD victim, a religious devotee, a subversive

revolutionary, a non-binary gender, etc. It is then left to the players and Game Master to

work out exactly how these factors influence the narrative and gameplay; there is no need

to program all of these possibilities in advance, as a video game would require. The

nature of player-characters in TRPGs offers a near-limitless array of meaningful choices

for role-play, which I present as the second tool which TRPGs offer to educators.

Encouraging Role-Play & Agency

Role-playing, the eponymous feature of the TRPG, is a fundamental element and

the largest differentiating distinction of the TRPG from other genres. In Chapter I, I

showed how TRPGs broke off from wargaming as a result of a shift of focus from large-

scale military interactions into individual-scale conflict, including the use of individual

goals and motivations. Players suddenly had the option to approach a single game in a
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multiplicity of ways, rather than in the abstract but generic roles of “a general,” “a

monopolist,” or even simply “a player.” A player’s participation was no longer defined

merely by the strategy that they would implement toward a predefined set of victory

conditions, but rather, by the individual victory conditions which they set for themselves.

In this section, I will describe how the tradition of role-playing, particularly

within the context of games, emerges from the same pedagogical background as games

themselves, which I outlined in Chapter 1. The origins of role-play, as with games, can be

found within a history of training and education. I will also discuss the varieties of role-

playing activities, game and non-game related, which have been brought into the

classroom already, as well as into popular modern video games. I will describe how these

innovative methods can offer new pedagogical and critical options to educators.

Origins o f R ole-Play

In Playing at the World, Peterson notes that the term “role-play,” like war-game,

has its roots in German (“rollenspiel'’), and that like wargaming, role-playing was

initially conceived with a pedagogical intent. Role-playing was pioneered as a form of

group psychotherapy by Jacob L. Moreno, drawing inspiration from German writer

Goethe’s work Lila. Moreno further detailed potential applications of role-play as a tool

for training in his 1953 social treatise Who Shall Survive: A New Approach to the

Problem o f Human Interrelations. Following on the heels of M oreno’s work were

hundreds of volumes detailing the ability of role-playing to provide meaningful aids to

learning. The popular 1961 text Roleplay in Business and Industry, building off of

Moreno’s ideas, argued that educationally-oriented role-play could be used “to provide

better understanding of the role-players by seeing and hearing them in action... give the
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audience and spectators information on how certain roles should be filled... [and] provide

the role-players with knowledge and skills by permitting them to experience a near-

veridical situation” (Corsini et al. 101). In other words, role-play allows players to

construct, and then play through, activities and scenarios that are outside of their ordinary

life experiences.

Just as historical wargamers saw and utilized the pedagogical connection between

chess and statecraft, Moreno saw the potential of role-play as a “training device in

various social, occupation and vocational activities” (48). Long before Reiswitz’s

kriegsspiel, games had been used with the goal of providing realistic situations for

instruction. Players adopted the role of a fictitious individual— whether that be the

general of the armies Waterloo, or an individual soldier, or any other role— in order to

learn about the experiences of that role. Once it was understood that role-playing could

be applied to any role under the sun, a much wider range of represented activity began to

emerge.

These newer role-playing activities relied “on interpersonal dynamics more

complicated than the traditional red-versus-blue dichotomy of wargaming; they emerged

from environments where a multiplicity of players had the opportunity to conflict or

collaborate, and in that rich web of interaction, to discover a persona worth embodying”

(Peterson 376). This would lead to the rise of wargames that focus more on politics as a

whole, like the RAND Corporation’s educational predecessor to the game Diplomacy

which focuses on Cold W ar politics as well as conflict (Peterson 379), and later produce

games, like TRPGs, that allow for a much wider range of roles.
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While I argue that this wider range of role-playing options appeared only recently

within formal gaming from out of the wargaming tradition, in truth, it has been an aspect

of play for much longer. The difficulty in pinpointing role-play as a game mechanic is not

its scarcity, but rather, its universal application to almost all forms of play. For an

example of how role-play is fundamental to the most rudimentary forms of play itself, a

brief look at child’s play reveals examples of what Jon Peterson calls “let’s pretend”

activities, the particular kind of communal role-play which, he argues, TRPGs elevate

and place value upon.

“L et’s Pretend” R ole-playing

Communal “let’s pretend” play eludes most formal analysis and resists attempts

to define it in the structural terminology of games. This, and its tendency to be relegated

to the domain of young children who are then assumed to move onto more “advanced”

forms of gameplay, has made records of such imagination-based games difficult to

acquire, outside of studies of child psychology. And yet, “let’s pretend” is one of the

most common and universal forms of play.

It is no coincidence that the same authors whose work inspired the first TRPGs—

Tolkien and C.S. Lewis— were also the staunchest defenders of “faerie stories” and

“childish” forms of play. Lewis famously stated that

The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to

them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of

familiarity’... If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror.

By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do

not retreat from reality: we rediscover it.

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Lewis argued that children used such “let’s pretend” games in order to interpret and learn

about the world around them, and that, furthermore, such a strategy is a valuable

approach. He argued that play, whether it be through games or through fantastic stories,

allowed for the creation of cognitive space necessary to see large and complex issues

more clearly, by putting them in terms of low-stakes play. The fact that all children

appear to, in some capacity, engage in this activity is significant, and part of the reason

why such a universal attribute has been forcibly relegated to the exclusive domain of

children.

Peterson points out another interesting literary connection that both hints at the

rich history and vast untapped potential of this play-style, noting that “the most well-

documented instance of this communal “Let’s Pretend” must be that of the Bronte

children: Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne Bronte” (388). The Bronte siblings, four

gifted children steeped in a combination of tragic family misfortune and rich literary

education, created an elaborate fantasy-realm using only maps and a set of twelve toy

soldiers. Dividing up the figurines and using them as characters in their performance of

short “plays”— with famous individuals like Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, and

arctic explorers Edward Parry and John Ross all making noteworthy appearances— the

children described themselves as “genii,” spirits who oversaw the fate of these

established characters. The origins of this narrative stemmed from a passing comment

one night from Charlotte Bronte: “Oh! Suppose we had each an island of our own.” Out

of this thought-experiment arose the elaborate narrative of the “Kingdom of Angria,” in

which rivalries, politics, and colonialism were both played out and, interestingly,

deconstructed in their motives by the young children. Charlotte claimed that, for many
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years after the “games” had ended, she imagined and wrote extensively about the society,

relationships, and beauty of the imaginary land that had captivated her young

imagination.

“Charlotte later believed,” Peterson observed, “that Angria did prepare her for

adult life, perhaps in much the manner that any child’s play bestows experience with

roles and situations required in adulthood.” Her character, Charles Townsend, was

described as a writer on the periphery of his society who often voiced his skepticism of

the supposed “heroics” of the game’s protagonist characters. Clearly, the gameplay of the

Bronte siblings, while abstract and freeform, was hardly disorganized or simple; and

Charlotte’s own experiences, in hindsight, were of course demonstrably impactful on her

adult career (390). Furthermore, there is little reason to assume that this particular

instance of child’s play was an isolated or unique case in this regard.

R ole-play and Education

In the same way that “Let’s Pretend” activities serve as a practical experimental

space for learning and development, role-playing activities can serve to inform

participants about social and emotional behavior. Indeed, within the fantastic contexts of

a traditional TRPG, very often social interaction is the lesson most clearly transferred

from the game into a real-world context.

While role-playing has a rich tradition outside of games, Mory Van Ments, past

Director of Continuing Education at Loughborough University and a well-known author

in the field of simulation, gaming, and role-play in education and training, gives special

attention to the sort of role-play often seen in TRPGs. He describes these unique group-

based role-playing activities as constructs, in which the verisimilitude of the simulation is

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enforced by having multiple players situated within a shared network of role-playing

relationships, so that each individual role-player feels immersed, primarily, by the other

surrounding role-players:

[Role-playing] focuses attention on the interaction of people with one

another. It emphasizes the functions performed by different people under

various circumstances. The idea of role-play, in its simplest form, is that

of asking someone to imagine that they are either themselves or another

person in a particular situation. They are then asked to behave exactly as

they feel that person would. As a result of doing this they, or the rest of the

class, or both, will learn something about the person and/or situation. In

essence, each player acts as part of the social environment of the others

and provides a framework in which they can test out their repertoire of

behaviours or study the interacting behaviour of the group (30).

These elements of role-play— focusing attention on interaction, putting role-

players into unexpected situations, and providing a framework for testing— are

ideally suited for the classroom. They encourage students to look at the contexts

in which language and communication are used, and to feel comfortable

experimenting with these contexts to elicit different results from the safety of their

adopted roles. In a TRPG, good role-playing and decision-making tend to be

rewarded by in-character success, and are thus role-playing is continually

reinforced by the in-game mechanics of play. Effective communication therefore

becomes a valuable skill, both for effectively playing one’s role, and for

communicating the justifications for one’s in-character actions. The more

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immersive the game, the more the skills and means to communicate and

understand each player’s decisions become demonstrably valuable to the student.

For example, role-playing exercises have appeared in one form or another as a

consistent feature of language-learning classes. As a method, it follows from the

interactional theory of language, which is advocated for by Jack Richards, a Professor of

Applied Linguistics, and Theodore Rodgers, Professor of Psycholinguistics and director

of the Hawaii English Program, the largest U.S.-based venture in language education

curriculum development, in their co-authored text Approaches and Methods in Language

Teaching. The interactional theory relates to Gee’s idea of language and learning as

inherently and inextricably related to their social context.

According to Richards and Rodgers, the interactional theory holds a view of

language “as a vehicle for the realization of interpersonal relations and for the

performance of social transactions between individuals” (17). In other words, language

serves a primarily interactive rather than a private function, and should be taught

accordingly. They argue that “language teaching content, according to this view, may be

specified and organized by patterns of exchange and interaction or may be left

unspecified, to be shaped by the inclinations of learners as interactors” (17). To be taught

effectively, language pedagogy must be founded on the context of interpersonal

exchange, even if this is, for the purposes of the classroom, an artificially constructed

context.

Within the interactional theory, role-playing can be viewed as a playground for

communication and language. Role-play activities in the classroom typically give

participants “specified content” with the open-endedness to allow students to interact

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with a situation in a way that they see fit. TRPGs, as games that generate such role-

playing scenarios organically and in a player-driven way, more often provide what

Rodgers and Richards call “unspecified content, to be shaped by the inclinations of

learners as interactors.” Players of a TRPG can actually seek out and “force” the kind of

interactions and communication that they are most interested in pursuing, testing, and

experimenting with.

Role-playing allows students to interact from the perspective of a variety of

different fictional personas, rather than limiting themselves to their identity as a student.

Developing such new identities allows students to construct their own discursive voice

within the language they are learning. Simultaneously, the simulated context of the

interaction applies constraints that the players must operate within and respect. These

constraints, like game mechanics, create the challenges of the role-playing exercise and

generate engagement.

Ken Jones, an expert and scholar on the topic of role-playing simulations in

education, explains that “in order for a simulation to occur the participants must accept

the duties and responsibilities of their roles and functions, and do the best they can in the

situation in which they find themselves” (113). And, when the fun of a TRPG is inserted

into this dynamic, a state of flow can be achieved through this kind of low-stakes

challenge. Thus, role-playing exercises are a type of simple game, even before any game

structure or mechanics are consciously applied; and, like a game, participants cannot

successfully complete the role-playing simulation without creatively engaging their role.
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R eacting to the Past: R ole-Playing History

While I will argue later in Chapter 3 that language-learning and composition

courses are some of the most obvious subject fields that could benefit from the

application of game-based learning, there are in truth many subjects that could benefit

from the use of TRPG-based pedagogy, and from the use of role-playing. History

courses, as I will demonstrate, have seen perhaps the most revolutionary use of role-

playing in any higher education classroom thus far, primarily through the example of the

new curriculum methodology known as “Reacting to the Past.”

Mark C. Carnes, a Columbia history professor and developer of “Reacting to the

Past,” transcribed his experiences using month-long role-playing games in Minds on

Fire: How Role-lmmersion Games Transform College. Reacting to the Past is a program

where students are collectively assigned roles within a particular historical event or

period. For example, one of Carnes’ classes spent a month recreating the circumstances

of the French Revolution, and later spent another month role-playing as the Chinese

Imperial Court of the Ming Dynasty, before finally spending a third month role-playing

the trial of Galileo. At the start of each game period, individual students were assigned

roles— some specific (Robespierre, the Emperor, Pope Paul V) and some abstract

(representation of a political party, faction, or ideal). Each role came with its own rules

and victory conditions which often ran counter to the victory conditions of other players

and their roles.

Carnes cites incredibly productive results toward engaging his students in a way

that, he argues, they are not engaged by traditional education. As I noted earlier in this

chapter, engagement is held as a crucial (and often-underestimated) element of effective

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pedagogy; simply put, students learn better when their interest and curiosity has been

drawn to the material in question. Carnes noted that now, as never before, engagement in

the classroom is at risk due to the multiplicity of media sources, digital and otherwise, in

the modern “economy of attention.” Before running Reacting games, he says he was of

the opinion that students today often enter the higher education classroom with the

expectation of being bored. He notes that many students in higher education opt out of

even seeking engagement through their education, instead choosing the fantasy realms of

massively multiplayer games like World o f Warcraft, the screen-tapping frenzy of a

Facebook or mobile game, or the well-established community of sports as their preferred

sources of engagement (144).

Not only did Carnes find that, through role-playing, students were motivated to

participate in his classes more often, more meaningfully, and with greater focus in his

programs, he also noted that the typically more reserved students were encouraged to find

their voices as well, in a capacity that other courses did not facilitate (127). Carnes even

notes examples of students who made significant improvements to their English language

skills, or who overcame other barriers and constraints upon their self-expression (such as

stuttering). He cites that, as a way to overcome language barriers, the Queens College in

City University of New York (CUNY system) used Reacting classes as a supplementary

class for students in the university ESL program (140).

While role-playing in various forms has long been utilized in education, Reacting

classes offer a very different form of role-play, specifically play that is long-term and

immersion-generating. I would argue that the Reacting classes uniquely display the sort

of prolonged, immersive role-playing that is typically also seen in TRPGs. While this
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requires a large commitment of time from the players, this investment pays off. Whereas

short-term role-play, a much more common feature of the classroom setting, asks the

player to briefly entertain another point of view, long-term role-play enables true

immersion within the role. This, Carnes argues, is the major distinction between effective

and ineffective role-play, and he found that role-play immersion was highly favorable to

the learning outcomes of his class.

Carnes claims that participation and confidence increased drastically in his classes

that made use of the Reacting curriculum. Students who were ordinarily shy and silent

began to speak up. One such student, playing the role of a member of the Emperor’s

faction in Ming China, nervously addressed the class for the first time in order to explain

that the students playing as the Emperor’s critics were not showing their “ruler” proper

respect. The point was heard, and forced the critics to take a more deferential— and

historically realistic— approach to disagreeing with the Imperial faction. Afterward, the

student who had earned her “team” this rhetorical advantage would continue to speak up,

often instigating discussion and even conflict to assist her side’s cause. The adopted role

of Imperial advisor gave her the confidence, permission, and authority that she needed to

fully participate in the class activity (127).

Barbara Gombach, a project manager for the Carnegie Corporation, upon

reviewing the effects of Reacting classes, was able to actually see one Korean ESL

student reach the “mysterious moment when the brain shifts from translating conscious

thoughts from one language to another and instead expresses itself in the new language”

(142). This absence of “linguistic self-consciousness,” Carnes argues, is essential to

productive and enjoyable learning, and not just in the field of language-learning. Such
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game-based role-playing extends the engagement and promotes an absence of self-

consciousness, thereby extending the “zone” wherein students feel comfortable working.

Rather than making learning easier, Carnes’ Reacting classes demonstrate that games

allow students to feel more confident while doing work that is actually much more

difficult.

Perhaps due to the focus on historical politics and major national events,

leadership seems to be one of the primary skills that students learn from role-playing in

Reacting classes. Carnes observes the ability of Reacting classes to organically teach

skills that other leadership-building programs struggle to even explain. Building

leadership qualities remains an important priority in many universities, and yet many

students, according to Carnes, report learning leadership primarily through social

organizations like fraternities/sororities and athletic teams, rather than through their

academic communities. Reacting classes allow such authentic social relationships to not

only form, but be experimentally played with, explored, and tested through role-play

(231).

Role-play-based classes also have the effect of allowing students to gain

confidence by detaching themselves from their own identities as students. Carnes argues

that the university “metagame” often encourages its “players” to focus on their roles as

“good” or “bad” students, which (in both cases) cultivates anxiety and a lack of

confidence that is detrimental to the learning state. Carnes observed that the student

culture of the university often seems at odds with learning goals; yet Reacting students

visibly took the opportunity to occupy spaces and identities that allowed them to leave

behind their identity as passive learners, and adopt participatory roles. According to
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James Paul Gee, the same process occurs in video games, between players and their

digital avatars. Over the course of play, he argues that “the virtual character becomes an

authentic professional built from the ground up by the player,” an “avatar of expertise”

which enables the student to act within and through that role (92).

By adopting the role of Anne Hutchinson, or King Louis VII of France, Carnes

found that his students grew more confident as class participants, and consequently more

confident in their grasp of the material (144). Students developed a connection to their

character, becoming invested in their success or failure within the game-space. Despite

being on new and uncertain ground— both as students in an unconventional history class,

and in their newly-adopted historical personas— students claimed to feel more

comfortable in this uncertain environment, working through a character, than within more

conventional and arguably more familiar class structures. Carnes demonstrated that

“Reacting had produced an anomaly— a rare instance in which people acknowledged that

they were in less control of their lives but nevertheless felt better about themselves.”

Coping and resilience-based skills seemed to be markedly improved among his students,

who learned “not only how to deal with failure but also to profit from it” (163).

Role-playing allows students to take on a multiplicity of positions within the

classroom, and this diversity encourages different and subversive forms of play and

learning, as Carnes shows. This makes Reacting classes uniquely suited for students like

“Nate,” who until receiving his role for the French Revolution game, had only “skimmed

Rousseau’s Social Contract and Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France”

(required reading for the course), and “barely scraped by” on quizzes. Nate received the

role of a section leader, specifically leading the faction charged with mobilizing the urban
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poor of Paris to action. Nate controlled what amounted to the game’s “wild card;” his role

had given him the ability to make a powerful and inspiring speech that might cause the

streets of Paris to explode into riots. Doing so at the right time would hinder the efforts of

his enemies, while doing so at the wrong time might thwart his own plans. “Nate” began

to produce a newspaper spreading his faction’s propaganda, and made use of

“obnoxious” political behavior to leverage their advantages. Not only was the inclusion

of such behavior historically accurate and realistic, it added a layer of depth that a “good

student” might not have added to the game, and allowed Nate to flex leadership (and

other) skills in a creative, unconventional, and even playfully subversive way. Rather

than detract from the class, the subversive nature of Nate’s “obnoxious” behavior

meaningfully contributed to the learning experience (68).

Likewise, students in Reacting classes are able to utilize non-traditional forms of

communication, from public speeches to songs to fake newspapers. Carnes notes that one

student, playing Governor John Winthrop in the Trial of Anne Hutchinson, presented his

argument through a customized and decidedly modern synthesis of Puritan preaching and

rap battle, interweaving modern and archaic language (247). This playful approach again

solidifies the student as an important participant within the learning that is taking place.

Performance of roles allows not only confidence and creativity into the learning

process, it has a demonstrable effect on building empathy-related skills as well. In one

Reacting class, a student who identified as an active and dedicated member of her

Muslim community was tasked with playing the role of Zionist advocate and leader Ben-

Gurion. Her experience shocked her: as she learned about this individual’s life, she found

herself empathizing with a figure that she had only understood as an enemy of her people.
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Likewise, the role of Awni Abd al-Hadi, leader of the Arab Independence Party faction,

went to a student who was, in his ordinary life, a committed Zionist who had raised

money for Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism. At the end of the activity, when asked

if he identified with the role of Awni, he replied, “Absolutely. If I had been a Palestinian

at that time I most certainly would have been Awni. Awni stood by his principles in a

moment of crisis, not really knowing what was going to happen next. I admire that. I

think I would like to see myself someday emulate that kind of attitude” (90). While

neither student had their political beliefs changed— Carnes is firm that role-playing is just

the opposite of indoctrination or brainwashing— their attitudes and perspectives with

regard to these historical figures were greatly expanded.

A similar expansion of perspective could be seen when an African-American

student, playing the role of John Calhoun, took up the cause of defending American

slavery in his class. The student was interested in a political career and wanted to better

understand the historical issues of slavery— specifically, from the perspective of a

slaveholder. Yet the student also found that his competitive nature meant that he initially

sympathized with the historical figure; he was happy (for the purposes of “winning the

game” as the South Carolina statesman) to find that Calhoun’s ideas seemed to bear

“intellectual merit,” while simultaneously growing even more disgusted by Calhoun’s

lack of empathy for the slaves. Carnes reported that “the process of identifying with

Calhoun helped James ‘shore up arguments against the wrongs Calhoun had advocated.’”

Likewise, a student tasked with adopting the role of Moammar Gadhafi found herself

feeling “badly” for the then-embattled dictator, while opposing his positions more than

ever before (225).

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The Reacting classes do not leave students to wrestle alone with the conflicted

and complex feelings instilled by role-playing. As with TRPGs, creative agency is the

driving force that keeps students focused on the shared social experience of the game.

There is evidence to suggest that role-playing methods, like those found in TRPGs and

the Reacting classes, can increase self-concept and facilitate attitude and behavioral

change (Swink and Buchanan 1). A student might feel overwhelmed or confused holding

multiple opinions regarding a Calhoun or a Gadhafi— moreover, since both are now

historical rather than current political figures, they may even feel that their opinion is

pointless, lacking relevant value. But within the magic circle of the game, both figures

are alive, the issues have never been more relevant, and history can be changed. With the

influence and agency of the students-players, something that is viewed as a great crime of

history— such the institution of American slavery, or Galileo’s “guilty” verdict— might

be, in a sense, corrected. That sense of agency is a powerful driving force behind

Reacting classes and TRPG-based education.

Identification with the characters of a role-play, whether fictional or historical,

opens up new space for new critical approaches. The idea of a monolithic central

narrative evaporates when a student is forced to confront the opposing point of view (as

well as many others), face-to-face, in the form of their fellow classmate. These concepts

are embodied in the individuals who are role-playing them, rather than abstracted as pure

theory. Playing within a role, even while attempting to achieve victory on behalf of that

role, is not the same as blindly agreeing with the role, as we saw in the case of James as

John Calhoun. Thus, the playground dynamic of TRPGs allows for an inherently richer

dialogue; one in which all points of view may be represented, but, rather than being
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automatically considered equal, they are then forced to test themselves against each other

in meaningful ways. A role-player forced to defend an unpopular point of view will seek

to avoid becoming a strawman, favoring arguments that will be difficult for their

opponents to discount. This proves especially effective for “teaching the debate” and

building student skepticism and critical thinking, without automatically falling into the

trap of giving equal time to points of view founded on ignorance. The most valuable

benefit, perhaps, is that even as the students decide for themselves which point of view

has made the better argument, they are simultaneously the ones making the arguments,

situating themselves within the historical context, and are encouraged to do so sincerely

(regardless of their own feelings on the issue) by the very nature of role-play itself.

R ole-play in V ideo Games

Identification through role-play occurs in video games as well, but not all games

demand the same manner of role-playing with the same depth or efficacy. I would argue

that TRPGs, being defined by a uniquely spontaneous, in-person, and immersive style of

role-play, are more versatile candidates for pedagogical adaptation than most other

gaming forms and mediums. The role-playing style which TRPGs support tends toward a

shared and collaborative experience, rather than a singular and isolated one.

In a digital video game, the player’s avatar is their point of connection to the

game space, and thus the nature of this avatar—be it the familiar semi-circle Pac-Man or

an immersive fully-rendered 3D warrior-hero— is fundamental to the role-playing that

occurs within the game. Just as in the case of a TRPG player’s character, the DRPG

player’s avatar is generally held to be the defining manifestation of the player’s role-play.
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Identification between DRPG players and their avatars has been thoroughly

established in previous scholarship, yet Katherine Warren, a scholar with an emphasis in

new media and video game narrative, points out that not all DRPGs translate this sense of

avatar-identification into genuine role-playing. While identifying with an avatar is a

crucial part of engagement in video games, an example like Pac-Man demonstrates how

such a game can require little-to-no perspective-changing. In her chapter “Who Are You

Here? The Avatar and the Other in Video Game Avatars,” Warren specifically offers a

contrast between DRPGs emerging from an American and European game design

tradition (Western RPGs or W-RPGs) and DRPGs emerging from Japanese game design

(J-RPGs). These two traditions emerged from distinct origins, and Warren highlights

some of their differences, including the handling of avatars and protagonist characters.

She suggests that the two traditions, held by many to be separate genres with their own

collections of tropes and expectations, offer radically different role-playing opportunities.

Warren suggests that W-RPGs have a greater tendency to reproduce the

“cyborgian” connection between the player an avatar uncritically, allowing the player to

view themselves in their avatar, and vice versa, rather than to view the avatar as a new or

distinct identity. W-RPGs like the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games allow for

customization, control, and a connection that attempts, as much as possible within the

limits of technology, to remove the sense of separation between the player and their

avatar— to make the avatar feel like an extension of one’s own body. This, at first, seems

harmonious with the goals of the TRPG genre, furthering a sense of immersion on the

part of the player; however, without the social structure of human intervention, Warren

argues that “the role-play elements of a computerized RPG become much less strict than
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they would in a game on a table. One can play a W-RPG and interact with an avatar

without ever role-playing.”

Certainly, it is evident that W-RPG players participate in some form of role-

play— the reality persists, in spite of the game designer’s best efforts, that the player is

not the avatar representing them within the game, and must make-believe that they are.

Yet Warren points out that the very power of customization which seems to promote this

behavior, in fact, removes the essential challenges of role-play seen, for example, in

Carnes’ Reacting classes— the demand to put oneself into the position of a completely

Othered individual. She argues that the highly-sculpted avatars of W-RPGs, infused with

nearly ultimate customizability and agency within the game-space “become thoroughly

idealized as vessels of a solitary player’s personal expression and will, leading to a deep

investment in the final avatar interaction. This personalized investment creates barriers to

studying avatars as complex facets of a video game experience” (52). Rather than

becoming the means to role-play another set of experiences, such avatars instead tend to

become tools for enacting the player’s own desires, unrestricted, unchallenged, and

uncriticized within the social vacuum of the game-space. She points out that, within the

context of this idealization, even the term “avatar”— a visiting emissary of a god—

becomes extremely problematic, as well as extremely suggestive of the manner of role-

playing which occurs within that genre. Such DRPGs allow players to simulate any

manner of background, race, complexion, gender, and identity, while elevating all of

these personas to the level of superheroes with no meaningful distinctions to their agency

or power, but instead making them all equally capable of manifesting the player’s will

onto the game-space.

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Warren contrasts J-RPGs with W-RPGs by pointing out two significant elements

where the two models knowingly and purposefully diverge. First, J-RPGs typically grant

an avatar to the player in the form of a fully-fleshed-out character with a set of pre-

established hopes, dreams, a background, a context, and a personally-tailored narrative

awaiting them— something much more difficult to do with a highly-customized avatar.

Second, J-RPGs include a cast of characters who will fight, under the control of the

player, as additional avatars beside the main character, rather than have the isolated

protagonist as the sole agent and the embodiment of the player in the game. The value

judgements of these genre decisions have been debated for decades, with W arren’s

observation simply being that they encourage two very different forms of roleplay.

“While W-RPGs build avatars, J-RPGs examine them, as J-RPGs as a genre concern

themselves deeply with telling stories about social relationships, social cohesion, and

interactions between people and their larger communities. In a J-RPG, the player alone

does not save the world; instead, she and her friends save it together” (57). Whereas W-

RPGs applaud the journey of individual accomplishment, J-RPGs focus on complicating

and questioning this dynamic.

Warren argues that, while a W-RPG player may role-play the persona of a

character radically different from their own identity, they are rather encouraged by the

game to view their avatar as an extension of their own power, and of their own identity.

Conversely, J-RPGs offer a form of Lacanian disconnect, in which the avatar, “appearing

on-screen in place of the player... does double duty as Self and Other” (59). This,

according to Warren, is a more critical view and a better representation of the potential of

role-play. She cites examples of J-RPGs in which the nature of the player-avatar
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relationship itself called into question, through revelations of hidden information (i.e.

secret pasts and origin stories) which forces the avatar’s identity to become restructured

in the eyes of the player.

This distinction between W-RPGs and J-RPGs relates to the TRPG medium in

two important ways. First, it highlights the similarities between the DRPG adaptations of

TRPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, of which there have been several, and the socially-

focused approach of J-RPGs. For example, games like Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate

represent explicit adaptations of the D&D universe, tabletop rules and all, into the digital

domain. By all accounts, these adaptations are the predecessors to other W-RPGs— in

fact, most of the W-RPG genre draws inspiration from them in one form or another.

Certainly, from an aesthetic perspective, Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale fall firmly

within the W-RPG genre. However, both games offer the player control, not over an

individual, but a party of heroes, in an attempt to mimetically simulate the “adventuring

party” social dynamic of TRPGs. And both games, in one form or another, offer a

prefigured identity to step into, rather than a wholly user-constructed avatar, and

specifically complicate the nature of the player-avatar relationship with revelations and

discoveries that force an in-game restructuring of the avatar-persona. All of these

features, as Warren has shown, are distinctly representative of the J-RPG genre, and are

the same features which allow for analysis of avatars as a mechanic, rather than merely

reproducing said mechanic. This, I argue, is because the same features which J-RPGs use

to encourage meaningful, thoughtful, and critical role-playing in the digital realm are also

inherently built into the TRPG medium. The attempts which have been made to adapt

TRPGs into the DRPG space, Western or otherwise, have all necessarily incorporated
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these critical features, without which they would risk losing the essential element of

party-based role-playing by which TRPGs distinguish themselves from other games.

My second observation from W arren’s comparative research is that tabletop social

games, as she mentioned, have a much more “strict” element of role-play. This is at least

somewhat ironic, given that TRPGs as a medium offer a greater degree of flexibility in

general and a vastly heightened range of action compared to their DRPG counterparts—

as I have stated earlier, there is relatively little “strictness” about them when compared to

pre-coded digital games. Yet, I would argue that this is entirely unsurprising given how

many of the social strictures at the TRPG table— and in society in general— are enforced

by the mere presence of other “players” in close social proximity; a social proximity

which both Western and Japanese single-player DRPGs lack. TRPGs themselves

encourage and allow for a vast range of action, yet TRPG groups self-limit themselves to

actions that are acceptable to the entire group’s sensibilities of internal consistency,

fairness, and taste (to name only a few criteria).

As with W-RPGs, there is nothing inherently stopping a player from using a

TRPG character as an uncritical extension of their own identity; indeed, I would argue

that TRPGs formed the inspiration for this very impulse in the W-RPG genre, and in

many ways accomplish this goal more easily. However, the inherently social nature of

TRPGs means that the player’s character, whether viewed as Self or Other, will

necessarily interact as part of a unit of other individuals, individuals whose actions are

controlled by the other players. These fellow players will, as a natural part of their role-

playing, seek to decode, analyze, and enforce the Otherness of one’s player-character

relationship. An example of this process was already shown in Carnes’ Reacting classes,
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in the case of the student who insisted that her fellow classmates authentically role-play

their identities as Ming dynasty ministers, rather than as students playing a game. Within

TRPGs like D&D, statements from other players to the effect of “your character wouldn’t

do that,” “your character is too short,” or “your Strength score isn’t high enough,” are

common. These arguments could, in theory, be ignored, unlike the coded rules and

regulations of a computer program. Yet, in practice, it would be considered poor

sportsmanship to outright ignore such arguments without offering some kind of rebuttal,

and the Game M aster’s authority allows them, in extreme cases, to limit or explicitly

deny a player’s course of action as a means to enforce “good role-playing.” Verbally

negotiating the range of plausible actions left open to be attempted by good role-playing

changes the dynamic of a TRPG significantly. TRPGs accomplish much of the same

critical examination which takes place in J-RPGs of “social relationships, social

cohesion, and interactions between people and their larger communities,” not through

narrative or even through gameplay, but through the dynamics of group discussion and

social negotiation.

I believe that negotiating the inter-player social milieu of a TRPG is one of the

most valuable and complex forms of role-playing that any game, digital or otherwise, can

offer. What J-RPGs simulate, by tasking the player with extending their game-identity to

a multiplicity of avatars, and complicating and examining the nature of the player-

character connection and its inherent assumptions, TRPGs instead accomplish as verbal

negotiation. Yet this communication is rendered so potent in the TRPG context that it has

the potential to rewrite the fundamental rules of the game— it is simultaneously an act of

play, and an act of game design. There is nothing that cannot be attempted in a TRPG,
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simply by considering and talking about it. This, I believe, is the ideal of the empowered

student made manifest in a playful, engaging role, one that allows the player to

restructure their own position within the game at will.

Role-play is a pedagogical device that puts freedom of agency back into the hands

of the student in an unprecedented fashion. “The freedom of agency, more so than the

figure scale, underlies the immersive power of Dungeons & Dragons” claimed TRPG

historian Jon Peterson (500). As shown in Chapter 1, TRPGs allow for a wider range of

action, interpretation, and creativity that almost any game or game genre available,

including digitally-based games. They are in a perfect position to capitalize on maximum

creativity, the same force that inspires students in Reacting classes to tackle their

character’s issues as their own.

Creating Participatory Learning Contexts

Early game-studies researchers Huizinga and Murray noted the ability of games to

create “shared attentional scenes,” events and activities that consolidate the attention of

multiple community members onto a singular experience. They argue that such activities

could have served as practice for (and potentially sources of) socializing behavior and

early community-building among humans. Games, in short, are self-contained active

learning contexts; and, in that sense, may have served as the earliest human “classrooms.”

I will suggest, in this section, that games are uniquely suited for the creation of learning

environments, as long as their potential is not stymied by outside influences. Games have

the ability to serve as practice for, and emulations of, systems within our society, and in

so doing are able to criticize themselves and the systems they emulate. By embracing this
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potential, they can serve as a model for the classroom spaces we seek to create as

educators.

A ffinity Groups and A ffinity Spaces

Increasingly, researchers are seeing a connection between learning and the social

conditions in which it occurs. James Paul Gee, one of the foremost researchers of

gameplay, argues that the view of learning as a purely mental, isolated activity is

flawed— and that in fact, because all knowledge and language exists between people, it is

impossible to extricate the information being taught from the social context that teaches

and supports it. “Thinking and reasoning,” Gee says, “are inherently social.”

Gee claims that games are uniquely suited to integrate communities of learners

(players) with the content they are studying (the game), organizing these communities

into what he calls “affinity groups.” He argues that the current education system has a

tendency to group students into conventional social categories; whereas games naturally

sort players into groups which are bound by a common endeavor, rather than by race,

religion, background, or socioeconomic status. These “affinity groups”, Gee argues, are

the building blocks of good learning, rather than any particular method or pedagogical

approach.

For example, in their article “Nurturing Affinity Spaces and Game-Based

Learning,” Gee and Elizabeth Hayes highlight the Internet’s ability to assemble affinity

groups with minute precision, cultivating “affinity spaces” where these communities can

operate and thrive. Hayes provides the example of fan forums, digital spaces where

enthusiasts congregate, wherein their favorite games may be deconstructed and analyzed

by a wide group of individuals with varying levels of experience. Affinity groups and
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spaces, they argue, facilitate a problem-solving-based, collaborative, reciprocal, proactive

form of pedagogy. Leadership and control of the space is fluid, status and participation is

achievable in multiple ways, and the lines between creator and consumer are blurred—

indeed, members of the community frequently change roles, playing the student or the

master, leader or follower, depending upon the momentary circumstances they find

themselves in.

Within affinity groups, the content being shared is constantly transformed by the

interaction of the participants, rather than merely reproduced and handed down from the

“experts;” these spaces thus serve as both practical workshops and learning/teaching

environments. The content of the affinity space is refined and improved through this

process, even as the participants themselves are transformed into increasingly capable

and knowledgeable members—increasing, in turn, the net resources of the community as

a whole. The most impressive transformation, however, is the transformation of the

learning process into an exciting shared experience for the group members. Participants

dictate the terms of their own learning, and navigate the affinity group to utilize experts

and initiates alike in whatever way they deem necessary to complete their goal (137).

It is important to note that affinity groups do not just happen to occur around

games; games create affinity groups naturally over the course of play, whether or not

there is intention to create one. A game-based affinity group is likely to feature fans

gathering to discuss a game, alongside players entirely new to the game, often discussing

their experience even as they play. Indeed, analyzing, deconstructing, and communicating

about games is an essential part of playing them, and thus becomes essential to these

affinity groups and spaces, even as these groups and spaces serve as a valuable resource
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to the newly initiated player. Nicola Whitton, building off of Gee and Hayes, argues that

moving from gameplay into game design and construction— which, as I showed in

Chapter 1, emerges almost inevitably from play— encourages the further development of

affinity groups. She points out that “giving learners agency to design and build their own

games presents a paradigmatic shift from teacher (or game) as holder of knowledge to

facilitator of learning” (128).

Inclusion and E xclusion within A ffinity Spaces

Affinity groups and affinity spaces become extremely important within the

context of the question of who plays video games, and why. Until this point, I have

largely discussed the history and state of gaming in terms of its potential, without regard

to who is included and excluded from this domain. Despite a steady, albeit slow, increase

in the number of women playing video games, Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins note

that “there have been surprisingly limited shifts in the genres that dominate the game

marketplace... The game industry is still designing games primarily for men, with

females seen as— at best— a secondary market and more often as an afterthought” (13).

As a growing new media form, video games have nonetheless become entrenched within

the familiarity of their own successful tropes and formulae, leading to a strong resistance

toward opening the domain further, to the people who are actually playing these games

today. As games continue to be produced almost exclusively for a male playership, this

perpetuates the idea that gaming is an exclusively male domain. T. L. Taylor describes “a

devastating cycle of invisibility at work here, one in which game designers, companies,

and sometimes even players render an entire demographic as tangential” (113).

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While I argue that the history I have presented in Chapter 1 suggests a

progressive, even inevitable, movement toward a greater range of inclusion and options

in gaming, this view is itself problematic. While the inclusion of women into gaming may

be inevitable, a part of the same natural process that has guided gaming into domains

larger than those of warfare and strategic competition, this process can and is stymied by

the perceived exclusivity of the affinity groups that embody the social experience of

gaming. Affinity groups are the gateway by which enculturation occurs, yet, being

socially-communicated and transmitted, that same gateway can become a monolithic

barrier. Gee’s descriptions define an ideal affinity group— one that disregards individual

criteria beyond one’s interest and enthusiasm in the domain around which the group is

built. When such an affinity group, claiming openness and neutrality, in fact does restrict

membership along social, political, ethnic, or gendered lines, it prevents the effective

circulation of the literacies produced within. In other words, an affinity group can only

accomplish the creation of an ideal learning environment if it is an actual affinity group,

and not just a social club masquerading as one.

In her chapter on “Gender and Gaming in a First-Year Writing Class,” rhetoric

and disciplinary writing professor Rebekah Shultz Colby of the University of Denver

explains how a lack of familiarity with the literacies of different gaming genres forms a

major barrier for the inclusion of female gamers. She states that “females often have a

much more limited access to gaming literacies because they lack the same-gendered

friendship groups to support its use” (Colby 150), friendships which male gamers have

much less trouble finding and developing. Lack of a basic familiarity with gaming tropes

and norms, she argues, will prevent achievement of the “flow” state when the game is
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intended for a literacy level that only certain in-group gamers are given the opportunity to

achieve, by virtue of their access to particular affinity groups and spaces.

Thus, the notion of some individuals being more or less proficient with, or

inclined toward games has much more to do with what affinity groups said individuals

are given access to. Many gamers do not or cannot recognize the depth of the literacy

which they themselves have become accustomed to— exposure to even a single DRPG,

for example, allows a player to understand many of the assumptions present in other

games within that genre. Colby points out that both boys and girls at a young age display

the same interest in gaming, and only later in life do women suffer from exclusion from

this domain, largely due to the historically narrow range of content which strategic games

have covered. She argues that this simple lack of access explains a great majority of the

assumptions surrounding whether women enjoy games as much as men, and whether

women enjoy the same games that men enjoy (156).

This is just the beginning to the issues women in the gaming community face,

including an expectation to perform paradoxical roles of both traditional femininity and

masculinity. Within the gaming community, examples persist of both overt, intentional

efforts to restrict female access to gaming and game design, as well as more subtle

restrictions which promote the exclusivity of gaming as a literacy; the exact opposite of

the function an affinity group, and a negation of its pedagogical potential. For example,

Colby observed that women in her gaming-themed classes, regardless of their actual

proficiency with video games, were “grouped in the class, not by... gaming ability like

the other males,” but along gender lines (152). Unless such exclusivity is challenged, the
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affinity spaces of gamers will continue to fail to serve, and be served by, gaming as a

medium.

Authentic Participation

Affinity groups as pedagogical environments present unique models for the

classroom. In Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal highlights a number of games that

create authentic activities by blurring the line between reality and games. One such

example, Foldit, is a game wherein players participate in the advancement of the

biological sciences by altering and redesigning protein structures. Players are given a

sample protein molecule, and must attempt to discover new ways that the molecule might

be reorganized in the human body, potentially discovering new utilizations (which may

or may not already be present in the organism) for the protein in question.

By folding proteins into different shapes, and logging new potential structures

into a database, players get the authentic experience of scientific problem-solving, as well

as the knowledge that their work is contributing to the scientific community (through the

growing database of folded “designs,” which will actually be used by “real” researchers

to postulate yet-undiscovered protein shapes). In effect, the player base of Foldit has

immersed itself in an elite culture, a culture which previously would have required years

of study to begin making meaningful contributions on behalf of. Not only do participants

earn the confidence of having of participated within the scientific community, they

actually are contributing meaningfully to the work of their “fellow” scientists, while

simultaneously teaching themselves more about what those scientists actually do in their

day-to-day work (McGonigal 240).

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The theory of situated cognition suggests that “learning by doing” is a better route

to comprehensive understanding within a field than the attitude of “learn, then do” that

requires enculturation into a domain prior to participation within it. Understanding the

contexts of a body of knowledge requires an understanding of the social, cultural, and

physical background that would come with actually immersing oneself in the context of

that knowledge domain. Games, and TRPGs in particular, present the context of

knowledge, not as a privilege to be “earned,” but as an inviting space to be readily

explored. And they are producing positive results: games like Foldit are not only

advancing research by harnessing the power of hundreds of amateur scientists, they are

contributing toward training the next generation of experts as well.

This sort of active participatory learning is key to a TRPG. From the moment a

player sits down to play— even before they completely understand the rules— they are

invited to participate and act upon the contextual space of the game. TRPGs, like a

language, cannot be understood in their totality prior to participating, because no amount

of participation will ever give a perfect understanding of such an open-ended game.

Participation, and specifically the responses of other players to their input, teaches

students more about the contextual space they are operating within, the rules and

limitations of play, and the group's particular culture of participation. Thus, the

immersion required by a TRPG is uniquely suited to create moments of “enculturation”

like those described by Whitton (45).

The comparison to language-learning is particularly apt when discussing learning

context, because context is a primary method of language-acquisition. Languages, like

games, must be understood as a holistic totality: just as a game’s rules must be learned
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via their relationships to each other, so must every word and punctuation symbol be

explained by its relationship with other words and symbols. In Rules o f Play, the parallels

between languages and games are clearly laid out:

In language...we refer to structure as grammar. The grammatical rules of a

sentence create a structure that describes how words can and cannot be

sequenced. We might refer to these rules as invisible structure, as we are

not always aware that they are there. In games, this concept of grammar

takes the form of game rules, which create a structure for the game,

describing how all of the elements of the game interact with one another.

Structure (in language or games) operates much like context, and

participates in the meaning-making process. By ordering the elements of a

system in very particular ways, structure works to create meaning (Salen

and Zimmerman 45).

We see here than language-learning is inextricably tied to context; no word can ever

really be learned in isolation of the other words that make up a language. Likewise, a

game is a system in which each part informs the meaning and function of every other

part, and must be learned, accordingly, through the context of the whole.

In Half-Real, Jesper Juul noted that Ludwig Wittgenstein, the noteworthy

Austrian philosopher and language-scholar, “used the concept of games for building his

philosophy of language,” while structuralist scholars such as Claude Levi-Strauss and

Vladimir Propp noted the similarities between the formal structure of games and the

structure of narratives and folklore. Ferdinand de Saussure, linguist and pioneer of

semiology, found chess a to be effective metaphor for language, saying that “a state of
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the board in chess corresponds exactly to a state of the language. The value of the chess

pieces depends on their position upon the chessboard, just as in the language each term

has its value through its contrast with all other turns” (8). This reliance on interconnected

structure, a feature common to games, languages, and, I would argue, all learning, makes

language-learning through context an especially effective method. Games introduce and

reinforce this cognitive practice, which enables the student to continue the learning

process for themselves, both in and out of the classroom.

TRPGs and the Playground D ynam ic

Games in general are fluid in terms of what manner of learning material they

embody or represent. TRPGs in particular are perhaps best understood as “playgrounds”

where different systems can be analyzed and experimented with. While the game’s rules

(mechanics) and its presentation of various aesthetics, restrictions, effects, and

consequences within said rules (components) might embody skills like clue-gathering,

resource-management, and discovery, the playground metaphor embodies the core

essential dynamic of almost all TRPGs. It is this playground dynamic, I argue, which

encourages the learning attempt in the first place.

Juul points out that, within this playground dynamic, all other rules become

malleable, because the Game M aster’s presence indicates that a TRPG’s rules “are not

fixed beyond discussion” (43). This manner of malleability is truly unique to TRPGs and

their distant cousin, the early kriegspiel, because these games argue that the will of the

Game Master and the group should supercede that of the game designers. The very nature

of the game itself, as well as the skills necessary to complete the game, are up for

experimentation.
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As I showed earlier, players in a TRPG must adopt the role of an individual

whose success depends (often quite dramatically) on their ability to master, or at least

correctly prioritize and allocate, their character’s skills. A student playing a character

with medical skills might not learn how to properly set a bone, but may be judged within

the game according to their ability to know when and where to apply such skills

(choosing to help a severely injured ally rather than a moderately injured one, for

example). The game becomes a laboratory in which the efficacy of the very skills that the

instructor is attempting to teach are questioned and tested, and their value, or lack

thereof, is made apparent. By adopting these contexts, “the learner appreciates both the

immediate situation and the underlying content as having value in both the fictional and

real w orlds.. .learning in such dynamic environments becomes a way of seeing the world

or of being in the world,” rather than a list of rote factoids (Barab et al. 308). This makes

TRPGs uniquely suited for the kind of constructivist pedagogy promoted by the theory of

situated cognition.

The advantage granted by the modularity of TRPGs can be seen most clearly

here; as long as the playful dynamics of the TRPG are retained, mechanics and

components can be rebuilt and restructured to meet the needs of almost any classroom.

One of the most curious examples of this, the M odem Prometheus educational design

project, is a computer-based role-playing game intended to teach ethics and complex

moral decision-making (Barab et al. 307). The designers argued that if a game could

realistically convey its fictional context, then the same learning could take place within

the player that would occur as a result of difficult real-world decision-making. They

argue that “contextualization should involve more than seeing a concept or even a context
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of use; it requires a projective stance that involves being in the context and recognizing

the value of the tools in terms of the context” (323). TRPGs accomplish this “being in the

context” through cycles of prediction, observation, and refinement, cycles which are the

building blocks of situated cognition learning. In TRPGs, “prediction and (self)

explanation exist throughout game play, framed as internal responses to moments of

choice.” This is the sort of “peripheral learning” which promotes situated cognition.

The active participation required by TRPGs encourages negotiation, not just

between the player and the game, but between the player and the Game Master. As

shown in Chapter 1, the role of GM evolved out of a referee-like position in wargaming

history, the final arbiter of military expertise. The resurgence of kriegspiel-inspired

games like Strategos in the late 20th century returned the concept of the impartial referee

to the attention the gaming populace. While the referee-mechanic had fallen to the

wayside after the Industrial Revolution in favor of rulebook-based gameplay, designers

began to bring the role back with the logic that games utilizing such a referee “rejected

strict adherence to predetermined rules in favor of allowing wide latitude to both players

and referees in determining what tactics might be employed and how successful they

might be” (Peterson 58).

Moreover, in a TRPG, there is a built-in assumption that the player will attempt to

verbally explain and/or justify the effectiveness of their character’s methodology, both to

the GM, and the other players (not to mention, themselves). While the GM is typically

given the final word in these negotiations— a responsibility not unlike that of a teacher—

the result is often a productive discussion between GM or player, rather than an unilateral

decision. The player, being personally invested in the consequences of their character’s
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action, has a powerful intrinsic drive to learn the information and choices which resulted

in a particular outcome, outcomes which are founded upon the group’s collective

understanding of the elements in play. A Game Master caught in the position of not

knowing the answer to a question will quickly find the group’s collective knowledge

turned toward the task of solving it, together, in the manner which seems most internally

consistent within the “magic circle” of the game experience.

This manner of “disruptive negotiation” is valuable in the way it encourages a

critical analysis of the simulation being presented by the GM/teacher, and the authority of

the game in general, right down to its most fundamental rules. For example, it is

commonplace at a TRPG table for players to interject their criticisms naturally into the

flow of play—phrases like “Why do I only get get to shoot once?” “Why doesn’t the

monster try to attack them?” or “I shouldn’t need to roll for that” are all typical

expressions of disagreement which are generally welcome in the game as part of the

learning process, or simply to express an alternative point of view to that of the

hegemonic GM-authority or game designer. Likewise, the GM is expected to always at

least field such questions, offering (and often debating) their justifications, if not always

acquiescing to their implied demands.

Codification and TRPGs

This process of automatic and reflexive questioning of the GM-simulation of the

TRPG is reminiscent of Paulo Freire’s concept of “codifications,” the exploration of a

theme through the representation it takes on in media. Media is decoded as “individuals

split the codification to apprehend its implicit theme or themes” (Freire 121). The critical

self-consciousness described here, I have already noted, is an inherent aspect of gameplay

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and its tendency to transform game players into critically-thinking game designers. Yet it

is also inescapable that a TRPG session will contain the built-in implicit assumptions of

the game designers, the Game Master, and the players as a whole; as with any media

performance, these assumptions enter largely unnoticed. Codification in games is

especially problematic, because of their immersive nature; TRPGs in particular present a

simulation that purports to accurately represent the real world, or at least a real world.

Players are asked to not only observe, and potentially internalize, but to actually

participate within whatever assumptions the group has brought with them.

Francesco Crocco describes codification as an essential technique to be applied to

gameplay, because “when a game is used as the medium for codification, it is treated not

as a simulation of the real world, but as an artifact to be critically examined for the ways

that it reifies hegemonic ideology.” He argues that the new context offered by applying

codification allows an “alienation effect” which “enables students to question its reified

ideology and critically reexamine their conscious or unconscious adherence to this

ideology” (Crocco 30). He cites video games like The Sims, a virtual family-life

simulator, and the classic board games Life and Monopoly as ripe opportunities for

codification, each being examples of normative media representations of capitalism and

the American Dream.

Crocco’s use of Monopoly as a way to decode economic inequality is particularly

insightful here. The classic Milton-Bradley game, he argues, unconsciously and

unreflectively presents the assumption of the classless “level playing field,” reinforcing

the idea that in capitalism, everyone has a chance to win (Crocco 31). In his classes,

students played a “modded” version of Monopoly, in which they take on the roles of
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specific characters, which introduced a role-playing element to a game formerly known

for abstract, nonspecific roles. The background of these character was a descriptive

narrative, mechanically reflected by their initial starting funds. Whereas Monopoly grants

equal money to all players at the start of the game, students in Crocco’s class who were

assigned to play characters from upper-class backgrounds began the game with more

money than students playing lower-class and immigrant characters. The victory results,

predictably, skewed universally in the favor of the players starting at a steep economic

advantage.

Crocco found that students who emerged from these classes would engage with

questions of economic inequality differently after playing the modded game. Of

particular importance is the role that discussion played in this codification process: “the

questions and discussion after the game enabled students to synthesize their varied

experiences into a new consensus about social mobility: talent, education, and hard work

matter less than inherited wealth and privilege. As one student succinctly stated, ‘Once

you’re born rich, you [will] always be rich.’” Perhaps even more meaningful is the fact

that, after play, “81% of students were willing to change the rules of the game in order to

make opportunity more equal” (Crocco 35).

TRPGs, like all games and media, can be guilty of reinforcing their own value

systems, and in many cases do so unconsciously. Yet the genre of TRPGs is particularly

open to the exact kinds of codification that promote the criticism and dismantling of these

values. Moreover, they do so on the spot, in the moment, as a functional aspect of

gameplay. Crocco’s success at codification of the game Monopoly necessarily arose from

modifications to the core game— modding being the means by which the game can be
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flexibly reanalyzed and given a new perspective. Discussion of the distinctions and

implications of such modding is, in turn, a method of codification, applied to game

design itself.

TRPGs, with their focus on the players as game designers, both modify, and allow

for discussion of said modifications, in what I would argue is the most natural and

organic manner of any form of gaming currently available. Indeed, TRPGs incorporate

codification into their gameplay in such a way that the codification itself becomes

engaging and fun— asking questions like “why don’t I get that power?” or even accusing

the GM of unsportsmanlike favoritism or bias are often incorporated into the gameplay

session. This makes TRPGs a significant tool for the purposes of applying critical

thinking not only to their own coded values, but for teaching students how to apply the

principles of codification into a potentially infinite variety of contexts.

Em ergent Learning

When students are allowed to control the direction of a creative learning context

like a TRPG, it can be difficult to predict exactly what learning takes place. Salen and

Zimmerman explain that games account for, and utilize, the element of “emergence,” or

unexpected learning that emerges organically from interaction between the learning and

the learning process. While strictly-regimented curriculum requirements might suggest

that learning must follow clear guidelines and not “waste time” teaching things beyond

the curriculum, in reality, emergent learning is an essential part of all learning and

understanding processes. Emergence facilitates transfer, the retention of material into a

non-classroom context, as well as allowing the student to approach the subject according

to their own learning needs.

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Nicola Whitton's research emphasizes the importance of varied contexts to

facilitate emergent learning and transfer. She found that “as players experience more

contexts within games they are increasingly able to generalize what they have learned

from them,” and concluded that a learning game should offer a variety of learning

contexts, not just a single one (45). Emergent material is not disruptive or time-wasting,

but rather an essential part of teaching any curriculum effectively.

In games, Salen and Zimmerman argue that “emergence is a crucial facet of

understanding how the system of a game becomes meaningful for other players.. .in the

case of language, for example, we cannot describe every statement that might be uttered

in a language even though we might know all the words in that language along with the

rules of grammar that organize them” (158). A TRPG would allow for recognition of the

multiplicity of possibilities that can arise in a language, and in a lesson. TRPGs develop

within their players a cognitive practice of generating constant emergent learning, by

asking questions in order to further and deepen their knowledge of a given situation;

TRPG players, like detectives, learn to understand that it is impossible to know too much

about a scenario, and that the right question (i.e. “does the floor seem solid? What about

the ceiling? I look up, what do I see?”) might mean the difference between virtual life

and death. This practice of seeking out emergent learning opportunities is then quickly

adopted and shared by the game participants as a whole, resulting in a unique and

productive affinity space for learning.

Promotion of emergent learning may be the most valuable contribution TRPGs

can make toward a true breakthrough in classroom pedagogy. A typical TRPG session

represents an affinity space of players, united by a driving passion to role-play their

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chosen persona, toward the end goal of creating a consistent, meaningful context to play

out fun and educational experiences toward the end goal of creating an engaging

narrative. TRPG players regularly teach each other, pursue knowledge independently,

and question the feedback of the Game Master. Nothing is off-limits, and may be dragged

into the “magic circle” of the game for analysis. The emergence of unexpected learning is

an elusive goal to pursue in the classroom, yet it occurs with regularity in this mode of

gameplay.
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CHAPTER THREE: TRPGS AS COMPOSITION

I have thus far argued that the history of TRPGs, and the nature of their gameplay,

illustrates their tendency to encourage interaction, modularity, and community

participation. Whether it be chess variants made by individual players, or modern

networked game-design communities and affinity groups, gameplay displays a natural

tendency to extend beyond the limits of an individual game. It seems that games, like

languages, instill a desire within their players to take them apart, examine them, find out

how they work, and rebuild them in interesting new ways. In short, both games and

languages share the trait that they are “made to be played.” The modularity of games—

the ease with which they may be disassembled into their core mechanics and rearranged

according to a new design philosophy—not only makes them powerful tools in the

classroom, but also incredibly practical and productive ones.

In this chapter, I will argue that the current needs of the First-Year Composition

(FYC) classroom benefit from games, and game design, being considered as a legitimate

form of writing. Games are comparable to other new media forms, especially in the way

they end up serving as the actual, real-world application for the lessons which are taught

in composition classes. Both teaching composition and playing games are activities in

which the crafting of experiences is the gateway to learning, rather than merely the

presentation of information. While there is a concern that the writing departments of

academia are already responding to a vast array of urgent issues associated with new

media and gaming-as-composition, I would argue that such efforts can in fact be made

easier, and more effective in their support, by the inclusion of TRPG-like activity.
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Gaming as New Media

Moving away from normative, traditional forms of writing structure into forms

which engage students in meaningful ways is a goal that is not unique to game-based

learning. Much of the modern scholarship being done in the field of composition is

concerned with the rising tide of digital media and the impact it has on the composition

course, in terms of how it affects student writing both in and out of the classroom. For

example, the prevalence of social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, among

a growing number of learning writers has vast implications for the compositional habits

of many of the students entering into higher education. This holds especially true with

regards to the transitional space that is the FYC classroom.

Social M edia and Gaming

Social media is a complex new media form that has been difficult to easily or

effectively incorporate into the composition course. In his chapter “The Game of

Facebook and the End(s) of Writing Pedagogy,” John Alberti, an English and new media

specialist at Northern Kentucky University, deconstructs the role that Facebook currently

plays in the composition classroom, which is typically one of dismissal and/or frustration

at the effect it has upon academic writing. Moreover, he suggests the role that it could

play, if social media is allowed to meaningfully interact with the lessons and learning

which take place in the composition course.

Alberti argues that both social media and gaming are categories of writing that

traditionally fall somewhere between “the serious ‘work’ of the official writing

curriculum versus the ‘play’ of the trivial digital writing spaces” (9). It is not difficult to
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see why the writing which takes place on Facebook is rarely regarded as equal to that

which takes place in the composition classroom, and some of these concerns stem from

legitimate questions of ownership and commodification— Facebook and Twitter being

“profit-driven corporation[s] within the consumer entertainment industry” (34). Other

concerns, however, are founded on rejections of the place of social-media-based writing

alongside more traditional writing, and on its presumed triviality. Alberti argues that both

social media and games represent a form of “playful” writing that the composition

classroom should embrace rather than denounce.

Alberti’s argument for the incorporation of Facebook into the composition course

is founded on many of the same principles that advocate for games in the classroom: the

supremacy of engagement and student-driven interaction over the “banking model” of

education. He argues that conventional writing forms like the five-paragraph essay are

held as more valuable than the actual writing which students participate within in their

day-to-day life, and that such valuations are counterproductive to student learning.

Alberti notes ways in which transfer can occur from the classroom into the

Facebook compositional space, and back into the classroom again; methods which are

hindered by the continued enforcement of strong distinctions between these two spaces.

Indeed, Ohio University Professor of English and digital literacies expert Ryan P.

Shepherd, in his article “Composing Facebook: Digital Literacy and Incoming Writing

Transfer in First-Year Composition,” argues that the main issue in the transfer of learning

from Facebook writing to the classroom (and vice versa) is the challenge of getting the

students to recognize it— or, rather, allowing them to view it— as legitimate writing. The

perceived “inauthenticity” of digital writing and its secondary place, he argues, leads to a
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vicious cycle in which writing within and outside of the classroom are prevented from

informing each other and transferring learning across contexts.

In many ways, Alberti argues, it is more productive to view the social media

practices of students as the actual real-world application of courses like First Year

Composition. The activities of the composition classroom, rather than preparing students

for a lifetime of academically-styled writing, should be viewed as the practice and

preparation towards a more meaningful type of digital writing, rather than discarding the

new, social forms of digital writing as aberrant or unproductive. Likewise, the social

composition that takes place within games both informs writing within the classroom,

and can be the productive, meaningful domain within which the classroom is preparing

the student to engage.

The parallels between the compositional practices of gaming and those of social

media are more apparent and easily understood when one views the Facebook platform,

as Alberti does, as its own kind of game. With its own equivalent value-systems

providing “points” and “leaderboards,” and, more importantly, a high degree of game­

like dynamics present in the social media platform, “the question of whether Facebook is

a game or not,” he argues, “seems more a matter of interpretive ingenuity than scientific

certainty.” While Facebook and other social media platforms being viewed as games is an

interesting perspective, involving a more lengthy debate, these social media spaces do

seem to contain elements of playful activity (10). The perceived playfulness of both

social media and game-based composition, I argue, has been a primary factor hindering

both forms from being incorporated into the composition classroom— despite playfulness

being, as I have noted in Chapter 2, a boon to their pedagogical effectiveness.

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Alberti states that “rather than a goal-directed game in the sense of working to

achieve a predefined objective, Facebook represents a social-directed game whose goals

are not singular but multiple, not linear but holistic; the sustaining of a viable, functioning

discursive community.” He draws a comparison between this kind of social media play

and community-building social video games The Sims, Farmville, and Ink. These games,

much like Second Life, World o f Warcraft, and other MMORPGs, organize groups of

players into communally-driven, socially-motivated activity (28). Yet, while these large-

scale MMORPG video games reach out to and unite an unprecedentedly vast community

into a cohesive digital space, I would argue that TRPGs promote a more direct and

personal kind of community, rather than anonymous interactions.

Alberti cites the work of Rita Smilkstein, a cognitive educational specialist who

explains the biological implications of the constructivist approach to compositional

pedagogy. Smilkstein argues that learning-by-doing is an essential aspect of

compositional studies, because of the manner in which “dendrites, synapses, and neural

networks grow only from what is already there... [and] grow for what is actively,

personally, and specifically experienced and practiced” (71). This advocates for the

effectiveness of simulation in general; and, furthermore, Alberti argues that because these

“experienced and practiced” actions do not distinguish between serious work and play,

the writing that takes place over social media is just as viable as a pedagogical

opportunity as an official in-class assignment (10).

The community-driven aspect of social media makes it a particularly valuable

opportunity. Class assignments are written, at best, in anticipation of feedback from the

class; at worst, they are written with the professor being the solitary audience. Digital
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social media, on the other hand, is open to the public, giving it the twin advantages of

being accessible to the viewing and feedback of a much wider audience, while this same

accessibility augments the sense of personal value and investment in the writer,

investment which professors often struggle to help students to bring into the composition

classroom. Alberti argues that “The ‘personal’ issues raised by a student friend request

are not outside the pedagogical frame of a writing class but central to it, as they speak to

questions of audience and the ethics of the rhetorical situation” (34). Again, the value of

this writing is primarily evident if the students are supported in making the transfer from

the social media platform into the learning space, and in recognizing the educational

potential inherent to both.

Gam es as M ultim odal Com positional Forms

While social media is one example of “playful” new media that is already being

brought into the composition classroom, games themselves are an inherently multimodal

form that many composition experts are welcoming as part of the new media revolution.

Digital video games in particular, as a medium that has only recently become firmly

entrenched in the mainstream lives of students and teachers alike, are now being

considered as new media options in the classroom. While I primarily have discussed

games as pedagogical tools up until this point, it is difficult to deny that, as Debra

Journet, a narrative and compositional expert at the University of Louisville, insists,

“games are not just another way to teach academic writing; they are a legitimate form of

academic writing” (Journet 238). Increasingly, as digital games are considered a part of

the totality of narrative form and composition, they are becoming objects of academic

attention.
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The acceptance of games as “legitimate forms of academic writing” is far from

universal. In their article “Ludic Snags,” Matthew Johnson and Richard Colby, scholars

on the rhetorical theories of gaming, present demonstrable evidence that strong resistance

to video games in the composition classroom is still the norm, and further, note that

“when asked to what extent a particular type of text is useful to analyze in the classroom,

participants ranked video games last— dead last” (111). Thus, it can be seen that, while

other forms of new media have been slowly reaching acceptance within the field of

composition, video games in particular have lagged behind.

I would not argue that this exclusion is entirely unwarranted. While there may be

an unfair stigma against video games as objects of study in the composition classroom, I

would agree that most resistance against the medium emerges from a lack of familiarity.

While most composition instructors will have at least some familiarity with film and

other forms of more established non-gaming digital media, the popularity of video games

and their consideration as new media is recent enough that unfamiliarity is a real concern.

It is quite understandably difficult to ask a composition instructor to include a medium in

the classroom that they themselves may be unable to confidently speak toward or even

utilize correctly. Because “unfamiliarity with games introduces particular difficulties

when trying to teach them” (Johnson and Colby 117), games are not ideally suited for

every composition class, or every composition teacher— and, certainly, they are not

perfectly suited for the needs of every composition student, something which Johnson

and Colby are skeptical that any pedagogical strategy can accomplish. While TRPGs, I

argue, by being founded on social system of communication rather than technological

systems, avoid a large degree of this knowledge gaps, they can easily be just as
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intimidating to the unfamiliar educator. For this reason, prioritizing games as an

inherently more valuable media form is a problematic approach.

The use of digital video game technology in the composition classroom is also,

itself, problematic when considering the educational norms that are perpetuated by such

an approach. Technology can be the catalyst for new ways of learning— indeed, I have

argued that all forms of gaming represents such a technology—however, it can also

further entrench normative, traditional pedagogy more efficiently, when utilized in an

uncritical way. Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, both compositional scholars and

recipients of the Outstanding Technology Innovator award by the CCCC Committee on

Computers, argue that “in many English composition classes, computer use simply

reinforces those traditional notions of education that permeate our culture at its most

basic level: teachers talk, students listen; teachers’ contributions are privileged; students

respond in predictable, teacher-pleasing ways” (55). Technology, whether it be the

technology of computers and digital video games, or the more fundamental technology of

games and play, will only benefit the goals of the composition classroom if it is applied

in a thoughtful and critical way. Further entrenchment of traditional composition-class

writing through technology risks alienating students all the more efficiently.

While proficiency, if not expertise, with games and game design are a practical

requirement for a composition teacher wishing to apply game-based pedagogy critically

and effectively in their classroom, there are many ways that this can manifest in practice.

Games offer options that other new media forms do not when asking students to apply

critical theories to them. Teachers offering games as objects of study can apply the

traditional analytical methods of literary criticism and composition, as well as criticize

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games based on “genres, layers of interactivity, different styles of gameplay, player and

player-character identities (and role-playing makes this even more complicated),

procedurality, the rules of gameplay, gaming culture, gaming terminology, gaming

history, the gaming industry, theories of design, and so on.” (Johnson and Colby 117).

I would argue that, as a highly interactive medium, the sheer variety of relevant

analytical lenses sets games apart from other new media forms. And while games do risk

reproducing existing traditional means of analysis, the impulse players experience to

break games down and to not just play them, but play with them, to become game

designers as part of the play process, makes them particularly useful tools for teaching

the value of critical analysis itself. Games, according to designer Ian Bogost, “can inspire

a different kind of deliberation than we find in other forms of media, one that considers

the uncertainty of complex systems instead of embracing simple answers” (169).

Gameplay and Rhetorical Ethos

When considering the relationship between games and composition, a concern

raised by educators is whether gameplay itself should be considered as a form of

composition. The question of whether playing through even the most interactive video

game represents a mode of composition is problematized by the assumption that

gameplay is a passive experience, rather than one of active construction. While in my

previous chapters, I described the active and interactive nature of games, here I would

suggest that a close look at the composition writing class itself reveals that it is already—

like most classrooms— a sort of game, or at the very least, highly suggestive of one.
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For example, Alberti, in describing the game-like nature of Facebook writing,

presents the traditional essay format within a similar context:

In many ways, the composition essay already meets the criteria of many

conventional definitions of a game: it exists apart from real-world

practice; it functions as a meaningful objective only in the context of the

classroom assignment; it has little or no transactional purpose other than

marking a player’s progress through the game/class. Viewed in this way,

we can say that the writing class is already a game; it’s just not necessarily

a fun one (37).

While the notion of the writing class as a “not-fun game”— that is to say, an

ineffective one— might be generalizing and unfair, it does highlight the

weaknesses that emerge when we consider classroom models that lack the

engagement we seek as educators. Indeed, many of the recent strides in the field

of composition have involved the reinterpreting of the writing class through the

lense of a game which needs to be more fun.

Facilitating Play Experiences

Justin Hodgson, a member of the Rhetoric and Writing department faculty at the

University of Texas, argues that courses, like games, need to be crafted around “play

experiences” rather than merely rules, content, and function (67). This focus on

experiences is a fundamental departure from educational structures like the “banking

model” of education. Enabling such play experiences requires a teacher as a facilitator

and enabler of play, a creator of specific kinds of events rather than of knowledge itself.

The professor, in this context, takes on an increasingly Game-Master-like role.

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While Alberti does not make the leap into the TRPG genre, he recognizes, as I

have highlighted earlier, the inherent value in the teacher-as-facilitator role which the

inclusion and acceptance of both social-media-based and game-based composition in the

classroom encourages. “In terms of mainstream pedagogical practice, incremental trends

in this direction seek to transform the role of instructor from arbiter of correctness to

expert facilitator, a coach rather than a referee. Keeping with this (gaming) metaphor, the

problem has always been to identify a (writing) game to coach in which students already

have a meaningful personal investment” (35).

The contrast between a “coach” and a “referee,” I think, is the most appropriate

analogy to describe the transition from the teacher as hierarchical top of the “banking

model” pyramid or expert (in gaming terms, the umpire-role of the more traditional

kriegspiel wargames), into modern understandings of the teacher-as-facilitator—like role

of the Game Master in TRPGs, an educator who is “playing with” rather than “playing

apart” from their students. When both teacher and student become immersed in the same

gameplay, and play alongside each other, there is suddenly new potential for learning to

flourish outside of a hierarchical model.

Constructing D iscursive Identities

One example of what gameplay offers to composition courses pertains to the

creation of a “discursive identity” or writing voice. Alberti argues for the connection

between such identity-construction and the TRPG concept of role-play. In Chapter 2 , 1

demonstrated how the Reacting to the Past classes described by Mark Carnes instilled a

sense of discursive identity within his history students, a goal which is at least as valuable

in the composition classroom as it is in the History classroom (11). Benjamin Miller, an

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Instructional Technology Fellow at the Macaulay Honors CUNY College, reframes not

only the composition course, but the act of discourse itself, as a “game played with

language.” This metaphor, he says, “prompts us to look not only for the game’s players

and rules, but also for the game’s genre, and its consequences” (121).

Miller compares discourse to a role-playing game, demonstrating how the

construction of a discursive identity necessarily involves playing with, not one, but

several possible personas, each a role to be tried on and discarded, much like an RPG

player might create, adopt, and then later discard a character. Miller argues that such

reconceptualizing of discourse could be used to disrupt common student notions, such as

the linear progression of a writing piece from concept to finished project. He cites the

“exploratory” notion inherent to all variety RPGs as a useful model for the writing

process, and one which could be utilized to the benefit of students entrenched within

“misleading assumptions” that lead to frustration and writer’s block.

Miller claims that writing can be understood “as a complex process of

exploration, discovery, and problem solving” (123), much like an intricate dungeon-

delve. While dungeons are often associated with TRPGs, and, indeed, first made their

appearance as exploratory spaces within such games as D&D, Miller uses the classic,

well-known DRPG The Legend ofZelda as his primary example. He offers a convincing

array of similarities between the dungeon-exploration strategies of the RPG genre and the

techniques of writing composition process, including:

- W riter’s Block: Analogous to hitting a dead end or barrier, writer’s block is often

viewed as an impediment to good writing. Veteran RPG players are familiar with

the notion of leaving such impassible dungeon locations, with the intention of
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revisiting and overcoming them at a later time. Likewise, writers can

reconceptualize writer’s block as a fundamentally necessary step in the writing

process, something that marks progress rather than a lack of progress; a sign of

incremental success, rather than a genuine impediment or failure.

A cquisition o f Tools/K nowledge: Dungeon explorers become familiar with the

“environmental signals” that denote a trap, secret passage, puzzles, key-lock

relationships, etc.; knowledge and tools that come with experience and observant

gameplay. A writer grows familiar with the “road signs” of the writing process,

and this experience fundamentally changes the way they will proceed through the

writing process. Learning to recognize the “environmental signals” of writing is

part of the process of “leveling up” as a writer.

M anagem ent o f Inventory: In additional to environmental features, the

collection of treasure, weapons, and other useful items is a crucial element of

RPG strategy. A writer makes use of resources acquired over the course of the

writing process, and learning when to use what you have saved is a valuable skill.

Precise construction and use of an inventory as a set of tools is analogous to the

writer’s research process and their use of a bibliography.

The D ungeon is N ot the Game: Dungeons come and go; they can be retreated

from, returned to, and abandoned entirely in some cases while still pursuing and

completing the game’s objectives. Likewise, no single writing project completely

defines a the totality of writer’s identity, and walking away at the right time is

sometimes the best choice.

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As the centerpiece of his analogy, Miller focuses on writer’s block as a common

challenge to new writers— yet, in dungeon exploration, a block is something to be

interacted with. He argues that the fallacy of linear progression as a hallmark of writing

expertise— the notion that writing gets easier, or more straightforward— is highly

destructive to the student’s writer’s impulse, progression, and sense of authority.

Dungeons in The Legend ofZelda, he points out, get more intricate and complex, not less,

as the player grows more powerful and gains experience, as will the writing pieces which

students attempt to participate within as their expertise grows. Miller concludes by

demonstrating that the identity-models of composition which writers internalize, such as

this model of the writer-as-dungeon-explorer, have a significant impact upon “their

success and satisfaction during composing and revising” (Miller 128).

These views of gameplay as a means to construct identity, or as an analogy to,

and practice within, the writing process, all suggest a particular approach for the use of

gameplay as composition, the idea of “writing through games.” Richard Colby and

Rebekah Shultz Colby of the University of Denver Writing Program present this idea in

their article “A Pedagogy of Play: Integrating Computer Games into the Writing

Classroom.” They describe how DRPGs, specifically referring once again to the popular

MMORPG World o f Warcraft, can be used to accomplish compositional goals by their

use as an avenue to write through gameplay, rather than writing “within” games.

Playful Identities

Lee Sherlock, a scholar in rhetoric and writing at Michigan State University,

presents one example of how the pedagogical technology of games can force players to

“consider the uncertainty of complex systems” when constructing a discursive identity.

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Sherlock cites his observations of the popular MMORPG World ofW arcraft, and the way

that identity is constructed within such digital gaming spaces. As a largely anonymous

community, gender occupies a complex place within WoW, wherein it is simultaneously

inconsequential, and also highly masculine-normative. Within these conditions, the

performance of identity within the WoW digital space, particularly of LGBTQ identity,

has the potential to find new means of expression, as well as new means to redefine the

WoW space itself.

Many of the spaces in which anonymous digital play occurs can be far from

welcoming environments. World ofW arcraft is no exception to this, and Sherlock

demonstrates exactly how frustrating such an environment can be; in a digital

environment where identity is constructed in such a revolutionary matter,

heteronormative expectations and oppression can, in many cases, become even more

deeply entrenched. Yet, at the same time, these game-based affinity spaces are largely

defined by their membership, as opposed to external cultural impulses. This make them

particularly susceptible to the influence of their membership, who often can and do

redefine the space toward their own needs. In other words, these affinity spaces are

highly malleable, and rapidly evolve to the needs of their membership, rather than

tending toward entrenchment in cultural artifacts the way many institutions do.

According to Sherlock, the WoW community is a site where “players, community

managers, and developers are in constant rhetorical negotiation over the content and

expectations of their gaming experience” (190). This rhetorical negotiation never ceases,

because such negotiation is the only means by which the affinity group can define itself

and its borders at all. A restructuring of such definitions and borders, therefore, will tend
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to occur organically within these spaces, as the membership changes and grows. The

growth and change of such communities shows how game environments like WoW

enable rhetorical acts which “influence and shape, not merely respond to, the production

and maintenance of popular cultural artifacts,” such as the construction of LGBTQ

identity (191).

The advantage presented by video games lies in how play-based affinity groups

tend to be playful with their expectations and assumptions, regarding identity in

particular. Role-play, for example, is one such playing with identity; Sherlock indicates

that, in fact, role-playing can be a meaningful method of identity construction, both

within and without the game space. “The activity defined as “role-playing”— although

often assumed to be “centered” as in-game interaction— is fluid, moving through various

genres and spaces, and these interactions add up to a complex, intertextual, multimodal

picture” (197). Thus the norm, in these affinity groups, is for identity to be a flexible and

fluid aspect of a community member, something that shifts and changes between

different games and different modes of play. A player will adopt different personalities,

behavior, and discursive styles in response to different games, and various players will

react to different games in different ways. Identity is not something that defines a

community member’s participation, but is, in fact, part of what a community member

plays with over the course of the gameplay experience.

Through such multimodal play, Sherlock believes that “we can examine the

tactics by which players, viewers, and readers can “reread” experiences in their lives—

their experiences with favorite games, movies, comics, TV shows— that they take

pleasure in but find frustrating, incomplete, or problematic in some respect and want to
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speak back to” (201). Games, in particular, encourage this kind of provisional identity

creation. Games are uniquely equipped to facilitate such “rereading” of experiences,

while the affinity groups which surround these gaming experiences grant an audience and

means to vocalize such “speaking back.” In this sense, games present an opportunity to

reconceptualize the way a writer’s discursive identity is constructed, not as an

unchanging constant, but as a tool which is used differently in different rhetorical

contexts.

W riting “through” Games

Sherlock highlights how the issue of gameplay as composition, or writing

“within” games, is difficult to justify on the grounds that very few modern video games

utilize text-based input. TRPGs are a notable exception to this truism, with the player’s

character sheet, and the Game-Master’s written notes, representing a fluid written text

that changes in response to gameplay. Most digital games have significantly less writing

involved in their process, and while the verbal and nonverbal communication occurring

within such games certainly represents a form of discourse and composition— again, an

area where TRPGs provide a deeper level of engagement— the most productive forms of

writing as gameplay seem to have emerged from the composition which surrounds such

games, rather than the composition which takes place within them.

Gaming communities and affinity groups, like the WoW community, do seem to

often surround themselves with their own compositional traditions. Richard Colby and

Rebekah Shultz Colby found that the work produced by students within their WoW-based

composition courses emerged from a context of necessity. Students would play, and in

the course of playing, discover an issue within the game that could not be resolved,
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requiring them to turn to composition. Writing in this capacity, as a response to extant

issues, is therefore placed in its proper context, as opposed to abstracted or written “for

the grade” (310). For example, a pair of students who were dissatisfied with the

restrictions inherent to the game’s chat functions conceptualized a social-media-like

addition to the game, which they first designed, and then wrote a proposal for, before

finally they were able to pitch the idea to Blizzard, the company that made and supports

World ofW arcraft. The experience of playing WoW was the prompt that facilitated

emergent learning, learning which helped students to realize the value of, and develop,

new ways of communication within the game, the community, and their own class, and

learn how to criticize the insufficiencies of the status quo of the current means of game

communication (Colby and Colby 309).

Writing through the issues and context provided by video games like WoW

obliges students to deal with genre constraints and affordances in the rhetorical situation,

gaining flexibility (Colby and Colby 308). This encourages a view of participation as

criticism, and of composition as a way to “speak back” into a domain with which one is

not necessarily fully familiar. Students would play the game, and conceptualize ways to

speak back to their in-game experiences through composition, such as through the

construction of strategy guides for instructing other players, a practice which offers “a

quantitative research approach along with some textual research to provide evidence for

this research gap” (Colby and Colby 309).

Justin Hodgson describes this kind of writing through games as promoting

transmedial composition, wherein games can serve as the driving force for a variety of

digital and non-digital composition forms. Games like WoW present a variety of options
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for transmedial composition, according to Hodgson, including “interactive images,”

“introductory character videos,” “collaborative machinima projects,” (“machinima” being

the art of creating film-like video productions using in-game graphic captures) “short, in-

class presentations on current trends in gaming,” “detailed character backgrounds,” and

“learning quests for other players” (71). Reflective essays, a common staple of the

composition classroom, can be especially effective in these contexts, as a means to bridge

the gap of understanding (Colby and Colby 310). This kind of composition also allows

for students to be introduced to non-traditional qualitative and quantitative research

surrounding the game, and to proposal-writing, as each concept for a productive class

project would need to be vetted for its efficacy (Colby and Colby 308).

Sherlock argues that “writing through video games might involve using game

engines as a vehicle for multimodal writing as illustrated by fan productions like

machinima” (190). Essentially, video games provide an engaging entrance into a variety

of other media, and in fact may necessitate such a multimodal approach. Discovering new

ways to innovatively write through games becomes part of the compositional process;

and the multimodal composition which games encourage serves the students well, in a

culture of ever-increasing emphasis upon digital platforms for composition.

Hodgson states that his WoW-based classroom was partly inspired by Gregory L.

Ulmer’s practice of ‘“ writing the paradigm,’ in which the methodology for

inventing/describing the paradigm mirrors the very paradigm being invented/described”

(64). For example, he argues, a course studying the rhetoric of gaming benefits from

presenting its material in the same way games present their own rhetoric. Thus, Hodgson

based his entire class on the foundations of the MMORPG, rather than just incorporating
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elements of it into a traditional classroom model. The result was that the course, indeed,

incorporated elements from the game, including collaboration, teamwork, competition,

and other dynamics of the MMORPG genre.

Use of World ofW arcraft in the classroom, for Hodgson, promoted a high degree

of collaborative learning between students. Previously, his courses needed to be designed

specifically to reinforce “collaborative methods, cooperative learning, and the benefits of

peer-to-peer interaction” that would likely not have occurred without his authoritative

intervention as teacher. In this new gameplay-based classroom, he notes “the overtly

collaborative element of WoW also had a major impact on the course design. Much of the

WoW gameplay cannot be achieved/experienced alone” (74). He demonstrates that the

game itself was the catalyst for a level of collaboration which became the “driving force”

of the class, to the point where he would observe that his lectures had been “taken over”

by peer-to-peer learning interventions, many of which were proceeding faster than his

own instruction could keep up with.

Writing through video games such as WoW also engages the question of audience

in a new and empowering way. The concept of delivery, how writing meets and interacts '

with its audience (intended or otherwise), is immediately highlighted by the feedback of a

vast MMORPG audience. Students in the classes of Richard and Rebekah Shultz Colby

presented their writing on game community forums, where their work was assessed not

merely as compositional writing, but as meaningful contributions to the body of writing

surrounding the game and its play. These professors argue that “students will be more

able to see how their writing circulates not through one culturally homogenous audience
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or even one distinct audience, but how their writing circulates through many divergent

audiences simultaneously” (Colby and Colby 310).

As Lee Sherlock’s research into online gaming communities shows, forums and

other anonymous digital communication media should be viewed critically for the

assumptions and expectations they perpetuate. At the same time, they offer up the power

to have their own communities constructed and altered by anyone who participates within

their cultural space. This makes them useful for both testing delivery of writing, and for

critically thinking about delivery itself. Larry Beason, Director of Composition at the

University of South Alabama, and an expert on rhetorical practices within online

communication, finds that gaming forums are an environment “with (1) nonstandard

language and (2) candid responses to such language” (205). Thus, as Sherlock noted,

online forums can become a place where language and discursive identity can be played

with, an arena for low-stakes writing that is nonetheless authentic to the context of the

writing which is being contributed, both in terms of the writing itself, and the feedback

the writer receives.

Beason observes that online gaming-based communities can become spaces that

foster “online discussions in which language choices serve as a bonding strategy, as well

as a way to show one’s individuality within a community— creating a rhetorical

environment in which members readily and frankly criticize and defend these linguistic

choices” (206). The feedback received in such an environment is detached from the

learning goals of the classroom, but extremely relevant to the domain of the game-

culture, and gives the experience of speaking into and defending one’s choices within

specific domain with which the student may or may not have experience. Beason points
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out that the nature of the active online discussions and forum responses he observed in

his courses reflected many of the textual-generation goals set out by the NCTE document

Standards fo r the English Language Arts. He notes that “some responses involve

applying knowledge of not only ‘language conventions’ but also of how genre might

affect a person’s language. Forum members also use their understanding of grammar as

they ‘create’ texts (posts) that ‘critique’ and ‘discuss’ texts of other writers” (221). Such

feedback gives the experience of delivery, into a much wider audience than that of almost

any composition classroom, which typically consists of the class of students as a whole,

or else, more commonly, the professor alone.

Game Design as Composition

W riting through games and gameplay is one option for bringing a greater degree

of play into the composition classroom. Another practice, which draws from the

discussion of game design as a crucial and productive element of all gameplay (as I

discussed in Chapter 1), suggests that game design itself could be incorporated into the

classroom. As a form of composition, game design has perhaps more to offer than

gameplay itself, but faces its own set of difficulties.

Game design is a unique form of discourse which, along with coding and other

digital media forms, is quickly increasing in importance and value as a discursive

method. Composition departments should be understandably hesitant to take on the

burden of some vast new field, such as computer science instruction, amidst their

already-large field of responsibility within the academic world. Yet master of game

design (in the virtual or analog world) need not be a prerequisite to implementing such
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methodology in the classroom. Danielle LaVaque-Manty, a lecturer at the Sweetland

Center for Writing at the University of Michigan and teacher of developmental writing

and new media writing, suggests that it can be “valuable to teach students to create their

own video games, and that instructors need not have programming skills in order to do

so” (135). This is partly due to the lack of technology actually necessary to bring game

design lessons into the classroom, and partly due to the lack of first-hand experience

necessary to utilize game design as a form of compositional pedagogy.

LaVaque-Manty’s argument stems from a holistic view of the emergence of new

media as a relevant topic within the composition course. She states that as the varieties of

new media continue to multiply, mastering each of these new forms, or even simply

keeping up with them, will become a full-time job in itself. She argues that, for educators

to make headway discussing the ideas of rhetoric and critical thinking within these new

media forms, the idea of requiring master over them must be discarded. The mentality

that this is even necessary, she argues, is a way to perpetuate and maintain the

instructor’s “position of expertise,” taking us back to the teacher-as-facilitator which all

play-like education seems to encourage. Applying theories of rhetoric to new media as it

emerges, on the other hand, is a productive and valuable endeavor. The ideal instructor in

any new media classroom, including that of game design, she insists, is one who can

understand and teach the analysis of rhetoric, rather than possess a thorough command

over every conceivable media form.

LaVaque-Manty states that “one pedagogical purpose of teaching students to

analyze and create games is to enable them to apply new understandings of procedural

rhetoric in other contexts. For example, students can be encouraged to analyze real-world
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processes from a rhetorical perspective (interpreting, for example, what their university’s

registration procedures tell them about their role in that institution) and design them with

rhetorical intent (e.g., choosing among different sets of hiring practices to convey a

carefully crafted organizational ethos to potential employees)” (136). In the case of the

above examples, the benefit emerges not from a mastery over registration procedures and

hiring practices, but over the rhetorical intent inherent to both forms of composition.

Likewise, teaching game design becomes a way to instill an understanding of how to

“play” with rhetoric, rather than merely constructing games, or any other media, as

rhetorical devices.

D esign-based Com positional A ffinity Spaces

Just as in the case with online affinity groups that formulate around various

modes of gameplay and individual games, there are online communities which gather

around different methods and programs of game design, providing the opportunity to

write through game design just as they allow players to write through gameplay. These

communities, like the ones discussed thus far, generate their own bodies of composition,

and their own accompanying standards and guidelines. Trevor Owens, digital archivist at

the Library of Congress and researcher of digital and technological history, documented

his observations of such a community, centered around the program RPG Maker VX, a

palette for the creation and coding of DRPG video game prototypes. This community,

operating out of the online forum RPGmakerVX.net, demonstrates how such a game

design affinity space enables compositional work in a similar manner to the online

communities described by Lee Sherlock and Larry Beason.

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Owens notes the development of fairly strict standards and regulations which

participants are required to follow in order to participate within the space of

RPGmakerVX.net. He demonstrates that these rules emerged from the immediate needs

of the community, rather than from an abstract sense of traditional academic or

“universal” standards. The rules were also collaboratively generated, out of the feedback

generated by thousands of replies to hundreds of game-prototypes. This indicates a

unique discourse within the community, and a set of unique discursive standards and

guidelines that developed organically over time and through the natural interaction of the

community members. These regulations cover how to participate as both an expert within

the community— summarized by the colorful phrase “don’t be an elitist bastard”— and as

a new initiate. As such, RPGmakerVX.net works as an ideal example of the affinity

groups described in previous chapters by James Paul Gee.

Prototype games that are submitted for review by the RPGmakerVX.net

community are required to be accompanied by summary, complete with a minimum word

count and descriptions pertaining to highly specific material categories, again, with

minimum words counts. These surprisingly rigorous standards (by the standard of most

affinity groups) are designed to better allow the community members to criticize the

game effectively, and, while thorough and seemingly inflexible, are only so in ways that

benefit the community’s stated discursive goals. Owens notes that “while online

discourse is often caricatured as antagonistic, the discussions on RPGmakerVX.net

quickly demonstrate that this community, like many online communities, values decorum

and deference. Members’ courtesy affirms the importance they place on the community

as a whole and on individual contributions” (231).

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Here, many of the same advantages of writing through gameplay can be seen;

access to a wider audience, and acquiring proficiency within a new domain. The kind of

low-stakes composition which writing through and within games offers the opportunity

for students to gain practice in engaging with unfamiliar rhetorical domains. Rather than

training in a particular type of scientific or academic genre on the hopes of mastering that

single genre, students will learn how to move through and write within unfamiliar,

established genres, deconstructing the process of acquiring proficiency within a genre.

This skill will then transfer into whatever kinds of writing the student engages with in the

future, both academic and non-academic, and moreover instills confidence in the student-

writer’s ability to achieve proficiency within any of the countless compositional genres

that are still unfamiliar to them at the end of the course. Rather than attempting to master

as many genres as possible, students learn the process by which domain mastery occurs,

in a fun and engaging way.

Gaming and Genre

Writing centered around gameplay has the ability to help students compose within

genres, and adopt a discursive identity within that genre. While gaming and game design

can be genres of writing in their own right, games can facilitate ingress into more

traditional literary genres as well. TRPGs in particular allow for this meshing of new and

traditional media, partly due to their historically recursive relationship with literary

genres, and partly due to their focus on gameplay that incorporates traditional narrative

and composition in a way that video games do not. This makes them useful for teaching

the genres that are most often associated with TRPGs— fantasy, science fiction, and post-
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apocalyptic dystopia— and with genres that are not so easily connected to games and

gameplay.

The genre of fantasy, for much of the history of literary studies, has generally

been seen as empty or norm-affirming, rather than a productive domain (Mandala 6). As

the most popular TRPG genre (largely due to the association with Dungeons & Dragons),

the criticisms of fantasy have largely been absorbed by TRPGs. Indeed, both the literary

and gaming fantasy spaces have numerous examples of the same Tolkien-based tropes

being uncritically rehashed, again and again, often for marketing purposes— from one

point of view, Dungeons & Dragons itself is merely one in a long line of such appeals to

an all-too-familiar aesthetic of juvenile swords-and-sorcery. And, while I have argued

that games are inherently more resistant to such uncritical recreation by virtue of their

collaborative interactivity, Francesco Crocco pointed out that gaming can, in fact,

become a way to normalize social and economic norms all the more effectively (27).

More recently, the fantasy genre has come under a new critical eye and been

reassessed for the value it offers (and can offer). Sally Emmons, associate professor of

English at Rogers State University, argues that fantasy literature encourages criticism of

fantasy itself, both as a genre and as an act of the limited human imagination. As a genre

which purports to go beyond the limits of the possible, fantasy is given permission to

reimagine itself according to “traditions” that do not necessarily exist in the real world

(85). Take, for example, the fictional languages which serve as the foundation of

Tolkien’s Lord o f the Ring cycle, which follow their own rules of structure and form

despite never having actually existed as historical languages, and allow for criticism and

reassessment of the Nordic and Old English traditions from which Tolkien drew his
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inspiration. Emmons argues that fantasy facilitates a deeper understanding of traditional

texts and their problems— fantasy and non-fantasy alike (86).

Fantasy and science fiction, as a function of depicting fictional societies and

languages, encourage and allow for exploration of language and the idea of contact

between languages. Even when they do not create entirely new fictional languages (as

Tolkien did), these genres nonetheless use language itself as a narrative construct. In her

stylistic review The Language in Science Fiction and Fantasy, Susan Mandala, an expert

on Applied Linguistics at the University of Sunderland, discusses the ways that these

genres play with language as a way to establish elements of world-building, exploring the

relationship between fictional worlds, and fictional languages. She shows how

abrogation—the rejection of normative English— and appropriation— acceptance of a

local variety of English— are enabled and used by fantasy and science fiction narratives.

Doing so deconstructs how these processes occur in the real world, and displays

this process to the audience (Mandala 39). The state-controlled language of “Newspeak”

in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, or the Russian-influenced argot “Nadsat” of

Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, are examples of how language itself is critically

examined within what Mandala calls “alternative world” texts. These novels, like the

languages of Tolkien’s fantasy world, not only offer an alternative to standard English,

but highlight and offer discourse upon the nature of such languages and the idea of

“standard” languages. This playing with fictional and archaic forms is an essential

element of the science fiction, dystopian post-apocalyptic, and fantasy genres (Mandala

94). Engaging with and reproducing such work in a composition course allows students
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to imagine language in a new context, changed from how it is used in their own world,

and to experiment with how it might be used in new contexts entirely.

The post-apocalyptic dystopia in particular, simultaneously denoting a literary

genre, a tone, and a setting, has become the focus of a great deal of recent media (Dial-

Driver et al. 75). The post-apocalyptic setting offers a synthesis between the “blank

canvas” of complete creative freedom, while maintaining a link to and basis within the

familiar real world. It allows for almost absolute freedom for storytelling, while

simultaneously enabling student knowledge bases to be utilized as a source of some

context. In my opinion, the post-apocalyptic genre strikes the most harmonious balance

between creative liberty, and the need to provide students with the means to draw upon

known material. In the next chapter, I will describe how post-apocalyptic TRPGs like The

Quiet Year provide a vast degree of creative flexibility, while simultaneously allowing

players to draw as much non-fictional real-world knowledge as they desire into the game

experience.

Mary M. Mackie notes her own success utilizing post-apocalyptic fiction

literature within composition classes as a means to awaken critical thinking, provoking

students to question “What if?” and to critically examine the moral and ethical premises

of various texts (Dial-Driver et al. 91). Trent Hergenrader, using the post-apocalyptic

DRPG Fallout 3 as the focus of his class’s writing assignments, noted the tendency of his

students to instinctively collaborate, not merely as fictional “survivors,” but as writers,

featuring each other’s characters within their own work in the same way their characters,

as the few lonely survivors, rely on each other for companionship and support (Voorhees

et al.). He adds that map-building activities within this genre encourage exploration, both
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literal and figurative— “in order to save the world, players must first come to know it”

(Gerber et al.). Many of the discussions surrounding the literary post-apocalyptic setting

and the dystopian genre itself discuss them in terms of a postmodern escape from history,

without the often-optimistic focus on specific speculative futures which marks science

fiction (Manjikian 30) (Heffernan 3).

Additionally, the post-apocalyptic genre is marked by a sense of “enforced

simplicity” which prevents newcomers from feeling overwhelmed. Within TRPGs,

limiting the scale of action to that o f local, personal action helps to highlight personal

relationships and augment the emotional impact of players choices and actions. While

some large-scale TRPGs give players an almost godlike range of capability to influence

their environment, the post-apocalyptic genre forces players to make difficult decisions

within a scope of limited resources, time, and options. Thus, the entry level for

meaningful creative participation in a post-apocalyptic TRPG is especially freeform and

open to interpretation.

A TRPG will usually have some kind of base genre, just as a writing piece will

inevitably represent one genre more than others. While I argue that the freedom of

TRPGs is a great asset, most games benefit from some kind of foundation. The challenge

of a game is a huge factor in its engagement, and challenges inherently require some kind

of limitation, the same way that genre limits while simultaneously informing a writing

piece. Without delving deeper into the implications of the post-apocalyptic genre, I would

simply argue that it represents, for the purposes of the composition classroom, the best

balance of limitless creative freedom and comfortable familiarity of any well-known

game setting.
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As “writing” comes to describe an increasingly diverse range of different media,

and moreover, different rhetorical contexts and intentions, composition studies have

acknowledged that it is not enough to merely teach the genre of “academic writing.” In

their day-to-day life, students can and will utilize and interact with many different genres

of writing and communication, from casual conversations to scientific discourses. The

Conference on College Composition & Communication, in its revised position statement,

“Principles for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing,” states that “sound writing

instruction enables students to analyze and practice with a variety of genres. Genres— or

distinctive types of texts— emerge from particular social, disciplinary, and cultural

contexts.” Genres, in short, emerge out of a particular need, and composition classes, the

CCCC argues, should encourage students to recognize the multiplicity of genre and how

to use the different genres of writing with which they will engage at some point.

The Council of Writing Program Administrators, in its “Outcomes Statement for

First-Year Composition,” describes such an understanding as “rhetorical knowledge” or

“the ability to analyze contexts and audiences and then to act on that analysis in

comprehending and creating texts.” The challenge is to present a genre, not as a standard

to be upheld, but as a one choice among many in a writer’s toolbox; and this is a

challenge that games are uniquely prepared to tackle. TRPGs in particular, with their core

playground dynamic, demand the players not stick to one particular genre, but rather

make use of different genres and forms of communication strategically. If a TRPG player

states that their character gives a heartfelt persuasive argument, only to find it land on

unsympathetic ears, they are likely to try a new approach on their next turn— perhaps

turning toward a more well-cited essay-like format, or an interpersonal debate model.

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Likewise, students in a composition class are best served by learning genres in the

context of what circumstances they are best applied toward, and what contextual

preconditions necessarily encourage particular genres to emerge.

In Writing across Contexts, this preference for teaching how to use genre in

general rather than how to mimic a particular genre is described as helping students to

“think like writers.” Students, they argue, are taught how to reflect on their writing, but

“they are not asked to engage in another kind of reflection, what we might call big-

picture thinking, in which they consider how writing in one setting is both different from

and similar to writing in another, or where they theorize writing so as to create a

framework for future writing situations” (Yancey et al. 4). This theorizing is something

that games inherently include within the process of play. A player attempting to achieve

success within the game will naturally do so by self-reflecting before, during, and after

the process, seeking clarifications toward an understanding of the conditions of their

success or failure. The degree to which games encourage players to deconstruct their own

gaming experiences, naturally transforming players into game designers, is a fundamental

element of their design and the hallmark of a rich gaming experience, as well as a

pedagogically valuable one.

In a TRPG, with its wide range of possible action, this self-reflection quickly

leads to a meaningful deconstruction of the communication and composition being

brought to bear. Players are strongly encouraged to perform compositional “remix,” or

the redesigning of genres and modalities according to the needs of a given specific

situation. As in the case of the Reacting to the Past student who performed a rap battle as

John Winthrop in the Trial of Anne Hutchinson, entirely new genres can be created—
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accidentally, no less— once the student views successful communication as the goal,

rather than faithful mimicry of a particular genre.

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CHAPTER FOUR: THE TRPG CLASSROOM

In this chapter, I will present my own model for teaching the First Year

Composition (FYC) course, using TRPG mechanics as a basis for class activities and

writing. I will also demonstrate that the inclusion of TRPG gameplay into composition

classes has a precedent for producing meaningful results and helping to accomplish

learning outcomes at both the high school and university level. In modelling a games-

based curriculum for the FYC classroom, I will describe specific TRPG-based writing

activities, and address how they engage students in meaningful learning, and how they

are particularly successful at encouraging students to develop social and interactive

writing strategies. Finally, I will recount some of the successes I observed through my

own application of these TRPG activities to the FYC classroom.

A game that exemplifies the potential of TRPGs in the classroom, and which I

will present here as the foundation for my FYC course curriculum, is The Quiet Year, a

TRPG created by Avery McDaldno. The Quiet Year (TQY) offers a TRPG-like

experience with a focus on storytelling, metanarrative analysis, empathic role-imagining,

and exploring the often-tenuous nature of communities in crisis. The game consists of

players taking turns contributing to a continuous narrative, building upon their own

previous input and the contributions of other players. There are no stated goals, other than

to collectively create an interesting story. Each turn of the game, another event,

discovery, or development is added to the continuing saga, cued by the game’s prompts

and structure.
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The unique nature of The Quiet Year (TQY), I will argue, makes it a perfect

introduction to games in the writing composition classroom, both for teachers and

students. Personally, I have found the introduction of r<2Y-based gameplay mechanics

into the First-Year Composition classroom to be a highly successful means of motivating

students and promoting engagement, and a useful demonstration of the potential of

TRPGs in education.

First Year Composition and Gaming

I have chosen composition as the ideal subject for testing the application of

TRPGs in the classroom for multiple reasons. First, as a game genre built upon verbal

and written communication, TRPGs have a remarkable number of mechanics and

components that overlap with the learning outcomes of the FYC course, such as the

promotion of critical thinking skills and practice with the developing writing process. The

average TRPG is loaded with activities, including character creation, character sheet

construction, and formation of a character background, which look more like writing

exercises than traditional game components. More importantly, the “playground”

dynamic of the TRPG genre which I discussed in Chapter 2 facilitates the creative

engagement and motivation to write which are desired by instructors in the FYC

classroom.

Second, I would argue that the field of composition research has brought forth

some of the most important recent developments in pedagogical thought; certainly, I

would argue, it has set the stage for most of the research that game-based education now

takes for granted. Composition scholars Yancey, Robertson, and Taezak, the authors of
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Writing across Contexts, make the point that “composition is a teaching subject”

intimately tied to the overarching modes of pedagogy which appear within itself and

other subjects. They demonstrate that composition departments are responsible for many

of the breakthroughs that were made in classroom research during the 1970’s and 80’s

(3).

For example, one monumental shift made during this period involved the

rethinking of the concept of transfer. Transfer is an aspect of education that was long

believed to be a happy accident, which relied entirely on the students’ initiative— either a

student would transfer learning from the classroom to the “real world,” or they would not.

In this model, the instructor and/or learning context had no ability to influence whether or

not transfer would occur. Now, transfer is understood to be something that can be

engineered into the pedagogical mode of a course, and that it can, in fact, be taught to

students as an important (arguably the most important) learning skill. Without this simple

understanding, game-based education could have no meaningful traction in academics

today; note how much of the scholarship I have detailed in Chapter 2 is founded on the

assumption that transfer can, in fact, be facilitated by external factors.

Finally, my impulse to use the composition course as the testing ground for

TRPGs stemmed from composition being the subject with which I personally had the

most experience teaching. This background, I believed, would help me immensely in

successfully adapting the subject into a TRPG-format. At the very least, I felt confident

that my expertise would help me to avoid most of the major pitfalls of the gamification

efforts discussed in Chapter 1.

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Em ergent Learning in the TRPG Classroom

TRPGs create a vast array of different “play experiences” within their playground

dynamic, a great many of which cannot be anticipated by the instructor. The TRPG-

generated feature of emergent learning, I have already discussed, is a desirable outcome

in any subject, but I would argue this is even more true in the composition classroom; this

is because the contextual circumstances that lead to emergent learning are generated

collectively by the class rather than imposed by the instructor. And composition classes,

especially the FYC course, must respond to the writing needs of the learners, rather than

a strictly instructor-driven curriculum. The emergent learning which TRPGs encourage

allow the compositional inclinations, and deficiencies, of the students to become the

focus of the course.

The CCCC states that composition courses should help “students gain experience

analyzing expectations for writing held by different audiences and practice meeting those

expectations.” While an educator might spend weeks imagining and designing a set of

expectations or a hypothetical audience for the students to write for, a TRPG is a system

built to rapidly generate inherently engaging contexts and situations, by virtue of having

been introduced into the game by the players themselves. Thus, students will be facing a

constant stream of audiences, expectations, and conventions which are meaningful to

either themselves, or, at least, their fellow classmates. They will be asked to role-play,

not as students, but to “think like writers” and make compositional choices the same way

they might choose a strategy, utilizing the full scale of their knowledge and experience.

Thus the authors of Writing across Contexts argue that transitioning from being a novice

writer to being an expert writer “cannot be reduced to sets of isolated facts or positions,
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but instead reflects contexts of applicability” (Yancey et al. 39). Games reinforce this

contextuality, and encourage free-thinking within the limitations of the challenge

presented, essentially dealing with the idea of genre at its fundamental nature— a series of

conventions based upon, according to the Council of Writing Program Administrators, “a

history of use and... common expectations between writers and readers” (WPA).

I have already described James Paul Gee’s argument that writing is

misunderstood as a solitary activity, when in reality all writing and communication

occurs in relation to other people, within the context of a culture, language, and many

other preconditions. The modern learning goals of the composition classroom seem to

recognize this. The Council of Writing Program Administrators states that FYC students

should “experience the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes” and

“develop flexible strategies for reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising,

rewriting, rereading, and editing” with the involvement of other writers and students at

various stages of the process. TRPGs are an inherently social medium, and have the

potential (shown later in this chapter) to enable students to collaborate in new and

unexplored ways.

The composition generated within a TRPG is playful and low-stakes, with a

relatively easy point of entry and potentially limitless room for creative ambition. TRPG

players receive immediate feedback on the content, style, and efficacy of their

communication from the Game Master and their fellow players. The Game Master will

often describe why the communication succeed or failed, and even entertain and

encourage reflective discussions on the points of his argument.

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The unique dynamics between Game Master and player emphasize the “rhetorical

nature of writing” in the same way a composition class should “consider the needs of real

audiences” (CCCC). The fallout of each player’s turn is naturally seen, discussed,

reflected upon, and responded to by the entire group of students, many of whom might be

immersed into role-playing the simulated audience for whom the active player is

composing.

Content in the TRPG Classroom

The issues of rhetorical knowledge and social learning tie into a larger

overarching question within the field of composition: that of what content should be

taught to accomplish desirable learning outcomes. I have already argued that TRPGs

offer an organic, rapid succession of meaningful and realistic contexts within which to

write. In doing so, they can simulate multiple genres, and provide the inherently playful

experiences which promote meaningful learning rather than rote facts. Yet even a focus

on play experiences and contexts does not disqualify the possibility of actual content

being transmitted in the composition classroom.

On one hand, some compositional theory and pedagogy scholars like Michael

Donnelly of Ball State University argue that the content of the course does not matter,

only what the students are doing. This agrees with Hodgson’s assessment that FYC

courses should focus on play experiences rather than content, and suggests that a class

dealing primarily with content within, say, the medieval fantasy genre, is just as equipped

to teach about the complex multiplicity of genre as any other in-class content. In such a

“themed” class, the objective remains to transcend the given genre(s) in question, and

eventually engage broader discussions of the role of genre. In this theory, a class focused
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on novel-writing is just as equipped as a class focused on poetry or scientific papers, for

the purposes of producing generally effective writers who can operate in and around

concepts of genre.

Other scholars, like Anne Beaufort, disagree, taking the stance that “ideas matter,

but also that specific ideas are critical to writing development.” Therefore, she suggests,

educators benefit most from seeking out the specific content that best teaches students

how to engage with good writing (Yancey et al. 131). Under this theory, a “themed” class

that focuses on a specific genre might be a missed opportunity to focus instead on content

that better suggests the multiplicity of genre, and other desirable learning outcomes.

This problem is extremely applicable to the question of games in the classroom,

due to the fear that a game-based class would have the same problems as a “themed” or

genre-writing class; the concern that students will learn how to write for, or through,

games, but not for other genres. I would suggest that this belies the advantages and

efficacy of games in terms of promoting playful, open-ended, and low-risk self-reflection.

Students participating in game-based.activities, as I have addressed, have a tendency to

question and discuss the success or failure of a writing piece within the context of the

game, rather than treating a piece as an abstracted object being held to some

objective/academic standard that can somehow be applied to all writing, regardless of

context. The game is a conscientiously self-contained, contextualized space, over which

the players have the same authority as the Game Master. Both the student and teacher

have the same ability to cite the rules to their advantage, and use the game itself as the

basis for critical standards. Students can even question or alter the game and its rules, in a

way that they might not feel the same authority over, say, a course syllabus.
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Thus the nature of the self-reflection inherent within a game gives an automatic

advantage over a themed class that must find other means to encourage the type of self­

reflection that takes writers beyond limiting concepts like genre, into an analysis of the

nature of genre itself. Students in a themed class will strive to imitate and work with the

given genre to the best of their ability, perhaps gaining expertise within that genre and

ideally transcending it. But players in a fantasy TRPG will necessarily play with the

fantasy genre, discussing and debating the contributions of other players an affirming or

subverting this genre, and even addressing the question of what is (and is not) the fantasy

genre, and genre in general. While a theme class can accomplish the same goal, in theory,

games do this on a fundamental level, as an incidental effect of play. In a sense, the

“theme” of any TRPG-based class is that of “role-playing as a writer.”

T echnology and the TRPG Classroom

Finally, the composition classroom is in a unique position with regards to

technology and its uses. As digital and “new” media rises to the forefront of students’

everyday composition, technology becomes more and more enmeshed with composition.

FYC courses in particular have an impetus to emphasize “relationships between writing

and technologies” (CCCC); and while digital writing has surely altered the field of

composition, I would argue that the composition-inspired breakthroughs in classroom

research which I noted earlier represent a much more important shift, one that affects the

totality of pedagogy itself, just as, I argue, game-based education does.

For example, FYC courses should encourage students to “create new knowledge

and practices for themselves when they encounter what we call a setback or critical

incident, which is a failed effort to address a new task that prompts critical ways of
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thinking about what writing is and how to do it” (Yancey 104). This perspective on

“setbacks and critical incidents” as learning opportunities is far from unique to

composition, though it may have special importance within compositional pedagogy.

More importantly, it should sound familiar—it is an extremely game-like approach to

composition, in which “failure” is contextually supported as learning, and in fact is one of

the most inevitable and meaningful ways to develop as a writer.

Not only is this a form of universally-applicable “new technology” with long-term

benefits, it is the exact kind of technology which games, and TRPGs in particular, purport

to offer— socially-based technology. Rather than focusing on the material tools of

education, TRPGs highlight the ways that interaction and situational context affect

learning; not just the tools of the classroom, but how those tools are used. Advances in

pedagogy, classroom research, and how to deal with academic “failure” and assessment

are the very best advances, I would argue, that have emerged from the field of

composition. The social, rather than just the digital technology of gaming coincides with

the goals of the FYC classroom, making its application particular advantageous within

this context.

The Q u iet Y ear : A Collaborative Storytelling Game

The Quiet Year is a unique game, even within the TRPG model of gameplay. It

utilizes a combination of verbal storytelling, map design, and cooperative negotiation

mechanics to facilitate the creation of a shared narrative experience. Over the course of

gameplay, the players analyze and adopt the role of a community attempting to rebuild

after the apocalyptic collapse of civilization. On each turn, players must insert some new
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challenge, reward, or danger to interact with the community and advance or alter the plot.

These developments are added to a communal record, represented by a map of the post-

apocalyptic region surrounding the survivor-community. As the game continues, the map

is slowly populated and extended beyond the borders of the community’s settlement, and

the main themes and conflict of the story emerge organically.

In a traditional TRPG, the Game Master alone introduces and controls the dangers

and challenges, acting as the antagonist to the players. The Quiet Year, on the other hand,

requires all of the players to introduce both good and bad elements at their discretion.

Avery McDaldno, the designer of the game, describes players acting impartially, “as

scientists conducting an experiment.” Whereas most TRPGs leave such narrative control

to the single Game Master, The Quiet Year asks every player to participate equally

alongside each other. These narrative contributions are sometimes prompted by

randomized pre-scripted questions; at other times, the player’s input is left entirely to

their imagination (McDaldno).

G am eplay O verview

“It’s a game about community,” begins the rulebook, “difficult choices, and

landscapes. When you play, you make decisions about the community, decisions that get

recorded on a map that is constantly evolving.” The map is the first unique feature that

sets TQY apart from other games. McDaldno, rather than referring to TQY as a TRPG

(despite its obvious roleplaying features), instead calls it a “map-drawing game,”

emphasizing the game’s most visual and collaborative aspect. The map, being a wide-

scope communal tool, eases the focus on individual characters and instead draws player

attention to the large-scale interrelations of their community.

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In addition to providing a central space for all players to share— the “joint

attentional scenes” first described by Murray— the map-feature of TQY represents a

departure from the typical experience and narrative of individual accomplishment offered

by most TRPGs. This focus is more reminiscent of the Japanese-made RPG video games

discussed in Chapter 2, which highlight the interrelationships of the protagonists and their

world. I would suggest that this difference makes it uniquely suitable in the FYC course,

and for players who are unfamiliar with the literacy of TRPG mechanics. For one, TQY’s

egalitarian approach— the omission of a Game Master role in favor of each player

participating on the same terms— is reminiscent of more traditional board games. This

makes the game more accessible than most TRPGs would be. Even students unfamiliar

with most common forms of gameplay can easily understand the concept of adding a

picture to a map, which provides a small, simple step toward greater levels of immersion.

The use of maps in general is a commonplace feature within the TRPG genre,

Navigation and exploration of the game-map is a significant element of many strategy

games, and, as I discussed in Chapter 1, instrumental to their historical development. In

most TRPGs, the hidden portions of the map are known only GM, who, in turn, presents

the map as a mystery to be solved by the players. However, in The Quiet Year, each

player will inevitably add new features, often of their own design, to the map. Like the

story, the game map is collaboratively generated, and thus the role of the GM is traded

between players instead of retained by a single individual. The rules state that “parts of

the map are literal cartography, while other parts are symbolic”— in order words, artistic

integrity is not the ultimate goal. The map is a reference point, the shared “text” of the
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game, the “history” of the community rendered accessible to any player in a single

glance.

The diffusion of the Game Master narration-role amongst the entire playerbase

results in a productive challenge for the promotion of meaningful writing and learning, as

each player knows that they themselves will be called upon to take responsibility for the

group narrative at some point. While the Game Master role typically requires a great deal

of experience with the TRPG in question, The Quiet Year reduces the role to a

manageable size, while retaining the sense of creative control. In my experience, TQY

players (both in and out of the classroom) are highly responsive to the level of control the

game gives them; in TQY, any player can introduce major plot developments and

challenges, which is a great deal more agency and power than the typical TRPG might

offer the players (GM excluded). And, also unlike the typical TRPG, TQY deals heavily

with the social implications and consequences of such all-encompassing control, as the

effects of each god-like tilting of the scales ripple outward into other players’ turns.

Teaching the Rules

The rulebook for The Quiet Year offers a specific methodology for the

presentation and teaching of the rules, instructing that a “facilitator” (distinct from a

Game Master) read aloud several sections of text to the players. These include a brief

story prompt, a description of the physical tools of the game (the paper, dice, and tokens),

and an outline of the game concept. After this brief overview, the rulebook is then handed

to the next player, who begins reading the following section which further details the

rules, and so on. The writing is clear, concise, and constructed dramatically to call the

listener’s attention to specific important mechanics. Moreover, the rules state their own
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intention: to ensure that everyone present is equally clear and comfortable in the role they

will soon take on as player, to avoid the pitfall of one knowledgeable player “guiding”

play.

This level of pedagogical self-awareness— the inclusion of rules fo r teaching the

rules of the game— is rare within TRPGs. Historically, these games were so complex that

the GM role was a necessity, not simply to run the game, but to serve as judge and arbiter

of the complex rules. The infinite possible circumstances that might occur in play

requires such an arbiter, which in turn reinforces a traditional hierarchical learning-

mode— the GM is held to be the “rule expert.” The Quiet Year, on the other hand,

requires fully-committed participation from the players, and recognizes that such a level

participation— as with a classroom activity— demands that the players have a clear

understanding of the rules before they begin. The rulebook of The Quiet Year is

structured and worded much like a course syllabus, preparing the players for their task

and communicating the “contract” that is being established for the duration of play.

Responsibility is distributed throughout the group, rather than centralized within a single

individual. TQY therefore is one of the most intrinsically motivating games, with each

turn requiring a narrative development that further immerses players in their own desire

to have an effect upon the text.

Contempt

While not central to gameplay, one of the most interesting mechanics present in

TQY is the acquisition and loss of Contempt tokens. When the game begins, Contempt

tokens (typically stones or glass beads) are left in a communal, easy-to-access location.
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Contempt is a mechanic through which players can signify their disapproval of the

narrative and in-game actions, or of the way the game is being played. The rules explain:

If ever you feel like you weren’t consulted or honoured in a decision­

making process, you can take a piece of Contempt and place it in front of

you. This is your outlet for expressing disagreement or tension. If

someone starts a project that you don’t agree with, you don’t get to voice

your objections or speak out of turn. You are instead invited to take a

piece of Contempt. Contempt will generally remain in front of players

until the end of the game. It will act as a reminder of past contentions. Its

primary role is as a social signifier. In addition, you can discard it back

into the centre of the table in two ways: by acting selfishly and by

diffusing tensions. If you ever want to act selfishly, to the known

detriment of the community, you can discard a Contempt token to justify

your behaviour. You decide whether your behaviour requires justification.

This will often trigger others taking Contempt tokens in response. If

someone else does something that you greatly support, that would mend

relationships and rebuild trust, you can discard a Contempt token to

demonstrate how they have diffused past tensions.

This is the full extent of the rules covering Contempt. Note that, conspicuously absent

from this description, is any guideline of the consequences following from the acquisition

of Contempt. Neither the player, nor the community, seem to be affected by the

possession or lack of Contempt tokens.

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The “trick” is that it is up to the players to determine the value— or lack of

value— which is placed upon the quantity and/or distribution of Contempt in their

community. In game design terms, this would typically be viewed as a major oversight: a

mechanic with no obviously meaningful ramifications upon the larger game. It does not

appear to affect any “victory conditions,” limit or enable player action, nor even impact

the narrative— except in so far as players choose to address it. This is a perfectly

representative example of student-guided learning, with Contempt presented as an

opportunity to be explored, rather than a lesson to be ticked off of a list of learning

objectives. Students are invited, rather than forced, to consider Contempt, and the role it

is playing in their game— or to dismiss it entirely, if they choose.

The rules state that the primary role of Contempt “is a social signifier,” and

therein can be seen the elegance of the rule-as-metaphor. Contempt in The Quiet Year

will only affect the community as much as the players allow it to, and failure to address

the root causes leading to acquisition of Contempt may transform the game (and the

community which it represents) into a vicious spiral of Contempt-grabbing. As in the

case of historically political games like Diplomacy, the motives, mechanics, and

consequences of Contempt— as with many of The Quiet Year’s mechanics— are built

upon the “pre-established” cultural rules and norms of interpersonal and large-scale

social interaction, rather than the arbitrary rules of a game system. The game, in turn,

exposes whatever implicit assumptions players have brought to the social enterprise, and

provides an experimental space for these assumptions to be broken down, discussed, and

ultimately (hopefully) redesigned.

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C onclusions about The Q uiet Year

The Quiet Year, I believe, offers a glimpse of the full potential of the TRPG

genre. The essential “playground dynamic” of the genre is still present, and perhaps even

refined, while the mechanics and components of traditional TRPGs have been almost

completely broken down and rebuilt to serve new purposes, highlighting community and

narrative over conflict and individual heroic storytelling. TQY shows what TRPGs can do

once free of their own self-limiting molds— often that of the Tolkienesque power-

fantasy— and given the leeway to address deeper and more complex concepts.

The unique feature of TQY also shows how TRPGs can be modular and open-

ended enough to give players the freedom to create their own story from scratch, given

only a set of algorithm-like “meta-conditions”— literally, The Quiet Year begins with an

empty map upon which the group must collaboratively generate the beginnings of a

community and that community’s story. A low resource cost (a deck of cards, paper &

pencils, and a handful of stones) makes the game affordable even by the often-lean TRPG

standards. Additionally, the rules take no longer than 15-30 minutes to teach and

understand, making it an extremely convenient ruleset for the TRPG genre.

The game takes an unabashedly more serious tone than most TRPGs, which tend

to skew to promote more action-packed and comical antics. The game’s publisher, Buried

Without Ceremony, carries the motto “Games that Mean Something,” and has produced

TRPGs which simulate road trips, love triangles, and dystopian social activism— all

topics with a more grounded and thought-provoking nature than are conventionally

associated with TRPGs (McDaldno). This sense of gravity combined with the

pedagogical self-reflection embodied in the very rules of the game confirms that The
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Quiet Year is, as the creators suggest, primarily a tool for learning about communities.

This learning occurs not through a lesson plan handed down by a game designer or Game

Master, but through the interactions of the players themselves, both as a fictional

community, and as a community of play.

The Q u iet Y ear in the High-School Writing Classroom

While not nearly as well-known as some other TRPGs, The Quiet Year has

accrued a passionate and loyal fanbase among avid TRPG enthusiasts. One such

enthusiast, Matthew Scrivner, has been introducing such games to the students of

Ironwood Ridge High School since 2005. Scrivner has utilized socio-strategic board

games like Diplomacy, as well as pedagogically-oriented TRPGs like A Penny fo r My

Thoughts and The Quiet Year in history and writing lessons (Scrivner, “Staff

Alphabetical”). His experiences using The Quiet Year were recorded in his incredibly

detailed online review, “Making High Schoolers Cry: The Quiet Year in the Creative

Writing Classroom.”

Scrivner begins this review by declaring that “for my students, it was a profound

and memorable learning experience. It left them teary-eyed and inspired, angry,

emotional, engaged and involved in a way I have almost never seen.” He insists that the

true purpose of the game is “to engage players in ethical dilemmas, and make them

understand and engage directly with the concept of community, culture, and society. The

post-apocalyptic science-fiction genre is the perfect grounds for this if one is willing to

set aside all thoughts of Mad Max or Zombies, and ask more essential, intimate and
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philosophical questions about the light and dark sides human nature as it manifests in

groups and families” (Scrivner, “Making High Schoolers Cry”).

Scrivner’s model for The Quiet Year writing class provides tremendous insight

into how this game can be used effectively in the context of the FYC classroom. First, he

bridges the most obvious and pressing gap between the basic game (which allows for 2-4

players) and the classroom version— the steep increase in the number of game

participants.

His solution was to bring The Quiet Year a step closer to a traditional TRPG by

introducing a writing assignment on the first day, instructing students to design an

individual character whom they would role-play for the duration of the game. This

character would exist as a member of the in-game community, an “avatar” persona for

the student to use and connect with. Thus, instead of 2-4 players representing and acting

on behalf of a hypothetical community of 60-80 fictional individuals (most of whom

would remain faceless and anonymous), the classroom version of The Quiet Year instead

becomes a world populated by the students’ avatar-selves, interacting with each other,

working to establish the community and overcome challenges. Just as in the base game,

turns would progress from one player to another, with the active player being asked to

dispassionately introduce challenges to further the shared class narrative.

Scrivner’s students responded positively to this kind of creative writing; the

resulting characters, produced independently as a homework assignment, described a

remarkably diverse array of genders, ages, abilities, professions, and morals. Students

introduced their avatars over the course of the following class. Scrivner noted that
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because I forced them to tell stories that included each other’s characters,

a webwork of relationships, backstories and resentments formed that gave

our community a rich backstory. I realized as this was occurring that what

I was adding was a bit beyond what the designer had originally intended,

but it worked, and it worked really well— it made everyone have a stake in

the community from the get-go, and it allowed me to further develop my

instructional focus, which was the toggling of narrative between the

individual and the group.

The fact that Scrivner found the inclusion of more traditional, individual-level role-

playing to be a pedagogical improvement is not surprising. While the basic game of The

Quiet Year discourages the role-playing of individual community members in favor of

large-scale thinking, the introduction of personal role-playing— as seen in the Reacting to

the Past pedagogy— increases the personal investment of the players into the game itself,

a potent motivator toward immersion.

Adoption of individual roles allows The Quiet Year to bridge the gap between

storytelling or “map-drawing” games and more traditional TRPGs, making the system

into a uniquely useful tool for introducing unfamiliar students to concepts such as role-

playing, narrative collaboration, and group storytelling. Below, I’ve included a copy of

Scrivner’s handout, detailing the classes’ character-creation assignment. This handout

includes an overview of the game themes and setting, but also offers a simple

introduction to role-playing. In particular, note the personal nature of the questions

Scrivner’s students are asked to address in their narrative, marked by the white dice at the

end of the handout:

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THE QUIET YEAR

F or a long tim e, we w ere at w ar with T he Jackals. N ow , finally, w e’ve driven them off, and w e’re left
with this: a year o f relative peace. O ne quiet year, with w hich to build our com m unity up and learn again
how to w ork together. C om e W inter, the F rost Shepherds will arrive and w e m ight not survive the
encounter. T his is w hen the gam e will end. B ut we d o n ’t know about that yet. W hat w e know is that right
now, in this m om ent, there is an opportunity to build som ething.

1) T he genre is P ost-A pocalyptic. T here was a world, and now there is this. T hat is all you know — your
daily life involves too m uch struggle, violence, and exhaustion for things like m em ory or history to
matter.
2) A ssum e you w ere either too young to rem em ber the w orld before with any clarity, or you were born
after it fell.
3) A ssum e the sam e for everyone else in your com m unity.
4) A ssum e that your daily life is deeply difficult - ju st finding food, water, m edicine, and other essentials
takes up m uch o f your time.
5) A ssum e the world is dangerous and filled with others that w ant to take from you and your com m unity.
6) A ssum e that you are not an outsider or loner, but have jo in ed or rem ained a m em ber o f this group to
increase the chances o f mutual safety and survival.
7) FO R N O W , D O N O T attem pt to define w hat Jackals or F rost Shepherds are. W e can all think about
that together w hen w e begin playing.

Your Goal Today:

B P c re a te the character you will play in this story.

D s h o u l d be meaningfully different than who you are in this class.

BPw rite an introduction to your character in the first person. Y ou will be reading this aloud to the class
on T hursday.

T hese are the questions you should address in som e wav in your narrative:

H i W hat nam e do others call you? W hat is the nam e that only you (and if applicable) your m ate know ?

W hat do you care about m ost or w ant most?

W ho or w hat has prevented you, up until now from getting it?

W hat has been your role in the com m unity up until now?

W hat role do you wish you had?

W hat are you m ost afraid of?

Tell a b rief story about som ething that happened involving or including the player to your left. You
need to coordinate with those people, but need not necessarily tell the sam e story or from the sam e
perspective.

te ll ief story about som ething that happened involving or including the player to your right.

3 Lastly, tell a b rief story about som ething that happened involving or including the player o f your
choice across the room . A gain, you need to coordinate with those people, but need not necessarily tell
the sam e story or from the sam e perspective.
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These questions are of such a thoughtful and descriptive nature that they automatically

prompt a deeper level of character development than would be expected in the FYC

classroom, let alone at the high school level.

The tremendous success which Scrivner found using The Quiet Year in a high

school creative writing class demonstrates the potential for his structure to be translated,

with very little modification, into many other educational contexts. Consider his thoughts

on how his game system encouraged students to engage with their own collaborative

narrative critically and meaningfully, engagement which could be applied to other

courses:

When writing or telling stories, students are often challenged by scale -

how to tell the story of a place and a people without dropping into an

expository or didactic mode; how to tell a story where the stakes are high

not just for their characters as individuals, but for the society they live in.

These sorts of questions of scale matter in all of the best literature -

consider that while we as readers fall in love with Gabriel Garcia

Marquez’s quirky, fierce, passionate, and sometimes quite mad individuals

in One Hundred Years o f Solitude, we also care deeply for the entirety of

the town of Macondo, its triumphs and tragedies, and ultimately its

history, which makes up the true heart of that novel. The Quiet Year

allows for just this sort of storytelling, and it’s somewhat surreal nature is

strongly reminiscent of Marquez’s Magical Realism. Player find

themselves asking, who ARE the Jackals really? What are the Frost

Shepherds? Is this world supernatural or mundane? Is the thing that

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brought about the end of the world (at some unknown point in the

unknown back history before the story starts) zombies? Nuclear war? A

plague? Aliens? And sometimes those questions are not answered, or

answered in such an ambiguous way that it leads to even more questions.

What was the deep crater the explorers found by the river? Is the rusty old

object the gravedigger excavated when digging a grave a sacred relic of

the past or a blasphemous and heterodox object of revilement? Did the

arrival of the Frost Shepherds signal our demise, or the beginning of a new

chapter in our story?

Scrivner’s examples demonstrate the critical attention that his TQY-ba.sed gameplay

instilled within himself and his students. The sense of play and control generated by the

game did, in fact, transfer over to how his students discussed ideas of narrative

construction and genre. Although his assignment was intended for high-school students,

by his own admission, it almost proved to have too much emotional weight for them.

This is interesting, considering how much of the game’s content is generated by the

players themselves; the game naturally scales to an appropriate net level of emotional

maturity, suggesting that the students’ emotional responses were the result of operating at

the cusp of their emotional capabilities— in other words, they were challenging each

other to enter the “flow” state regarding what game content they could and could not

effectively handle.
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The Q u iet Y ear in the FYC Classroom

I quickly discovered that translating The Quiet Year from a game into a

university FYC classroom writing activity required very little adaptation or design

alteration. Using Scrivner’s work as a rough model, as well as making use of my own

TRPG experience, simplified a great many of the more difficult issues. This relative ease

demonstrates the close parallels between games and writing activities as they currently

exist, and is a testament to the lack of difficulty which even educators unfamiliar with

games would face providing such game-based curriculum.

Like Scrivner, I began by designing a writing project to facilitate the creation of

individual student-controlled characters. Not only do individual characters create a

greater sense of investment through role-play, it allows the class as a whole to have a

better sense of the constituents of their community, and therefore of the community as a

totality. Use of “avatars,” as I showed in chapter 2, promotes the adoption of guided

agency for the student, encouraging them to exercise their free will within the limits of

the game in a concrete way. While TQY demands all players serve at least a few turns as

the Game Master, introducing abstract events from a wider perspective, students would

be free to react in between their turns from the perspective of their individual characters.

By alternating between the personal and macro-scale perspective, I argue Scrivner’s

variant of TQY presents the best of both worlds.

Following completion of the character creation assignment outside of class, the

students would then review of some of the characters who they generated through this

process. Students were then given the full rules of the game, with regards to setup and

individual turns. This was at least partly inspired, on my part, by the pedagogical
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objectives laid out in the TQY rules, which attempt a step-by-step introduction to the

game. Having waited until characters had already been established and reviewed before

discussing the further details of the class activity, the students would then be presented

with the remaining rules of the game itself, which would be necessary to understand as a

whole before play could begin.

Step 1: The Question

As with the basic TQY rules, students in my class activity would be asked to take

turns speaking on behalf of the narrative itself. Unlike the game, they have the option to

do so through the lens of their individual character. Despite this additional feature, on a

given player’s turn, full agency is in their hands— whatever they declare is irrevocably

etched into the collective history of the community, represented by the play-map. The

player’s turn then becomes their opportunity for full creative authorial license.

As in the basic game, a player’s turn— symbolizing a week of time passing in the

game’s eponymous “Quiet Year”— would begin with them drawing a card from a 52-card

deck. The card offers a choice between two question-prompts, of which the active player

chooses one. These question-prompts are mostly designed to provoke thoughtful inquiry

into the nature of life in the community, such as “Where are you storing your food? Why

is it a risky place to store things?” or “What group has the highest status in the

community? What must people do to gain inclusion in this group?” Other questions ask

the player to inject a new element into the narrative, such as “Outsiders arrive in the area.

Why are they a threat? How are they vulnerable?”

All of the official questions in the deck are extremely open-ended, with room

intentionally left for interpretation and variation by the active player. Answering a
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question could be as simple as a sentence, or as long as a detailed speech or explanation.

Students might be asked questions by their classmates, either explaining or justifying

their decision. The questions are not simple to answer, but nonetheless provide a structure

for creativity that, in my class, proved invaluable for bringing non-gaming students into

the activity comfortably. Few students, in my classes, had any difficulty creatively

answering these hypothetical questions, especially when given the choice between two

options. This was especially important for preparing students for the second phase of

their turn, the Action.

Step 2: The Action

After answering their question-prompt in such a way as to clearly describe their

addition to the narrative, the active player would take an Action. Their Action would

mechanically and dynamically reflect their character’s direct impact upon the community

for that week. The base TQY game utilizes three types of actions: Discover Something

New, Start a Project, and Hold a Discussion.

- “D iscover Som ething New ” simply entails adding another development, threat,

or feature to the map, abstract or concrete, without the guiding specifications of

the question-prompt.

- “Start a Project” requires the active player to describe a long-term goal that the

community is working toward, with the implication of cooperation as a requisite

of successful completion— the player also decides whether the project is

ultimately successful or not.

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- Finally, “Hold a D iscussion” asks the active player to verbally pose a question or

statement to the entire group of players, to which each other player must respond

to in a manner reminiscent of a “town hall” debate.

Adapting these three Actions to the classroom required little modification;

however, in the interests of retaining a focus on the element composition, I chose to adapt

the Discover Something New and Start a Project options from verbal descriptions into

writing assignments. In the case of Discovering Something New, this assignment was an

individual writing piece, which would present the student’s “discovery” to the class. In

the case of Starting a Project, the active student would team up with another student who

had also chosen this Action and co-write their pieces together.

Students choosing either of these two Actions would return with their written

piece in the next class, presenting them as a “breaking news update.” The presentation of

this writing serves the dual purpose of peer-reviewing the work in question, and updating

the other students on the current state of their community (a necessity for keeping the

class updated on the continuing narrative). Finally, students who chose the Hold a

Discussion Action would ask a question to the class; each student in turn would reply

with a single statement, usually voicing their opinion on the issue that had just been

raised.

The two-part turn structure is at least partly designed to ease students into

gameplay. The card-based question-prompt serves as a creative “warm-up”— both for the

class and the active player—which drives forward the story in exciting new ways. After

this act of immersion (or re-immersion), the student’s Action becomes a much more free­

form representation of their own priorities and intentions within the community.
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Whereas the question-prompt card asks a random, generalized question, the

Action is specific, and entirely driven by the student themselves. Often, students unsure

of how to utilize their Actions would turn to the question-prompt, or another player’s

turn, for inspiration. In other cases, students prepared their Actions several classes in

advance, having already determined their choices based on their character’s motivations.

In cases where Actions built upon the previous Actions of others players, tensions,

conflict, and relationships would arise— not only between characters, but between the

students who controlled them.

The Q uiet Year in the Classroom: A nalysis

Bringing The Quiet Year into the FYC classroom was an experience that, despite

my familiarity with both teaching and gaming, surprised me in many ways. My first

priority was to ensure that no student felt alienated by the game-based course content;

quickly, however, it became clear that the vast majority of students were excited and

engaged by the activity from the moment game instructions first began being described. It

was obvious that there were some students with backgrounds in organized gameplay, and

it was not entirely unexpected that these students would hold the majority in a typical

modern classroom. What was surprising was the size of this majority. The enthusiasm for

game-based content was so overwhelming that it quickly became the greater challenge to

locate the students who were, in fact, initially skeptical of the idea of games in the

classroom. This discrepancy became even more difficult to catch, as the less confident

students quickly caught on and matched their classmates, often exceeding their levels of

engagement once the process of immersion had begun.

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Students attempting to conceal their lack of familiarity with games might seem

like a negative result, until one considers that such hiding occurs in almost every

classroom— students have a long-bemoaned tendency to stay quiet rather than express

confusion on unfamiliar subject matter. The distinction, in this case, is that the game-

based content serves as a perpetual “on-ramp” for including students who were not yet

engaged. The question, “what are we doing here, right now” posed midway through a

lesson is often a difficult one to address; the answer is often simply “learning the day’s

material,” and, short of beginning the lesson again from the start, the student’s options to

recapitulate the misunderstood material is limited. In this activity, students who were

initially “left behind” could easily enter into the game at any point and at any level of

engagement with which they felt comfortable.

Students in the TQY activity were admittedly quite nervous about the immense

sense of responsibility associated with a “misstep” on their turn— however, rather than

this uncertainty being based on a perceived sense of a personal or academic failure, it

emerged from a sense that their turn would might affect the narrative of the entire class.

The students were excited to participate, but also didn’t want to spoil the game for their

classmates, which prompted a kind of thoughtful, even playful, nervousness, rather than

an anxious one— a social awareness, rather than self-consciousness. In these cases, the

sudden, sometimes unexpected arrival of a student’s turn would often prompt the

question “what are we supposed to do?” Rather than review the three pages of

instructions again, the answer could usually be stated along these lines: “Well, right now,

we are drawing a card, answering a question, and then taking an Action.” Not only are

these instructions easier for the student to process on the spot, they do not sell the larger
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game short; these individual mechanics are the building blocks of the lesson as a whole,

and by doing these seemingly simple activities, the nervous or confused student could

begin the process of engagement and immersion, just as readily as the student who had

been preparing and agonizing over their turn for days.

Students who engaged immediately and deeply with the activity were able to

utilize their experience to their advantage. However, rather than receiving extrinsic

rewards for their enthusiasm— a better grade or some other academic “gold star”— these

individuals were intrinsically rewarded within the game. For example, the players who

demonstrated initiative by volunteering to take the first turns in their respective classes

were rewarded by having the most leeway in terms of storytelling; the narrative would

begin on their terms, and subsequent players would necessarily build upon their

foundations. This was a valuable and teachable moment, as it prompted many students to

verbally reconsider their participation habits.

Some students were more inclined to watch and listen than they were before,

letting others set the stage and acting thoughtfully rather than impulsively (or to preserve

the appearance of superficial participation). Other students, who had remained silent,

quickly immersed themselves as a way to leave their narrative mark before the story

became too “crowded” for their unique ideas. The students discussed, unprompted and as

a group, the merit and ramifications of allowing so much power in the hands of whoever

spoke first, while highlighting the fact that, in our daily lives, we encounter the same

problem on the personal, political, and social levels. Intrinsic motivation alone was

sufficient to prompt a large-scale reorganization of student behavior, as well as student

reflection upon the nature of their own participation.

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Scrivner’s model of character creation serves as a means of early engagement into

the larger concept of the TQY activity. Again, while not part of the basic rules of The

Quiet Year, the element of role-play produces valuable results toward student

engagement and agency (as seen earlier). Students were able to use the story of their

characters, and their subsequent turns, to establish major details about the narrative as a

whole. The genre, tone, and setting of the collective narrative, while unclear at first,

would quickly come into focus as characters were introduced, and discovered to fit

together in interesting ways. And, within the class narrative, the identity of these

characters could be explored, experimented with, and discussed in a way that was

detached from the anxiety and academic concern, or any of the other forms of “serious”

role-play in which students participate in their day-to-day life.

As with Mark Carnes’ Reacting classes, the variety of roles in the TQY activity

naturally led to some students adopting authoritative “leadership” roles within the

fictional community. Whereas these roles were assigned to the students in the Reacting

classes, students in the TQY activity were able to choose their character’s own role, and

even design their own concepts of leadership positions and governments. Students who

did so, often inadvertently made strong declarations about their community’s politics and

leadership.

What was most interesting to me was the student response to responsibility within

their fictional communities’ authoritarian structures. Students who disapproved of the

declared authority of other community members were allowed to take Contempt tokens to

note their dissatisfaction. Additionally, on their own turns, they could have their

characters take up a cause of their own, which would in turn further immerse the players
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in own their chosen roles. This would often lead to power struggles which would be

deepened or alleviated by the nature and degree of communication which occurred

outside of turns, both in- and out-of-character. Most significantly, throughout these

conflicts, not a single grade was being fought over; the benefits which motivated such

acts were for the community, not the player, and thus the motivation of the students was

almost entirely in-game and intrinsic.

Such large-scale conflicts, factional rearrangements, and other similarly divisive

incidents were what tended to draw in the outliers, the students who at first had difficulty

engaging the activity. Students would volunteered for bonus Actions, something that

would earn them no extra credit, for the chance to alter the fate of the community in their

favor, to get the last word in a particular conflict, or even to gain vengeance for a former

slight. Such rivalries largely remained friendly, and, in a word, playful; the more the

students immersed themselves in these seemingly tense and fractal divisions, the more

fun they seemed to be having. Doing extra classwork, to them, was worth getting the

upper hand in their own private fictional conflict.

Students volunteering for extra work was certainly one of the most surprising

results of the activity to me, as an educator. Quietly, I made the observation that the

“Hold a Discussion” Action— despite having a decidedly lower investment of time and

effort on the part of the active player (the two other Action options both requiring a

writing assignment AND a presentation in the next class)— was not chosen more often

than the other two options. This suggests that students were willing to invest more time

than was strictly required on an Action that, to them, was more meaningful and impactful

upon the community narrative.

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Collaboration between students was something that developed organically, albeit

slowly; but when it did, it proved more productive than any group-work I had witnessed

in the past. Students necessarily collaborated when using the Start a Project option; but

also, in the classroom, students verbally coordinated their turns and narrative

contributions with each other. A student completing the narrative threads and loose ends

of another student became commonplace. Additionally, students would collaborate using

sketches and other modes of transmedia. The open-ended nature of the assignments

encouraged students to tell their story using a diverse range of media forms, including

digital media and art outside of the direct purview of what was covered within the class.

Since I had been encouraging transmedia presentations throughout the course, I

considered this a huge success, largely because the students hadn’t resorted to drawing as

a way to earn extra points; they had done so out of a desire to communicate their

narrative to the class in the most effective and meaningful way possible.

The Q uiet Year in the Classroom: C onclusions

My experience teaching a FYC course using The Quiet Year as a basis was, on the

whole, successful in my goals of 1) engaging the students cooperatively 2) motivating the

students toward meaningful writing, and 3) opening up the classroom to other forms of

writing and media. Students seemed understandably surprised at first, and unfamiliar with

the format of class. Within a few weeks, they had adapted and even began to correct and

update me on details of the collective narrative.

The attention given to the map, the rules, and the story were such that even I, a

long-time gamer, was surprised at some of the responses I was receiving. Students

formed factions, pursued agendas, and expanded the map with their own “exploration
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missions.” On the whole, I have never seen a more motivated class, in any subject, as

either a student or teacher. Attention and intrinsic motivation became focused not on

myself as instructor, nor on the game, nor even on the material being learned— the focus

fell instead upon the learning itself, and how it was occurring. By the end of the activity,

the students were not just writers, or players; they were also game designers, capable of

critically analyzing the activity in which they had just participated.

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CONCLUSION

I have demonstrated the pedagogical value of games and the advantages they

offer— many of which are desperately needed in the classroom today. The journey that,

for us, began at the table with Erik, Ed, and an imaginary gazebo, I hope will continue

well into the future as game-based pedagogy becomes an increasingly familiar sight in

the modern educational context. With games quickly approaching the rank of the world’s

most popular entertainment medium, the need to restructure our understanding of their

position in our society is not up for debate. Modern game-scholars, however, may yet

have the opportunity to decide exactly where that position ends up being located, in terms

of how serious and meaningful games will be allowed to be considered as artwork, tools,

and resources. This, in turn, will have an impact on what games will be allowed to be

made in the future.

In Chapter 1 ,1 showed that the history of TRPGs did not begin with Erik, Ed, and

the gazebo, any more than it will end with them. I endeavored to present a history of

games that confronts the notion of their apparently frivolous nature and reveals instead a

steady and consistent undercurrent of educational value (sometimes, but rarely,

recognized by their contemporaries) which lies at the very fundamental levels of what

games are and why we play them. I endeavored to prove that games have always been

about teaching at least as much as they have been about other kinds of entertainment, and

that the mode which inherits the largest portion of this pedagogical “genealogy” is, in

fact, the TRPG genre. Despite modern and historical aversion to games and play in the

classroom, the history of games, I argue, is the best evidence that they should be a
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foundational element of education, and one of the most valued tools in our pedagogical

workshop.

In Chapter 2 , 1 consolidated many of the diverse strains of thought surrounding

games-as-education, what benefits games offer the classroom, and why TRPG-play in

particular stands out as an effective system for learning. Building upon the work of other

game-studies scholars, I highlighted three major contributions which TRPGs offer to

modern education. Many of these contributions further disrupt the notion that games are

frivolous, easy, or wastes of time, stubborn notions which run counter to these scholarly

observations of how students play; yet such assumptions remain as some of the most

solid barriers preventing the ingress of games into school. Furthermore, the problems

which I argue that the inclusion of games could remedy— lack of engagement, lack of

socially-driven learning, and abstracted learning contexts— are some of the more pressing

concerns in the modern classroom that have left most educators largely stumped. By

bringing forth and leaning upon a plethora of experts, I have attempted to present the best

argument I can, in a single chapter, that games, despite a lack of widespread use in

education, are demonstrably effective (and even superior) educational tools. While games

certainly require more scholarship to prove this definitively, the research that has been

thus far carried out, I would argue, is most certainly positive, and indicative of the future

work that needs to be done to fully explore this space.

In Chapter 3 , 1 presented the writing composition classroom, specifically the

First-Year Composition class, as the ideal example of a subject that could benefit from

the inclusion of TRPG-based pedagogy. I offered examples of how the structure and

playful drive of TRPGs is ideal for accomplishing the stated learning goals of the
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composition course. This argument, aimed primarily at the skeptical educators, also

serves as an outline of how the learning goals of any subject matter or university

department can be translated into game dynamics. The composition course serves as a

space where the benefits of TRPGs can perhaps most clearly be displayed; but just as

composition lends itself to interdisciplinary work, spilling inevitably into other subjects,

so too do the benefits of TRPG-based learning apply to almost every academic subject.

Additionally, the game-like nature of modern academic writing, and of education in

general, shows that we are already much closer to the game-based classroom than one

may realize. Nonetheless, the composition course provides a concrete example of the

potential application of the history presented in Chapter 1, and the theory presented in

Chapter 2.

In Chapter 4 , 1 outlined I blueprint of my specific vision for a TRPG-based

composition course, built around the model of The Quiet Year. This chapter offers the

culmination of my research, and the most concrete and specific application of game-

based education, as well as a view at what such a TRPG classroom might look like, and

what benefits emerge from such an application. In proceeding through this work, I strove

to move from the general benefits of games to their,more specific uses and

implementations. As I noted in previous chapters, applying game-based methodology can

be, and often is, an unsuccessful venture when performed without an understanding of

what makes games effective teaching tools. I hope to have provided a model in this

chapter that can be followed by any teacher, however unfamiliar with game theory they

may be, as well as a convincing argument that the use of game-based curriculum is not

only theoretically grounded, but also demonstrably effective in practice. Additionally, I

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hope that this outline can be used as a model for how game-based learning might be

applied to a much wider range of academic subject matter and contexts.

Games-based learning is a valid pedagogical approach that I believe, in the next

several decades, will need to be reconsidered in a widespread and serious way. It remains

to be seen whether the academic institutions and systems currently in place will accept

this conspicuous overlap between the domains of education and recreation. In any case, a

difficult journey is ahead, one that only becomes both more complicated and more urgent

by the rising popularity and familiarity with mainstream gaming and the communities

which surround that hobby. I believe that a games-based approach to learning which

makes use of the TRPG model is the ideal to which educators should strive, not only

because of its effectiveness, but due to its liminal position at the cusp of both education

and entertainment.

I feel strongly that the effective use of games in the classroom will, first and

foremost, depend upon a fundamental shift in our perception of the work-play dichotomy

of our current culture, and where learning falls within such a system. Moreover, I hope

that the game-based classroom might be a catalyst for such a shift, causing both students

and educators to rethink the framing of our learning goals, and how they serve the

students. I do not think that the issues inherent to this discussion end in the classroom, or

after graduation. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said that “more than anything

else, the quality of life depends on two factors: how we experience work, and our

relations with other people.” I believe that games have a great deal to say on both of these

topics, and that the “voice” of play can be best heard when working hand in hand with

education. Education, particularly when centered around the fun and playful nature of
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learning, represents an opportunity for students to critically examine their own

assumptions on their quality of life, and their relationships to their work, and the people

around them.
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APPENDIX: HANDOUTS

ASSIGNM ENT: C H ARACTER CREATION

Due in class, printed, Thursday 9/22

We will be creating characters for our use over the next few weeks, as we play out a
game-based activity based upon “The Quiet Year.” This should require no understanding
of the game’s mechanics or how the character will be utilized, so be as creative as you
want and don’t worry if a character will “work” for our future activities or not. Above all,
remember that we want to know about your character, not the apocalypse. Right now we
do not know what the world is like, how it ended, or what it has become— we will define
these details on Thursday. Work within the Guidelines below, which will provide you
with enough to begin defining your character while keeping the setting vague and
abstract. For example, you could describe a character suffering from PTSD, and really
elaborate on their conditions, symptoms, triggers, etc., while leaving the cause of said
psychological disorder ambiguous (for now). This will intentionally force you to focus on
your character—their personality, identity, and lifestyle— rather than on plot or world-
building.

Guidelines & A ssum ptions for Players:

1) The genre is Post-Apocalyptic. There was a world, and now there is this. That is all
you know— your daily life involves too much struggle, violence, and exhaustion for
things like memory or history to matter.
2) Assume you were either too young to clearly remember the world before, or that you
were born after it fell.
3) Assume the same for everyone else in your community.
4) Assume that your daily life is deeply difficult-just finding food, water, medicine, and
other essentials takes up much of your time.
5) Assume the world is dangerous and filled with others that want to take from you and
your community.
6) Assume that you are not an outsider or loner, but have joined or remained a member of
this group to increase the chances of mutual safety and survival.
7) FOR NOW, DO NOT attempt to define what Jackals or Frost Shepherds are. We can
all think about that together when we begin playing.

Y our Objectives:
- Create the character you will play in this story.
Your character should be meaningfully different than who you are in this class.
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- Write an introduction to your character, 2-3 pages (1500 words), in any form (first
person, third person, diary, community myth, song, piece of ancient media
through which they define themselves, etc.)

These are som e questions you could address in som e way in your narrative:
- What name do others call you? What is the name that only you (and if applicable)
your mate know?
- W hat do you care about most or want most?
- Who or what has prevented you, up until now from getting it?
- What has been your role in the community up until now?
- What role do you wish you had?
- What are you most afraid of?
- Tell a brief story about something that happened involving or including another
character. You need to coordinate with those people, but need not necessarily tell
the same story or from the same perspective.
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TH E Q UIET YEAR
R ules o f Setup

The O pening Story: Let’s read the opening story, to immerse ourselves in the game-
narrative.

“For a long time, we were at war with The Jackals. Now, finally, w e’ve
driven them off, and we’re left with this: a year of relative peace. One
quiet year, with which to build our community up and learn again how
to work together. Come Winter, the Frost Shepherds will arrive and we
might not survive the encounter. This is when the game will end. But
we don’t know about that yet. What we know is that right now, in this
moment, there is an opportunity to build something.”

Explaining the Tools: Let’s start by familiarizing ourselves with our tools.
- The Board: This is our map. Before playing, w e’ll establish some of the
landscape. As we play, w e’ll update the map to reflect new discoveries, conflicts,
and opportunities. Parts of the map will be literal cartography and other parts will
be symbolic. W e’ll try to avoid writing words on it, though common symbols are
fine. Throughout the game, w e’ll all be responsible for drawing on this map. It’s
fine to draw poorly or crudely, but all of us are going to draw.
- The C ontem pt Tokens: These are Contempt Tokens. They represent any tension
and frustration that might arise in the community.
- The Year Deck: The four suits— Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades— will
represent the four seasons— Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. We will progress
through each suit, one by one in the above order; but, the order of cards within
each suit will be random. Let’s set up the Year Deck now.

W ho W e Are: We all have two roles to play in this game. The first is to represent the
community at a “bird’s eye” level, and to care about its fate. The second is to
dispassionately introduce dilemmas, as scientists conducting an experiment. The Quiet
Year asks us to move in and out of these two roles. We can embody specific characters,
or represent currents of thought within the community. When we speak or take action, we
might be representing a single person or a great many. If we allow ourselves to care about
the fate of these people, The Quiet Year becomes a richer experience and serves as a lens
for understanding communities in conflict. W e’ll also be presented with opportunities to
introduce new issues for the community to deal with. This will often happen when we
draw cards or complete a “Discover Something New” assignment. By dispassionately
introducing dilemmas, and then returning to our other role as representatives of the
community, we create tension and make the community’s successes feel real. If there’s
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an issue you struggle with in real life (like whether violence is ever justified), introduce
situations that call it into question.

Sketching Terrain: Before the game begins, we must establish some facts about the
community and what its surroundings are like. We begin with a brief discussion (taking
two minutes at most) of the general terrain and habitat of the area. This can be as simple
as someone saying, “how about a community in a rocky desert?” and everyone else
nodding in agreement. At this point, each of us should introduce one detail about the
local terrain. When we introduce our detail, we then sketch our contribution onto the
map. These sketches should be rough and simple, leaving lots of blank space for
additions during play. The community itself should be fairly large on the map, perhaps
occupying a third of the space. Unless otherwise stated, assume that our community has
60-80 members, among whom our characters live. As an example, a group might decide
to set their game in a forest. The first player introduces the detail: “Alright, the forest is
full of young, spindly trees.” The next player adds, “And it’s nestled within a steep
mountain range.” The third player adds, “W e’ve taken up residence in an old mining
camp.” The final player says, “And the trees in this area have all been clearcut.” As
details are added, the players draw them on the map. Let’s collect 6 good details now.

Starting Resources: Next, we each declare an important resource for the community,
something which we might have in either abundance or scarcity. Some examples are:
Clean drinking water
- A source of energy
- Protection from predators
- Adequate shelter
- Food
Choosing a resource makes it important, if it wasn’t already. If you pick ‘gasoline,’ it
becomes something that your community wants and needs. As a group, we now choose
one of those resources to be in Abundance. It gets listed beside the map under
Abundances, and whoever called it now draws an abundance of this resource on the map.
The other resources get listed as Scarcities, and the players who called them draw their
absence or scarcity on the map somehow. Remember that symbols and symbolic
representations are fine, but words should be avoided. Let’s declare 10 resources and
decide 2 which are in Abundance. The rest are in Scarcity.
 187

TH E Q UIET YEAR
R ules o f Play

The W eek: The basic unit of play in The Quiet Year is the week. Each week is a turn
taken by one player. During each week, the following things happen:
1) The active player draws a card, reads the text aloud, and resolves it. Follow all
bold text.
2) The active player chooses an assignm ent (Discover Something New, Start a
Project, or Hold a Discussion).

Draw ing Cards: As there are 52 cards, there are 52 weeks. We won’t necessarily get to
play all of them - the Frost Shepherds could arrive any time during Winter. Most cards
have two options to choose from, separated by an ‘o r... ’ divider. Pick the option that you
find the most interesting and fitting, and read the text aloud. The card might ask you a
question, bring bad news, or create new opportunities. Many cards have specific rules
attached to them, which are written in bold text. If you drew the card, it’s up to you to
make the decisions that the card requires. If a card asks you a question, think about
whether your answer could be represented on the map somehow. If it fits, update the map
to reflect this new information. For example, if the card asks you about the sleeping
quarters for the community, you might end up drawing a row of tents near the edge of the
forest.

Assignm ents: After resolving their card, the active student must choose one of three
assignments. “Discover Something New” and “Start a Project” assignments will be
completed as homework: a standard 2-3 page (1500 word) piece. Such assignments must
be brought to the next class in a format befitting an in-class presentation— this most
likely means either A) printing out enough copies for the class, or B) presenting your
assignment orally. Each class, starting next week, will include a lengthy “News”
segment, in which last week’s assignments are presented for class consideration and
critique. The only exception to this is the Hold a Discussion assignment, which is
completed in class immediately after the player’s card is resolved.

D iscover Som ething New. In your writing, introduce a new situation. It might be
a problem, an opportunity, or a bit of both. During next week’s News segment,
you will draw that situation onto the map. Drawings should be small and simple:
smaller than an inch, finished within thirty seconds. Whenever things seem too
controlled or easy, we can use this action to introduce new issues and dilemmas.
Some example situations:
There’s a dried-up well located at the edge of town.
- Mangy wolves have been slinking around the woods.
 188

- There’s a broken-down waterwheel a mile upstream.

- Strange wailing noises come from the forest at night.
- A self-declared prophet arrives.

Start a Project. You choose a situation and declare what the community will do
to resolve it. There is no consultation about this idea - the community simply
begins work. You must, however, coordinate with a classmate who also chose
Start a Project in the same class as you, writing a single piece together (however
you see fit to do so). If no one else chose to Start a Project, you must Discover
Something New instead. Some example projects:
- W e’re converting the mineshaft into a cold food storage.
- W e’re killing those wolves.
- W e’re going to sacrifice a newborn on the night of the full moon, to
appease the Windwalkers.
Remember that you are a small community. It isn’t easy or quick to build a house
or repair a water wheel. Do you have the necessary tools and expertise to do this?
Be generous with your assumptions, but do remember that scarcity and difficulty
are the norm.

Hold a Discussion. This assignment takes place in class, instead of at home. You
must begin the discussion, and you can choose to open with a question or a
declaration. Starting with you and going clockwise, everyone gets to weigh in
once, sharing a single argument comprised of 1-2 sentences. If you opened with a
question, you get to weigh in last. If you opened with a declaration, that’s it for
you. A discussion never results in a decision or summation process. Everyone
weighs in, and then it’s over. This is how conversations work in communities:
they are untidy and inconclusive affairs. Each discussion should be tied to a
situation on the map. When a discussion ends, mark the situation it is attached to
with a small dot. Some example conversations include:
- Should we retaliate against the bikers? (Or, if leading with a declaration:
We should abstain from retaliation or violence.)
Could we use the school-bus as a sleeping area for the village children?
It’s important that we stay concise. If any of us feel like we have more to say on a
topic, we can always hold another discussion about it at a later point. Note that,
while the above two actions are marked according to my standard writing
assessment, your Discussions will be marked according to how well vour fellow
students participate. This places a burden upon them to engage your topic, and a
burden upon yourself to choose an engaging topic.
 189

U pdating Resources: At the start of the game, we’ll have two resources in Abundance
and at least that many in Scarcity. These lists serve as guides for interpreting the health of
the community. Throughout play, we’ll update these lists to reflect changes in our
circumstances, whenever we feel that it is appropriate to do so. Maybe the completion of
a project alleviates a Scarcity or creates an Abundance. Some weekly cards will alter
these lists as well.

Contempt: If ever you feel like you weren’t consulted or honoured in a decision-making
process, you can take a piece of Contempt and place it in front of you. This is your outlet
for expressing disagreement or tension. If someone starts a project that you don’t agree
with, you don’t get to voice your objections or speak out of turn. You are instead invited
to take a piece of Contempt. Contempt will generally remain in front of players until the
end of the game. It will act as a reminder of past contentions. Its primary role is as a
social signifier. In addition, you can discard it back into the centre of the table in two
ways: by acting selfishly and by diffusing tensions. If you ever want to act selfishly, to
the known detriment of the community, you can discard a Contempt token to justify your
behaviour. You decide whether your behaviour requires justification. This will often
trigger others taking Contempt tokens in response. If someone else does something that
you greatly support, that would mend relationships and rebuild trust, you can discard a
Contempt token to demonstrate how they have diffused past tensions.
 190

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 VITA
Name: Timm Woods

Date of Birth: April 20, 1987

Elementary School: Notre Dame

New Hyde Park, New York

Date Graduated: June, 2001

High School: Chaminade High School

Mineola, New York

Date Graduated: June, 2005

Baccalaureate Degree: Bachelor of Arts

Loyola University
Baltimore, Maryland

Date Graduated: June, 2009