Jennifer Grouling Cover - The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games

Abbreviations, Terms, and Transcription Symbols

Gaming Terms

CRPG: computer role-playing game

D&D: Dungeons and Dragons

DM: dungeon master, the term for the gamemaster in D&D

DMG: Dungeon Masters Guide

GM: gamemaster, the one who runs a TRPG campaign

LARP: live action role-play

MMORPG: massively multiplayer online role-playing game

NPC: non-player character

RPGA: role-playing game association, an organization for D&D players

TRPG: tabletop role-playing game

XP: experience points

Terms from Possible-World Theory

(adapted from Ryan, Possible Worlds, vii)

APW: An alternative possible world in a different system of reality, a fiction that is accepted as true when the reader shifts to this world.

AW: The actual world is our reality.

NAW: The narratorial actual world is the world that the narrator presents to the narratee.

TAW: The textual actual world is the view of the text reference world that is presented by the author.

TRW: The textual reference world is the world that the text claims as factual. It is the alternative possible world that the text refers to.

Transcription Symbols

[ overlapping utterances

(#) length of pause in seconds, noted if 3+

: extension of sound or syllable

/ rise in intonation

CAPS loud and emphasized utterance

(laughter) general laughter in the group

(laugh) laughter by participant indicated

... speaker trails off

--- speaker self-corrects

Preface and Acknowledgments

It was the fall of 2003, and my first semester of graduate school. I signed up for a course called Discourse Analysis, thinking it had something to do with Foucault. As it turned out, it was really a methods course in linguistics, and when my professorDavid Hermantold us we needed to tape record a conversation, I had the perfect idea: I would record part of a session from my Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) group. I signed up to present to the class under the unit called narrative analysis, thinking my recording would be a perfect fit. I quickly came up against the traditional linguistic definitions of narrativethat it was a story, told about an event in the past by a narrator to a narratee. Maybe its not a narrative, David Herman said in reference to my D&D transcript. But as I sat there week after week engrossed in the story of Whisper and her companions in the world of Sorpraedor, I knew that at least part of what kept me interested was the story I was experiencing. And thus, I continued to attempt to reconcile my personal experience with the narrative theory that drew my academic attention.

My course project turned into other course projects, including a seminar paper for Carolyn Millers rhetorical criticism class where I first tested out some of my ideas on the rhetoric exigence behind the tabletop role-playing game. These course projects turned into a thesis, under the direction of David Herman, David Rieder, and Mike Carter. I can not thank my committee enough for their input in this process. It was one the most rewarding writing experiences, and when David Herman suggested that my thesis had the potential for a book, I was floored. After my defense, I went out and bought some shiny new dice for my D&D game.

At times, I wished that, like my sorceress Whisper, I could have sum moned some magic energies, perhaps a polymorph spell, to magically transform the thesis into a book length project. Of course, I found it wasnt that simple. However, with the help of many people, I was able to complete what really is a transformation. I added massive amounts of research to this book project, I completely rewrote nearly everything, and I even changed some of my ideas.