A Hermeneutical Approach to Role-Playing Analysis

Abstract

This is an article about viewing role-playing games and role-playing game theory from a hermeneutical standpoint. In other words, it presents one view on how a role-playing situation can be seen as a set of texts. That view also includes the idea of not only analyzing those texts, but also addressing the way game participants interpret those texts. On the side of role-playing theory, this article uses material from various schools of thought, from the post-Forge community to Nordic larptheory. On the side of hermeneutics, emphasis is on Paul Ricoeur’s idea of meaningful actions as texts. Those are the texts that people performing or observing that activity appropriate and interpret. The result of this article is one potential bridge between various schools of thought on looking at role-playing, including a translation platform capable of enabling the move of theories and research results from one role-playing culture to the next.