Tabletop Role-playing Games Research Articles

Writer as Character: Creating “One-Pager” Tabletop Roleplaying Games in the First Year Composition Classroom

This proposed session/paper reflects on an assignment in a first-year writing course where students create a “one pager” tabletop roleplaying game based on writing a research paper. This assignment is designed to both support skill transfer through defamiliarizing the process of research writing through translation to the roleplaying game, and to define the persona (or player-character) of the writer, exploring the materiality of the writerly identity. This assignment is rooted in a composition pedagogy that centers the identity of the author as a complex piece of the writing puzzle, building on feminist and queer pedagogies (Jung 2005; Hawisher 2003; Alexander and Rhodes 2011) and interrogating Aristotelian conceptions of ethos and identity. Building on both persona and frame theories of tabletop roleplaying games (see Waskul and Lust 2004; Fine 1983; MacKay 2001; Grouling Cover 2010), this assignment asks that students not only conceptualize the writing process but the writer themself, as a character that exists in the created game–a persona existing in the “gameplay” frame. After creating their own games, students play the games created by the peers and subsequently reflect on the “character” they were invited to play, thinking about how their own complex, intersectional, and performed identity shapes their writing. This assignment lays bare both the intersections between person, writer, and text, and the processes and skills required to craft a research paper. This session will include the assignment sheet, samples of student work, and reporting on the experience, as well as a thorough grounding in the composition and TTRPG theories that undergird the work.

Gaming [the] Systems: Critical Analysis through Tabletop Roleplaying Games in Humanities Classrooms

In its very designation, “role play” contains a productive tension: the expectations bound up in roles and the liberating potentiality of play. It comes as no surprise, then, that role play has found expression in the worlds of business, therapy, education, and even the military. Table-top games exist as our culture’s most familiar form of role play but among its least theorized. In this paper, I examine the rich potential of table-top role-playing games in humanities classrooms as a means to fuel cultural critique, critical analysis, class discussion, and self-reflection. My paper lays out a theoretical structure for analyzing games as multi-dimensional texts and a practical guide for bringing them into the classroom. In particular, I look at two free-to-access and permissively concise game systems which can easily fit into an open week of coursework. The games, “Lasers and Feelings” and “The Deep Forest,” depart from the cultural expectations of “Dungeons & Dragons” to rethink, adapt, and challenge our understanding of issues ranging from the formulation of the rational, Western subject to the politics of post-colonialism. I supplement conventional process-oriented pedagogy with Ian Bogost’s “Persuasive Games” and C. Thai Nguyen’s “Games: Agency as Art,” to establish a robust groundwork for students to analyze and critique how game design decisions make arguments about the world. Furthermore, in playing the games in the classroom and debriefing afterwards, students identify their internal systems that reflect and inform their own assumptions about the world.

Media linguistic features of the tabletop role-playing game text

The subject of the study is the media linguistic features of the text of a tabletop role-playing game (TRPG). The purpose of the work is to identify the essential features of the media text and answer the question: can media accompaniment of a tabletop role–playing game be considered a media text? Despite the sufficient elaboration of the topic of media communications on the Internet, the research material is a little-studied phenomenon. The research material is transcripts of sessions of the board RPG "Dungeons & Dragons" from fragments of the TV show "Critical Role" on streaming platforms. The study examined the emergence and development of the media text concept, noting a significant expansion of this term semantics in the context of media globalization. Further, the typological properties of the media text as an object of linguistic media research were systematized and the text of the TRPG was analyzed for compliance with existing criteria. The article used descriptive and comparative methods; a statistical method to assess the popularity of the TRPG. When working with the transcript of the game, Python programming methods were implemented: to increase clarity and create a correct text transcription. As a result, conclusions were drawn about the presence of such media linguistic features in the media accompaniment of TRPG as collective authorship, hypertextuality, interactivity and etc., which constituted the scientific novelty of the study. Comparative analysis by criteria allowed us to trace qualitative changes in the typology of media texts. In addition, the expediency of expanding the terminological apparatus of media linguistics was emphasized, which correlates with the study of transmedia narration. The results of the observations can be applied to improve the text-generation that accompanies the gameplay, and can also be used to conduct similar studies based on the speech material of TRPGs.

‘How do you want to do this?’: table-top role-playing games and academic identity

ABSTRACT This paper aims to explore the intersection of academia and Table-Top Role-Playing Games (TTRPG) with the development of identity through both character creation and maps; these two features are key features within TTRPG games, adding depth and richness to the world of play. The author suggests that TTRPGs provide a unique space for introspective academic inquiry and potential personal growth, as players are able to explore and experiment with different identities and roles within a collaborative storytelling framework. Used as a reflective process, academics can explore how their academic working lives look, and their experience of living them, and consider the impact on their actions including areas which they may need to develop or how to best utilise their academic identity for the varying aspects of their work. This may include a deeper undertanding of both who they are and how they interact with others they meet in their professional lives. Through an autoethnographic reflection on both TTRPGs and academic identity, the author proposes that the two worlds have much to offer each other in terms of personal development. Specifically, how the creation of a character based on the academic’s identity can be ‘played’ within a map representing the reality of their academic working life to enhance their personal and professional development.

A Dicey Situation: A Study of How Controlled Vocabularies Describe Tabletop Roleplaying Games

As popular culture has become an accepted aspect of study, academic interest has increased for tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs). However, existing controlled vocabularies cannot accurately describe them, and this will decrease their discoverability in collections. This article surveys several controlled vocabularies that feature headings for TTRPGs and argues that their definitions, structures, and disambiguation between subject and genre/form fail to distinguish TTRPGs from other forms of roleplay or from works about TTRPGs. The author also offers possible short and long-term solutions for better implementing existing vocabularies in TTRPG records.

Are Dwarves Protestant? American Religion and “Dungeons & Dragons”

I analyze the ideology of representation of religion in the tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) Dungeons & Dragons. I approach TRPGs as a type of protostory, an interactive set of stories governed by rules which provides affordances to create different stories. Whether a specific story is relatively hard or easy to instantiate from the protostory indicates if this particular instantiation serves as a preferred, negotiated, or oppositional reading of the TRPG rules. Based on an analysis of the dimensions of religion proposed by Ninian Smart, contrasted with Harold Bloom’s idea of American religion, as well as the concept of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation, I discuss the similarity between the way Dungeons & Dragons simulates religion, and the traditional understanding of religion in American culture.

Social skills training with a tabletop role-playing game, before and during the pandemic of 2020: in-person and online group sessions.

The area of social skills is broad, in theory and in practice. For social skills training, various clinical practices have been applied in group sessions, as have motivational resources such as role-playing games (RPGs). In recent years, the need arose to assess the clinical impact of the pandemic. The objective of this study was to determine the impact that the pandemic has had on in-person and online social skills training. We evaluated six subjects with autism spectrum disorder, with or without another, similar disorder, each of whom attended a total of 12 two-hour RPG sessions over a 12-month period. The original (Portuguese-language) version of the Social Skills Inventory for Adolescents was applied at three different time points (pre-, mid-, and post-intervention). After six in-person tabletop RPG sessions, there was an increase in the mean frequency scores and a decrease in the mean difficulty scores. However, during the pandemic, the remaining six sessions were conducted online and the effect was the opposite. Our data indicate that there is a need for further studies assessing social skills training in online contexts.

A Scoping Review of Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TTRPG) as Psychological Intervention: Potential Benefits and Future Directions.

The present study aimed to investigate how prior research of TTRPG revealed the benefits of TTRPG as a psychological intervention and how further studies can overcome the challenges and limitations of TTRPG in those previous studies. The study used Scoping Review to explore the potential benefits of TTRPG. Three research questions were identified (1) the extent to which empirical research has been conducted regarding TTRPG as intervention, (2) the potential of TTRPG mentioned, and (3) the suggestions for future research. The study investigated the last 10 years (ie, 2013 to 2023) of research publications with all research methods included. The search focused on key terms of "Tabletop Role-playing Game", "TTRPG", "Dungeons and Dragons", and terms related to intervention. The databases used were in English and Indonesian and resulted in 109 papers but later eliminated due to various reasons until it became 51 papers to be reviewed. Of the 51 papers included for final analysis, majority are of exploratory approach (n = 35; eg, literature review and qualitative design studies), indicating that research in TTRPG is still at the emerging stage. Quantitative design studies (n = 12) and mixed-method design studies (n = 4) on TTRPG are the minority. Majority papers (n = 30) are published in the United States, only three papers published in the Asian context, indicating that TTRPG research in the Asian context is scarce. From existing literature, TTRPG provides benefits to promote cognitive and psychosocial skills, to prevent negative effects and stress, as well as to intervene in psychological problems such as social anxiety, depressive symptoms, and autism spectrum disorders. Further studies can explore the use of TTRPG in Asia-representing collectivistic culture, to employ different systems of TTRPG and to examine the effects of TTRPG using experimental design to overcome the limitations of prior studies.

TaskMaster: The Subintern Adventure Game-Game-Based Learning for Medical Subintern Task Prioritization.

The medical subinternship (also known as an acting internship) offers postclerkship medical students an opportunity for significant professional development. However, the skills required of a successful subintern-efficiency, patient triage, and advanced organization-are distinct from skills generally refined during the medicine clerkship. Few published curricula exist to prepare postclerkship students for success in this new role. To address this training gap, we introduced a novel tabletop role-playing game to equip medical subinterns with the necessary skills to deliver safe and efficient patient care. We created an hour-long game-based learning session for rising internal medicine and family medicine subinterns. Led by a single facilitator, students worked together to triage and complete tasks in a gamified simulated environment of a morning on the wards. To assess the session, we surveyed participants (N = 130) immediately after activity completion. Eighty-three participants completed the postactivity survey, for a response rate of 64%. A majority of students agreed that TaskMaster: The Subintern Adventure Game met its educational goals of increasing comfort with task prioritization, organization, and patient triage. Ninety-three percent of respondents (77 of 83) either agreed or strongly agreed that they felt more prepared to be a covering provider for patients after the activity. Participants also reported high engagement with the activity. Leveraging the interactivity, teamwork, and contextualized practice of game-based learning can offer low-cost and adaptable opportunities to teach higher-order clinical skills and increase preparedness for the subinternship.

From Dungeons & Dragons to Dragon Quest: Cultural dialogue and material shifts

Arguably one of the most popular genres in today’s video game market is the Japanese role-playing game (JRPG). The distinguishing traits of the genre are often a matter of debate. The final decision on whether something is a JRPG usually relies more on general feelings than on rigid criteria (Mallindine 2016). However, one shared trait among the exponents of the genre is that they find its roots in Western tabletop role-playing games, such as Dungeons&Dragons (1974). As a matter of fact, Dungeons&Dragons served as an inspiration for many other role-playing games (RPGs). One such example is Wizardry (1981), which, together with Ultima (1981), was among the most successful computer role-playing games of its time (Barton & Stacks 2008). The two games served as the beginning for long-spanning series, which enjoyed wide success in Japan (Adams 1985), where the RPG genre as a whole was soon integrated, through various platforms, into the local media ecology (Steinberg 2015). Wizardry in particular was also among the games which influenced Horii Yūji (Horii 2018a. 2018b) to create Dragon Quest (1986), one of the earliest examples of JRPG. This article seeks to draw a connection between Dungeons&Dragons and the early JRPGs. First, I compare Dungeons&Dragons, a tabletop RPG, to its most well-known digital counterparts of the time, Wizardry and Ultima. By doing this, I expose the differences between ‘pen and paper’ and ‘screen and software.’ Then, I observe the differences between Wizardry, Ultima, and Dragon Quest in terms of both aesthetics and gameplay, in order to understand how Japanese developers and distributors negotiated the concept of RPG for the Japanese market. In both comparisons I consider how characters, avatar, gameplay, and narrative are mediated by the platform and the cultural milieu hosting them.

A Preliminary Geography of the (Mega)Dungeon Spatial Practice and Tabletop Role-Playing Games

The dungeon and megadungeon are imagined spaces of a complex and interconnected network that emerged in fantasy tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) from the 1970s. As a space distinctive to early TTRPGs it is characterised by asymmetry between the dungeon as an object of design, and the dungeon as a practice of play. The discourse of games manuals, independent publications and blogs emerging from the TTRPG scene tracks the origins and evolution of these procedural and labyrinthine spaces, and the distinct spatiality of the megadungeon as a geographical object. The space of the megadungeon can be mapped onto a Lefebvrian triad of spatial production: it exists as a representation of space produced by a dungeon master or algorithmic generation that forms an infrastructure of play; it exists as a spatial practice emerging out of the unique experience of players traversing the megadungeon; and it forms a space of representation by seeking to imagine the megadungeon as a living fictional world, intersecting with the assumptions about spatial norms and relations originating in tropes of fantasy fiction. Surveying these trends in conversation with recent insights from human geography illustrates the distinct spatiality of the megadungeon that is derived from its origins in TTRPG play. This brings forward important questions for the utility of the megadungeon as a metaphor for digital media ecologies, and asks whether the metaphor could be extended to enrich conceptual debates in human geography.

THE MOTIF OF WAR IN TABLETOP ROLE-PLAYING GAMES: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

This article explores the prominent motif of war in tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) through the analysis of popular games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer fantasy role playing game. The author argues that the motif of war is a prevalent theme in RPGs due to its ability to prompt players to engage in epic battles and quests and to develop complex storylines. The article draws upon theoretical frameworks such as narratology and ludology to analyze how the motif of war shapes player experiences in these games and how it contributes to the evolution of TTRPGs as a genre. Through the analysis of game mechanics and thematic elements, the author demonstrates that the motif of war serves both as a source of conflict and a means of creating immersive gameplay experiences. The article concludes with a reflection on the implications and potential future directions of studying war in RPGs.

Novel Academic Tabletop 2022 (NAT22): A Dynamic Dice-Based Emergency Medicine Education Tool.

Gamification is an effective teaching tool that improves engagement and knowledge retention. Tabletop role-playing games are dynamic games that use random chance and foster player/leader partnership. To date, there are no teaching tools that mimic dynamic or unpredictable patient presentations. This style of game may work well as a tool for medical education in a simulation-based modality. In this report, we document the rules, materials, and training required to reproduce a hybrid game created to combine facets of simulation and tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) to create a dynamic medical education tool. After testing the game for flaws and fluidity of gameplay, we plan to collect data evaluating emergency medicine residents' enjoyability and knowledge retention. In this article, we describe a novel TRPG simulation hybridgame that we hypothesizewill improve learner enjoyability/engagement and have similar educational benefits to standard medical education.

Inclusivity and diversity in ‘Actual Play’: Studying The Adventure Zone

‘Actual Play’ is a growing form of play spectatorship which involves the recording and broadcast of tabletop gaming sessions. It has spawned bestselling comics, live shows and television adaptations. Unlike ‘Let’s Play’ videos on YouTube or game livestreaming on platforms like Twitch, there has been little in the way of critical analysis of this new media form. This article therefore aims to understand its audience(s) through qualitative and quantitative content analysis of survey responses from the fan communities of one of the most popular Actual Play shows, The Adventure Zone. We focus on the relationship between Actual Play’s attempts at creating more accessible and inclusive media that welcome all types of people and the more exclusionary, highly gendered aspects of the broader gaming community. These enquiries also serve as a case study for Actual Play as a less-examined area of both play spectatorship and gaming content creation, and points towards potential future study in these areas. This article analyses Actual Play podcast The Adventure Zone to highlight the under-explored dynamics of fan audiences in this area of gaming content creation. Topics covered include audience reception of the creators, engagement with issues of diversity and Actual Play as a tabletop roleplaying game gateway.

Introducing Dungeons & Therapy: A Tabletop Role-Playing System for Group Therapy

Abstract: This article is the first of a planned three-part series that explores the utility of table-top role-playing games (TTRPGs) in therapy and introduces a new system designed by the authors for use in group therapy settings called Dungeons & Therapy. The surging popularity of TTRPGs like Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) has led to scholarly interest in their potential uses within therapeutic settings. However, D&D’s financial cost, complicated rules, and history of problematic content can create barriers for therapists wishing to use it. Dungeons & Therapy, which the authors have made as a free alternative to D&D, seeks to capture the role-playing essence of TTRPGs with a simplified rule set and to provide systems through which a therapist can encourage different kinds of play from players to facilitate personalized therapeutic outcomes.

Benevolent Transgressive Play in Dungeons & Dragons [D&D

Background Research into transgressive play experiences in games has grown in recent years. In this article, we explore the potential for transgressive play to be constructive in multiplayer settings—something we conceptualize as “benevolent transgression.” Aim This article describes the presence and appeal of benevolent transgressive play experiences in the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons [D&D]. Research Methods In 2021, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted focus group discussions (3 groups, 14 participants, aged 24–55) and an online survey (354 participants, aged 18–63) with current D&D players to better understand what play experiences were meaningful and appealing for them—in consideration of the game’s contemporary resurgence. Key Finding and Discussion Our qualitative analysis focuses on participant responses that described the presence and appeal of transgressive play that knowingly challenges player boundaries or game boundaries, what we term benevolent transgression. We propose two key factors that we believe enable it—1) player agency and 2) collaborative negotiation—and briefly discuss benevolent transgression in consideration of game-based learning [GBL].

“Monstrous Adventurers”: The Racecraft of the Dungeons and Dragons Imaginary

This paper examines the use of racial categories within the tabletop roleplaying game ‘Dungeon’s and Dragons’ through the lens of racecraft as outlined by Karen and Barbara Fields. Examining D&D as an imaginary, I explore how its mechanics and fiction create categories of race through a process of profiling that produces sumptuary codes, perpetuates a racial hierarchy, invokes racialized accounts of biology, and constitutes a racialized gaze. Through stressing the continuity of this fictional account of race with real world racecraft, I analyze how the fiction of D&D fails to imagine beyond the condition of race. This fiction thereby operates as a mirror that reflects back to us the difficulties of thinking beyond such racial logics, reaffirming the need for continued critique and a reimagining of race.

The Wand in the Well: A Tabletop Role-Playing Campaign in a Child Protection Context

This paper reports a tabletop role-playing campaign developed in a child protection counselling context. The campaign was written by 12-year-old “Oliver” (a pseudonym) in collaboration with his counsellor and then played through with members of his family. The paper provides the background to the study, incorporating the theoretical context, tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), narrative play therapy, and the position of the counsellor as both a co-creator and dungeon master. It outlines the collaborative process of creating a TTRPG campaign, and then as the primary intention, presents a faithful retelling of the campaign undertaken. The paper further provides clinical reflection on symbolism evident in TTRPGs and the campaign presented. Finally, it presents therapeutic outcomes to highlight the impact of this intervention and support the role of TTRPGs in a therapeutic context. The campaign investigates themes of displacement from home, siblings working together to overcome obstacles, exploring dungeons, overthrowing evil scientists, retrieving lost possessions, and, ultimately, returning home.

Expanding the Intervention Potential of Tabletop Role-Playing Games

Expanding the Intervention Potential of Tabletop Role-Playing Games

The role of expertise in playful learning activities: A design-based self-study within teacher education aimed at the development of tabletop role-playing games

Some playful learning (PL) approaches may underestimate the importance of students' prior expertise in specific kinds of play. This study examined the implications of expertise in a PL environment wherein tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) served as learning tools. Through a design-based project in which participants designed and played TRPGs, we investigated how student teachers’ TRPG expertise affected learning processes and outcomes. The findings indicate that the TRPG novices played, designed and learned through TRPGs, although learning potentials were reduced due to their lack of experience. Therefore, an organisational educational change emphasising play, training and peer learning is suggested.