Introduction

You mean you do not wish to share in a grand adventure?

GANDALF, THE HOBBIT

It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.

OLD HERMIT, THE LEGEND OF ZELDA

It is a line familiar to anyone who has ever played Dungeons & Dragons (Gygax and Arneson 1974). One of the most-used plot hooks in recent gaming history, it represents something both familiar and welcoming. An adventure is about to begin. Players have a general idea what to expect next. There will likely be some small initial quest or task to be completed immediately. Keeping with the canonical Dungeons & Dragons (hereafter D&D) taxonomy, the quest will likely be to exterminate a small horde of rats in the cellar of the very tavern you are currently staying in. Whether or not the group of adventurers knows each other is immaterial, because after this quest they all will. And they will all have something in common; they will be rat-killers extraordinaire. Thus we have the beginning of a role-playing game (hereafter RPG).

The familiarity of this example is rooted in its reproducibility as an RPG trope. It has been constructed, presented and re-presented in multiple ways across several gaming contexts. Baudrillard (2006) and Benjamin (1999) remind us that recognition is rooted in reproduction; that to disseminate an idea fully we need only reproduce it repeatedly until it becomes a commonplace. We can see evidence of this in several notable digital role-playing games (hereafter DRPGs). For example, Black Isle’s Icewind Dale (Bethesda 2000) opens with this exact quest (which is not surprising as it is a digital D&D adventure). Still other games have used this very trope in multiple ways. Bethesda’s second installment in the Elder Scrolls series, Daggerfall (Bethesda 1996), regularly requires players to remove rat infestations from inns all over the many towns and cities of High Rock province, coincidentally offering the exact fee for staying in a room at that same inn as payment. More recently, BioWare’s blockbuster Dragon Age: Origins (BioWare 2009) employed this trope as a part of the human noble origin story, a way of introducing the player to their history and their Mabari hound companion. In similar fashion, Bethesda’s blockbuster Fallout 3 (2008) teaches players about the game’s combat mechanics by inviting the adolescent avatar into an early career removing radiated rats and roaches from the lower bowels of your post-nuclear vault home. It would seem that to play RPGs is to be forever saddled with the unenviable task of culling the rodent population of whatever world we happen to be adventuring in.

The reproduction of these tropes is expected of RPGs. They represent formal elements that serve to signify the status of the game artifact. Their re-presentation invites comparison to other games that share in their likeness. This is, in some way, what it means to work within an idea of genre. Of course, as the series introduction acknowledges, the very idea of genre is contested. But even when we can decide the criteria for parsing one genre from another, as Mortensen argues, genre is still often elusive (2009). Examining the game genres identified by the Norwegian Media Authority, Mortensen explains that that the problem with these genres, derived from categories prevalent within the game industry, becomes apparent when brought out of the abstract and into the game store. Many games have elements of each genre, making classification an exercise in prioritizing one or other aspect of each game. Still, role-playing games can be an intelligible type and, as such, can be used as a way of framing (and thus containing) a conversation about particular dynamics and modes of engagement.

As a genre, the RPG has a relatively well-established history. Its early origins are fairly well-known. Brad King and John Borland discuss this in their early history of computer role-playing games, claiming that ‘scratch almost any game developer who worked from 1970s to today and you’re likely to find a vein of role-playing experience’ (2003, 4). This idea of locating DRPGs in relationship to D&D, as well as miniature wargaming, has been echoed in other scholarly histories (Barton 2006; Wolf 2005). Still, while its origins may clearly be established, the DRPG has developed its own unique history. We have progressed to a point where multiple DRPG franchises have established themselves as recognizable hallmarks. A player need only mention series such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Knights of the Old Republic, or Baldur’s Gate to invoke not only a litany of signifiers but also the anticipation of gameplay conventions, both ludic and narrative.

Each generation of consoles and computer hardware has titles that serve to further establish the existing tropes of the genre and push those conventions with new developments. For years, console RPGs were defined by active-time battle menus (a kind of nod to the turn-based systems of pen and paper). As hardware became more advanced, the battle systems and mechanics became increasingly advanced, allowing DRPGs to become increasingly seamless and operate in ‘real-time.’ One has only to look at titles such as Eternal Sonata (Tri-Crescendo 2007) or Tales of Vesperia (Namco Tales Studio 2008) to see various evolutions of the battle system. Even Final Fantasy XIII (Square Enix 2010), the most recent iteration in the franchise, has pushed our concept of game mechanics in its ability to shift character role/archetype at will during combat.

In similar fashion, we have seen the evolution of the DRPG through the representation of perspective and narrative. While older iterations relied on either a top-down or side-scrolling view, incremental increases in graphics processing allowed RPGs to work with a first-person perspective. Early work by SSI on Eye of the Beholder (1990), as well as Dungeon Hack (1993), encouraged other projects like Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls franchise. DRPGs developed new ways to immerse players, inviting them to participate in fictional worlds by inhabiting the gaze of characters. Along with this, games increasingly incorporated the complex interweaving of subplots that supported the central narrative of the game. Early titles such as Origin Studios’ Ultima series had parties of characters, but often these characters were skeletal in nature, serving less as a part of the embedded narrative and more as recognizable plot markers. Later installments in the franchise introduced more complex elements to these characters, giving them history, personality, even individual motivations. Likewise, console games develop similar patterns. Square’s DRPG epic Final Fantasy VI (1994) carries a cast of fourteen playable characters (although some can be missed in the gameplay), many of which have lengthy story arcs and side quests. This idea, once an anomaly, has become an expectation in current DRPGs.

There is no question that the tropes that signify a DRPG have evolved and even branched off in different directions. Still, some remain relatively unchanged, like the persistent, pesky rat problem with which we began.

Representation and Ludicity in Role-playing Games

What, then, to make of all the rat killing? It is a part of the same inevitability as ‘You’re sitting around a tavern table’. We know that an adventure is beginning. The trope is reproduced with enough frequency that these tasks serve as a familiar, identifiable introduction to what is to come. The tricky bit here is that in this very act of identification we see the groundwork for a possible schism to follow, one that explores the multiple and seemingly disparate parts of RPGs. These early quests, while often understood as a narrative introduction, also serve as a kind of ‘tutorial’ to the games mechanics. They not only bring together a disparate band of adventurers in some rising action, but also establish the base set of rules and conditions that players will be working with throughout the game. While our characters are learning their world through the introductory work of killing rats, the player is learning the gameworld through the introduction of playing this experience. This highlights the dual nature of what it means to engage in an RPG. On the one hand, play means to give over to a character and explore those depths in a diegetic space. On another, we are asked to engage with a system of mechanics and rules that govern the operation of reality in the game’s contexts. This is a synergy noted by Burn and Carr (2006). They discuss DRPGs as relatively non-linear games that emphasize ‘exploration, story-telling and characterization’; however, they further specify that the DRPG is defined by the ability to configure a character (and often a party of characters) through the management of attributes, skills, and equipment (17–18). And, ultimately, it is the narrative and ludic interplay of ‘character management’ that engenders the sensibility typical of RPGs, the emphasis on ‘reflection, reading and strategy over pace and spectacle’ (21).

If we begin with a focus on the character and the narrative, the rodent-infested humble beginnings represent something particular for the RPG as a whole. While rat killing is certainly a familiar example, what really makes the trope resonate with players is that these rudimentary tasks only serve to herald the unavoidable fact that there are larger, more arduous, and (hopefully) more rewarding tasks to come. Rarely do we jump into the game a full-blown epic-level character (though titles such as BioWare’s Mass Effect [2007] have made interesting moves coupling narratives concerning the hero’s status with low-level game mechanics). In many ways we could read these examples using traditional plot devices. If we applied some notion of Freytag’s pyramid here, we might see these as a kind of exposition moving us towards the inciting incident of the narrative. There is much truth to that, as rarely do RPGs ask players to solely focus on the task of rodent removal, which instead often opens doors – sometimes literally, but more often figuratively – to some other intrigue. We might further push this narrative example and say that this exposition is simply a way of moving characters together towards an inciting incident that serves as (to borrow Joseph Campbell’s language) ‘the call to adventure’ – a moment that heralds a larger, more involved story with stakes greater than the constituent characters (1972). The trouble is that this only foregrounds particular aspects of the RPG. To focus on these things alone would mean to ignore the not-inconsiderable scope of issues and ideas related to the construction of images and representations in RPGs. Much like the forerunner, D&D, in general DRPGs owe something to the texts that came before them. We can see elements of these character-driven events in the works of Tolkien, Verne, Scott, Wells, and a litany of other writers who locate their characters in relation to particular stories as a means to tell us something – about ourselves, our world, or our ideas. These presentations are rarely simply experienced as ‘story’, but instead operate with rhetorical purpose.

To play a ‘role’ in an RPG is to take up an ideology located in some relationship to the narrative and context surrounding it. During an interview for the New York Times, Gary Gygax remarked:

The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience. There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you’re involved in, whether it’s a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agents or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things. (Schiesel 2008)

Gygax’s claim to ‘vicarious experience’ opens up several possible avenues for inquiry. What do the actions of our characters say about us (if anything), given that we (often) control them? Even the very language of that question is loaded. Are they, in fact, ‘our characters’? What is the relationship between the player, the avatar, the gamespace, the narrative, and the constituent actions of play? Should we really be killing all these rats? What does it suggest about the quality of our characters and the worlds they inhabit if the first thing we do in these games is embark on a bloodletting of animal cruelty? Does it matter that our characters never bother to stop, dispose of the rat carcasses properly, and at least clean the blood off of the floor? Does the adventurer’s handbook even cover how to remove blood from cobblestone? Do these issues even matter? What about the goblins and trolls we raid for loot and experience? Sure, they attacked the caravan, but this land was theirs for a thousand years before our traders began to exploit its wealth. Did we just exterminate a nuisance or participate in genocide? And does that reflect some historical or even hypothetical circumstance, or the contemporary moment? How we experience these issues both speaks to the RPG we are playing and speaks for us as players. These are the larger implications of working in and with role-playing games, and digital role-playing games in particular.

We run into similar issues of depth if we consider the mechanics of gameplay. To play a role means more than (and for some players has nothing to do with) being invested in the narrative events impacting a series of characters. There is, necessarily, attention to the less storied elements that define the capacities that characters bring into play. These capacities, governed by the game’s mechanics and procedures, are mediated through the game but controlled by the player. These, too, are RPG commonplaces. We expect to see and use these conventions to flesh out ‘who’ these characters are by deciding – limited as those decisions may sometimes be in a DRPG – what they do in response to the events and entities they encounter. In a sense, these are simultaneously mechanical and ontological issues. Does the player-character have a high enough level to succeed? Or the requisite alignment or reputation to be granted access? Have the necessary skills and gear been acquired? Is the party composed to suit the task at hand? These issues function at a managerial level, but are no less ontological. They help establish the sense of ‘being’ for the character as rooted in the actions of the player. These identity markers are made manifest and negotiated through the ludological elements of play. King and Krzywinska argue that the bond between player and player-character is more strongly developed in RPGs than other game types because typically the player determines the character’s attributes as well as ‘the manner in which these are strengthened as the game proceeds’ (2006, 42).

At the same time, the scaling of gear and items is a traditional RPG trope that connects strongly with the notion of the epic in fiction (for instance, when Bilbo obtains ‘Sting’ in The Hobbit.) Inevitably, players sometimes seek to acquire more and better items and equipment to modify their capacity to act, and just as often to maintain the construct of the fantasy.

It is an act of arrogation for theorists and critics, no matter how well-intentioned, to claim one or the other motivation supersedes or obviates the other. Thankfully, the RPG genre makes no demands that we do any such thing.

If this introduction has made one point clear we hope it is that, as a ludic genre defined by the game rules that structure gameplay, RPGs call for both dramatistic and mechanistic engagement. The structural and mechanical dimensions of playing a fighter are meaningless – or at best arbitrary – if absent from the conventional, representational construction of the fighter in relation to the gameworld and the other playable characters. The game’s thematic – whether it is fantasy, science-fiction, steampunk, or historical – will undoubtedly influence the discursive framing of game structures (consider party versus squad), but the tropes that circulate across RPGs, and DRPGs in particular, are ludic. For this reason, RPG describes a kind to the extent that titles given the label share gamic structures.

Mapping the Adventure

Given the complexity of RPG history and contemporary forms of DRPG, we invested some effort into the internal taxonomy of this collection. Operating from the notion that RPGs involve both ludic and dramatistic (or narrativist, if you must) management of characters, and drawing from the vernacular of RPG player communities, we imagined a sectional taxonomy accordingly. The three sections, Game Master, In-Character, and Out-of-Character, refer to distinct modes of engaging with RPGs, but they also – imported into this alien, academic context – signify something more. We imagine Game Master, In-Character, and Out-of-Character as shorthand for, respectively, concerns about how RPGs are designed, played, and ultimately made relevant to contemporary society and culture. Of course, most of the essays in this anthology address the design, play, and impact of RPGs, but the various authors coming from distinct perspectives and applying different approaches tend to emphasize one of these dimensions more than others. As such, the organization of this collection reflects both the content of the chapters and the approaches applied in them.

The Game Master

The Game Master is, in table-top RPGs, a special role. Playing as the Game Master means running the game by determining – within the structure of the game’s rules, though there is room for rules to be modified at the Game Master’s discretion as well – the campaign setting, the non-player characters, items, and creatures that populate it, and the events occurring around and in response to player activity. Chapters in the section Game Master tend to focus on the processes and products of game production as a means of exploring the dynamics that make these particular games function as they do.

The first several contributors take designed elements of RPG games – gamescape, temporality, and narrative-quest structure – as starting points for exploring how players make gameplay meaningful. Bealer offers an eco-critical analysis of Arc the Lad that focuses on the relationship between gamescape, as it is narratively and visually constructed, and the performance of gameplay. In this sophisticated reading of the dialectic between gamescape and gameplay, Bealer breaks new ground by encouraging critics to give credence to the ecological antagonism underwriting of so many RPGs. Abboud’s Derridian analysis of temporality in World of Warcraft demonstrates how ‘time is out of joint’ in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (hereafter, MMORPGs). Focusing on the design and implementation of temporal relations, Abboud is able to offer a nuanced reading of the integral importance of player activity to virtual worlds that claim persistence, narrowing the gap between player and game by forcing the two constructs into relief. Henton takes a different tack to examine the creation of meaning in Dragon Age: Origins, focusing on the homologous relation between RPG quest structures and the organization of narrative fragments. Considering the archive as both a ludic and discursive structure, Henton makes a strong case for the RPG’s ability to unmask the ways in which archival practices of organizing knowledge and experience permeate everyday life as well.

The last two works in this section consider what happens when DRPGs move through different linguistic and media contexts. Schules looks at the semantic quagmire created by the North American localization of Lux-Pain, highlighting circumstances in which discursive representation is absolutely essential to meaningful play. However, he also recovers, from these breakdowns in representation and painfully deficient processes of game production, the potential to demystify the discursive attribution of meaning to otherwise aimless and anomie phenomena. Randall and Murphy draw from adaptation studies in order to navigate the tension between the need for both fidelity to, and expansion upon, the source material of The Lord of the Rings Online. Randall and Murphy not only lay the groundwork for further adaptation studies of games, they also produce insights that might help the game industry move beyond the (typically) terrible games adapted from films and books.

Playing In-Character

Playing In-Character refers to the practice of playing from the subjective viewpoint of the game character. In this most literal ‘role-playing’ mode of engagement, the player acts as if they are the character, charging fists-first into overwhelming odds if that is something the character is brave enough, or more often dumb enough, to likely do. Chapters in the section In-Character tend to view the relationship between the player and player-character, or avatar, as the locus of inquiry and explore the relationship between that center and the game that surrounds it.

The first two contributions in this area take the player-character, or avatar, as the jumping-off point for examining the experience of play. Whitlock’s consideration of memory, and the traumas that seem to disproportionately impinge upon RPG characters’ abilities to remember, examines how different theories of memory impact the development of narrative and player engagement. Memory is explored in Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, and Lost Odyssey, exposing the use of memory as recollection, involuntary, ghosting, and body as developed in these games. This suggests the power and flexibility of the use of memory beyond the simplistic convention of amnesia. Baerg brings Foucault’s critique of neo-liberal rationality to bear on the RPG character in order to help explicate and situate the DRPG in relation to the contemporary political and economic landscape. Looking at the Neverwinter Nights series of RPGs, Baerg highlights how playable characters serve as loci for the minimization of risk and the maximization of rewards and in this way enable the enactment and performance of neo-liberal subjectivity.

Additional chapters consider the performance of identity in RPGs and the contexts and conditions that make such performances psychologically and socially meaningful. McDowell looks at the Fallout series as an exemplar of the post-apocalyptic RPG and a jumping-off point for considering how playing RPGs means not only taking on a role but also taking on one’s self. Applying Briankle Chang’s Derridian theorization of postal communication, McDowell asks us to contemplate how playing a character is a process of self-discovery and self-construction – both the apocalyptic end and the continuing revelation heralding the new. Friedline and Collister employ a linguistic approach to examine how player communication styles enact distinct power roles within the speech community of World of Warcraft. Friedline and Collister’s participant-observation in the World of Warcraft yields patterns of talk both determined by and determinate of players’ power within the community. Zook performs a close reading of Dragon Age: Origins in order to uncover how the narrative and visual representation of blood constitute a metaphorical theme that provides meaning and context for the activity of gameplay. Zook’s analysis is readily articulated to Travis’s classical approach and highlights how compositional performance becomes consequential by linking gamic action to symbolic meaning. Travis examines how BioWare RPGs facilitate composition by theme as a means of enabling identification between player and character as well as the performance of the player’s identity. Bringing insights from classical theory to bear on this most contemporary of media, Travis attends closely to the game narrative as a context that gives meaning and imparts social and psychological significance to the variable performances made possible by BioWare RPGs.

Playing Out-of Character

Playing Out-of-Character refers to a mode of engagement that utilizes the subjective knowledge of the game player. Here, the simple-minded fighter might refrain from barreling down a darkened dungeon corridor because the player recognizes that it might save the party much frustration to send a rouge first to check for traps. Chapters in the section Out-of-Character tend to focus primarily on the social and cultural consequentiality of RPGs and the practices of playing RPGs.

The first two offerings in this section consider the social and cultural construction of RPG characters as the point of contact for the significance of the experience of play. Voorhees examines the dynamics of squad management in the Mass Effect series as a truth game in which neo-liberal multiculturalism always wins. Employing Foucault’s notion of governmentality, Voorhees argues that the nexus of narrative representation and procedural operation in Mass Effect encourage valuation of cultural difference to the extent that it yields tangible benefits. Douglas looks at the representation and performance of race and culture in World of Warcraft, focusing especially on how race and culture are conflated at the intersection of (back)story and character configuration. Bringing the lessons of postcolonialism to bear, Douglas’s insightful critique of World of Warcraft takes aim at how RPGs, in the main, recirculate and reify this literary multiculturalism.

The last three pieces in this section quite literally take the analysis out-of-character. Hergenrader takes Fallout 3 into new territory in his essay exploring the possibilities and pitfalls of using RPGs to help teach creative writing. Reflecting on his own experiences in the classroom, Hergenrader offers an example of how RPGs – simultaneously objects of analysis and exemplars of practice – can be utilized as serious games capable of nurturing understanding and building concrete skills. Call explores notions of metagaming rooted in the tensions between in-game and out-of-game logics to challenge the either/or dichotomy of player location. Drawing on notions of metagame as informed by game strategy and pen and paper culture, this argument relocates the issue as a matter of player literacy by examining the complex player decisions involved in Suikoden II. Moran reflects on the character of RPG characters, and their diffusion and dissemination through digital culture more generally. Viewing the RPG character as, essentially, one that is configurable, Moran shows how this trait is taken up in other types of games as well as the applications and services that constitute web 2.0.

These three areas will hopefully provide as much variety and lively discussion for readers as we experienced conceptualizing this text. The approach we chose is a reflection of the interdisciplinary nature of this collection, which builds off differences in language choice and perspective, and should provide access to a new range of theoretical approaches that are strengthened by working alongside disparate disciplines. Other organizational logics were available, and, plainly, several chapters (arguably all of them) could have been located in more than one area. We have opted for this arrangement in an effort to provide a more open and reflexive collection that engages rather than stifles discussion, but certainly this arrangement will highlight certain conversations and obscure others. So be it. Other narratives will undoubtedly emerge from, and in spite of, the one we have attempted to embed here.

We hope that you engage this text in this way and take away your own story and your own sense of the experience. You will likely find some familiar ground here (thankfully, no rat-killing). Some of these ideas are novel while others will resonate with your sense of what has come before. It is our hope that the material here will also present to you many of the ideas, arguments and issues in and around RPGs, and DRPGs in particular, in a manner that helps generate new ways of seeing these ideas as our characters grow and develop in the undertaking of this ‘grand adventure.’

Benjamin, Walter. 1999. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.’ In Illuminations, 211–44. London: Pimlico

Bethesda Softworks. 1996. Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. [PC Game]. Bethesda Softworks.

Burn, Andrew and Diane Carr. 2006. ‘Defining Game Genres.’ In Computer Games: Text, Narrative and Play, ed. Diane Carr, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn, and Gareth Schott, 14–29. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Campbell, Joseph. 1972. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.

Dreamforge Intertainment. 1993. Dungeon Hack. [PC Game]. Strategic Simulations, Inc.

Gygax, Gary and David Arneson. 1974. Dungeons & Dragons. [Game]. Tactical Studies Rules.

King, Brad and John Borland. 2003. Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture, From Geek to Chic. NY: McGraw-Hill.

King, Geoff and Tanya Krzywinska. 2006. Tomb Raiders and Space Invaders: Videogame Forms and Contexts. NY: Plagrave-McMillan.

Mortensen, Torill Elvira. 2009. Perceiving Play: The Art and Study of Computer Games. NY: Peter Lang.

Namco Tales Studio. 2008. Tales of Vesperia. [Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3]. Namco Bandai.

Square Co. Ltd. 1994. Final Fantasy VI. [Super Nintendo Entertainment System]. Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Square Enix. 2010.Final Fantasy XIII. [Multiplatform]. El Segundo, CA: Square Enix.

Westwoods Studios. 1990. Eye of the Beholder. [PC Game]. Strategic Simulations, Inc.