Requirements analysis and speculative design of support tools for TTRPG game masters

In running tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), game masters (GMs) are tasked with helping create and facilitate the building of a shared story between players based on player choices. In this paper, we look at how we can inform the design of computational tools for GMs through the use of qualitative interviews. We interview GMs about their process in preparing for and running a beginner TTRPG module, "Lost Mine of Phandelver", and present to them a prototype of a computational tool built based on this module that has some of the features we believe would be useful in a GMing assistant, such as consolidating information for easier reference, serving as a brainstorming tool for GMs, and helping GMs keep track of what has happened in the game world. From these interviews, we collected insights into how the GMing process works within the context of a specific scenario and found which features GMs liked and what could be improved with our digital prototype. We also compare the results of these interviews to online advice for GMing the module. We use these insights in order to speculate about possible design directions for further development of a GM’s computational assistant.

Eliciting Affective Responses Through Sentient Encounters in a Farming Computer Game

Farming computer and video games embed a wide range of emotive and culturally idealised tropes and encounters. In this paper, ‘non-representational’ theory is utilised to assess the mechanisms through which affective responses are elicited in computer gameplay, applied to a case study of Stardew Valley. Analysis focuses on sentience: interactions with in-game livestock and local community members. Game mechanisms incentivise routine, daily interactions with livestock, linking affection expressed by livestock to farm productivity and financial gains and leading to a sense of responsibility for livestock welfare. In contrast, human interactions involve sporadic, discovery and reveal-based encounters. By staging these contrasting ‘worlds of affect’ in-game, Stardew demonstrates how an affectively rich landscape can be created through sentient encounter, and how the ‘work’ of grafting embedded in gameplay yields a range of affective responses.

Lyric Games: Geneaology of an Online “Physical Games” Scene

Baldur’s Gate and History: Race and Alignment in Digital Role Playing Games

Games studies today are characterised by both the novelty of interpreting the unfolding digital revolution, and insecurity about where the discipline stands in terms of other academic fields of inquiry. The ludology/narratology debate exhibits two important features: anxiety about the proximity of the discipline to the games industry, and a formalist bias that dominates the field. Focussing on race and alignment in role playing games, this paper addresses this bias by asserting the relevance of cultural materialist and postcolonial modes of critique to commercially-produced computer games. It is argued that games like Baldur’s Gate I and II cannot be properly understood without reference to the fantasy novels that inform them. When historicised, the genre of fantasy reveals an implicit reliance on notions of race and moral alignment. The ways these notions re-appear in digital role playing games is shown to be relevant to current political and social realities of the West.

Interactive Story Writing in the Classroom: Using Computer Games

Interactive story writing is a new medium for creative expression. The story “writer” uses a computer game (such as BioWare’s Neverwinter Nights) to create an interactive story where the “reader” is an active participant. The state of the art is that the story (plot, character behaviors, character interactions, conversations, etc.) is specified by writing scripts. Unfortunately, scripting is too low level for non-programmers. ScriptEase is a tool for writing interactive stories in role-playing games that frees the author from doing explicit computer programming. Stories are created by selecting and customizing familiar patterns. From this specification, ScriptEase automatically generates Neverwinter Nights scripting code. To test the usability of ScriptEase, the tool has been used as an aid to help with the short story unit of a Grade 10 Alberta high school English curriculum. This paper describes ScriptEase and reports on our experience in using it in the classroom.

A Touch of Medieval: Narrative, Magic and Computer Technology in Massively Multiplayer Computer Role-Playing Games

The paper provides an in depth examination of the narrative structure of Massively Multiplayer Online Computer Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). The analysis is focused on the narrative complexities created by the relationships between computer technology, the medieval fantasy that is central to the genre, and the emergent nature of the online player society. The paper is divided into four major sections: the first examines the question of neomedievalism (as pronounced in the 1970's by Umberto Eco) and its relationship to technology and magic. The second section recounts the historical development of the MMORPG genre. The third section examines the narrative form unique to fantasy genre computer games that arises when the cogent narratives of the fantasy genre are mixed with the equally fantastic narratives of high tech computer culture. The fourth section examines a specifi c set of game "artifacts" that make the specific narrative diegesis of MMORPGs.

Albert Goes Narrative Contracting

RPG’s (Role Playing Games) and improvisational theatre have some obvious similarities. Both require the participants to work together in real-time to construct dynamic narrative elements. Seeing communication in terms of ongoing narrative contracts is a well-accepted principle of improvisational theatre (Johnstone 1981). The recipient of an offered narrative element can accept the offer, block it, or make a counter-offer. This paper describes a methodology for studying subjects engaging in a controlled online role-playing ‘encounter’. The encounter is titled ‘Albert in Africa’ and the study draws on the previously described Fun Unification Model (Newman 2004). In this study, subjects’ individual responses were correlated with the number of acceptances, blocks and counter-offers they make during their encounter. Comparisons are then made with observations of the massively multiplayer game World of WarCraft. From this emerges a methodology for analyzing the complex interactions of RPG encounters.

Albert Goes Narrative Contracting

RPG’s (Role Playing Games) and improvisational theatre have some obvious similarities. Both require the participants to work together in real-time to construct dynamic narrative elements. Seeing communication in terms of ongoing narrative contracts is a well-accepted principle of improvisational theatre (Johnstone 1981). The recipient of an offered narrative element can accept the offer, block it, or make a counter-offer. This paper describes a methodology for studying subjects engaging in a controlled online role-playing ‘encounter’. The encounter is titled ‘Albert in Africa’ and the study draws on the previously described Fun Unification Model (Newman 2004). In this study, subjects’ individual responses were correlated with the number of acceptances, blocks and counter-offers they make during their encounter. Comparisons are then made with observations of the massively multiplayer game World of WarCraft. From this emerges a methodology for analyzing the complex interactions of RPG encounters

Kingdom Hearts, Territoriality and Flow

This paper explores the relationship between companies Square-Enix and Disney as played out within the games of the Kingdom Hearts (キングダムハーツ) franchise. We contrast the relationship between these two transnational companies within the franchise's aesthetics and theoretical logics over the course of the various games. We are particularly interested in the games' own thematization and problematization of concepts of globalization, transnationalism and cultural flow. The games narratively and interactively foreground the collapse of membranes that separate worlds, producing legitimate and illegitimate modes of territoriality and intermixture.

The Making of Nordic Larp: Documenting a Tradition of Ephemeral Co-Creative Play

Research and documentation of live action role-playing games, or larps, must tackle problems of ephemerality, subjectivity, first person audience and co-creation, as well as the underlying question of what larps are. In this paper these challenges are outlined and solutions to handling them are proposed. This is done through the prism of producing a picture-heavy art book on Nordic larp. The paper also discussed the problems of writing about game cultures as an insider and makes a case for addressing normative choices in game descriptions head on.