Narratology & Roleplaying

[Jonathan Walton]

I was in the college library doing some research for Storypunk when I stumbled across the academic discipline of narratology.  I suppose I was vaguely aware that it existed, but hadn't really though about it as directly relavent to roleplaying.  Now, however, I'm overwhelmed by the amount of material that I want to read.  The academic study of narrative seems to have a great deal in common with the theory issues we discuss here all the time.  I can see myself working on an MA in Narratology and doing a case study of the development of roleplaying and RPG theory, but that's another story.

Anyway, I was wondering if other people had done any reading in this area and if they had particularly interesting sources to recommend.  My father, the English professor, pointed out Vladamir Propp's "Morphology of a Folktale" as the foundation of modern narratology.  Propp goes through Russian fairy tales and outlines the essential elements that make them up, creating a kind of flow chart for the construction of a fairy tale (something I'm going to have to use in a future game).

Additionally, I picked up Mieke Bal's textbook, "Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative," but that was pretty dense and not especially informative or relavent to roleplaying, since it focuses mostly on written narrative.  More promising, though I haven't gotten into it yet, is Michael Roemer's "Telling Stories: Postmodernism and the Invalidation of Traditional Narrative."

It seems that a large part of modern narratology looks at new forms of the narrative that develop in modern media (hypertext, meta-linear narratrive, microfiction, interactive fiction, etc.), so it amazes me that roleplaying doesn't get much attention in academia, since, as a narrative form, it has interesting and unique properties.  Then again, maybe I'm just not looking in the right places.

Suggestions?

[Johannes]

Hi,

I'm currently doing my master's thesis about the narratology and fiction of RPGs. The work is still very much in progress but I can recommend some scholars to you. The field of narratology can be divided roughly into two traditions: narrator research and plot research.

Gerard Genette, Wayne Booth and Seymour Chatman are perhaps the most noted scholars of the narrator research tradition. Monika Fludernik is the most important modern representative of the field.

The plot research line is smaller. Propp, Greimas and Eco are perhaps the best known researchers in the tradition but the most interesting stuff is going on in the contemporary research which Marie-Laure Ryan represents. I strongly recommend her works to anybody who is interested in plots and theory of fiction.

Hope this helps!

[Jonathan Walton]

Johannes,

Thanks so much for the suggestions.  I'll certainly check them out.  It's great that you're doing your master's thesis on this topic.  What exactly is the focus of your research?  I'd be really interested to hear more about it.

As far as roleplaying goes, am I right to think that the narrator research branch would be more applicable to looking at the GM-as-narrator (traditionally) and then maybe the player-as-narrator (which is happening more in modern games, like the ones produced here)?

And the the plot research portion might be more applicable to Narrativism and looking at the narrative of roleplaying itself?

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Kind of a side point:

Anyone interested in an "open" game license might want to check out Creative Commons, which I'm using for The Shadow of Yesterday.

[Johannes]

Hi,

My paper is (currently) about the authoring/reception process of table top RPGs. It is common among narratologists to think of plot as a series of states connected by events. This has led me to establish that minimum unit of plot is a state-event-state -sequence. In my paper I'm trying to illustrate (in narratological/phenomenological/modal logical terms) how this minimum unit is produced in the interaction of the group. The authoring/reception process is how it is done. All sorts of issues about RPG theory are connected to this process which I belive to be central to table-top RPGs.  

My personal view is that even in the most traditional DnD games the players are allowed narratorial discourse so I wouldn't divide it so sharply between player and GM. IMO it is more interesting to look at the focalization and reliability issues which are where the players and GMs differ. Power to narrate is definitely a issue here also but it is something that narratology knows nothing of.

The problem with Narrativism and narratology is that narratology is (due to its formalist/structuralist heritage) a very formal field of study which is not so interested in hermeneutic/reception issues like theme (or Premise). Only Ryan has really built a bridge between these two worlds in her books. This doesn't mean that plot research isn't usefull to RPG analysis but I think that its strenghts lie in assessing the "freedom" of the plot and such things.