| dc.description.abstract | This thesis project consists of a conversation-analytic approach to performed
affect, frame navigation, and creative language use in a tabletop role-playing
game (TTRPG) context. Drawing on work in the domains of narrative processing,
embodiment, affective production and perception, intertextuality,
and the boundaries of play, this research investigates the role of language use
in facilitating playful interaction and affect. TTRPG sessions are entertaining,
playful experiences aimed at collaborative narrative building through
the use of synthetic characters in a fictional world. Players speak as their
characters, acting out their desires, motivations, and actions. The goal of
TTRPG play is the collaborative construction of a narrative, and work in Discourse
Studies has established that emotional narratives are more compelling
and impactful than their non-emotional counterparts, generating identification
and involvement from audience members with story world characters.
TTRPG players, however, are in the unique position of both audience and
creator, since their response to story world stimuli has the capacity to influence
events in the narrative being constructed. Work in games scholarship
illustrates that in emotional story world circumstances of conflict, loss, resolution,
and levity, players employ affective cues to represent their characters’
emotions, even if it ’bleeds’ into a strong emotional response that has potential
negative repercussions for the player. This research attempts to address
the question of why players perform this affect, examining ten excerpts of
play from Critical Role, an actual play Dungeons & Dragons show, that
immediately follow or concern emotional story world circumstances and analyzing
them for affective cues, their appraisal and affirmation, navigation
across the game-reality boundary, and players’ capacity for creative language
use. Ultimately, this work aims to contribute to the broader question of why
we play narrative games and what we get out of them, through its analysis
of the role played by language in facilitating creative interaction. | |
