Foreword

Inside the Magic Circle

It is a tendency of poststructural criticism to let the exception determine the rule: the

furthest deviations from the norm become the means for limiting that norm.1 My approach

to narrative is much the same. By looking at the exception, the most distant fringe, I can

better pinpoint the center. As I examine the D&D narrative, I hope that its nonstandard

narrative nature may provide insights for further study of narrative broadly. This foreword

opens my larger argument by first explaining the basics of D&D and then setting out the

parameters of my study.

Within the magic circle of D&D lies a complex network of interactions. Let me

briefly outline how the game works. For readers unfamiliar with D&D, first released in

1974, it is a game in which around 3-6 participants role-play characters who adventure

together in imaginary narratives. Players sit at a table and spend several consecutive hours

gaming. Groups meet regularly, and the narrative they co-create continues from one gaming

session to the next. Each player controls a single character, while the DM runs the fictional

world in which PCs encounter monsters, villains, and all manner of natural phenomena that

they must overcome in order to improve and survive. Although D&D contains many salient

qualities, to keep this introduction to it concise, I want to focus on its complex rules system,

gameplay, and lore.

One important element that sets D&D apart from less formalized role-playing games

is its complex rule system. D&D has three core rulebooks, The Player’s Handbook, The

Dungeon Master’s Guide, and The Monster Manual. These lengthy guides, in addition to a variety

of polyhedral dice, constitute the minimum materials needed for playing. What‟s more, an

industry full of supplementary materials—such as campaign setting handbooks that give

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encyclopedic knowledge of D&D geography, history, and politics—provide ancillary rules

and content for adventuring worlds. These will often include complete adventure modules

that DMs use to direct the plots of particular narratives.

The Player’s Handbook, however, explains the basics of the game. For example, it

shows how to make characters, which occurs by quantifying certain physical and magical

attributes that all characters possess. Six primary, randomly set abilities (strength, dexterity,

constitution, intelligence, wisdom, charisma) determine how other scores are calculated. So,

when figuring out the armor class (ability to defend against an attack), the armor‟s rating is

added to the character‟s dexterity score in order to take into account the character‟s ability to

dodge or parry an attack. Similarly, a low charisma score hurts attempts at diplomacy, which

are made by rolling dice and then by role-playing the outcomes of the dice rolls. The point

of mentioning these mechanics is to note that D&D is a complex system which builds

characters through their datasets. Manipulating these numbers in relation to the dice and the

rules forms the intricate D&D system.

Also in need of explanation is the gameplay of D&D. As an adventure begins, the

DM explains the setting. Players talk about what their characters will do, or they may discuss

with each other what the best course of action will be. Some groups tend to work as a team,

allowing one member to speak for all of them, while others prefer to perform actions

individually. The characters eventually run into encounters, which usually involve either

meeting an NPC or engaging in combat. Combat is the main event during which gameplay

changes. Players roll initiative to determine turn order, and then they must wait for their turn

to act. Except for these instances, there is no set order for who plays when, although the

DM typically manages what happens when.

Another important element of D&D is its lore. The literary academic may be able to

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appreciate the vast tradition that the fantasy worlds of D&D have attained, which is not too

different from Arthuriana or other such mythologies. Numerous scholars have dug up the

roots of D&D in the Middle Earth world of Tolkien and the mysterious underworlds of

H.P. Lovecraft, but its progression beyond such predecessors is also notable. D&D has

advanced to the systemization of magic, the creation of hundreds more races, the evolution

from Middle Earth worlds to terrains bearing resemblance neither to the medieval

distortions found in much fantasy literature nor to the elves, orcs, and hobbits of Tolkien.

D&D‟s status as the most popular TRPG, according to Dancy‟s research, points toward the

intricacy that has come to characterize its lore: a game with numerous and dedicated fans is

going to produce a much greater and more complex discourse than less popular games. It

should not be dismissed as a minor cultural distraction, then, but examined as a sprawling

culture of art and interaction.

Before proceeding to the first chapter, I would like to note some topics that do not

fit the scope of this study. First, I am not dealing with computer role-playing games

(CRPGs). The academic interest in CRPGs has generated a mountain of scholarship that

would take too much space to survey here. While there are some connections between

TRPGs and CRPGs that might prove relevant, the differences introduced by computer

mediation decisively alter the core structures of the RPG. They are very much a different

subject in regards to the narrative elements that I study. Some scholars see a congruency

between the experience of CRPGs and TRPGs, but this view denies the complex and

transformative ways in which computer mediation affects both phenomenology and

narrative.2 As can be seen from the large number of groups still playing D&D in person,

detailed in Dancy‟s marketing research, a large gap remains between CRPGs and TRPGs.

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 Second, I do not make claims about other TRPGs (e.g., Everquest). They have

elicited worthwhile criticism, some of which I apply to D&D, but although many of my

assertions may relate to TRPGs generally, they are intended for D&D specifically. Several

other TRPGs use systems comparable to D&D, but the mechanics can differ extensively,

and the lore is often quite dissimilar. Both my own experience playing D&D and D&D‟s

wide following and influence make it the best target for my study.

Third, I do not claim that this study advances sociological work on D&D. Fine has

done significant writing towards this end, as have Waskul and Lust. While I draw on these

critics, my experience playing D&D does not manifest itself into anything more than

contextually relevant observations about the sociology of D&D.

Fourth, my use of the fourth edition, released in 2008, is, to my knowledge, singular

in scholarship of D&D. The differences between the third and fourth editions are key and

merit description as a change not only of mechanics but of purpose and intent of the D&D

narrative. One the most important critics I draw on, Cover, mentions the fourth edition, but

even her recent work does not apply its changes.

Finally, this study‟s goal is not to make claims that are connected to the larger project

of structuralism. Neither, though, am I dedicated to furthering poststructuralist ends. My

aims are indeed sympathetic to poststructuralist methodology, and so I often employ

hermeneutics that draw on those discursive tools. Notable among these is my overall intent

to avoid totalizing and my inclusion of a moderately understood poststructuralist view of

language. However, I am using these only as they apply to D&D, not with the purpose of

commenting on poststructuralism itself.

My purpose in this thesis, then, is framed in contrast to these areas that I do not

have space to explore. It may also be framed in direct opposition to CEO of Manifesto

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Games Costikyan‟s mistaken belief about TRPGs. He insists that “traditional tabletop

RPGs, while they often exhort players to roleplay and tell stories, don‟t generally provide a

structure to shape them” (10). Au contraire, the structure of TRPGs is a highly complex

system, and the goal of my thesis is to explain the shape of D&D‟s role-playing narrative.

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 Chapter 1

Narrative Forms and Dungeons and Dragons

“The daunting task that remains now is to show in detail how, in particular instances,

narrative organizes the structure of human experience—how, in a word, „life‟ comes to

imitate „art‟ and vice versa.”

~ Jerome Bruner, last line of “The Narrative Construction of Reality”

Life imitates art most clearly when life is art, when human experience displays the

qualities of literary art that are not exclusive to the construction of a material text, but may

exist in the patterns and forms that shape existence. Narrative is one of the most far-

reaching of these forms, and through this particular structure of reality, many social and

cultural activities take on artistic shape.

In the epigraph, Bruner opens an expanse for scholarship, one within which my

study of D&D narrative forms provides a case study, a “particular instance.” Narrative is

indeed the primary driving force of D&D, a point which this chapter will reiterate through a

variety of vantages. And the D&D narrative—even more than most traditional forms of

narrative, such as novels, poems, or films—is densely arranged around and structured by

human experience. Because of that, in D&D, life is art, rather than only an imitation of it.

My plan in this chapter is to lay out the ways in which D&D operates as a narrative.

This involves, first, a preliminary examination of the major topics of TRPG criticism as

expressed by the leading TRPG scholars. Within this discussion, I argue several points: that

D&D is both material and experiential, that it is a game and yet has strong narrative

tendencies, that it is structured by useful, but inadequate, systems of frames, and that it is a

narrative that does not conform to typical narrative terminological distinctions. Second,

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having navigated these initial issues and in order to find a mode of narrative analysis for

D&D‟s complex materiality and frame-structure, I classify D&D as a separate genre. This

understanding of the D&D narrative works better than other possible models, such as seeing

D&D as a compilation of specific gaming sessions and transcripts or as just an abstract

narrative form. Third, after considering the problems with traditional narrative formulations

that ensue from the application of narrative theory to D&D, I look at three recent

innovations in narrative theory that offer more versatile ways of analyzing the D&D

narrative: unnatural narratives, tempics, and multiple-focus narration. Fourth, I conclude by

thinking briefly through some implications raised by these issues.

The result of these investigations indicates the need for new formulations of

narrative in order to keep up with D&D and other emerging narrative media. As culture

creates relatively new kinds of narrative such as D&D, students of narrative must

continuously be adapting their work to these new challenges. My considerations aim to shed

light on how this might come about.

MAJOR TOPICS3

When beginning a discussion of a multimedia text like D&D, one is always

confronted with the problem of where to begin, for TRPGs have no “square one” but

merely intersecting layers of content and narrative, plus the points where those layers

converge at quadratic intersections. Criticism on TRPGs recognizes this complexity and

suggests several important entry points into the discussion. By summarizing and

commenting on these foundational areas of discussion made by the three leading scholars of

TRPGs, I set up my own argument, which finds its locus of identification and departure

within this critical context.

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 Let me first overview the critics before proceeding to the major topics they discuss.

The groundbreaking scholar of TRPGs is sociologist Gary Alan Fine. Shared Fantasy: Role

Playing Games as Social Worlds, his 1983 qualitative study of D&D groups, although dated, has

established the predominant issues with which other scholars have engaged. In the wake of

Fine‟s establishment of the field of TRPG analysis lies the work of performance studies

researcher Daniel Mackay. His thoughtful commentary The Fantasy Role-Playing Game (2001)

addresses both social and narrative aspects of TRPGs, but it sees them in light of TRPGs as

drama. Refining Mackay‟s study is The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games

(2010) by rhetorical studies analyst Jennifer Grouling Cover. She directs the conversation

about TRPGs away from the theater in order to see how these interactive games produce

narrative. Although other academics contribute to this discussion—such as well-known

narrative studies theorist Ryan, video games student Neitzel, sociologists Waskul and Lust,

and CEO of Manifesto Games Costikyan—they only write about TRPGs on brief occasions

and so only tangentially enter this critical forum.

Fine, Mackay, and Cover present comparable analyses in full-length books.

Furthermore, these three authors share one overlapping trait in their lineage: they all focus

on social dimensions as their default methodology.4 I do not. Yet Herman has warned that

“any analysis of narrative structure must be complemented by an account of narrative

communication” (“Toward a Socionarratology” 219), so it would be foolish to ignore the

social components of D&D and only think of strictly narrative ones. Social criticism

supplies needed background to my own arguments about the narrative workings of D&D.

Since my views derive from narrative studies, I critique these leading authors not for their

neglect of narrative, but for their demotion of narrative concerns in favor of social, ludic,

and rhetorical ones.

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Experience Over Materiality

The most important entry point into this discussion is the ways critics define

TRPGs. These definitions help make sense of the complicated layers of the TRPG text.

D&D may be a text in the broad sense of a semiotic system, but not in the narrow sense of a

single document.5 It is a cultural text, full of social and narrative signs, which are temporally

located at the moment of its collective creation. In their sociological examination of D&D,

Waskul and Lust usefully define D&D as “an ongoing coauthored narrative that players

fashion out of the enormous possibilities for dramatic imaginary actions, consequences, and

reactions that are mediated by probabilities determined by the roll of the dice” (343). As

opposed to traditional literature which has a single material text, in D&D the materiality is

only a portion of its narrative whole. D&D‟s text is compounded by the participation of

multiple players whose own choices become an integral part of the narrative.

So the question follows, “Which part of D&D is actually the core of the narrative?”

Mackay begins an answer by defining the TRPG through the relationship between its

narrative and its materiality:

The role-playing game exhibits a narrative, but this narrative does not exist until the

actual performance. It exists during every role-playing game episode, either as a

memory or as an actual written transcription by the players or gamemaster. It

includes all the events that take place in-character, nonplayed character backstories,

and the preplayed world history. It never exists as a code independent of any and all

transmitters. (50, emphasis his)

Problematic in this valuable definition is the ambivalence towards the material nature of the

TRPG narrative. Is it a memory or a transcription? In fact, it is both. Mackay‟s suggestion

that the TRPG narrative is a memory—and because of its social nature, a collective memory,

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even while individually experienced—implies that it is a different text than any method of

transcription, whether written or recorded with video. The value in looking at the TRPG as

a memory is that it takes into account the various perspectives that constitute that collective

memory, while a transcript typically provides no more than a single point of view. A

collective memory, though, taps into only a portion of the TRPG narrative. The TRPG

requires a fuller, less reductive account.

Cover goes on to be more definite than Mackay when she argues that the TRPG

narrative is not fully material, in the sense that a written transcription is not equivalent to the

TRPG narrative itself. She explains that the “oral text is the core of the genre” (55). The

TRPG narrative resides in the performance and in the memory of that performance. Neitzel

adds to this discussion by pointing out that the narrative cannot be transcribed until the

game has been played, thus confirming that D&D exists in experiential form before it exists

as a physical text (49). The D&D narrative is both material and immaterial, both a set of

physical texts and a set of collective experiences.

Based on that conclusion, the complete D&D narrative cannot be “read,” only

experienced. Interestingly, Fine‟s methodological choices implicitly support this view of the

TRPG. When studying the gaming sessions, Fine participated instead of just observing.

This suggests both that detached objective analysis is limited in how much it can learn

through observation and that experience is necessary to understand D&D. Transcripts of

the game, books written on adventuring sessions, videos of sessions, and analytic

descriptions such as this chapter all leave a gap in trying to convey the sense of the TRPG

that can only be known from a first-hand perspective. D&D‟s status as being foremost an

experience suggests that it works similarly to the way we experience narrative in our everyday

lives.

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 An endless stream of critics, including narratologists, theorists, psychologists, and

semioticians, backs up this stance inadvertently by their arguments that the experience of

everyday life is mediated by narrative. For example, Genette notes that “every day we are

subjects of a narrative, if not heroes of a novel” (230). Barthes argues specifically that

narrative is culturally universal and transmedial (“An Introduction” 327). Bruner says plainly

that “we organize our experience and our memory happenings mainly in the form of

narrative” (4). Mackay interprets Lyotard‟s The Postmodern Condition as arguing that the role-

playing game is a model for everyday life (Mackay 152). Since D&D is arguably more similar

to everyday life, because of its immateriality, than it is to a single narrative text, experience is

the dominant mode through which we understand the D&D narrative.

Both Narrative and Game

The definitions above and their implications for the immateriality of TRPGs do not

touch on other important elements of D&D. Another definition, this one begun by Mackay

and refined by Cover, provides still more thorough criteria. The TRPG is “a type of

game/game system that involves collaboration between a small group of players and a

gamemaster through face-to-face social activity with the purpose of creating a narrative

experience” (Cover 168, italics removed). Cover‟s definition stresses that TRPGs are not

just unstructured role-playing, but that they work within organized systems,6 a quality which

differentiates TRPGs from other forms of role-playing.7

D&D‟s complex narrative qualities, I argue, prevent it from being classified simply as

a game. The final phrase in Cover‟s definition above takes a strong stance on the narrativity

of TRPGs by laying out the purpose of D&D as narrative experience, not simply a game.

This topic is likely the largest and most contentious dispute about TRPGs. Mackay‟s view of

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the narrative/game debate, for example, is that the TRPG is primarily a game but has

narrative components. He most often refers to TRPGs as games, and typically uses the

word “narrative” for when he wants to emphasize a different frame of the game. Without

formalizing this argument, he foreshadows Cover‟s view and my own that there is an

undeniable narrative quality to TRPGs. In opposition, as Cover notes, many proponents of

the position that games are not narratives—including Aarseth, Juul, and Flynn—argue that

pro-narrative scholars commit the spatiodynamic fallacy, which equates the presence of an

explorable spatial world with the presence of a narrative (75). Eclipsing these indictments

with her own stance, Cover argues that such critics define narrative too specifically (74).

Even though the critics are correct in saying that a narrative is not created out of an

explorable world alone, just because PCs in a TRPG narrative have choices within a larger

world does not preclude their choices from being narrative, quite the contrary.

Costikyan attempts to engage this topic, but makes a crucial error in setting up an

either-or between games and narrative, calling narratives linear and games nonlinear (6). He

backs up this division by pointing towards the (seemingly) static nature of stories to follow

only one course, while games depend on their flexibility within rules 8 to give a nonlinear

range of options. The problem with this view is that stories, while often conforming to a set

formation, are not necessarily confined by such linear constraints. Costikyan goes on to

suggest that there may be a small area of possible overlap between these two extremes, but

he only begrudgingly admits that this is “conceptually possible” (7). He offers no

formalization for this conceptually possible space.

Ryan suggests an alternative, a compromise. Her article on interactive narrative

fleshes out Caillois‟s landmark classification of games by connecting her two concepts of

narrative games and playable story to his of ludus and paidia, respectively. Ludus games are

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broadly delimited by their regulation and structure, while paidia are characterized by play

without systemization or rules (Caillois 29). In Ryan‟s joint conception, then, a narrative game

contains agreed-upon rules, ends with winning or losing, and is built upon a narrative

structure which is secondary to player agency. So, although a player can win in chess or

football, neither are narrative games because they lack clear stories. Examples of this category

include the video games Half-Life, Max Payne, and Grand Theft Auto. In contrast, a playable

story is not governed by totalizing rules, does not have a clear state of winning or losing, but

contains a narrative, the furthering of which overrides any game-goals (“From Narrative

Games to Playable Stories” 45-6). The Sims is Ryan‟s example of this category (47). Ryan is

not trying to create a typology of games here as Caillois was, but instead her purpose is to

provide two general poles toward which interactive narratives tend. This has implications

for D&D.

I argue that D&D‟s placement may rest on either end of Ryan‟s spectrum. Ryan,

however, is clear in her opinion that TRPGs—and she explicitly mentions D&D—fall in the

category of playable stories (“From Narrative Games to Playable Stories” 47). And yet, D&D

is not so simply identified. Like a narrative game D&D has numerous rules. Likewise,

winning may occur in D&D, but more from a paidia standpoint than from a ludus one.

Indeed, Fine aids in this point when he does not dismiss the possibility of winning, but

qualifies that “fantasy gaming does not have winning as a clearly defined goal” (185).

Although it has no explanation, as do many games, of “how to win,” D&D can reach certain

states for which the best explanation is win or loss. For example, if all of the characters are

killed in one battle, there is certainly an affective sense of losing, coupled by a major turning

point (if not ending point) of that particular narrative. On the flip side, having achieved level

thirty, the highest level, essentially allows the characters to win. The Player’s Handbook says it

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this way: “Upon completing your Destiny Quest [level thirty], your adventuring career—and

your life as a normal mortal being—effectively ends. . . your character‟s story has ended. He

lives on in legend, but he no longer takes part in mortal events. Instead, it‟s time to create a

new group of adventurers and begin a new story” (172). Although the language of win/loss

is not used here, there is a definite tone and implication of winning. I conclude from this

mix of evidence that D&D does not occupy a static position in the game-narrative debate,

neither in its historical genealogy, which has been influenced by both war games and fantasy

narratives,9 nor in its specific manifestations in different groups. Some groups may play

D&D in order to “win,” while others, quite possibly the majority of players, may play for the

sake of the narrative. So in charting D&D‟s narrative features, although I see clear narrative

qualities in D&D, I remain aware of its mercurial position on the spectrum between narrative

games and playable stories.

Cover reaches a helpful finding for making sense of this slippery status of TRPGs

when, conceding that TRPGs are not always completely narrative, she stumbles upon the

useful notion of narrativity. This gradated rubric indicates degrees of how much narrative

exists at a particular moment (94). But these particular moments are also difficult to pin

down. Cover‟s medial position between the either/or of game/narrative leads her to argue

that different amounts of narrativity are realized through the specific emphases found in

different frames of gameplay, which I discuss below. By taking an approach that is more

sensitive to the true flux and dynamic modulation of TRPG gameplay, Cover provides some

closure about the game/narrative debate, since she is able to show that narrative elements

are certainly present within the TRPG without making the blanket statement that all parts of

the TRPG are solely narrative.

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Frame Systems

This move brings us to Cover‟s threefold frame structure of the TRPG. Her frame

system grows from those proposed by Fine and Mackay. Because frames are the main mode

for understanding all the factors that contribute to the D&D narrative, let me discuss each

conception of frames in turn: first Fine, next Mackay, and then Cover.

Fine‟s application of frames draws from his interpretation of sociologist Erving

Goffman‟s frame analysis. Summarizing Goffman‟s system, Fine defines a frame as “a

situational definition constructed in accord with organizing principles that govern both the

events themselves and participants‟ experiences of these events” (181-2). This definition

echoes how the TRPG narrative is constructed from both a string of events and the

characters‟ experience of those events.10 Fine therefore sees frames more as “frames of

mind” that lead to various roles which develop as players adapt to different content. His

classification of frames includes the real world, the game context, and the character identity.

Not exclusive or comprehensive for him, these frames merely suggest different psychological

orientations that players may enter into during the game.

Mackay‟s system of frames differs from Fine‟s by drawing attention to the

performative nature of speech and thought. He adds to Fine‟s work, however, by proposing

four frames: drama, script, theater, and performance (60). He sees them in concentric

relationships, the innermost of performance being contained within theater, theater within

script, and so on. For Mackay, frames structure the use of language and therefore PC

identity. Because his background in dramaturgy leads his terminology to privilege

performative analysis, Mackay calls each narrative a performance and recalls J. L. Austin‟s

concept of performative language (50). Performative language “occurs when a player‟s first-

person, in-character utterance, coincides with the enunciation” (Mackay 55). In other words,

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at the moment that a player speaks as his or her character, language becomes action since the

player is then enacting the role of character. But something else occurs too. The player

seems to become his or her character. Identity takes on complexity as we cannot distinguish

the difference between player speech-acts and character speech-acts, giving unity to the two

parts of the term PC. Indeed, as Mackay reminds us, PCs flicker effortlessly and rapidly

from one frame to the next, and so from one mode of identity to the next (55). As a quick

example, imagine a chaotic D&D battle sequence. While role-playing his character, Etan,

Chad will both speak as Etan, “Die foul beasts!” and as himself, “My dice are amazing

tonight!” in quick succession. But this oscillation of identity is not necessarily a problem.

Mackay later describes the importance of performative speech in relation to PC identity:

“The character comes to life in moments of alterity, when the player experiences the

sensation of being another” (86). He then goes on to affirm Merleau-Pony‟s view, which

argues that when speaking, the speaker‟s speech and thoughts are one.

Yet this stance must be false, if only partially, since we have all had moments when

we have said something and then retracted it, like Eliot‟s Prufrock, saying, “That is not what

I meant at all.” The player is always more than the character, in thoughts and actions, even

while performing. While identity does seem to overlap between incongruous subjectivities

like players and characters, they cannot be equated in any totalizing way. The nature of

character identity in TRPGs, then, sheds light on the structure of frames. Frames in general

should not be regarded as spaces to move into and out of but instead as ways of classifying

actions—and yet, as is demonstrated by multiple, if unequal, identities coexisting in a PC all

at once, these frames are inadequate to demarcate clear distinctions.

Cover, however, sticks with frame analysis and finds some helpful insights with it,

employing a lucid, but modified, version. She collapses Mackay‟s last two frames into one,

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since they are both ultimately part of the narrative (89). Her three frames are social, game,

and narrative. The social frame has the least amount of narrativity. It is where off-record

speech and narrative-planning speech occur (96). The game frame contains more narrativity.

Here the players make dice rolls or intentional statements about what their characters will

do. This frame functions primarily in relation to the rules of the game (99). Appropriately,

the most narrativity occurs in the narrative frame, which “differs from the game frame

because it involves the actual construction of the textual world” (101). Both in-character

speech and gamemaster narration occur in this frame.

Berlatsky has recently noted the problematic usage of frames and their tendency to

elide the reality of what they claim to structure. He suggests borrowing the term “gutter”

from comics studies. That space between frames where meaning-making occurs, the gutter,

can then be used to more precisely reflect the reality of the situation (163). I discuss in my

next chapter how the movement among frames—or along gutters—is typical and integral to

the D&D narrative. Frames, gutters, and their implications for identity among participants

in TRPGs broadly, and in D&D specifically, are useful strategies for providing a complete

analysis of the sociological and psychological situation of the TRPG.

Because my own focus is on the narrative and not the social milieu, I only

peripherally incorporate frames, using Cover‟s model, when their effect on the narrative

itself becomes relevant. So instead of conjuring up a new set of frames for the TRPG, or

instead of looking at ways of classifying narrative actions and speech-actions, I look at both

the unique characteristics of D&D and the structures that perpetuate its narrative.

Terms and Roles

One last relevant topic taken up by these TRPG theorists is the meaning of basic

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narratological terms, such as “author,” “narrator,” and “reader,” when speaking of the

TRPG narrative. None of the critics takes a definite stance on this issue, suggesting instead

that it depends on the circumstances. Mackay cautiously generalizes: “[T]he gamemaster is

more often in the role of the author, and the role-player more frequently assumes the role of

the reader” (134). But these positions are by no means always the case.

Cover addresses this issue by pointing to Hammer‟s 2007 division of three levels of

authorship for TRPGs. In it, primary authors control the system, rules, and world.

Secondary authors form the story itself. Tertiary authors produce the text that makes up the

story. But with this typology, it still depends on who is doing what to decide which level of

authorship a gamemaster, game designer, or player takes on at any given moment.

Generally, the game designer is the primary author, the gamemaster the secondary author,

and the players the tertiary authors. Even so, as Cover notes, these roles are rarely stable

(126-7). Moreover, while these new designations provide more nuanced terms of

authorship, they do not solve the problem of shifting roles in D&D.

Divided and shifting authorship occurs quite often. There will be cases in most

TRPG narratives when a player helps form the story by explaining her character‟s

background, when the gamemaster creates her own world, or when a gamemaster speaks

part of the text of the story itself. No single role narrates. Players may narrate, if the

gamemaster allows them that degree of performative language, and gamemasters often

narrate, but even the game designer can narrate, as when the gamemaster is only a puppet

narrator when she reads from the module‟s script. Neitzel offers another solution by

suggesting that anyone who acts in the authorial role should be dubbed the implied author

(61). Even that solution, though, does not adequately explain the reality of who narrates and

who “reads.” The best generalization about the roles of author, narrator, and reader in

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TRPGs, then, is that they are not stable, but constantly being displaced from one player to

the next. Furthermore, traditional narratological terms seem unequal to the task of D&D

narrative analysis.

D&D AS GENRE

Surveying the major topics of TRPG criticism has left us with more questions than

answers. Some of these problems find better solutions through new narrative

conceptualizations as I begin to think about the principal parts of the D&D narrative. A

fundamental methodological problem comes up, however, in attempting to do so. As critics

have shown, D&D is not a single text. So what is the object of my study?

In turning toward already established methodologies as models for my own, I could

look either to the study of narrative broadly or to the study of particular forms of narratives.

Theorists of narrative in general (e.g., Genette [1980], Prince [1982], and Ricoeur [1983])

attempt to structure texts so large that neither induction or deduction allows for

comprehensive study.11 On the other hand, theorists who look at a particular form of

narrative such as the novel (e.g., Lukács [1971], Fowler [1977], and Bakhtin [1981]) find the

works they study bound within a closed system. Although they have numerous sources to

draw on—both regular exemplars and deviant exceptions—and although induction seems a

more plausible approach, this method also encounters pitfalls in applying to D&D. The

D&D text has the immaterial quality of experience not simply as an offshoot of it but as an

intrinsic part of it.12 Clearly, the D&D narrative arises out of the rulebooks, campaign

settings, supplements, dice, combat grids, players, fantasy sources, and even the transcripts

of gameplay, but should I choose to study just one of these—say, the transcripts—or should

I focus instead just on player experience? Neither of those options will model a complete

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textual analysis of the D&D narrative. Consequently, I resort to another method to collect

these scattered elements: D&D as a specific and separate genre.

Genres are notoriously difficult to demarcate, as Vera Nünning has been careful to

point out. She explains, “It is controversial, for example, whether genres can be determined

on the basis of the features of a given body of texts which belong to a particular genre

(which, however, would first of all have to be established) or whether we should base our

explication on the concept of „ideal types‟” (231). It is a paradox of the platonic chicken and

the egg, where there is no single origin of a genre, but genres seem to form once there is a

body of texts large enough to attract notice. Those texts, however, do not all necessarily

share certain immutable properties. Instead, they congregate around a few similar features.

In no way exclusive to one genre, those features overlap with each other, creating a fuzzy

system without comprehensive definition. Furthermore, Nünning differentiates these textual

qualities, which stylistically identify a work in a particular genre, from relational qualities, which

historically categorize a work into a particular period and cultural context (233). Textual and

relational qualities may sometimes be at odds, which adds further discrepancy for texts which

fit the style of a genre but not the historical span of that genre (e.g., Tristram Shandy as a

metafictional text). So while classifying a work in a genre is a relatively straightforward task

for most people on an intuitive level, delimiting the genre analytically is not nearly so simple.

Nünning points to Fowler, who, in Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of

Genres and Modes notes that genres do not exist so much for classification purposes as for the

dual parts of the process of text creation—writing/creating and reading/interpreting (Fowler

38). Since there is no single author or reader of the D&D narrative, it is even more

important to see genre as the device which encapsulates both of these text-creation roles and

presents them in a single unit. By turning my focus from a particular text to the corporate

20
author-reader structure (despite the difficulties with it) that recurs throughout instances of

D&D‟s genre, I can narrow down the parameters of this discussion and not get bogged

down in the specific-universal transitions that a genre debate might broach. This creates

methodological ease since it allows me to think of the diverse constellation of D&D texts as

a single, if heterogeneous, unit.

Genres are useful classification tools because they have both structuring power and

identity-creation power. This quality allows for inclusion of D&D‟s material and immaterial

properties. In their joint introduction to a collection of essays on worldmaking, Ansgar and

Vera Nünning cogently describe the function of genres in relation to identity:

[W]hen individuals try to make sense of their personal experience[,] they tend to

order it along the lines of literary genres or other text types. Genres themselves can

thus be conceived of as important ways of self-making and worldmaking in that they

provide the necessary salient frames, scripts, and schemata for narrating coherent

selves and building worlds. . . . Genre conventions thus exert a forming influence on

life stories, which are embedded in the culturally available plots and values of the

respective society. Serving as repositories of narrative models and schemata, genres

provide a foundation for our sense of identity, while at the same time making us

members of the community that generated the cultural models in the first place. (13)

The emphases by Fine, Mackay, and Cover on the social dimension combined with my own

emphasis on the narrative dimension of the TRPG find a snug parallel with the features of

genre that the Nünnings provide. They point out the importance of a genre to house both

identity-creation elements and the structures of specific narrative models. Creating the

world of the narrative (frames and scripts), constructing the identity of the PCs, and

influencing the contexts which surround the narrative—these are the realms of genre

21
construction. By locking onto these features of genre, the narrative structure of D&D

displays qualities that go beyond the purview of frames; it also contains literary periodization,

social-relationship creation, collective narrative creation, and the almost solipsistic level of

personal experience.

The D&D narrative, therefore, is better termed the D&D genre. All D&D game

sequences fall within this genre. An even larger genre could be labeled the TRPG, but

getting this broad entails a loss of shared attributes, since many TRPGs have nothing in

common except their face-to-face narrative creation. In contrast to many other TRPGs,

D&D fits into the style of the fantasy genre, dealing with surface-level attributes such as

magic, a pseudo-medieval setting, and otherworldly creatures. Doubtless, it also borders on

other genres, depending on the specific way a group chooses to play it (e.g., a western-

themed adventure). Changing the theoretical parameters of the study of the D&D narrative

to consider it a genre of its own will help account for all the relevant narrative factors.

D&D‟s unconventional generic status requires an unconventional narrative

approach. As such, it is necessary to take a brief look at the recent history of the study of

narrative in order to situate three new approaches to narrative that better fit the D&D genre

than do traditional lineages of study.

FROM NARRATOLOGY TO NARRATOLOGIES

Although plenty of narrative study went on before Genette, he is the landmark figure

for the narrative approaches I want to discuss. Genette‟s major principles provide a foil for

the narrative scholars who have critiqued and succeeded him. One should not dismiss him

as obsolete, though, since his work has been foundational for the departures that recent

critics have taken, and narrative studies owes him a great debt. In the journal Narrative, Pier

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has recently pointed out the continuing relevance of Genette‟s work to the new

developments in interdisciplinary narrative scholarship (9). Part of the brilliance of

Genette‟s works Narrative Discourse and Narrative Discourse Revisited is their ability to bridge the

specific, his interpretation of Proust, and the universal, his narrative systemization.

Genette‟s broad narrative divisions (order, duration, frequency, mood, and voice) are all

attempts to pinpoint and classify every line in a narrative. Making sense of these narrative

qualities involves complex configurations of the text in relation to reality. Narrative time, for

example, is expressed in terms of real-world time. Although I can imagine attempting an

exclusively structuralist interpretation of the D&D narrative through Genette and other

structuralist narratologists, such an attempt is misguided because, in the first place, of the

D&D narrative being much different in structure from the novel-centric model Genette

develops, and because, in the second place, of the poststructuralist critique of structuralist

narratologists like Genette.13

Springing from the shortcomings of narratology, a move over the last fifteen years to

revive narrative theory has brought about a number of useful and yet problematic effects.

After the death throes of narratology in the late 1980s, the time when some of the most

detailed narrative analysis was produced by Genette and Ricoeur, the study of narrative was

forced to reexamine its methodology in light of increasingly accepted poststructuralist

critiques. If Currie‟s interpretation of poststructuralism is correct, then the formalist study

of narrative (which of course, he notes, cannot be viewed as a unified or stable movement,

despite such common characterizations) has been abandoned (35). The poststructural

critique of narratology left the movement methodologically stymied. For example, as early

as 1973 Barthes argued that the critic himself uses language when judging language and is

thereby implicated in the problems of poststructuralism‟s view of language (Currie 56).

23
Furthermore, poststructuralism‟s dethronement of totalizing systems also spelled out an end

to narratology‟s structuralist project.

At the same time as all of this, fictional narrative began to give birth to new hybrids

and grotesques: for example, one the one hand, theoretical fiction, a genre that is a

simultaneous and “mutual contamination” of fiction and criticism, and on the other hand,

the myriad pluralizations of postmodernist fictions (56). The poststructuralist critique of

structuralist narratology, coterminous with these developments, resulted in three new

historicist-style responses, which have in part determined the course of current narrative

studies. The first of these is the creation of what Currie calls “a thoroughly self-conscious

deconstructive textualism,” or a narrative poetics based on acknowledging poststructural

critique (57). The second is the rejection of deconstruction altogether and the decision to

move on with traditionally formalist studies. The third is the backgrounding of the problems

of deconstruction by focusing on what are perceived as more relevant issues of politics and

history (57).

Herman‟s “Introduction” to an anthology of innovative narrative approaches called

Narratologies has a somewhat different take than Currie‟s analysis. He agrees that pluralism

has taken over the study of narrative, since “narratology has in fact ramified into narratologies”

(1, emphasis his). He is careful, however, not to confuse “postclassical narratology” with

“poststructuralist theories of narrative” (2), which equates to Currie‟s first new historicist-

style response of the fragmentation of narratology. This new broad community of

postclassical narratologies neither excludes particular approaches based on tradition nor has

a set creed. Although it has tendencies toward a number of different crossing and emerging

fields,14 even mutually incompatible theories are included. Currie does, in fact, later concede

that “narratology is a common resource, a finite set of terms and concepts which can be

24
deployed by critics with very different interests. . . . not a critical school and not a branch of

formalism” (136), thereby essentially affirming Herman‟s conception of a splintered narrative

studies.

The expansion of narrative theory into different fields has primarily occurred

through scholarship over the last twenty years, only a few works of which I have space to

mention. Herman‟s subfield-defining essay “Toward a Socionarratology: New Ways of

Analyzing Natural-Language Narratives” opens the door of narrative studies into this

multidisciplinary range. He considers a sociological approach to narrative, doubling up with

cognitive and analytic-philosophical approaches. But looking back, I notice that the study of

narrative has never been limited to literary studies. Just two examples include White‟s

seminal essay “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality” and Bruner‟s “The

Narrative Construction of Reality,” which indicate the influence of historians and

psychologists, respectively, on narrative theory. In light of such relevant influences, multiple

perspectives from diverse disciplines seem to have been increasingly accepted with open

arms by narrative scholars. Few, however, have sought to question any problems arising

from this diversity.

One difficulty in trying to synthesize definitions of even the most basic narrative

terms is that definitions are not universal across the inclusive, but heterogeneous, field of

narrative studies. Each different academic perspective supplies its own explanation of

narrative, plot, character, authorship, and point of view. Even the Routledge Encyclopedia of

Narrative Theory cannot provide an authoritative definition of narrative.15 Take the various

derivatives of narrative and observe the differences in definitions over the last twenty-five

years.

Genette defines narrating as “the act that consists precisely of introduction into one

25
situation, by means of discourse, the knowledge of another situation” (234), emphasizing

both the dimension of the subject and of a connection among situations. Barthes calls

narrative “a logic of actions and a „syntax‟ of characters,” narrowing the focus to the linguistic

reduction of stories to symbols (242). Stressing social properties, Ryan defines narrativity as

“a sequence of events involving thinking individuals, linked by causal relations, motivated by

a conflict, and aiming at its resolution” (“From Narrative Games” 43). This definition

differs with Prince‟s, which abstractly informs us that narrativity “designates the set of

optional features that make narratives more prototypically narrative-like, more immediately

identified, processed, and interpreted as narratives” (387). Herman sidesteps these

terminological differences by pointing out how “it is misguided to attempt to locate the

property of „being a narrative‟ in a particular aspect of verbal structure—that is, the „narrative

clause‟” (“Toward a Socionarratology” 229), thereby critiquing linguistic reductions in most

of structuralist narratology and some latent tendencies in current narrative studies. 16

These problems in terminology lead to several consequences. The shift away from a

“single” structuralist narratology and towards a multiplicity of approaches has left in its

aftermath, besides a multiformity in definitions, both a creativity in the approaches new

narrative studies scholars use and, subsequently, a number of failed ventures in narrative

understanding and (yes, still) systemization. But not all such ventures have leapt off

university presses never to see a second edition. Indeed, several narrative scholars have

innovated approaches that are seeing and ought to see even more critical extension.

Keeping the overlapping definitions of narrative and its derivatives in mind, I want

to look at three original narrative theories from Alber et al., Morson, and Altman, all of

whose inventions give better entry points into the D&D narrative than more traditional

perspectives do. As I examine the merits of these, I show how their innovations provide

26
new patterns and tools by which the D&D narrative may be examined.

Unnatural Narratives

Jan Alber, Stefan Iversen, Henrik Skov Nielsen, and Brian Richardson collectively

situate the need for nontraditional understandings of narrative for D&D in their recent

argument against the assumption of mimesis in all narratives. They claim, “we lose sight of

the specific features and forms of narratives when we take natural narratives as models for

all narratives” (115). Natural narratives assume a realism that corresponds between the

fictional ontology and the real one, but this view, received from Plato, is not necessarily the

case with all narratives. Alber et al. note three aspects of narrative that may change in

unnatural narratives: storyworlds, minds, and acts of narration. Time and space,

consciousness, and the presupposition of the narrative act itself are all displaced and

reconfigured by the undefined expanse of unnatural narratives.

Time and space are forcefully altered from natural narrative expectations in the

D&D narrative. Discussing McHale‟s thesis in chapter 2, I go into more depth about the

impossible spaces of postmodernist storyworlds, or heterotopiae. These are akin to the

unnatural storyworlds of Alber et al., places that cannot be imagined in the same terms as

our own world. The fantasy tradition in general has an affinity for this kind of narrative

space, but D&D‟s narrative structure takes the impossible spaces even further through

multiple planes, portals, and extra-dimensional spaces. Two examples of these world

structures are the Mary-Poppins-like “bag of holding” and a spell called Time Stop.

Impossible does not mean unimaginable; it only means the failure of the mimetic

understanding of story. In unnatural narratives, space and time break the narrative property

that Bruner calls referentiality, which is essentially the verisimilitude of mimesis (13).

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 D&D also reframes typical notions of the mind. We tend to understand others by

surmising how their minds work on the basis of our knowledge of our own (Alber et al.

120). The reader of narrative is constantly having to construct real minds from only partial

evidence, by jumping explanatory gaps (121). That kind of extrapolation can be disrupted,

however, by giving incongruous explanatory descriptions of different “I‟s” (123).

“Unnatural” disruptions like these are prevalent in D&D, mainly through the entities

represented by PCs and NPCs. Considering the PC again, it is both the person playing and

her character persona. When that character changes, the PC partially changes, but not

totally. The actant is faced with something akin to a person with multiple personalities

disorder, being at once the same and yet hauntingly different. The partial minds of NPCs,

minions, monsters, and evil villains played by the DM also all suggest incomplete

consciousnesses. Alber et al. affirm that “unnatural minds force the reader to construct

consciousnesses that defy the continued-consciousness-frame” (124). The reader must think

outside human-like minds to make sense of unnatural narratives.

D&D flaunts the typical expectation of the consciousness of a character. The

quantification of intelligence in the D&D engine shows that players may create entities

which are not fully human. For example, a score of two in intelligence is reserved for the

lowest forms of life, such as dangerous fungi or golem-like automatons. Creatures become

more sentient as they near a score of ten, and once they get into the twenties, they boast

super-human genius. Different gradations of consciousness, then, many of which are

diametrically opposed to the minds we encounter in everyday life, are generated through

ability scores and then role-played by the players. D&D has diverse applications of

unnatural narrative minds.

Finally, the very positionality of narrator and narratee is nontraditional in the act of

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D&D‟s unnatural narration. Retrospection is eliminated since the story is told in the present

tense.17 There is no future narrator explaining what happened. Some scenes may be

narrated in the past tense by the DM, after the players have given their actions, but that act is

more summary or re-narration than full narration. Alber et al. argue that there may not even

be a narrator and narratee in some unnatural narratives (124). This is not the case in D&D,

which has a definite sense of being told and being heard, even if these narrative roles are

multiplied and complicated in collective storytelling.18

The point of charting the unnaturalness of narration in D&D is to show that

traditional schemata based in mimesis can only take this analysis so far in understanding the

D&D narrative. Indeed, from the research I have done on D&D specifically, none of the

critics have correctly acknowledged the status of D&D as an unnatural narrative, even

though some seem to have implicitly realized the need for innovative structures and systems.

Towards that end, I want to look at the other two innovative narrative approaches that offer

helpful unnatural narrative perspectives on poetics, discussed first, and then on narrative

systems.

Tempics

The second innovative narrative approach is Morson‟s new poetics—or, more

precisely, an alternative to poetics—called tempics. His conception opposes Aristotelian

unity in narratives by arguing that contingency and open-endedness create narratives that are

“irreducible to systematic unity” (“Essential Narrative” 278). The exemplars for Morson‟s

idea are Tolstoy‟s works, which often extend so long as to break any literary unity. 19

Tempics is based on “not only what did happen but also what else might have happened,”

positing an indeterminacy for how the narrative will progress. This often arises out of longer

29
works, or works that otherwise bypass or hyperextend typical narrative arcs (279, italics his).

Morson‟s theory flies in the face of structural narratologists and fiction authors, such as

Barthes or E. M. Forster, who argue that every detail is essential to the narrative. Tempics

accounts for epiphenomenal details (280). Morson realizes that while Aristotelian poetics

may be a good method for interpreting classical masterpieces that can attain such heights of

unity, neither life itself nor many of these “processual” works of literature fall into that

mode, and so they need alternative methods for understanding them (282).

Morson outlines the characteristics of a work governed by the interpretive apparatus

of tempics, several of which find direct correlations in D&D. First, the work must contain a

processual intentionality, that is, a future which is not completely determined by the past.

Instead, the future “may revise the past,” not literally but as the way the narrative unfolds

changes how the past is perceived in retrospection (307). A current example is the tendency

of television shows to revise the plot they have planned based on feedback from viewers, so

that previous episodes that were intended to lead the plot in one direction can actually lead it

in another, depending on how the later episodes turn out. Next is a lack of closure.

Tempics-based works must be genuinely incomplete, as life is, unaccompanied by

comforting dénouements. They “necessarily contain loose ends” (307-8). They also tend to

be serialized so that revisions must be incremental, being done section by section. This

ensures that early parts are not revised in light of what happens much later. Likewise, the

endpoint cannot be plotted out for certain from the beginning. This is the case with many

of Dostoevsky‟s novels, as can been seen by looking at his notes (289). Furthermore, these

works resist re-reading, because the processual contingency of the writing must parallel the

one-time-ness of the reading (309).

The narrative similarities between processual works interpreted by tempics and

30
TRPGs are so stark that it is surprising Morson makes no references to TRPGs. Because

D&D and other TRPGs do not have a fixed physical text, they are open to much of the

potential and indeterminacy that exists in processual works. D&D is also a game that

produces a narrative that often lacks closure. Game sessions rarely end “happily ever after,”

and sometimes are forced by outside, social-frame forces to stop in the middle of a battle or

an engrossing diplomatic situation. In the six years that I have played D&D, no group of

characters has ever made it to the highest level, although some adventures did reach

completion. But even then, players wanted their characters to move on in the continuous

need for more unconcluded narrative. Chance qualities of D&D, too, suggest contingency.

In writing about cheating in D&D, Fine relevantly observes that dice rolls “provide a

backdrop of chance that can be altered when necessary,” implying that there is an

undetermined quality to agency in the D&D narrative (100). Morson‟s quality of

serialization finds a parallel as another way of explaining the different D&D gaming sessions.

The parallel is almost a perfect match in the temporal gaps between sessions (as between

parts of a serialized novel), and more importantly, in the unknown future for all participants

that creates anticipation for the next installment. DMs typically only plan a little ways ahead

because they never know what PCs will do. Finally, D&D resists re-reading to the extreme

in that, as has been explained already, no one can truly re-read a D&D narrative, but only

experience it as it unfolds.

So tempics, as a multifaceted theory of unnatural narrative, gives an alternative and

nontraditional reading of the D&D narrative. Morson‟s theory more closely matches the

ways that I have discussed D&D as different from literature—namely, as a collective social

creation, a foregrounding of experience, and a contingent narrative that relies on processual

creation, rather than on a unified narrative plan. By this point, my discussion has

31
overviewed several ways that the D&D narrative may be conceptualized, ways necessarily

different from traditional narrative interpretation. I now turn toward one more schematic

that explains the perspectives through which the D&D narrative progresses.

Multiple-focus Narration

The third narrative innovation comes from Altman‟s A Theory of Narrative. There,

Altman distinguishes among single-focus, dual-focus, and multiple-focus narratives. This

typology gives a useful schema for mapping the D&D narrative ontologically through

systematic, but not totalizing, terms.

To reach multiple-focus narration, let me first summarize Altman‟s concept of

following. In contradistinction from point of view, following is the character or group on which

the narrative focuses (16). Whether the narrative takes place in first or third point of view

and whether the narrator is omniscient, focalizing, or in a certain voice is largely irrelevant in

determining following. Instead, following is more akin to ideas of protagonist or main character,

which determine whom the narrative is about. The span of time in which a following occurs

constitutes a following-unit (22). Similar following-units occurring over the course of a text

constitute a following-pattern (26). These following-patterns break into three groups. Single-focus

narration centers around just one following-pattern, usually the time spent on a protagonist.

Dual-focus narration oscillates between two actants, whether single characters or groups.

Multiple-focus narration does not exclusively focus on any one or two groups for the

entirety of the narration. Altman is careful not to be too exclusive, noting in the concluding

chapter that most narratives will actually contain traces of all three styles, even while favoring

one (318).

Altman reads characteristic themes and conventions into each of these categories,

32
but it is their structure that I want to borrow and less the literary tradition that he sees in

each. The multiple-focus following-pattern fits D&D best, since there is no primary character

to follow—or even two groups to alternate between—especially when we consider the

subjectivity of each participant in the D&D game. The role of the DM is crucial, however,

in aligning these perspectives into a group narrative. In fact, the DM matches up

exceptionally well to Altman‟s idea of the multiple-focus author. He explains, “Whereas

single-focus and dual-focus authors are usually presented as creators, the multiple-focus

author is often styled as the editor of preexisting material. An art of juxtaposition rather

than invention, multiple-focus narration does not need to create the materials from which it

is built” (252). In other words, the story comes into being by meshing the characters‟ own

stories. Collective narrative arises from joint interaction of the major characters. The DM,

while laying out the story, at her best does not invent a story, but weaves a story from the

plot strings that PCs bring to the table. Clearly, there is a range of styles here, some DMs

leaning more towards a narration led by their own invention and others relying almost totally

on PC background stories and scripts. The point here is that no one character dominates

the storyline. Neither is there a movement between two groups. Instead, following passes

from character to character, from player to player, best demonstrated in battle sequences,

during which there is a progression of turns created through initiative rolls. This turn-based

system includes not only PCs but NPCs as well, ensuring that D&D narration is continually

varied and never rests on a static following. Multiple-focus narration is the best way to

understand action in a D&D narrative, and it makes the most sense for my inquiry.

What this chapter‟s review of both TRPG and narrative research provides to

chapters 2 and 3 is a framework and context for understanding more specific aspects of

33
D&D. Let me summarize the findings of chapter 1. The relevance of explaining where

D&D falls in certain debated topics arising from the criticism founded on Fine‟s and

Mackay‟s scholarship situates my own views of D&D‟s status as more narrative than game.

A study of D&D which fully considers its social and narrative realities additionally requires

that D&D be more than just a transcript or video recording; it is also a set of experiences.

Seeing experience within the structure of genre can delimit both the ineffable nature of those

experiences and their manifestation in social and textual frames. D&D is a unique form of

narrative that transcends the material text of literature.

Also, the toolkit of innovations in narrative theory, coming out of the tradition from

Genette to Herman, provides new theoretical apparatuses for looking at the complex nature

of the D&D narrative. Indeed, I am anxious to avoid one-person concepts like “narrator”

and “narratee” which, though often applied to D&D, do not actually fit its collectively

created and told narrative. In place of these inadequate forms and designations, I insert into

the broad understanding of unnatural narratives both tempics, which sees the narrative as a

process of creation, and the tool of multiple-focus narration, which can be used to track the

plot in the case of a narrative without a protagonist. Using the narrative structures I have

outlined, I can now proceed into a more detailed study of D&D‟s operations.

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 Chapter 2

Dungeons and Dragons as Ontologically Dominant Postmodernist Fiction

Branding D&D with the label “narrative” raises more questions than it answers.

Although my first chapter did not by any means propose a complete narrative analysis of the

structures of D&D, it did aim to give enough grounding and form that I can now defend its

placement not merely in the field of narratives, but in the specifically postmodern mode of

narratives. I am treating postmodernism here not as a historical period or school of

philosophy such as poststructuralism, but as an approach to or style of narrative literature.

Among the schemata proposed by literary critics over the last forty years that have

attempted to account for and describe postmodernist literature vis-à-vis modernist literature,

McHale‟s influential overarching division between epistemological and ontological

foregrounding allows for the most comprehensive investigation of postmodernist literature.

Although there have been numerous attempts to explain and characterize the modern-

postmodern divide, I find McHale‟s approach to be the best. Ihab Hassan‟s landmark lists

of modern-postmodern binaries, Frederic Jameson‟s cultural-economic critique, Linda

Hutcheon‟s classification of postmodern literature as historiographic metafiction, and many

others20 all find themselves subordinated, from a literary standpoint, by the broader context

issuing from the interpretive questions the text itself raises. By asking what are the most

important ideas within a work of fiction, I can isolate not only the themes, structures, and

meanings of that text, but, more broadly, the dominant around which the text is oriented.

According to McHale‟s analysis of postmodernist fiction, that dominant is ontology.

It is my intent, then, to analyze the narrative genre of D&D as ontologically-

dominant postmodernist fiction. This approach, rather than the frame-based approach of

Fine, Mackay, and Cover, is a better method for plotting the specific structures of the D&D

35
narrative, since it avoids a totalizing system akin to structuralist universalizing. 21 While

giving evidence that D&D foregrounds ontology, I discuss the specific narrative tropes

(McHale calls them topoi) that D&D contains.

Before I assess McHale‟s position in greater depth, a couple of qualifications are in

order. First, my argument is more than just classification. As I demonstrate D&D‟s

manifestations of the ontological narrative tropes from McHale‟s study, I show how D&D

tends to exemplify these tropes even more than the examples McHale gives. This

epitomizing nature of D&D is due to its complex social and narrative structure. Also,

although D&D is disposed toward the ontological over the epistemological, this attribution

is by no means an exclusive hierarchy of the former over the latter. On the contrary, both

descriptors find numerous valid applications within the D&D narrative. With McHale, I use

the term “foregrounds” to qualify this dual emphasis without meaning exclusion.

To start out, I chart the criticism McHale‟s thesis has generated. Then I enumerate

and expound on the ontological structures that fit the D&D narrative. This part of the

chapter opens with a look at worlds in D&D, and how their creation and form match the

qualities McHale sees in postmodernist fiction. Next, I examine characters as complex

identities that violate boundaries and complicate positions that are traditionally separate.

After that, I move to a more abstract look at time, scripts, pastiche, chance, and social affect

in the construction of the D&D narrative. These structures all further D&D‟s focus on

creating rather than learning, on being rather than knowing. I close the chapter by turning

back and seeing how the metacritical aspects of D&D actually emphasize the same focus on

ontology provided by its tropes and narrative structures.

36
CRITICISM OF MCHALE

Postmodernism, as McHale sees it, is a consequence of modernism (Postmodernist

Fiction 5). Based on this premise, ontology follows epistemology as the emerging cultural

dominant of our time. By dominant, McHale means what linguist Roman Jakobson calls

“the focusing component of a work of art: it rules, determines, and transforms the remaining

components” (qtd. in McHale 6). The dominant is revealed by both the questions

interpreters ask about the text and the questions which the text itself seems to broach. The

epistemological questions that dominate modernist works deal with interpretation, limits and

access to knowledge, certainty, and the way knowledge changes forms (McHale 9). But

postmodernism rewrote the questions people asked. In the era following World War II that

carried with it a culture reacting against the horrors and epistemological aporias brought by

Nazism, a new set emerged: questions about the existence of different worlds, the

overlapping and limits of space, textual existence, stability of identity, and world structures

(10). These ontological questions are the result of epistemological ones being stretched too

far. McHale puts it this way: “Intractable epistemological uncertainty becomes at a certain

point ontological plurality or instability: push epistemological questions far enough and they

„tip over‟ into ontological questions” (11). Since postmodernism is in a large part a

consequence, so too must the key questions and themes that structure postmodernist texts

succeed the inquiries of modernist texts.

Because a thesis like McHale‟s is, practically, impossible to prove, he abandons any

kind of generalizing argument in favor of quite a few inductive close readings. His

Postmodernist Fiction and Constructing Postmodernism are filled to the brim with explicated novels

and short stories that support his overarching point. One concession that McHale makes

along this litany is to agree that not all texts clearly foreground epistemology or ontology, but

37
that a range of works lie in between. He labels these works “limit-modernist” (13). He

further qualifies his thesis throughout his books by saying that ontologically-dominant texts

will of course also raise epistemological issues and vice versa—but the point is that one is

more common and more emphasized, while the other is less common and less emphasized.

In fact, it would be odd if the work of postmodernism did not contain remnants of

modernism within it.

As a result of causing quite a stir in literary communities, McHale‟s thesis has had its

critics for two decades and counting. And although it is reviewed most satisfactorily early on

in Ernst van Alphen‟s study of postmodern theories of the late 1980s (823), the highly

acclaimed Hutcheon only manages to pull off a slight critique of Constructing Postmodernism.

She is half-heartedly critical. Her differences with McHale‟s work are in his “irreverent”

tone (170) and choice of texts to study (171). Otherwise, Hutcheon‟s review is generally

positive in regards to McHale‟s ambitious project. Significantly, Hutcheon cannot provide a

counterargument to the epistemology/ontology classification of McHale. Her analysis

suggests the sturdiness of McHale‟s argument.

Currie connects Hutcheon‟s work to McHale‟s. In analyzing her argument

concerning postmodern historiographic metafiction, Currie insists that postmodernist fiction

“is uniquely capable of fulfilling the poetics of postmodernism precisely because it is

epistemological” (71). If Currie is correct, then it seems that Hutcheon‟s genre argument of

historiographic metafiction is in direct contradiction with McHale‟s thesis. However, it is

not as though philosophical concerns were one thing and generic concerns were another.

Anytime we make divisions between different genres, as Derrida has noted in “Law of

Genre,” what we are essentially doing is making divisions themselves, irrespective of the

genres that we divide (61). Such a project certainly has the appearance of an examination of

38
knowledge. But it is really an examination of being disguised as an examination of

knowledge, so it is easy to forgive Currie for posing one in the terms of another. When we

say something about genres, as Hutcheon does in her argument that postmodernist fiction is

actually historiographic metafiction, we are not actually saying anything about what we know

but about what we perceive being to be—that is, what literature is—and via Derrida‟s

connection of genre to philosophy, something about who we are in our tendency to classify

and categorize. Far from an inquiry into our epistemology, Hutcheon‟s argument is best

framed as an ontological study.

A sharp criticism to McHale comes from his now-colleague Herman, whose 1991

essay “Modernism versus Postmodernism: Towards an Analytic Distinction” cleverly argues

that the division between epistemology and ontology is itself a modern construction.

Herman deconstructs: “McHale's model remains, in my view, an important symptom of

what it purports to diagnose” (57). However, I see two reasonable responses to this critique.

One, the change from modernism to postmodernism may entail changes in the way humans

perceive and catalog information and even think about it, but the change itself does not

erase the world and the divisions that exist a priori within it. If McHale is using a modern

conception to demarcate this shift, then his point is not invalidated simply because of the

apparatus he uses to describe the phenomenon, that is, the ontological-epistemological

divide. Two, McHale‟s modern-postmodern conception may indeed be contradictory—but

contradiction is akin to the methodology of postmodernism. Here, McHale would be using

a postmodern method to deal with the modern-postmodern change.

Punday sympathetically extends McHale‟s philosophical-aesthetic edifice.

Throughout his monograph Narrative After Deconstruction worldliness recurs as a

postmodernist (or, as Punday prefers, post-deconstructive) quality of narratives. It is not

39
only that this kind of fiction foregrounds worlds (ontology) in its subject matter, but the very

forms of these post-deconstructive texts “arise out of a tension between the real world and

the fictional text” (50). Nevertheless, Punday goes on to take McHale to task for not

showing the full picture of postmodernist fiction‟s focus on worlds. In attempting to show a

shortcoming, Punday makes one of his own by reducing McHale‟s characterization of

postmodernist fiction to merely “thematic” (52). On the contrary, McHale‟s thematic focus

on world-making only touches the surface of the structural depth that ontology reaches in

postmodernist fiction. His distinction is not that postmodern authors enjoy putting in

questions that deal with existence more often than questions of knowledge. Instead, the

plot, characters, themes, settings, and genre (as we shall see with science fiction and fantasy)

arise from a key cultural shift that relies more on the problems of being than those of

knowing.

The primary complaint I had while reading McHale‟s work was his tendency to

reduce the terms epistemology and ontology, sometimes using them as synonyms for

“knowledge” and “existence,” while in fact they carry with them the corpus of western

metaphysics. The best recourse to this problem for my work is to accept it as a reduction

and to proceed through his analysis, which I adapt to a reading of D&D, with an awareness

of this simplification.

Let me then move on without further ceremony, by presenting the main address of

this argument—how is the D&D narrative a fiction which foregrounds ontology as its

dominant? It does so through examining the topics of worlds, characters, narrative

construction, and, last but not least, metacritical analysis.

40
WORLDS

To set up my use of McHale‟s view of worlds, I need to put forth my views on the

science fiction/fantasy debate. This too-brief account grounded in Miéville‟s views will

suffice to explain my stance and its basic evidence. Miéville takes on Suvin‟s heavily

influential position that science fiction and fantasy are separate genres and in a hierarchical

relationship, science fiction being a much more valuable object of study due to the way it

situates readers cognitively (231). Miéville attempts to push at this argument, noting several

factors: the softening of Suvin‟s position in recent years (232), the “heuristic efficacy” of this

division as being a critical shortcut (233), the politics that have shaped this debate, and, most

importantly, the striking similarities between the two genres (232). As I see it, Miéville is

correct in trying to mitigate the dissimilarities between science fiction and fantasy. Genres

are always problematic, as no shortage of scholarship has proved, and so making these

overarching divisions between them is bound to fall shy of a solid position. Furthermore, as

certain texts within a genre stand out, so can those texts not be generalized like the rest of

the texts in that genre. As my thesis attempts to show, D&D stands out from much fantasy

literature as being remarkable in its depth and complexity. By conflating science fiction and

fantasy below, I do so not with the purpose of making a grand statement about genre, but

with the purpose of showing how D&D‟s exceptional qualities extend beyond those valued

in science fiction.

Worlds suggest a topical classification of D&D but within certain genres. D&D falls

into the genre of fantasy, which suggests its tendency towards imaginative worlds unlike our

own. McHale addresses both fantastic literature and science fiction. Although he claims

that science fiction “is the ontological genre par excellence” of postmodernism (16), his

investigation ultimately fails to look at the properties of fantasy in nontraditional narrative

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forms, such as TRPGs. In any case, his work predates the mainstream popularity of D&D.

He therefore misses the ontological qualities of the fantasy-driven genre of D&D, which

better fits the superlative “par excellence” in this case than science fiction does. Indeed, it is

the very qualities that McHale lauds in science fiction that D&D contains. He argues that

the most important characteristics of science fiction are not those that deal with creation of

new technology and the exploration of outer space but “the social and institutional

consequences of technological innovation, the social arrangements these advances give rise

to, rather than the innovations themselves” (66). D&D‟s complex social dimensions match

this emphasis. Worlds fit the ontologically-dominant characteristic not only by their

expression through alternate worlds and realities, but through the social diversity that lies

behind these structures.

One similarity between science fiction and fantasy is their ontological focus on

possible worlds. In studying D&D‟s preoccupation with worlds, I find that the entire

mythos of the D&D narrative relies in an essential way on multiple ontological levels. In

brief, the whole structure of D&D is governed by possible worlds and their intersections.

To begin with, examining Borges‟s short story “The Garden of Forking Paths,”

because of its extensive influence on fantasy through its imaginative realization of infinite

worlds, allows me to engage in a wide-ranging account of worlds in D&D. In this story

Borges initialized a number of strategies and ideas which were later to become prominent

tropes of postmodernist fiction, and fantasy in particular, several of which I have included in

this chapter. The story involves an exponential web of paths in a garden containing every

possible eventuality. McHale calls this topos the “what if” premise, which allows us to

imagine the world otherwise than it is (61). “The Garden of Forking Paths” may be

interpreted as a narrative that imagines all possible storylines, thereby working as a kind of

42
template for branching paths in other narratives. Decades after this 1941 fiction, a strikingly

similar idea comes from White‟s critique of narrative in history: “For in fact every narrative,

however seemingly „full,‟ is constructed on the basis of a set of events which might have been

included but were left out; and this is as true of imaginary as it is of realistic narratives” (14,

emphasis his). Even “The Garden of Forking Paths,” although it simulates possible

branches of stories, does not realize them all in the text. This imagined potential to create

divergent storylines is a key ontological topos of postmodernist texts.

One entrance into the D&D ontological structure opens through the multiple

realizations of mutually exclusive storylines.22 Each time a D&D adventure is played, the

same broad template of the story is used. As hundreds, or even thousands, depending on

the adventure‟s popularity,23 of people play the same adventure, any number of storylines are

played, or we might say that a virtually infinite number of forked paths are walked down—all

confined by the same general structure.24

This structure may appear similar to genre, and yet it is the very limited nature of the

D&D genre that allows for multiple storylines to branch from the same narrative

configuration. As a D&D adventure is played by different groups and so develops among a

community of players over time, it becomes more and more recognized as a distinct

narrative. One example of this is the Temple of Elemental Evil, a classic adventure from the

first two editions of D&D. Cover notes that D&D editor Monte Cook rewrote the

adventure for the third edition, and without modifying the location, placed the new

adventure years later, as though the thousands of gamers who had played the original

narrative had actually completed the adventure and won, leaving the setting rich with history

and potential for new plots to emerge (134-5). A more personal example is The Sunless

Citadel, a popular module for first-level adventurers. It is the classic D&D setting: a haunted

43
dungeon populated by kobolds, dragons, and an evil “boss” at the end. I played this module

in the early 2000s with a group as our first adventure. My brother played it in 2010 with a

different group of players. Although my brother had played in the version I had run as DM,

when he was DM of his own, the adventure took a completely different turn. Is it the same

narrative? Yes, but it takes on multiple contradictory realizations. “The Garden of Forking

Paths” is limited by its singularity to walk down only one path, to be only the model for a

grander hypothetical in which all paths could be walked. The D&D narrative extends the

potential in Borges‟ model and can, if only theoretically, walk down every forked path,

exploring all possibilities. Even practically, however, narratives may be replayed and so

rewritten (or over-written) with new outcomes.

This stance requires some qualification. McHale describes the forked narrative

structure when discussing stories that have been written, deleted, and then rewritten: “Self-

erasing narratives of the kind I have been discussing violate linear sequentiality by realizing

two mutually-exclusive lines of narrative development at the same time” (108). We can take

this seeming contradiction—the impossibility of having a single narrative that occurs in two

different ways—just so far without unfairly stretching its application. Although two groups

may play the same story, one might argue, they are not playing them together and therefore

are not actually creating mutually exclusive versions of the same narrative. Indeed, Cover‟s

emphasis on the phenomenology of TRPG narratives suggests that the subjective singularity

of the D&D narrative prevents multiple recursions of similar adventures from being situated

within the same plot arc. If different players have unique experiences during similar

narratives, then the narratives are different because of the experience, even if the events of

the plot are the same. In this view, no two narratives within a genre could ever be the same.

However, this scenario seems rather an overemphasis on the social-psychological

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factors. To avoid a solipsistic stance of the narrative (that a narrative cannot be understood

except by those playing it), we must assume with the majority of narratologists the legitimate

difference between story and discourse (often, histoire and discours, or fabula and sjužet). Dan

Shen‟s entry in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory informs us that the story may be

abstracted from the discourse, since the story is what is told, while the discourse is how it is told

(566-7). So it is not so much that the discourse is extended along mutually exclusive storylines

as it is that the story is repeated and branched, creating overlapping narratives. Here, I am

not concerned so much with a particular narrative instance, as I am with the branches of the

D&D genre. Because D&D, as discussed in my first chapter, relies on the untotalizing, and

yet grouping nature of genre to draw different gaming sessions together, these narratological

stories may play out all the possibilities of a particular D&D module narrative. Although

never reaching some transcendent level where all narratives are played (due to conflicting

subjectivities), D&D stories do have the ability to get closer to realizing the paradox in “The

Garden of Forking Paths” of walking down different conflicting narratives. In other words,

to map a D&D narrative, one must realize how each group creates a world through that

narrative, and how discourse for each group may be different, so comparable stories are

constantly being created and forked through new developments in the D&D genre,

actualizing new possibilities. D&D alters typical conceptions of both story and discourse,

which emphasizes the way D&D worlds exist.

The foregrounding of worlds also broaches the ontology of paradoxical space. A

term derived from Foucault, the heterotopia, which is the term that I prefer but which

McHale calls the “zone,” is perhaps one of McHale‟s most convincing elements towards the

ontology of postmodernist fiction. It is a space in which incongruous figures and realities

are juxtaposed in contradictory existence (45). McHale suggests a number of different

45
orientations in which these confluences may configure themselves. The relationship that fits

D&D the best is “superimposition,” defined as when “two familiar spaces are placed one on

top of the other, as in a photographic double-exposure, creating through their tense and

paradoxical coexistence a third space identifiable with neither of the original two” (46).

However, an even more nuanced kind of juxtaposition is needed for the D&D genre, since

the superimposition of D&D heterotopiae is not totalizing, but limited to certain localities,

as will be shown. While all D&D worlds are potentially superimposed, the heterotopia is

only fully realized in particular places within the world. This localized superimposition, as I

will call it, where D&D worlds merge at specific locations, occurs on two levels: extra-

dimensional pockets connecting planes and campaign settings.

Let me explain D&D planes. They are different dimensions, realities, spaces of

existence. Often, planes have a certain thematic characteristic, such as the feywild plane

where elves live, or the celestial plane where angelic creatures dwell. Most do not come into

play in D&D adventures except for the purpose of side-quests (D&D subplots), summoning

otherworldly monsters for battle, or recalling the homeland of an exotic character. Indeed,

most adventures take place on the mortal world, or what the third edition better labeled the

material plane. Yet like science fiction‟s limitless expanse of potential worlds in the universe,

D&D has a limitless supply of possible worlds via these alternative dimensions. Although

focused on ontology, planes themselves do not suggest an exemplification of ontology

through heterotopiae. To show that, I move to a specific feature of planes—in this case, a

specific city.

Epitomizing the heterotopia is Sigil, the City of Doors, home to all D&D races and

monsters, and “the microcosm . . . of everything that is” (Baker 25, emphasis removed).

This city exists in its own plane, but a plane that is outside the regular D&D universe‟s

46
structure. It is a point at which all planes connect, but it is part of none of them.

Interplanar portals populate this heterogeneous city, each of them leading to a different

realm of existence (25). The city has the shape of a torus, or a donut, and is divided into six

wards, each of which is so different from the others as to be its own heterotopia. One is

dominated by chaos, another by elemental beings. They all coexist in a kind of volatile

pastiche under the disciplinarian authority, the Lady of Pain, the only center and means of

magical surveillance in this nucleus-less world (27). The city is without anything to keep it

together except its structure—circular perfection of city shape, governmental rule by force,

and extra-dimensional pockets that provide the only means of entrance and exit to and from

this city (26). Sigil is a city so fraught with unlikely juxtapositions and structures which

deliberately create chaos that it seems like it could not exist. It is the center of D&D spatial

ontologies, but has no center of its own.

The heterotopic zone appears on an even broader level when we consider D&D

worlds, or campaign settings. Fine notes that settings “are not only fantasy settings, but are

worlds in which the game action takes place” (76, emphasis his). They are different cosmic

systems in which a D&D adventure may be set. Campaign settings fit heterotopia‟s criteria

even better than planes, since they not merely include different dimensions, but change the

nature of how reality operates in D&D. They are completely different cosmologies.

Because D&D works by turning physical qualities into numbers, or by quantifying physics,

so too campaign settings are not only different nations and kingdoms but also different

versions of quantified physics. Popular ones include Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms. One

less like our own world is the universe of Dark Sun. In this campaign setting, religion is

considered defunct, so magical classes such as clerics who use divine magic are forced to

modify how their spells work. Changes like this go beyond theme to structure, altering the

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way D&D is played. The D&D game engine takes on fluidity here, as even key rules may

change from campaign setting to campaign setting. This alteration of physics goes beyond

any changes from plane to plane and approximates heterotopic status.

A critic might argue, “Yes, I see how worlds are essentially ontological and how

D&D has a definite structure centering around worlds, but isn‟t the core of the D&D game

about exploring those worlds and learning what‟s in them—in short, about an

epistemological venture, rather than an ontological one?” I agree with those facts, and yet

disagree with their interpretation. For even the epistemological elements are framed within

the ontological ones. To refer back to the issues that ontology addresses, we find an

emphasis on those entities that exist in space-time and their states of being, while

epistemology deals with the acquisition of knowledge. D&D‟s epistemological nature of

exploring dungeons is housed within the nature of those dungeons‟ existence and the beings

who populate them. The game does not often focus on whether or not the PCs have correct

information or whether their senses are working all right or how the PCs know what they

know. In fact, the quantification of the senses, perception, and actions is made precisely so

that those questions do not become issues. Instead, the game focuses on the PCs‟ progress

as characters, on the milieu of the dungeon they are in, and on the intersection of the PCs‟

world with the DM‟s. Cover notes that “TRPGs offer popular fiction worlds, with the full

possibility of exploring and inhabiting them during the gaming session but, furthermore,

they offer players the ability to completely transform and control these worlds” (151).

Exploration is important, especially in earlier editions of D&D, but the focus is

predominantly on the attributes of worlds and characters, the two foci of D&D ontology,

and how they can be changed.

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CHARACTERS

D&D‟s thematization of different kinds of worlds deals mainly with large-scale

structures and concepts. Ontological foregrounding occurs on a much more particular level

through D&D‟s ontology of characters. In this section I discuss McHale‟s concepts of

transworld identity and sous rature as D&D topoi that educe an ontological position and problem

of even greater relevance than worlds, that of PC identity.

McHale calls transworld identity the existence of one character in multiple ontologies.

The rule for it truly to be transworld identity is that the essential properties of the character

must remain intact as the character changes location (85). Examples of transworld identity in

science fiction, for example, include Michael Moorcock‟s Jerry Cornelius or Kurt Vonnegut‟s

Kilgore Trout. Transworld identity, in fact, is a common trope in postmodernist fiction (86).

The most widely known—so widely known as to be cliché—example of this type of identity

in D&D is in the migratory character of Drizzt Do‟Urden, a dark elf25 created by fiction

writer R. A. Salvatore in his popular Forgotten Realms fantasy series. Drizzt started out as

just one of several prominent characters in The Icewind Dale Trilogy but moved on in later

novels to become the central and almost only character in works such as The Lone Drow. His

wide popularity among fantasy readers and D&D players is due to a number of traits,

including his uncharacteristic benevolence for a drow, his engaging physical description

(violet eyes, white hair), and his two magical, sentient swords. His flamboyant name

probably doesn‟t hurt his fame either. Drizzt‟s ontological status became transworld when

the D&D 3rd edition Forgotten Realms campaign guide converted and quantified him into an

NPC. His omnipresence throughout Salvatore‟s novels, his appearance in internet forums

filled with fan fiction, and his embodiment as a PC by untold numbers of D&D groups have

resulted in the busy elf‟s transformation into a dataset within the numeric system that

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structures the D&D game-engine. Upon reading his statistics for the first time, I recall how

strange it was to find this character transplanted from one world to another. Examining his

character numbers was like seeing a skeleton. Drizzt‟s transworld status likens him to an

archetype, such as Hamlet or Odysseus, since his name may be used by players as not so

much that of a single character as of a broad identity or role, often reducible to certain

physical and personality traits. Unlike an archetype, though, Drizzt frequently appears as a

definite character containing a specific history. Because he is used by players in both

capacities, his ontology is mutable and overdetermined. His status as a character who is not

merely written about, but is role-played, becoming part of the player‟s experience,

differentiates him from most transworld characters relegated to postmodernist novels and

short stories. Drizzt‟s ubiquitous presence throughout D&D lore via his transworld identity

signals both the multimedia and the multi-ontological status of D&D characters.

A D&D topos that further complicates traditional notions of narrative ontology is sous

rature, a technique that helps us understand the faintest level of character existence in the

D&D narrative. Literally translated “under erasure,” sous rature refers to times when a

presented entity in fiction is mentioned, becoming a part of the narrative, and then is un-

made, erased, in one way or another eliminated from the world (McHale 100). Thomas

Pychon‟s moment of minimalism exemplifies this technique: “Of course it happened. Of

course it didn‟t happen” (Pynchon 667). This kind of deletion is confounding, since it

upsets the typical existence readers expect characters and events in literature to have.

McHale points out that this technique follows the same line of thinking as Derrida‟s

acknowledgement that we use certain ideas in discourse, even if they are philosophically

unsound, in order to further inquiry. However, McHale is careful to distinguish between

Derrida‟s sous rature and his own: “[My] purpose is not, as with Derrida, that of laying bare

50
the aporias of western metaphysics, but rather that of laying bare the processes by which

readers, in collaboration with texts, construct fictional objects and worlds” (100). This

erasure carries over into the realm of narrative creation. A character may be thrown into

existence by the author, only to be recalled and nixed. Then again, the result of this erasure

is not true erasure, but, as when a pencil erases a thickly drawn mark which cannot be

completely erased, so too with characters sous rature, a faint imprint always remains behind.

Saying that a character exists in fiction and then saying that she does not exist serves to

highlight the continuing ontology of that character, so that the earlier existence may come

back into play, bringing the character back into the awareness of the reader.26

D&D illustrates sous rature better than the postmodernist fiction McHale refers to,

even more than Gravity’s Rainbow. Putting characters sous rature is a common practice in the

D&D narrative. Throughout a campaign, depending on a variety of factors,27 a player will go

through multiple characters. Let us suppose that the barbarian PC named Etan the Impaler,

played by Chad, has just been abandoned by his cowardly companions and has been caught

by a Lich-king and sacrificed to the evil deity Vecna. Chad no longer has a character to play,

unless his fellow PCs are able to (and choose to) find a cleric to resurrect Etan. Supposing

they didn‟t like Etan (or Chad), Chad is then forced to abandon the Etan persona and create

a new character. DMs usually have house rules for how this process works, but most

relevant here is the insertion of Chad‟s new character into the narrative. Suppose he decides

to get away from the tough fighter type and creates a frail, aged wizard named Mindcye who

lost his hands in a brawl with a hydra, but who has a toad familiar 28 through which he casts

spells. The DM and Chad work out enough backstory for his new character and find a way

to quickly introduce him into the group and the narrative. Now the group is back up to its

full complement of PCs, but the social dynamics are different, obviously in part because of

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the addition of Mindcye, but less obviously, because the group also plays in the wake of

Etan, sous rature.

The group will interact with the ghost of Etan in their midst. Suppose Etan had

saved Karinariara, and that is how she joined the group. The others will continue to enact

the narrative through those relational ties created and left by Etan. The erasure of Etan will

therefore continue to change the narrative of the adventure, as though Etan were haunting

the group with the presence of his absence. This level of sous rature is similar to how a

character‟s erasure occurs in novels and short stories. D&D pushes this trope even further.

Even more relevant than Etan‟s influence on the subsequent plot is his sous rature

effect on Chad‟s PC identity. Here, we begin to see the problematic ontology of PCs.

Although Etan has been removed from the game, the framework from which Chad plays

Mindcye will be colored by his history with Etan. Players will often find it hard to get out of

the personality of an erased character, especially if that character had lasted a while or had

especially memorable personality traits. The term “PC” becomes inadequate at this point to

signify the reality of Chad‟s relation to his characters. The “P” changes only slightly while

the “C” changes radically. Are we to understand Chad‟s new situation as a separate PC? A

double PC? The ontology of what it means to play a character destabilizes. Identity seems

to be both singular and multiple. Sociologist Waskul calls the PC “a marginal and

hyphenated role that is situated in the liminal boundaries of more than one frame of reality”

(19). Through its complexity, PC identity becomes an important aspect of D&D. In short,

this modified PC exemplifies the postmodern view of identity29 at the same time that it

foregrounds the influence of ontology.

PC identity is also seen in its complexity from a narratological standpoint. Currie‟s

Postmodern Narrative Theory references the longstanding literary debate about how readers are

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to relate to characters. He recalls Wayne Booth‟s classical position which suggests that

readers merely sympathize with characters, making the reading process one of a clinical

nature, where the reader may dip into the worlds of fiction and step out unchanged (36).

This safe view contrasts to Currie‟s position of reading as an act of identification. Currie

confesses, “Identification, on the other hand, touches my own subjectivity in a more

profound way, because I have seen myself in the fiction, projected my identity into it, rather

than just made a new friend” (36). Of these two options, Booth‟s and Currie‟s, identification

with the character is clearly the better fit when applied to D&D, but it still does not attain

the high degree of subjectivity that is created in the D&D narrative. As a player performs in

the game, she creates the entire existence of her character. That identity, that of the PC, to a

point is then inseparable from the player‟s own. Far bypassing Booth‟s sympathy, and

engaging Currie‟s identification to an extreme extent, players and characters go through a

simultaneous creation of mutual identity, which is understood in the term PC. This

complication increases the ontological density of D&D characters.

Some TRPG scholars offer explanations of this strange configuration of identity.

Mackay argues that “in the narrative frame the player‟s voice is not the character‟s voice”

(88). By keeping in mind the distinction of frames (discussed in the previous chapter) and

their ability to indicate who is speaking, participants can always know who is character and

who is player. Fine suggests, “Players can be described in two ways: as individuals who

happen to be playing a game, carrying with them real-world interests and values, or as

animators of a persona” (144). In fact, they should be described as both ways, always.

Understanding any particular moment of character action, and by implication, narrative

progression, involves a close look at PCs to see whom they are speaking as and in what

frame they are speaking.

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 There is a relative abundance of other literature on the identity construction of the

PC. For example, Michelle Nephew argues that the bridge from player to character is an

outlet for unconscious desires (122). Numerous authors have written on the

schizophrenic—by which they usually and incorrectly mean issues dealing with multiple

personalities—qualities in TRPGs. Suffice it for my purposes to summarize the critics by

saying that the PC remains an unstable identity, one that navigates several frames

simultaneously, and one that highlights postmodern views of identity and existence.

Postmodernist ontological dominance is stressed by the intricate ways both worlds

and characters operate in D&D. The diversity added by heterotopiae and the new

conceptions of space introduced by planes both give heightened attention to the worlds in

which characters exist. These characters, too, have complex identities, as seen through the

changing ontology of sous rature and the migratory presence of transworld characters. As

more than mere fictional characters, though, player identity must be construed within the

TRPG system, as characters who are also people. The complexity therein highlights their

existence.

NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTION

The ontological prominence of D&D appears most vividly on the levels of worlds

and characters. Ontology finds further application in other aspects of D&D‟s narrative.

Knitted into the unseen structures of the D&D narrative is a tendency toward existence

rather than knowledge, toward the created reality rather than the quest to explore it.

Ontological focus is seen in the structures of time, scripts, pastiche, chance, and social affect.

I discuss each of these in turn, amplifying the argument about the postmodern narrative

construction of D&D.

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Time

D&D‟s complex engagement with time expresses how ontological foregrounding

occurs in the construction of the D&D narrative. Genette provides a systemization of

narrative time vis-à-vis duration that illuminates this complexity. One part of his analysis of

duration is his classification of four narrative speeds: Pause, Scene, Summary, and Ellipsis.

Genette notes that most literature oscillates between dramatic scenes and bits of summary,

the latter of which are used for less interesting parts (97). While the typical D&D narrative

generally fits this canonical narrative configuration, it also diverges from it. Since dramatic

scenes equate the duration of real-time with fictional time (95), these are the most common

in D&D. This category encompasses Cover‟s narrative frame, including all the interaction

between PCs and NPCs, the PCs‟ dialogue among themselves in character, attacks (when

they are performed through language by the PCs), and occasionally narration by the DM.

But D&D does not match the category of dramatic time in the narrative frame

perfectly. Let me explain. When the social and game frames meet the narrative frame, there

is actually a lengthening of time in numerous spots along the narrative, as though pockets of

additional narrative duration were adjoined to the real-time narrative. When players discuss

their characters‟ actions in real-world time (in the game or social frames), that speech must

somehow be translated into narrative-time, and yet it must be shortened, since there is no

way characters could have a five-minute argument on whether or not, for example, the sly

succubus is lying while they are having a conversation with her. Such aberrations and

elongations of real-time over narrative time also include deciding, calculating, and

communicating battle moves and attacks, which all take longer than the narrative frame‟s

duration of those actions. Therefore, time expands around those actions. Expanding

bubbles of time alter what it means to exist in the postmodernist D&D narrative.

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 These “distortions” might be attributed to the durational category of Pause,

described by Genette as the textual parts (or, in D&D, the communication among PCs) that

take longer than real-time (95). Players show their awareness of this problem when a

conversation over battle strategy is particularly prolonged. One player might notice,

“There‟s no way we could have planned all that in six seconds, even if we had the knowledge

of our characters.”30 The player is referencing three D&D truisms. One, each round in a

battle takes approximately six narrative seconds. Two, speaking in a battle is considered a

“free action” and takes up no time by the rules (Heinsoo 267). Three, because the players

are not actually the heroes they role-play, they may do certain things to compensate for those

differences. One such action is to spend more real-time than narrative time deliberating

over actions that the character could conceivably have done faster than the player‟s

knowledge allows her to do. So if Argon is a battle-hardened dwarf fighter, he is going to

know certain reflexive combat strategies that might take the twenty-year-old English major

Nicholas five minutes to actually discern on the battle-grid. As a result, real-time becomes

converted into narrative time as the social and game frames transpose into the narrative

frame.

Time becomes intensely ontological when it initiates a crisis in being, when being is

stretched over multiple frames, as in the case above. Holistically, the PC is both player and

character, but reductively, each is operating at different speeds of time as they exist in

different frames. Temporal changes in D&D therefore point out where the character is in

relation to her existence more than to her knowledge. The unity of PC once again fractures

by the different speeds at which the varying identities move. The complication of time

seems to be a postmodernist trend and might be opposed to the complication of

interpretation in modernist works.31 As the vehicle by which characters find their role in

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D&D, time works to gather the disparate frames of being in the D&D narrative.

Scripts

Time is closely related to the narrative structure of scripts. To my knowledge, no

TRPG critics have discussed scripts, and yet their presence in D&D glues together

ontological levels and frames, speaking comparatively. The concept of scripts is taken up by

a number of different theorists, and each uses it in a slightly different way. I focus on two

applications of scripts to D&D, what I am labeling dramatic scripts and understood scripts.

In the first way, D&D has a physical dramatic script that may be read at times. It

generally comes from the adventure module and is read aloud by the DM. These prompts

often come in the form of descriptions of dungeon rooms or sometimes of NPCs. They are

broken up into different parts that the DM reads based on what the characters do (e.g., if

they walk farther into the dimly-lit room, they may see the skeleton hanging on the wall).

This kind of script takes up real-time and narrative time, which confuses the correspondence

of frames in D&D. The dramatic script, though, may be summarized or omitted, and so is

not necessary for every D&D gaming session.

Dramatic scripts are the closest D&D gets to having a physical text, unless

transcripts of the gaming session can be counted. McHale points out that to draw attention

to the materiality of a text is to foreground its ontology (181). I argue, however, that a

materiality as multifaceted as D&D‟s is even more of an ontological foregrounding than

simply drawing attention to materiality. D&D‟s status as neither completely material nor

completely immaterial, but a combination of physical texts and subjective experiences (as

discussed in my first chapter), complicates its ontological status in a way that supersedes

those texts that make the reader think about their physical nature. McHale‟s point in

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discussing the materiality of texts is how postmodernist narratives draw attention to the

materiality of texts in ways not attempted by modernist fiction. The same can be said of

D&D, since its ambiguous immaterial-material ontology does indeed complicate the

questions of existence that readers ask about it. Furthermore, it does so in ways not

attempted before. Because D&D, through dramatic scripts, draws out the obstacles of

materiality even more than most postmodernist book-based narratives, it emphasizes the

tension that comes from a narrative form that has essential narrative qualities existent in

different media.

The second type of scripts, understood scripts, originates from script theory analysts

Roger C. Schank and Robert P. Abelson, who employ scripts as a mental devices that people

use to understand causal connections among events. Most are narrative conventions that

people recognize immediately. As relatable contexts, known backgrounds, or paradigmatic

cultural situations, understood scripts provide reference and causal plausibility in otherwise

unconnected strings of events. They are the reason why we can understand stories (Schank

and Abelson 38). Scripts are the story happening before the story begins.

Herbert Grabes connects this idea of scripts back to worlds. He explains, “The

central importance of scripts for both worldmaking in general and literary worldmaking in

particular lies in their function of mediating between the potential infinity of details and the

necessity to structure knowledge in everyday life as well as in storytelling” (55). By making

sense of strings of events, scripts are the unseen glue that holds together fictional worlds.

Scripts therefore provide needed structuring in narratives because of their suturing role in

relation to cognitive narrative gaps that the reader experiences when connecting events.

More explicitly in the lineage of Schank and Abelson lies Bruner‟s narrative

explanation of scripts and what I am calling in the D&D narrative understood scripts.

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Bruner‟s landmark typology of ten properties of narrative relies on this idea of scripts that

preexist the narrative. Bruner‟s fifth property, Canonicity and Breach, entails a violation of

the “canonical script” in order for a narrative to take place (11). In other words, a narrative

is not just events occurring in an order, but it must be a departure from the expected order.

A fitting illustration comes from the 1998 movie Pleasantville, which depicts a black-and-

white era 50s television show in which everything goes perfectly. The movie introduces

color into the show as this utopian script is breached, which director Gary Ross uses to

point out the unlikelihood of those shows making sense in a 1990s social climate. Similarly,

in narrative, there are background scripts going on before the narrative begins. Because

background scripts, in Bruner‟s thought, must always be breached, this property of narrative

introduces conflict as its essential quality.

Understood scripts do not, in and of themselves, foreground ontology. They are

common to all narratives. In D&D they emphasize the ontological construction of the

narrative as they manifest in several different ways. They are the background stories of

characters that are created before playing them, the normal town life that is supposedly

going on before characters arrive, the summarized sections of narrative when the PCs agree

to stay in the city for a few weeks to restore themselves after a battle,32 and the status quo

stasis when one player cannot come to a gaming session and her character stays behind from

the adventure. But these are all examples of character-based scripts. D&D‟s understood

scripts go much deeper to show ontological foregrounding.

Scripts are good and well in the narrative frame, but D&D‟s particular ontological

inclusion of scripts operates across frames. They allow us to pinpoint how exactly the D&D

narrative is co-created. When players leave their regular lives to play in a TRPG session,

they are making several simultaneous script changes, both breaches and continuations. One

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player leaves a shouting match with a roommate. Another joins the table after studying. A

third hosts the gaming session, resuming a previous script. The D&D narrative comes into

being through the collective breaching of understood scripts by the PCs, particularly those in

the social (“real-life”) and narrative (fictional) frames. There would be no D&D adventure if

their actions did not break the equilibrium of the storyworld. The collective merging of

these scripts by different players is what distinguishes TRPG scripts from a person reading a

book off-and-on over a period of days or weeks. It is not simply that we project outside

circumstances into our perceptions of the narrative; it is that our social circumstances dictate

much of the content of the narrative. This occurs as players bring in scripts from outside

the game and, whether intentionally or not, include them in the choices of their characters,

choices that ultimately form the collective narrative. Housing multiple identities, a PC‟s out-

of-character self becomes melded with her in-character self, thereby introducing ideas,

thoughts, actions, and qualia from outside the narrative into the narrative, breaching the

script on a diegetic, frame level.33

Besides cohering, scripts therefore also disrupt the ontology of a unified narrative by

scrambling frame boundaries. The players‟ “real lives” occurring in the social frame are

continually interrupted and rearranged by the game frame and narrative frame. Short-term

equilibrium in personal, social, and narrative scripts is dependent on the crossing and

breaching of frames for determining what happens in them. All of this attention to scripts

reinforces the complexity of D&D‟s narrative ontology. Although McHale does not discuss

scripts, they are an important part of how ontologically-dominant postmodernist fictions

work. Apart from time and scripts, three more parts of narrative construction, ones

addressed at least partially by McHale, follow: pastiche, chance, and social affect.

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Pastiche

Only marginally discussed in Postmodernist Fiction is the narrative structure of pastiche.

This term of course arrives in current discourse through the cultural exposition in Jameson‟s

1991 Postmodernism.34 There, pastiche is often described in the context of the disappearing

subject, which makes Jameson assert that “[p]astiche is, like parody, the imitation of a

peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead

language. . . . Pastiche is thus blank parody” (17). Although I cannot disagree with

Jameson‟s reasoning here—and indeed, I want to reach the same conclusion (except about

D&D, not postmodern culture) regarding the “increasing unavailability of the personal style”

that characterizes pastiche (16)—I do see a rather ironic route to that conclusion by looking

at how heteroglossia leads to pastiche in the D&D narrative.

Perhaps opposite to Jameson‟s pastiche is Bakhtin‟s heteroglossia. Bakhtin‟s theory

sets up my application of McHale‟s view of heteroglossia, dependent on pastiche. In this

lengthy description, Bakhtin addresses the singular nature of each voice in narrative:

As a living, socio-ideological concrete thing, as heteroglot opinion, language, for the

individual consciousness, lies on the borderline between oneself and the other. The

word in language is half someone else‟s. It becomes „one‟s own‟ only when the

speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates

the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this

moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal

language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but

rather it exists in the other people‟s mouths, in other people‟s contexts, serving other

people‟s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one‟s

own. And not all words for just anyone submit equally easily to this appropriation . .

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 . it is as if they put themselves in quotation marks against the will of the speaker.

(293)

This explanation addresses the ownership of language and the epistemic problem the reader

encounters in knowing which discourse belongs to which voice. Language is always a

pastiche of voices, depersonalized, not because of retrieving words from a dictionary, but in

fact because so many voices comingle to create the well of language from which individuals

draw. When someone pulls from that source of language, he “populates it with his own

intention,” thereby personalizing it for a moment. Heteroglossia relies on pastiche for its

anonymous diversity of language.

In a study of carnival McHale discusses heteroglossia. Modernism uses heteroglossia

only on the level of style, where it is equivalent to polyphony, multiple voices within the

same ontological plane. This is manifest in works posing different perspectives but which

are included for a common purpose, such as the diverse viewpoints in The Waste Land

(McHale 166). Heteroglossia in postmodernist texts, however, works on the level of

ontology. It aims to destabilize the single perspective by fragmenting one world into

multiple worlds. Not only are there multiple voices in postmodernist fiction, but there are

intersecting philosophies, which, taken as a whole, do not agree with each other. These aim

toward fundamentally different ontologies, rather than just stylistically different ones. While

modernist works use polyphony as a means to a unified end, postmodernist works use

polyphony to augment fragmentation (167).

This type of pastiche through heteroglossia, however, finds new clarity in D&D.

The very nature of the D&D narrative requires that multiple actual voices and worlds

construct the story at once. Thus, there is no question of whether those voices are distinct,

as they originate from actual people. Polyphony is much more literal in D&D than in single-

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authored works of fiction, and because of this less representational interaction of multiple

people‟s voices in creating a narrative, stylistic polyphony is necessarily ontologically-

fragmented heteroglossia, since each person (in my view, not Jameson‟s) is radically singular,

bringing in her own perspective which cannot be homogenized into a single world-view,

although of course there may be certain cultural similarities. I do not mean to suggest that

each person is a radically different ontology in the sense that they cannot interact. Rather, I

mean that, despite identities that are in part culturally constructed, each player embodies a

unique, non-replicable standpoint. In contrast to modernist works where a single author

fictionalizes points of view not her own, the players of D&D fulfill that attempt toward

polyphony by occupying perspectives uniquely their own. When we ask Eliot how his

Tiresias in The Waste Land would respond to a particular question, we are ultimately going to

get an answer from Eliot. When D&D players come together in a heteroglossic formation,

we get answers that indicate their different standpoints. Granted, certain ideological and

social factors bind these voices together, but their differences go much deeper than the

characters that Eliot can create himself from his single standpoint. So, postmodernist

heteroglossia does not aim to make an epistemological inquiry into which perspective knows

the most or is more correct in its representation, but rather focuses on the new formations

of beings that occur in the mutual and collective creation of the D&D narrative world.

Without a unifying standard, these voices form McHale‟s postmodernist pastiche.

Pastiche in D&D works through the heteroglossia of individuals bringing in

substantially different philosophies and standpoints that meet as they play through their

characters and as they interact in the social frame. D&D is the manifestation of a

postmodernist heteroglossia, since it does not so much theorize about incompatible

viewpoints coming into conflict as it enacts this theory through specific people in narratives.

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Chance

Ontology is significantly affected by the chance methods used in the creation of the

D&D narrative. McHale references the “machines” employed by certain postmodernist

novelists to create a narrative via random operations. John Barth‟s novel LETTERS uses

the title to give the story structure. The alphabetic letters of the word “letters” are overlaid

on calendar months, and the days they cover determine when letters (epistles) are written in

the novel and who writes them. In this way, although Barth is still the novelist, the

particulars of his method are somewhat left to chance (157). Such writing tactics are

reminiscent of postmodernist poets writing in the influence of the 1920-30s surrealist

movement. These recent poets include Jackson Mac Low and John Cage, who pioneered

the use of randomly generated machines in order to achieve “objectivity.” This type of

avant-garde exploration of randomness is a tendency of postmodernist fiction.

The use of random methods in D&D is hardly debatable. I discuss the mechanics of

the random engine of D&D in more depth in my third chapter, but suffice it to say for now

that the use of dice in D&D is integral to the gameplay and therefore to the creation of the

D&D narrative. Not only this, but it also suggests the postmodern experimental fiction

genre into which D&D fits.

Chance in D&D produces a strange mixture of instability and stability in relation to

narrative ontology. One would think randomness through dice would create instability in

the narrative, always causing unpredictable events, ruining the plans of both the DM and the

PCs. Indeed, to the extent that players follow rules rigidly, chance can severely alter players‟

expectation in a D&D narrative. It can at times even destabilize any cohesion that its

unnatural narrative might have.

Actually, however, chance more typically works as a foil to narrative stability, thereby

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pushing the narrative forward, though in unexpected ways. Fine insightfully notes that in

spite of all the chance that goes into TRPGs, players have methods for decreasing the

chances, and this gives them agency (91).35 Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in a cultural study of the

effects of probability, points out the commonness of the “narrative fallacy” because of its

psychological effect: “If narrativity causes us to see past events as more predictable, more

expected, and less random than they actually were, then we should be able to make it work

for us as therapy against some of the stings of randomness.” People do this all the time

when they give understandable explanations for why a car accident occurred to them, but

assume randomness (or probability) when it happens to others (73). So the result of chance

in D&D is that the narrative structure helps players make sense of unpredictable events.

Although chance factors may influence the plot that the narrative takes, they rarely work in

such an extreme way that players want to quit. The combination of chance surprises and

narrative expectations creates a dynamic, variable ontology beyond modernist narrative

characterizations and matching better with postmodernist ones.

Social Affect

A final key structuring device of D&D‟s ontological narrative, this one altering the

narrative‟s plot, is one that critics have acutely missed: the affective sway of PC-DM

interaction. It plays a key role in controlling the D&D narrative. Cover gets credit for

coming close to this point. “Unlike the gamebook,” she contrasts, “even in a fairly scripted

adventure, the DM and players can subvert the intended narrative structure.” She goes on to

point out that there are rarely “unsatisfactory” endings in D&D because the DM adapts (30).

This is important because it shows that a driving force of the D&D narrative is the affect of

the players vis-à-vis the livelihood and status of their characters, which is not to go so far as

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to say that it is impossible for characters to die because the players will then quit. On the

contrary, in a successful D&D narrative, it is very likely that some characters will die; that is

the nature of suspenseful danger. The point here is that, ultimately, it is people who control

the characters, both PCs and NPCs, so their psychological states are directly influential on

the narrative itself. Once more, ontology, not epistemology, drives the D&D narrative.

Because PC‟s affective decisions are made more in relation to who they are—or what they

are—than to what they know, social affect moves the D&D narrative forward in a decidedly

ontologically postmodernist way.

One example should illuminate. I was playing with a group in 2009, and two of the

men began to get angry at each other. One was the DM and the other a willful PC who

often led the group in making decisions. The DM created a battle situation that was quite

difficult, and by the poor luck of the dice, this PC got badly injured quickly. So the

headstrong player became upset and made his character, who was normally brave, rush out

of the room and abandon the group, an action quite “out of character” for him. His

emotional response changed the course of the narrative. This type of influence points back

to the ontological nature of frames and their fluidity. Although the frames established by

Fine, Mackay, and Cover all help elucidate the TRPG, their neatly divided up typology

ultimately cannot capture the influence that actions in one frame have on the others. For

researchers of TRPGs, the psychological state of players might be the next worthwhile area

of study. Until that research occurs, emotional states of players remain classified as an

important causal factor on the narrative construction of D&D worlds.

METACRITICAL ANALYSIS

A final aspect of ontological foregrounding is the meta, or self-reflexive, qualities of

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the D&D narrative. McHale‟s Postmodernist Fiction tiptoes around the meta phenomenon

without actually giving it the full attention that it deserves, especially considering how many

other critics have observed self-consciousness when discussing postmodernist fiction.36 The

closest that McHale comes to this discourse is his chapter “Styled Worlds,” in which he

describes the way postmodernist fiction uses disjunctive language and syntax to provoke in

the reader an awareness of the text as a constructed object. Such implicit self-reflexivity is

certainly a quality of metafiction, as suggested by Hutcheon when she distinguishes between

overt and covert metafiction. Covert is not self-conscious, only implicitly self-reflexive, and

so not the primary quality of metafiction, which is overt, explicit self-reference (7). To be

the most fully metafictional, a work must explicitly refer to itself. McHale‟s study fails to

engage this greater metafictional level.

There is a surprising lack of scholarship on self-reference in role-playing games. This

absence may be due to the unwritten nature of self-reference in D&D and other TRPGs.

Generally, scholars discuss self-consciousness in the game in terms of engrossment. Mackay,

for example, posits that players lose their meta-awareness of the game itself when they are

most fully immersed in the game, to the point that they not only forget the game but forget

themselves (84). But although this case appears plausible, it is actually not so. The players‟

immersion in the narrative frame is related to their position in the other frames, but being

deeply involved in the narrative frame depends on their involvement in the crossing of

frames, an act labeled metalepsis—in short, being involved in the TRPG as a whole.

Berlatsky‟s argument that meaning-making occurs in the gutters37 between frames further

supports my argument because, even though D&D does not have actual gutters as between

the boxes in a comicbook, it still depends on the crossing of boundaries between roles and

psychological mindsets to make sense of the full, multi-layered narrative. A player‟s meta

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involvement in multiple frames at once highlights self-reference by means of the metaleptic

actions she takes.

The Dungeon Master’s Guide itself gives us another entry point to self-reference:

“Metagame thinking means thinking about the game as a game. It‟s like a character in a

movie knowing he‟s in a movie and acting accordingly. „This dragon must be a few levels

higher than we are,‟ a player might say. „The DM wouldn‟t throw such a tough monster at

us!‟” (15, emphasis theirs). The guide goes on to offer suggestions for dealing with

characters who choose to violate the spirit of the game by crossing frames. D&D‟s caveat

here shows that the normal mode of gameplay is to keep frames separate. However, I argue

that at the deeper level of enjoyment—and by implication, the deeper level of narrative

formation—the case is just the opposite. Instead of D&D players having an ignorance of

frames, I attribute to players a heightened awareness of the ontology of frames.

In contrast to most games which derive pleasure and fulfillment from the win-loss

dynamic or from the experience of gameplay, D&D derives its primary interest from

interactions that take place on the metaleptic level between the heterocosmic reality of the

fantasy world and the social interactions of the real world. The overlapping of frames allows

for this negotiation of levels of play by the participants. This is analogous to the point made

about scripts—that the breaching of scripts across frames constitutes the primary means of

narrative progression—but this point deals more with the game side of D&D. The game

depends on players crossing frame boundaries in order to achieve greatest immersion. This

is similar to a point made by Cover about frames. She observes, “Because players‟ actions in

the game frame influence the narrative frame, their level of immersion in the narrative frame

is directly related to their level of immersion in other frames” (105). Indeed, Mackay,

although he seems to be unaware of the implications, similarly points out that the type of

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boundaries crossed are often between the narrative and pop culture references, which are so

common in the game as to be conventional (76).38 By violating frame boundaries, players

experience the whole game more fully and take pleasure in the dynamics involved in

manipulating actions in different frames.

Self-reference certainly appears in modernist works, but it is often limited to specific

statements. Not until postmodernist fiction does a self-consciousness become conventional

and overtake narratives, a self-consciousness that works structurally to actually form the

narrative through the interactions in multiple frames. Dealing with the very constituent

narrative parts of D&D, frames foreground the importance of the game‟s ontology. As

players necessarily recognize the meta qualities of D&D‟s construction, they demonstrate the

prominence of ontology to D&D worlds.

This discussion has elucidated the influence of ontological factors in the panoply of

important narrative structures in D&D. The study of worlds reveals that the postmodernist

space of D&D is one in which creation and control of fantastic worlds is key to D&D‟s

ability to play out similar versions of the same basic narrative, continually rewriting

cosmologies as new adventures play out. Related to it is identity, a problematic topos that

extends across frames as player identity merges with character identity. Furthermore,

narrative structures of time, understood scripts, heteroglossic pastiche, unpredictable chance,

and the affect of players all align D&D as a narrative focused on the questions of ontology

more than those of epistemology. Finally, a step back from the narrative allows for a

perspective that sees frames as boundaries that must be constantly crossed and must

constantly enter conscious awareness of the players as they display the metafictional

characteristics of postmodernist narrative.

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 D&D exemplifies the postmodernist dominance of ontology even more than the

many examples that McHale provides. When ontology takes precedence over epistemology,

both as a structuring philosophy and as a dominant form in critical analysis, it illuminates the

paradigmatic nature of D&D to be about the characters and the narrative worlds they create.

My thesis now turns toward an inquiry examining the many facets of violence in D&D.

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 Chapter 3

Productive Violence and Poststructural Play in the Dungeons and Dragons Narrative

DM: Alexander, your character is hit by a sweeping cut from the orc-king‟s

battleaxe. Take ten points damage, and you are stunned until the end of his

next turn.

Alexander: That puts me at negative three hit points!

DM: In that case, you fall unconscious. Phillip, it‟s your turn.

Phillip: I‟m using my Fireball spell. [Rolls dice.] I got a 23—does it hit?

DM: Yes, the orc-king howls in rage as your flames set his skin on fire. Roll for

damage.

Phillip: [Rolls and adds modifiers.] 14 points.

DM: Laura, your turn.

Laura: Karinariara will shoot an arrow at the orc-king using Chaos Bolt. [Rolls dice.]

I got a one!

DM: Critical fail. [Rolls dice.] The arrow misses the orc-king and flies into

Phillip‟s shoulder—I mean Torag‟s shoulder.

Phillip: Laura!

Laura: I didn‟t mean to! [Rolls dice.] You only take three points of damage.

Phillip: [In a bad Scottish accent] Torag be not a forgivin‟ dwarf!

DM: [Looks up stats in a rulebook and rolls dice.] Ok, the orc-king swings at

Phillip, but the axe deflects off his armor.

Phillip: Glad I bought that plus-two magical robe.

Alexander: [Rolls dice.] I got a ten on my death saving throw. Does that save?

DM: Yes, you still have three strikes left. Phillip, your turn.

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Phillip: I teleport behind the orc-king and cast Disintegrate. [Moves his miniature and

rolls dice.] I got a 22 versus will.

DM: [Checks stats sheet.] It hits! The orc-king begins to disappear. His legs

disintegrate, and he falls backwards off the cliff. The last glance you catch of

him is his eyes wide with disbelief. Good job. Everyone gets 5000

experience points and levels up.

On first glance, violence and play seem to be separate concepts.39 Violence appears

to deal with death, torture, criminals, distant wars, and angry football players, while play

nestles closely to the discourse of children, leisure, sports, and inconsequential diversions. A

closer inspection reveals, however, that the two concepts overlap in their purviews. As an

example, take my contrived, but representative, dialogue from a D&D gaming session above.

D&D, while unmistakably a playful game, abounds with the signifiers of violence. In a battle

sequence such as this one, violence is the subtext behind every sentence uttered and every

action taken by the PCs and DM. Indeed, D&D tends to enact violence not only through

the content, but also on a deeper plane of signification, where it does violence to the D&D

narrative as a whole. Violence and play are both essential components of the game, and they

operate on two distinctive narrative levels: content and structure.

First of all, play and violence fill the subject matter of D&D. As a game, D&D has

the lightness that characterizes play, but as a narrative, D&D is topically about violent

material. It is the combination of that playful content with violent moments of narrative

choice that together make up the “aboutness” of D&D. As I will show, D&D has an

intrinsically violent nature in the sense that it would be a different game were violence not

directly part of the content.

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 Second, play and violence both operate structurally with respect to rules. Further,

they both “play” in a Derridean sense, since the rules of a game and the rules of a juridical

system both create space and elasticity in the system which allow for a freedom of

movement within boundaries. Viewed as a game, D&D‟s play-fulness gains meaning and

relevance by its relationship to the rules. In other words, without rules play falls apart, and

the game cannot hold the player‟s interest. Violence, on the other hand, works by both

bypassing and adhering to the rules/laws of a juridical system. Indeed, the way violence

operates in relation to laws parallels the way it works through play and narrative in D&D.

Violence and the prohibition of violence together delimit laws around norms in the same

manner, as I discuss, that the narrative of D&D goes outside the boundaries of the norm of

its script in order to fashion its narrative.

Based on these considerations, I argue that violence acts as a form of play in D&D,

the end result of which is not a loss of meaning, but the production of it. Towards this

claim, I analyze D&D through the basic narrative qualities set forth by Herman, which

provide a framework for explaining how violence works in the content of the D&D

narrative. Then, as a preface to discussing theoretical views of violence, I describe the

complex relations among violence, play, rules, unknowns, and randomness in D&D,

presenting several formalized scholarly conceptions of play. Finally, I build on these

foundations by examining some poststructural avenues by which violence works as play to

produce the D&D narrative.

BASIC ELEMENTS OF NARRATIVE AND VIOLENCE

Instead of taking my own impressions from playing and observing D&D as the

method for illustrating how it tends to be a narrative-game premised on violence, I want to

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adopt a narrative model from Herman. He has recently argued that there are four basic

elements of narrative: situatedness, event-sequencing, worldmaking/world disruption, and

experience. Since the gameplay of D&D functions through the narrative form, I contend

that the subject matter of D&D, when seen through Herman‟s narrative elements, is

primarily violent.

These four qualities are posited by Herman in his recent book Basic Elements of

Narrative. The volume is positively reviewed by Natasha Azarian-Ceccato, except when she

points out that Herman uses overly technical jargon (809). I see it slightly differently. The

problem is not so much technical terminology as it is cumbersome terminology. Although

suffocating terms such as “situatedness,” “structured time-course” (92), and “logico-

deductive reasoning” (11) reflect Herman‟s background in linguistics and philosophy, the

reader wonders throughout the book why he didn‟t just say “setting” or “time” or “logic.”

In addition, Herman‟s reduction of all narrative traits to four seems to elide the complexity

of narratives, and yet, for a study of its length, Herman‟s book successfully takes into

account the vast majority of narrative conditions. This does not mean that my use of

Herman‟s elements as violent aspects in D&D explains, or even attempts to explain, all the

narrative components of D&D. It is rather one way of approaching the thematic prevalence

of violent content in D&D.

Herman‟s qualities are especially pertinent for my use over other studies of the

essential features of narrative (such as those by Genette or Bruner), since he does not limit

his study to literature, but includes movies and conversations. Because D&D is a hybrid

narrative genre, the broader methodology of Herman‟s investigation conforms particularly

well to my own study. As a consequence of his breadth, Herman‟s scope goes beyond my

own, and so the application of my descriptions of his narrative elements is more focused

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than his.

Situatedness

Herman begins with situatedness. He defines it as the “specific discourse context or

occasion” (37). It is the formalization of the “where” that is used in common parlance to

describe setting. Game studies scholar Jenkins describes this “where”: “[I]n the game

[D&D], for example, the Dungeon Master‟s activities start with designing the space—the

dungeon—where the players‟ quest will take place” (56). Through one of the title words of

the game, dungeon, the need for a particular space delimits the narrative setting in D&D.

Narratives require a location in which they occur.

But situatedness is more than just a “where.” It involves several related scholarly

views of narrative space. Like Fine, Herman builds on Goffman‟s work, pointing toward the

concept of frames as the means by which narrative spaces are delimited.40 Herman‟s use is

different from Fine‟s, however, since Herman sees frames more as a place in which

narratives occur and less as a frame of mind. Frames structure both the environment and

the interactions among characters, giving a stage on which the plot may be acted out through

and among characters in a meaningful way (Herman 41). Ryan makes a similar statement

about these spaces. In a discussion of spatial difference in narratives, she defines narrative

itself as the moment “when a character moves across the border between two meaningful

spaces” (“Playfields” 161). Situatedness, akin to Cover‟s social, game, and narrative frames,

is the movement through the cultural spaces of the characters, the psychological atmosphere,

the genre‟s distinctive feel—all the structuring elements that work together to track position,

reference, and role from one character to the next. Jenkins explains this point more fully:

“[S]patial stories can evoke preexisting narrative associations; they can provide a staging

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ground on which narrative events are enacted; they may embed narrative information within

their mises-en-scène; or they provide resources for emergent narratives” (57). A situation

includes more than just the name of a location, more than just a “where.” Thus, the word

dungeon implies not only a general physical location but also a contextual one, since the

reason for the characters being in that dungeon will necessarily contain cultural and

idiosyncratic markings answering the question “Why are they there?”

To address violence, then—to what degree does violence suffuse the content for the

template of situatedness in D&D? My answer involves a generalization which, due to the

variations among D&D groups, may not be true in all instances. Even so, the overarching

thematization of D&D relies heavily on violence as the raison d’être (or “character hook” in

D&D terminology) for the formation of an adventuring group from fictitious characters

who are often quite dissimilar and otherwise unconnected. The characters must have some

reason for being together, and violent events invariably fuel this contrived partnering.

Although the end goal for some groups is the glory of the quest or the pursuit of gold,

achieving those means inevitably leads the adventurers down violent paths. Such enterprises

usually begin at a place with a violent aura. Consider again the dungeon, the most typical of

D&D adventure locales and common starting point for adventures. The labyrinthine

dungeon connotes danger: rabid animals, animated skeletons, many-headed hydras,

trapdoors, and darkness—the perfect macabre setting for fear of the unknown. D&D is

situated in such a way that the locations and reasons that drive characters into a plot evoke

violence.

Event-sequencing

Second on Herman‟s list is event-sequencing, defined as “a structured time-course

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of particularized events” (75). This category deals less with the “when” aspect of setting and

more with the ways the audience interacts with the temporal qualities of text,41 specifically in

terms of group decisions. Herman elaborates his conception of event-sequencing: “[A]

narrative traces paths taken by particularized individuals faced with decision points at one or

more temporal junctures in a storyworld; those paths lead to consequences that take shape

against a larger backdrop in which other possible paths might have been pursued, but were

not” (19). Indeed, this process of taking certain narrative lines over others is the same one

that PCs face when making decisions. They reach points where they stop making individual

choices and must make a single choice as a group. Event-sequencing in D&D relies heavily

on the choices PCs make and the subsequent outcomes.

Choosing among the two or more Frostian paths in a yellow wood nearly always

determines a particular course of physical violence. Will the characters threaten the local

priest to heal them from their festering boils, or will they pursue the Lich-king into his

otherworldly lair to break the Contagion curse he put on them? Is it worth it to travel through

the haunted forest from which no one ever comes back? Should they attempt to negotiate

with the bugbear kingpin, or is it safer to set an ambush? Such typical junctures are not only

violent in nature but also violent in their consequences.

Often event-sequencing in D&D takes these group decisions and realizes them as an

aggregate of individual decisions. This most often occurs in battle. The issue there is not so

much a matter of the group coming to consensus as it is a combination of the separate

actions of the party leading them down a particular path “to where it bends in the

undergrowth.” During combat, PCs will usually choose either an Attack Power or a Utility

Power, depending on whether they want to fight or do something else (such as teleport the

queen‟s gem into their pocket, rather than fight her for it). When Phillip‟s character cast the

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Attack Power Disintegrate above, he demonstrated how the violent option is much more

often the one chosen. Even Utility Powers, however, may eventually lead to violence.

Stealing the queen‟s gem will probably turn into a narrow escape from palace guards not

long afterwards. So, an event-sequencing juncture in D&D may not always be violent in the

sense that the choice itself will immediately produce or prevent violence, but it is the case

that a temporal juncture will usually have some future violent implications as one of the

main motivating factors for the decisions made in relation to it.

My view on violence‟s influence on events in D&D does not preclude the

occurrence of non-violent plots. It is true that often characters use less violent abilities—

wisdom, intelligence, and charisma—to bypass violent contingencies. For example, the

adventuring party may concoct an ingenious plan to hoodwink the mercenary out of his

flying carpet and cleverly fly around the contingent of wingless owlbears. Such a plausible

and representative scenario seems to be entirely non-violent. However, the party‟s very

avoidance of violence points out how violence structures the D&D narrative. 42

Worldmaking/World Disruption

Herman‟s third quality is worldmaking/world disruption, which is summarized as the

“disequilibrium” brought about by human (or human-like) agents into the stability of the

storyworld (105). Although this element creates an artificial binary between worldmaking

and world disruption when really both terms are part of the larger process of world

mutability, the points Herman makes are still useful for this discussion‟s application of

violence in D&D‟s content. I want to focus on two ideas Herman discusses about this

quality: ordering and possible-worlds theory. Ordering matches up with worldmaking, and

possible-worlds theory matches up with world disruption.

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 Following the influence of Goodman‟s 1978 Ways of Worldmaking, Herman explains

the qualities that describe a dynamic, mutable world, one that exists with its own laws and

presuppositions (109-110). Among these is ordering, which fits the D&D worldmaking

process quite snugly.43 Ordering is scientific or temporal categorization, working in the same

way that in our own world historians subdivide the past into time periods or biologists

classify life into the kingdom-phylum-class-order-family-genus-species model. D&D‟s

categories and hierarchical relationships correspond perfectly with this model. For example,

all characters, monsters, traps, dungeons, and even adventures themselves are labeled with a

numerical difficulty, often called their level (or, more clearly, “Challenge Rating” in the third

edition). Complex, sometimes exponential, relationships structure these levels. For

example, according the Dungeon Master’s Guide, a group of four average 19th-level adventurers

is supposed to be a good match for an 18th-level standard monster, but the levels would

change for two adventurers, or for three monsters (56-7). Divisions build on each other to

create the intricate system of the D&D world, structured in the game frame and played out in

the narrative frame.

But characters are not the only part of D&D which is ordered. Weapons are

subdivided into simple, martial, and exotic, and within these three, they are further

subdivided into ranged and melee. Armor is arranged by its protectiveness and

encumbrance. I could go on. In short, everything is categorized in the D&D world.

Ordering through hierarchies and systems of classification does not inherently

contain violent content, although they may be violent on a more theoretical level of

displacing one item over another, as I discuss in the third section of this chapter. However,

in D&D, these modes of organizing worlds are violent. There are examples in addition to

the lists above. Character level is determined mainly by the factor of how much destruction

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the character is capable. In addition to their style, weapons are divided up by the type of

violence they inflict. Monsters are given a level based on the numeric coefficients of their

attacks. Even something as insignificant as the material of a door is violent—doors are

ordered by how hard they are to break open. The use of organized systems in D&D, then,

categorizes objects, identities, and properties in a violent way, making for a complex world.

Ordering explains the worldmaking part of Herman‟s third element. The other half

of the element, world disruption, applies to D&D best through the premise of possible-

worlds theory. I have room here for only a superficial account of the various branches of

this theory informed by possible-worlds theorists Doležel, Ryan, and Maitre. Originating in a

literary take on philosophical conceptions in which a hypothetical world is imagined in order

to give perspective to this one (Doležel ix), possible-worlds theory imagines, notes Herman,

“a central world that counts as actual and various satellite worlds that can be accessed

through counterfactual constructions voiced by the narrator or by the characters” (120).

Counterfactual becomes fictional reality in D&D through its base world, or Text Actual

World (122). Ryan points out that possible worlds need not find their reference in our

world, but that there may be a Text Actual World within the narrative around which other

worlds are oriented (Possible Worlds 109). This is the case in D&D. In Maitre‟s description of

possible-worlds theory, there are those worlds which are hypothetically possible in the sense

that they match our physical laws, and then there are worlds which are possible (in the sense

of conceivable) in that they do not (15). For fiction, we have to take this point relatively,

since clearly fictional worlds contain qualities that go beyond nonfictional physical laws.

Everything in fictional worlds is oriented around the fictional Text Actual World, which

provides the norms of “reality.”

The conception of possible-worlds theory as world disruption plays out in D&D

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through planes, or alternate dimensions, briefly mentioned in my second chapter. D&D‟s

Text Actual World is called the material plane, or the mortal world. Through various

magical means, the players may gain access to other ontological planes. These tend to be

formulated in relation to violence, either by their scarcity of it or by their pregnancy with it.

The Manual of the Planes supplemental handbook describes The Shadowfell plane, for

example, in the following way: “The Shadowfell is the dark echo of the mortal world, a

twilight realm that exists „on the other side‟ of the world and its earthly denizens. . . . The

Shadowfell is more than just a mirror, even as darkly cast and twisted as it is. This plane is

the destination of souls loosed from their bodies” (48). It is pictured as a saturnine world

where evil beings wait to waylay the unwary. Other planes are sketched out similarly in their

linkage to the Text Actual World and its balance of violence, some having virtually no

violence and other others being inundated with violence. The interruption of the mortal

world by other planes with different civilizations and contexts creates a disequilibrium,

throwing the fictional plane structure off-balance. Through the intrusion of violent planes,

D&D realizes the potentials of possible-worlds theory.

Violence results from these manifestations of worldmaking/world disruption.

Ordering of the D&D world takes on a naturally violent tone as it organizes and creates the

categories of battle. D&D‟s own complex system of possible worlds, too, breaches its

ontology by the invasion of other planes. Worldmaking/world disruption, like Herman‟s

other properties of narrative, when applied to D&D highlights its embedded violent content.

Experience

The fourth narrative element is experience, or what-it‟s-like. Herman borrows from

philosophy of mind when he suggests that this final basic unit of narrative is the

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phenomenological qualities, or qualia, of the characters‟ narrative experiences. Qualia are

usually thought to be epistemologically unrelateable, an almost solipsistic aspect of

consciousness. Philosopher Frank Jackson calls qualia that which people experience yet no

amount of physical description can relate (127). To the contrary, Herman believes that one

of the points of narrative, one of its fundamental characteristics, is the experience and

identification that passes from character to reader.44 Through the experience of observing a

character in a story, readers understand qualia similar to the characters‟, which they can then

relate to analogous ones of their own. Herman goes on, moreover, to give some examples

of what this might look like:

Enacting and not just representing ways of experiencing—the what-it‟s-like

dimension of an encounter with a supernatural being, a difficult transition from

adolescence to adulthood, or a painful conversational exchange that points up the

willful obtuseness of a selfish and manipulative romantic partner—stories capture

and sustain our interest because of how their structure maps on to the mind‟s own

engagement with the world. (157)

Indeed, this very structuring of qualia is one of the attractions and values of D&D. The

intertwining and overlapping identities of players and their characters (exemplified in the

term PC) epitomizes the ability of a reader to imagine what a character experiences, since in

a very actual way, as Waskul and Lust add, the reader/player is experiencing what the

character is (337).45 The players do not merely read about what another experiences; they

enact the roles in game-based mimetic ways to live those experiences.

This direct identification with and co-creation of identity is essential to D&D and

essentially violent. Herman‟s element of experience is all about who the character is.

Deciding the character‟s qualities, which occurs through the same process that someone

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would use to decide on her customization of a new car, is the first task of the game. The

player gets to choose the character‟s race (dragonborn, dwarf, eladrin, elf, half-elf, halfling,

human, or tiefling); class (cleric, fighter, paladin, ranger, rogue, warlock, warlord, or wizard);

and other personal attributes (deity followed, moral alignment, physical description, and

background story) (Heinsoo 3). I contend that these narrative choices are all violent either

in and of themselves, or by directly precipitating violence in the narrative. Some examples

demonstrate this point. A player will often choose to be a cleric because the cleric can

magically heal wounds. A half-orc is chosen for its increased strength in dealing damage.

Moradin is chosen as a deity to serve because he favors battle-hammers. Although there is

an element of preference in making these choices that is unrelated to violent consequences,

strategy is usually the main motivating factor, the PC always being aware of one of the

foundational premises of D&D: There will be battle.

PLAY, RULES, UNKNOWNS, AND RANDOMNESS

Herman‟s model leads me to assert that the content of the gameplay in D&D often

consists of violent situations, events, worlds, and experiences. Violence, while providing the

subject matter for many of the basic narrative elements in D&D, takes on a complex

relationship to play when examined from a more structural angle. In this section I begin by

surveying various scholarly and theoretical definitions and descriptions of play vis-à-vis

games, after which I go on to discuss how violence in play works through unknowns and

randomness. Let me summarize the thought process of this argument. I recall Derrida‟s

notion of play in order to suggest that rules are necessary for a game to be a game.

Furthermore, it is the unknowns of games, demystified by playing out the game within the

rules, that make games interesting. In D&D—but by extension, all games—randomness is

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the specific mechanism that functions as an unknown. Randomness in D&D is expressed

through violence, suggesting that violence is a key component in how D&D works as a

game.

Play has been studied by various disciplines using different methodologies and

purposes. Nachmanovitch‟s overview of play points to the large body of literature which

focuses on play as useful from an educational and evolutionary point of view. Because play

teaches flexibility and encourages creativity, it has a purpose in the way it develops human

psychology. However, Nachmanovitch goes on to correctly point out that play is also

whimsical, fanciful (18).46 Games must retain their inconsequential nature, it seems, in order

to be meaningful at all. Locating play in an academic discourse which demands of it a

purpose is tantamount to voiding play‟s nature. It is not my aim, therefore, to hold play to a

rigid, systematizing benchmark, but rather to identify more fully this fundamental tension of

play to be both light and airy on the one hand and functional and meaningful on the other.

Play mediates this tension through its status as a system with rules. 47 Rules are key to

the views expressed in Huizinga‟s prominent book Homo Ludens, which sets the critical

foundation for a theoretical analysis of play. Cultural critic George Steiner introduces the

book by summing up Huizinga‟s definition of play: “[Play] is an activity which proceeds

within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted”

(10). Rules are the essential property of play. In the context of the game, they are flexible as

a matter of choice prima facie in whether someone decides to play the game at all and accepts

the rules. Breaking the rules constitutes a change of game, because then, certain rules have

become implicit. Cheating, for example, is the act of following a different set of rules than

other players, thereby essentially changing the game being played.

Huizinga formalizes his conception of rules into the idea of the magic circle,48 the

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area that limits where play occurs and where it terminates at the boundary of nonplay (30). 49

Within the magic circle, rules determine what may be done. Caillois seconds Huizinga‟s

emphasis on rules in his influential book Man, Play, and Games: “the confused and intricate

laws of ordinary life are replaced, in this fixed space and for this given time, by precise,

arbitrary, unexceptionable rules that must be accepted as such and that govern the correct

playing of the game” (7). In order for play to be considered play (or a game to be considered

a game), the rules must be accepted; otherwise, the magic circle‟s boundaries become

indistinct from the real world‟s.

More recent scholars, such as Morson, also agree that rules are paramount. He

describes their ability to delimit action, by both what they prevent and what they allow:

“Nothing forbidden by the rules can ever happen in a game” (134) and “Rules prescribe

what can and cannot happen” (135). Indeed, this conception of rules leads me to a pivotal

point made by Ryan. She suggests that meaning and significance in the game exist only

because of rules (“Playfields” 164). It is the human interaction with the rules of the game

that makes the game worthwhile and interesting. Without at least implicit rules, games do

not have a coherent definition.50

But this dependence on rules for the ontology of games does not demand that rules

are always fixed. Quite the contrary, in any interaction there will be numerous layers of rules

(social, ludic, psychological, juridical, etc.), which correspond to frames, any of which may be

in flux.51 The rules of many games, especially D&D, are open to change, which is

exemplified in the common practice of creating “house rules.” But although, as Punday

reminds us, the boundaries of the game‟s discourse may always be fluctuating, the rules are

still the structuring feature of gameplay, even as they are dynamic enough to change

(Narrative 34).

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 The question follows, how do rules deliver meaning? One way comes to light by

looking at the relationship between rules and play in the context of Derrida‟s conception of

play. Golumbia informs this discussion by examining the traditional interpretation of

Derrida‟s use of the French word jeu. He suggests that Derridean jeu is commonly thought

to translate as freeplay. In the context of Derrida‟s linguistic argument, this means that

signifier and signified have no inherent connection and so are considered arbitrarily tied and

not necessarily in one-to-one correlation. The consequence of this misunderstanding via

mistranslation is that readers understand Derrida‟s point as “unbounded and undecidable

variability in meaning,” which is a common interpretation arising in the popularization of

Derrida‟s theory. But Golumbia strikes down this interpretation as the right one. It would

be a play without rules. Golumbia argues instead that Derrida‟s use of jeu refers more to the

idea that language is a game, a game that, on the contrary, does have rules (180).52 Jeu can

best be interpreted by either of the English words play or looseness in the sense that people use

play when speaking of the play of an elastic cord or rubberband, or the play of a lever or

clutch (181). The often-cited Derridean endless deferral of meaning, then, should be

understood not as some kind of wishy-washy system where any signifier might create any

signified, but rather as a rules-based system that, in opposition to the rigid structuralist

system of one-to-one correspondence, has a flexibility within its rules while still maintaining

a hint of arbitrariness in spite of these relational rules. In other words, “play” in Derridean

thought plays off the flexible but structured nature of a rules-based game.53 So, to answer

the question of how rules deliver meaning—they do so by creating a structure in which

elements may have a flexible range that provides orientation without demanding fixity.

Play becomes meaningful to the game players when rules are in relation to this kind

of looseness. While rules constrain what may happen in a game, they also open up the

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number of options for what may happen. Take the card game Uno. Even as a player has

the potential choice to play any card in her hand, she is constrained by the rule that, except

for wilds, the only playable cards are those of the same number and/or color as the one face

up on the pile. This prohibition on what may be played in Uno serves two main purposes.

First, it prevents whoever happens to have the most Draw-Twos and Draw-Fours from

winning (which would be the end result were the rule removed). Second, it allows the player

to use her skill to meaningfully enjoy the game. Without any kind of structure to limit yet

open up the possibilities for which cards the player may select, Uno would be much more

similar to the card game War, having few or no choices.

On the other hand, it is not only rules that give games meaning; it is also unknowns.

Caillois continues, “In fact, the game is no longer pleasing to one who, because he is too well

trained or skillful, wins effortlessly or infallibly” (7). Games that cannot provide the sense of

“looseness” through rules also cannot provide a game interesting enough to play. If a game

is too completely understood, too rigid, or so simple so as to be completely discerned

immediately, it loses its appeal. For example, consider tic-tac-toe. It does not take long for

the average adult to play the game and realize that it is impossible to lose if played correctly.

The game is only truly captivating for children who have not yet mastered the complexity of

the game. Games require an unknown in the context of rules to be interesting. D&D fits

this description.

Unknowns are similar to the randomness in games. Play in the Derridean usage

implies a sense of arbitrariness, or even randomness, by its looseness. After all, if signifier-

signified reference cannot be pinned down because of endless deferral and slippage among

connotations, then to the player or reader there is at least the appearance of randomness.

Whether this randomness is actual or not is beside the point. What is important is that play

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within rules points to the appearance of a loose system which cannot be pinned down. That

variability can seem to be random.

Randomness and chance have always held an important role in the structure of

games. Caillois draws attention to this history in the chapter where he defines four

categories of play. Agôn includes competitive games, alea games of chance, mimicry imaginary

role-playing, and ilinx games of vertigo (12). The alea category engages randomness the

most.54 Caillois points out that alea games are enjoyable even when the odds of winning are

highly unlikely, because the very nature of luck suggests a reason for hoping that chance may

fall in the player‟s favor (115). The drive to defeat the unknown allows alea games to hold a

powerful affective sway over players. The paradigmatic examples of alea are dice games,

such as poker, or casino games, such as roulette. While Caillois does see the application of

alea qualities, namely randomness, in the other game categories, I believe he does not go far

enough. I believe, in fact, that all games worth playing contain alea randomness.

Rosewater‟s online blog on the website for Wizards of the Coast, producers of D&D

and other related games, describes the need for randomness in games from the perspective

of the computer-gaming designer. He contends that “games at every level from the macro

to the micro need to have some unknown built into them.” Now, clearly not all games have

formalized alea factors such as dice, so how do they satisfy this unknown? Rosewater

unlocks a concept which I see as vital to most games. The appearance of randomness seems

to be more significant than the actual amount of randomness. Rosewater notes that there is

a difference in player reactions when the mechanism of randomness in the game varies in

how obvious it is. So, for example, a computer game could ask a player to press a roll-dice

button at a particular juncture in the game, or it could incorporate this random generation

into the background of the programming engine. If the player has to click the button to

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create the randomness, however, she will perceive the randomness as being greater than if

the action were performed automatically. Thus, the perceived randomness of the game is

the true determinant of the game‟s unknowns, not the reality of what percentage of the game

is random.55

Since games deal in perceived randomness, all unknowns are perceived as random to

the player when she cannot determine how or why the variable is acting as it is, just as

people cannot predict the outcome of the roll of a die by examining its physics with their

eyes in real-time, even though a rolling die is just a complex physical movement through the

air and is, from a Newtonian perspective, not random at all. All randomness is perceived

randomness, and all unknowns are perceived randomness. And all enjoyable games have

perceived randomness. All games are at least in part alea. Why is it that the child enjoys tic-

tac-toe and the adult does not? The child perceives the game as impenetrable, too complex

to be figured out, partially random, and so enjoys the play with the unknown. The adult,

however, realizes how each move of the game could eventuate, and so has no unknown with

which to play. Without randomness as the unknown and its looseness within the rules, the

game becomes rigid and loses its essential qualities of play.56

Morson considers the relation in games between randomness and contingency. His

formulations appear to undermine my thesis. Strictly alea games in his understanding are not

contingent, because they can be determined by statistical probability, what he qualifies as

“[r]elatively predictable” (“Contingency” 136). Instead, it is games that deal with less

predictable (over a period of time) principles that are more contingent. Morson puts sports

into this category, since even computer models of some sports cannot capture everything

that happens (e.g., a bird flying in front of a baseball pitch) (137). Morson still agrees that

alea games have chance, but it is a chance colored by statistical probability (143). Opposite

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to Rosewater‟s point that all unknowns are perceived randomness, Morson argues that not

all (perceived) randomness is unknown. But there is room for compromise. A balance

between these two perspectives explains the gameplay dialectic—rules create an unknown

through their “loose” play. Even predictable games contain the je ne sais quoi of luck which

leaves their outcomes never completely decided, despite probabilities. On the other side of

the dialectic, these probabilities may become so routine that they no longer appear as

unknowns. Morson‟s contingency theory threatens the unknown quality of play that gives

games their interest.

Morson‟s point here about probability in contingency may seem to invalidate both

my argument in chapter 1 that D&D is a processual work and my argument here in chapter

3 that D&D relies on perceived randomness uncolored by probability. He could argue that

dice in D&D have no contingency and that all these rolls are merely probability-generated

statistics (136). To respond, D&D makes use of perceived randomness at a fundamental

level in an extreme way that elides Morson‟s probability, as can be seen through the use of

dice in D&D‟s complex system which works in such a way that precludes probability. A

character‟s prowess at battle may be guessed at by looking at her skills and their probabilities

of success, but each instance of combat is often a matter of the particular chance factors that

situate the battle. Additionally, D&D is complex enough that no two battles are the same,

and often strategies in battles vary wildly. This expansiveness suggests that statistics are not

nearly so dependable in D&D as they are in roulette, for example. In probabilities-governed

games the large-scale aggregation and summation of dice rolls or roulette spins build to a

point in which it can be predicted, whereas in D&D dice rolls interfere with each other as

one set of rolls will often be posed against another. Furthermore, the complex variation of

rolls and opposition of modifiers forms a situation in which predictability becomes

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impossible. Imagine how different a battle will be between, on the one hand, three first-level

elven barbarians fighting a worg with melee weapons, and, on the other hand, a party of five

twentieth-level characters comprised of an ilithid-wizard, a drow-avenger, a dwarf-paladin, a

human-cleric, and a goliath-fighter taking on a gold dragon guarding his lair from the Astral

plane and using an army of orcs as minions to bate the PCs into a volcano entrance. This is

no roulette.

Randomness in D&D is far beyond statistics. Instead, it enters into an intricate

system in which players and DM may influence random factors.57 The point of this game-

system minutia is to exhibit the structural level of play through randomness and unknowns.

I have argued in this section that play is a loose operation but depends on rules for its

integrity. Rules are dependent on unknowns and perceived randomness to create interest in

the game and to make choices challenging. For devoted players, D&D exemplifies a game

that has appealing, engrossing unknowns and an engaging level of perceived randomness.

These unknowns, primarily the dice, revolve around violent eventualities. So it is the very

unknowns providing interest to the game that in D&D are violent.

STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE AS PLAY

In the same way that play only makes sense in relation to rules, so too does violence

only make sense in relation to rules. The manifest level of violence‟s connection with play in

the D&D narrative, which I laid out using Herman‟s four elements, mimics a deeper, latent

level where play is violence. As evidence, in this section I look at how violence operates

both inside and outside juridical boundaries (laws) as seen through conceptions of violence

from Derrida, Benjamin, and Žižek. I then apply these conceptions back to D&D, suturing

the gap between superficial and structural levels of play and violence.

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 Punday mentions that numerous theories of narrative—from White‟s fourfold

system of narrative in history to Haraway‟s study of sexism in the narratives of the sciences,

to the narrative ideologies demystified by postcolonialism—have suggested that the effect of

narrative is cultural production (Narrative 1). But the components of the narratives

themselves that aid in producing the meaning of the productive narrative are what interest

my study. As I examine violence here in its theoretical dimensions, I track the productive

power of violence both in its delimiting capacity within the law and, similarly, its creative

capacity in the deferral of narrative.

Much of the theory on violence deals with its relation to the law. Laws are to

violence what rules are to games—at least in the sense that they structure what may or may

not be done. This is not to say that they physically adjudicate abilities, but that they sanction

actions. Summarizing Derrida‟s take on law and violence, Sinnerbrink writes, “Legitimate

force can be used by the law; it is inextricably bound to our legal and moral sense of justice.

Force without law, by contrast, is sheer violence, the violence that we rightly condemn as

unjust” (486). Perceived justice seems to be bound to the law‟s arbitration of which

instances of violence are legal and illegal, the arbitration of legitimacy. From this standpoint,

the law based in justice is the rubric by which violent actions are considered permissible or

not.

Similarly, Benjamin takes up the discussion of violence and the law in “Critique of

Violence.” He elegantly writes, “For if violence, violence crowned by fate, is the origin of

law, then it may be readily supposed that where the highest violence, that over life and death,

occurs in the legal system, the origins of law jut manifestly and fearsomely into existence”

(242). Benjamin acknowledges that the law depends on violence for its existence. “Law-

making violence,” though, is unable to use the law as its source of legitimacy, since it creates

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the law which can only apply to it after the fact. Contradictorily, Benjamin sees violence as

not only “law-making” but “law-preserving” (241). Law is used to maintain the legitimacy

(or illegitimacy) of violent acts. Benjamin therefore views the law as the mechanism for

producing violent power.

It also follows, however, that the law‟s ontological relation to violence works

conversely to the sequence just mentioned of violence creating law. It is not so much that

the law creates violence as it is that the law sets up a system whereby violence can be plotted

and delineated. Indeed, Sinnerbrink calls “Critique of Violence” “a reflective examination of

the limits and legitimate use of . . . violence” (490). Let me specify. There are acts of

violence which stand on both sides of the law. Benjamin gives the example of the police

officer‟s violence as “legitimate” (243). But there are clearly “illegitimate” criminal acts of

violence which fall outside the justification of the law, such as most modern cases of assault

and robbery. In other words, all acts of violence fall into a formation that places them in

some relation to the law, namely, either inside or outside, either under sanction or violation.

This is not to say, from my standpoint, that violence originated the law or that the

law originated violence. Although it might be intuitive to think that the law arises as a

response to violence, one might argue that in order for violence to be considered violence,

the law must already be in place, if implicitly. So instead, they are in a dialectical relationship,

co-occurring and dependent on one another, each coming into play as the other emerges,

each giving definition to the other as they exist in tension with each other.

Does this mean that all political actions in regards to the law are designated by their

relation to violence? Benjamin does not reach this extreme standpoint of saying that every

political action is violent. For example, Sinnerbrink points out that Benjamin regards the

proletarian general strike as a non-violent way of negating the law. Not surprisingly, Derrida

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reads violence into the non-violent suggestions of Benjamin by claiming that Benjamin‟s

discussion of non-violent strikes is actually violent. Moreover, Derrida reads any and all of

Benjamin‟s distinctions between different violences as always already contaminated, arguing

that there can be no true distinction between state violence and strike violence. Each is

subsumed in the other, meaning that both are contaminated with the other and so cannot

truly be separate ideas (Sinnerbrink 493).

How does Derrida reach this point? Violence in Derridean thought, being

remarkably similar to play, is sewn into the deepest level of metaphysical meaning. In the

chapter “The Violence of the Letter” from Of Grammatology, Derrida traces the derivation of

physical violence from its more basic anthropological and linguistic roots. He theorizes:

There was in fact a first violence to be named. To name, to give names that it will

on occasion be forbidden to pronounce, such is the originary violence of language

which consists in inscribing within a difference, in classifying, in suspending the

vocative absolute. . . . Out of this arche-violence . . . a second violence . . .

prescribing the concealment of writing and the effacement and obliteration of the

so-called proper name . . . a third violence . . . what is commonly called evil, war,

indiscretion, rape. (112)

Derrida‟s threefold conception of violence suggests that the difference between a name and

the person it signifies is necessarily the primary violent act; it is a creation of difference

where there is naturally no difference, a splitting apart of what might otherwise have been

(or what has been commonly perceived as) whole—although, the point for him is that the

whole is always already nonexistent, broken. The arche-violence, the violence of distance, of

lack of presence where the proper name cannot be immediately connected with the unique

individual, is the first level of violence. The secondary and tertiary orders stem from this

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one. Law and physical violence, then, are different applications and extensions of enacting

the primary violence of linguistic difference, each building on the one before it.

This conception of violence as difference is also the problem with anthropology, and

by extension, Western metaphysics. Derrida quotes Rousseau in order to make this point:

“But to study man, one must extend the range of one‟s vision. One must first observe the

differences in order to discover the properties” (106). Afterwards, Derrida describes this

passage as “militant,” a unexpected term given the absence of explicitly violent diction in the

passage. So where does the warlike language enter? Derrida‟s difference as violence here

suggests that the anthropologist is the scientist who creates violence by her very study of

types of humankind. By studying people, one releases violence, since an analysis of people

necessarily employs linguistic difference, for it must use terms of designation, classification,

totalization, and hierarchy as the methodological tools of its investigation.58 While

anthropology is the quintessence of these violence-inducing problems in the sciences, the

application can be distributed to the rest of the sciences and the Western tradition in general.

All such investigations depend on a study of humans one way or the other, and all create

difference, in spite of the fact that all these traditions claim to, and are often assumed to be,

revealing and structuring original knowledge. Western metaphysics, then, is characterized by

a foundational violence.

I have attempted to outline the link between Derrida and violence in the sense of

difference being the fundamental structure of violence. Derrida‟s well-known term différance

is also a useful tool (or perhaps weapon) in fastening his method to D&D. Both the

difference in meaning of signifiers and the deferral from one to the next capture and model

the tendency of the D&D narrative to bypass a definite connection with the original

narrative, or the scripted one. The Derridean Stiegler, in a seemingly cryptic turn of phrase,

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discloses that “différance is both the opening to the possibility of the singular and what always

already condemns this singular to be composed with that which reduces it” (250). As a

signifier simultaneously evokes and generalizes singularity, it does violence to the whole

process of discourse. Violence like this as an act of destruction, breaking, disequilibrium, or

negation intuitively functions opposite to and along with acts of creation or production. But

there is a paradox here, since violence produces even while negating.

I grant here that this abstract level of violence in D&D equally applies to all linguistic

texts. The violence of representation certainly works on a level distinct from the grounded

level of formal violence discussed in the first part of this chapter; however, it is the

coextensive nature of both violences, formal and linguistic, that so enmeshes D&D in

violence. This is not to say that violence determines the whole D&D game, but that its

realization occurs in multiple areas of application, areas that when the game is played operate

simultaneously and are thus interconnected, and so show the extent to which violence helps

structure D&D.

Deferral of meaning and difference between signifier and signified both entail

violence and both carry over to the violence of the D&D narrative. Recall Herman‟s third

element of worldmaking/world disruption, the importance of disequilibrium. Part of this

process involves Bruner‟s idea that a world exists before the narrative, what I discussed in

my previous chapter as Schank‟s and Abelson‟s conception of scripts. Bruner alleges, “For

to be worth telling, a tale must be about how an implicit canonical script has been breached,

violated, or deviated from in a manner to do violence to what Hayden White calls the

„legitimacy‟ of the canonical script” (11). The world that exists before the narrative is played

out must be written over, on top of, and thereby erased by the actual narrative. This

“original” world is understood by the reader as preexisting the narrative and as always being

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deleted, overwritten, because of the narrative being told. So part of the structure of

narratives is to do violence to the equilibrium of preexisting scripts. In D&D, it is the

departures and deviations from the original script that make the story interesting. Violence

is inherent to the game.

The best part of adventures for many PCs is not in playing out the plotline by its

script but instead is found in the individualized choices made during the adventure, which

give it unique shape and identity. It is through the violence done to these scripts that D&D

creates its storyworlds and thereby interrupts equilibrium, illustrating Herman‟s world

disruption. The script is never really followed—is, in fact, always already unplayed. Truly

playing the script in D&D is necessarily deferring the meaning of the script to the particular

real and fictional backgrounds, personalities, decisions, and environmental circumstances

(i.e., situatedness) surrounding any D&D group. It is this difference in storylines, their play,

that always diverges from the script and that enacts violence on a structural level. The

original narrative, like Derrida‟s “original” language of presence, cannot be said to exist in

any kind of manifested or actualized form, except as an artifact that is manipulated by

players or as a platonic potential form which is never realized. The narrative is always

broken by deferral to another narrative, the plot never played, the characters never matching

up with pre-designated paradigms. In this sense, then, D&D suggests a de-suturing of the

narrative, never having a one-to-one match between signifying arche-narrative and signified

played-narrative. Derrida‟s linguistic model of différance here accounts for the narrative

model of D&D, its structural violence working as play.

One final poststructural perspective illuminates the D&D narrative, this one similar

to the deferred script but from a hermeneutical viewpoint. Interpreting de Man, Žižek in

The Plague of Fantasies observes, “Interpretation is thus conceived as a violent act of

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disfiguring the interpreted text; paradoxically, this disfiguration supposedly comes much

closer to the „truth‟ of the interpreted text than its historicist contextualization” (95).

Commenting on this passage, Wolfreys suggests that the violence here cannot be so simply

defined, because in that act, the person defining would be doing violence to violence, or, as

he says, “To suggest . . . that „violence is X‟ or „violence is not X‟ is to miss the extent to

which the figure or the very idea of violence in discourse or language, before any physical

act, is normalised, naturalised, and has passed into an unthought framework within which

our subjectivity is constructed” (138). Both Žižek‟s de Manian concept of interpretation as

violence and Wolfrey‟s Derridean notion of the ontological violence of all discourse apply to

D&D. Each playing of D&D is an interpretation of the intended script. Each game is

therefore a disfiguring of what that script purposed and yet, seemingly paradoxically, is closer

to the underlying truth or intent of the script, if not the initially perceived understanding of

what the script denotes.

The interpretation of a D&D script outside of its expectations is actually the

fulfillment of the script‟s purpose. So even when the PCs deviate from the planned dungeon

where the whole adventure is supposed to have taken place—perhaps they decide that the

Lich-king is not so awful after all and they would rather subdue the nearby wilderness—they

are being true to the spirit and intent of the game. The play of violence occurring as the PCs

co-create the narrative takes place through their reinterpretation and rereading of the

narrative. In doing violence to the script, the players actually effect it; in deviating and

deferring, they actualize. Violence is performed by the characters‟ actions in the play of

D&D.

In a fictional ontology of possible worlds ruled by crafty dragons, mastermind

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mindflayers, and the occasional epic-level hero, violence produces the meaning for both

picaresque characters and the players who give them life. Yet it is not structural, ontological

violence alone, but violence in and as play. Unlike most conventional narratives, the D&D

narrative arises collectively from the players who intuitively enact forms of violence. As the

production is deferred from one player to the next in a multiple-focus narration à la Altman,

the narrative of one character is forestalled by the interruption of the next character. Play is

only achieved when, under the flexibility but restrictiveness of the rules, characters do

violence to their own storylines in favor of the communal storyline.

Far from being a total system that demystifies D&D‟s operations, violence as play is

only one entrance into D&D‟s particular undertaking of the many collectively written

TRPGs. Instead, one of the main points of this chapter, and a refrain in the whole thesis, is

how conventional understandings must be discarded when considering the “unnatural

narrative” of D&D. My first chapter suggested new narrative forms to replace inapplicable

terminology and categories. D&D‟s narrative quality of being collectively created through

social interaction entails a modification of the typical narrative terms that work well for

conventional novels and short stories. D&D must be revised in scholarly conceptions to

make room for the social, game, and narrative frames that structure it.

Following this same line of reasoning, the second chapter argued a new status for

D&D against the typical views of it as a just an escapist game. D&D‟s complex narrative

structure, especially demonstrated through its ontological focus on worlds and characters,

attributes to it the same qualities that McHale has connected to postmodernist fiction.

Indeed, as I have shown, D&D‟s extra dimension of social creation allows it to fit McHale‟s

qualities even better than most postmodernist literature.

In the same manner as the first two chapters, this chapter has revised standard

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notions of meaning-making in the D&D narrative. Violence working through the genre-

based subject matter, through the interworkings of games themselves, and through the

theoretical operation of Derridean violence explains more fully how the complex narrative

and game aspects of D&D function. With these re-conceptualizations, new scholars may

take on the task of honing in on particular D&D narratives and reading them as literary

works.

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 Afterword

Outside the Magic Circle

Not everyone plays D&D, so what do my chapters on its narrative provide for the

outsider? Besides a specific extension of narrative theory, they offer insight into the nature

of identity in a culture in which people increasingly occupy role-playing identities. Indeed,

D&D‟s postmodernist status makes it an excellent cultural artifact for current analysis of

identity. Although many cultural critics argue for the complete creation of identity by roles,

I believe that identity is more than the sum of its socially collected forces. However, both

my position and theirs can recognize the importance of role-playing, especially in a social

climate which is constantly producing emerging technologies that mediate reality. With the

pluralization of media in a postmodern world, people occupy more roles than they used to as

each particular medium becomes more fitted to a particular mode of information

transmission. Sherry Turkle‟s recent book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology

and Less from Each Other (and the title says it all) points out the continuing danger to our

identities in a culture being rapidly rewritten with new technologies. All this alerts us to the

need for better understanding of how role-playing works in relation to identity.

To close the larger project of the narrative forms of D&D, I suggest that role-played

characters are more than fictional constructs, but are significant in the development of the

players‟ identities, and are in that sense real. Fine argues that TRPGs “have social structure,

norms, values, and a range of cultural artifacts, which if not physically real, are real to those

who participate in them” (123). Our conventional distinction between fantasy and reality

blurs as players exist across frames in both worlds at once. Since ontology is foregrounded

in D&D, it is not surprising that what happens in the game may be relevant to other

locations of being.

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 These sentiments may seem well and good in speculation, but can anything more

specific than “they affect identity” be said about TRPGs‟ real influence on gamers? In fact,

it can. Mello has performed sociological research at DragonCon, a large gaming convention

that meets annually in Atlanta. She asked gamers if they used knowledge learned from

TRPGs outside of the game. The responses were highly in the affirmative, with nearly fifty

percent claiming that vocabulary, trivia, and social skills transferred into real-life uses. Ten

other categories of skills learned from gameplay were mentioned, all with significant

percentages of respondents voicing their affirmation of transferrable knowledge (187). As

TRPGs can take up a significant amount of time, the information learned while gaming

naturally affects players‟ abilities as well as identity.

Perhaps our understanding of TRPGs needs revision. Although containing populist

and undeniably escapist tendencies, D&D and other postmodernist TRPGs do create a

narrative that goes beyond the metaphorical realness commonly ascribed to traditional

literature. As players become involved in the creation of a narrative in a face-to-face setting,

they find their own character and knowledge increasing with the development of their role-

played characters. Rules and other factors that help structure the D&D narrative game carry

over into developmental forces that grow certain parts of identity. Despite the superficiality

and lightness that often characterizes D&D games, its relevance to ongoing studies of

identity and narrative structure is worth further consideration.

White relevantly points out, “Narrative becomes a problem only when we wish to

give to real events the form of a story” (8, italics removed). In the same way that I have

catalogued the instances of violence in D&D to perpetuate its narrative, White sees narrative

itself as a violent imposition on experience. Indeed, many of the implications that I have

been making are based on the premise he critiques. However, even if real events are not

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naturally in narrative form, we often perceive and actively structure them that way. In a

game like D&D that not merely imitates real life, but exists outside the magic circle and in

real life, the importance of narrative is underlined even more. So I end by arriving back at

the purpose of narrative study, that by discerning more precisely how narratives operate,

people may more closely understand their own lives.

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 Notes

Preface
1 I refer the reader to the wide body of literary and cultural criticism in the tradition of poststructuralism for

examples of this tendency. Here are a few instances of what I mean. Butler‟s position in Gender Trouble argues

that the male-female binary is false by looking at exceptions, such as Herculine Barbin (32 and elsewhere).

Barthes‟ critique in S/Z that because structuralist models do not fit all narratives, they are false is another

example. Similarly, in Allegories of Reading de Man suggests that because some sentences do not mean what they

seem to mean, language is a poor tool for conveying meaning.

2 Although ethnologists Florence Chee, Marcelo Vieta, and Richard Smith collectively argue that

“phenomenologically, the realities of gamers are not clearly distinguishable between offline and online realities”

(170), I contend that such a view is naïve in that it does not recognize the complex ways that computer

mediation transforms both phenomenology and narrative. See any number of books by Sherry Turkle for

more on the differences between face-to-face and computer-mediated interaction.

Chapter 1
3 My thesis employs headings and subheadings to organize the material. Note that I use small caps for major

sections and underlining for minor sections.

4 Other TRPG scholars have focused entirely on the social aspect of role-playing. See Sarah Lynne Bowman‟s

2010 The Functions of Role-playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems and Explore Identity.
5 The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism suggests that while text refers to a physical

document in its first sense, it may refer to any system of signs in more recent usage (303).

6 Mackay agrees with this point later in his book, but does not include it in his initial statement or in any

comprehensive statement (121).

7 See Costikyan, “Games, Storytelling, and Breaking the String” for a more detailed list of other role-playing

systems similar to, but different from, the TRPG.

8 I discuss the nature of rules and flexibility in my third chapter.

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9 In contrast to the dearth of criticism on the D&D narrative, there is an abundance on its historical origins.

See Marshall, “A World unto Itself: Autopoietic Systems and Secondary Worlds in Dungeons & Dragons.” See

also Wizards of the Coast, 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons.
10 PCs receive Experience Points for their completion of certain tasks, a rule that essentially turns a character‟s

actions into numbers. These are determined from a chart with exponentially increasing figures that is used to

calculate when a character “levels up.”

11 Barthes‟s methodological commentary on this point in “An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of

Narrative” argues that linguistics should be the model for narratology, and so because linguistics “found its

proper footing” when it switched from induction to deduction, the same should be true of narrative study (38).

For its part, induction, like deduction, has deficiencies as an approach to narrative study, since it is always

limited by the domain of works it considers. It therefore always leaves out certain works, privileging a canon

which can be neither comprehensive nor fully representative of all works.

12 Postmodern conceptions of texts have pointed out the value of the reader (and consequently, her experience)

in interpreting the text. Barthes‟ idea of the writerly text exemplifies this movement. Nicol clarifies Barthes‟

definition as a text in which “readers are obliged to produce their own meanings from fragmentary or

contradictory clues, thus effectively writing the text themselves” (44). One might argue, then, that all texts have

this same requisite quality of experience that I have labeled to D&D. However, I contend that in D&D,

experience comes from making the choices for the characters, while writerly texts, no matter how much

authors might try to structure them into “open” forms, provide agency only in the form of interpretation, not

textual creation.
13 I do use Genette in an analysis of narrative time in my second chapter. However, I do not employ him in

any kind of comprehensive way.

14 See Herman for a comprehensive list (“Introduction” 1).
15 See Ryan‟s entry on “Narrative” for its explanation of the problems in trying to define the term (344-8).
16 Herman‟s more comprehensive, yet abstract, definition of a narrative goes as follows: “What makes a story a

story cannot be ascribed to narrative form alone, but rather arises from the interplay between the semantic

content of the narrative; the formal features of the discourse through which such narrated content manifests

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itself; and the kinds of inferences promoted via this interplay of form and content in particular discourse

contexts” (“Toward a Socionarratology” 229). See also Herman‟s explanations in Teaching Narrative Theory.
17 The word “occurs” or the phrase “is being told” might be a more grammatically appropriate expression for a

story happening in the present tense, which therefore cannot be “told” in the literal sense.

18 I address this complication in more depth in chapter 2.

19 Morson‟s argument here is certainly against a strong line of criticism that contends for the concluded nature

of Tolstoy‟s works. As Georg Lukács has defended, War and Peace concludes authentically, not only for the

story itself but for the historical period too (14).

Chapter 2
20 See David Herman‟s “Modernism Versus Postmodernism: Towards an Analytic Distinction” for another

example, or see Ernst van Alphen‟s “Review: The Heterotopian Space of the Discussions on Postmodernism”

for an examination of other such approaches from the 1980s to the modern-postmodern divide.
21 Indeed, both Mackay and Cover draw heavily on structuralist theory when they give lip-service to theory at

all. Although my thesis may on the surface seem even more generalizing than theirs, McHale‟s thesis and, as a

consequence my own, are more nuanced and moderate, as will be shown.

22 There is an undeniable link between this point about alternate D&D worlds and possible-worlds theory.

D&D exemplifies many of the relations that possible-worlds theorists such as Lubomír Doležel and Doreen

Maitre discuss in their studies. I foray into possible-worlds theory in chapter 3, so at present I merely note that

possible-worlds theory and its application to fiction foreground the ontological dominant present in

postmodernist fiction.
23 Certain adventures have been written into modules that show up in each new edition of D&D. I would

include Temple of Elemental Evil, Sunless Citadel, Speaker in Dreams in these.

24 Fourth Edition D&D makes this idea of mutual exclusion even more likely, as its character templates are

more restrictive than other editions. The game was redesigned from a very open-ended model to a closely

structured model where the player chooses different varieties of her class. Most classes have two heroic tier

paths to choose from, and at each level which powers they get are limited to usually two to four choices. This

new way of structuring classes in D&D has the disadvantage of making character development less open-

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ended, but the advantage of adding ease in creating new characters, especially for beginners. Because players

are more likely to play an archetypal character this way, it mitigates the role that experience might play in

interfering with mutually exclusive storylines.

25 Dark elves, or drow, are an “evil” subrace of elves.

26 It is remarkable and paradoxical that the use of sous rature can emphasize a character‟s ontology more than the

continuing presence of that character in the narrative.

27 These include the style and possibly the spite of the DM, the difficulty of the adventure and campaign, the

skill of the PCs, the chance factors of the dice, and multiple subject positions (but never just one of these).

28 A familiar is a small creature that a wizard has a close bond with and can use as a conduit for magic.
29 I am referring here to the common belief in cultural studies that identity is constructed by roles.
30 I do concede here that such a statement highlights epistemological questions in D&D. As mentioned, even

ontologically-dominant postmodernist works have instances where epistemology stands out. Such a question

dealing with knowledge is an example of one of those.

31 McHale does not make this point explicitly. His analysis of time travel in science fiction, however, indicates

that my point here about the complication of postmodernist time is true. See his subsection called “The

Science-fictionalization of Postmodernism” in Postmodernist Fiction.

32 This particular example is also an instance of Genette‟s durational category of Summary. As can be seen

from the other examples, however, Genette‟s typology does not account for all narrative speeds in Narrative

Discourse. Neither does he revise the typology in the succeeding study Narrative Discourse Revisited.
33 As a linguistic aside, it is ironic that this interpretation results in scripts operating opposite of theatric scripts.

While the latter designates what will be said, the former provides contingency in preventing a determined

storyline.
34 Constructing Postmodernism, McHale‟s follow-up book to Postmodernist Fiction, does reference Jameson‟s

Postmodernism, which is published between the two works. However, McHale does not reference Jameson on

ideas surrounding pastiche (269). Jameson discusses pastiche in earlier work but condenses it in the 1991 book.

35 Fine follows this point with a nearly exhaustive sermon about superstitions and their implications that come

about from players‟ desire to have control over the dice. One might argue that this is one of the key conflicts

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that goes on in the D&D narrative, not in the narrative frame but the game frame, where the results of those

conflicts ultimately play out in the narrative frame as events.

36 Waugh, Hutcheon, and Nichol are a few leaders in this circle of critics.
37 I discussed this point in more depth in chapter 1.

38 I find it fascinating that the opposite of this is true as well—that when D&D groups find themselves in social

spaces apart from the game, they will often make references as though they are in the game. For instance, a

group in West Lafayette, Indiana, will enter a room with dice in it, and one of them will immediately suggest

that they start rolling character sheets (Benskin).

Chapter 3
39 In this chapter, except when otherwise noted, I will be using the term play as the main activity of a game in the

same way that violence might be the main activity of an assault. Since play is also a verb, I will use it as the

action of game. Occasionally, I use the term gameplay to indicate the structured interactions determined by the

game and to differentiate it from alternative meanings of play, such as the poststructuralist meaning.

40 Frames have considerable discussion in relation to narrative, as has been already laid out in my first chapter.

Relevant to this chapter‟s theme of games, though, Nachmanovitch notes, “Play is not the name of an act or

action; it is the name of a frame for action,” as if to suggest that all of play is really just a matter of frames (2,

emphasis his).

41 By taking Herman‟s definition instead of the common one of diachronic time, I do not mean to elide the

relevance of a more conventional understanding of narrative time. Since D&D is based in a ficto-medieval

world, the time period is one of the most violent components of D&D, that era having had no shortage of

wars. Setting, however, has very little to do with an actual historical time period. Not only has the fantasy

genre rewritten medieval times into a completely new and fictional world, but that recreated world has bled

over into the popular conception of the Middle Ages. David W. Marshall‟s thesis in “A World unto Itself”

argues that D&D is essentially a Tolkienian “Second World,” an autopoietic, or self-created, system which

develops its content from itself, not from the external (or actual) environment, i.e., the real Middle Ages (171).

According to Punday, D&D‟s world is not limited to medieval Europe, but also has roots in other cultural

mythologies, including Egyptian, Greek, Norse, and Indian (“Creative Accounting” 122). Its broad range of

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roots, then, proposes that the time-period of D&D is often thought to be in some kind of heterotopic Middle

Ages, but the reality of the material D&D uses has progressed far away from any origin in historical reality.
42 I concede that some DMs enjoy puzzle-based adventures that are devoid of violence. This tendency, though,

is arguably uncommon and highly uncommon if no violence occurs at all.

43 See Genette‟s chapter “Order” in Narrative Discourse for relevant parallels with Herman.

44 Herman leads the argument too far when he intimates that this identification is a complete transferal of

qualia from character to reader. Narrative, however, over other forms of representation, does allow mimetic

experience to be compared and contrasted among similar experienced situations, not from physical descriptions

but from narrative occurrences (152).

45 I mean this sentence in both of the possible grammatical meanings—that D&D allows for players to undergo

the same experiences as the characters and for players to understand the “is” of characters, their being.

46 This view of play recalls Miss Havisham‟s absurd injunction to Pip in Great Expectations to play: “ „I want

diversion, and I have done with men and women. Play. . . . I sometimes have sick fancies,‟ she went on, „and I

have a sick fancy that I want to see some play. There, there! . . . play, play, play!‟” (59).
47 Waskul and Lust argue that rules have very little bearing on D&D gameplay, that they are only “guidelines”

which can be bent, and that this “bendability” is what makes D&D so much fun (340-1). I argue just the

opposite. D&D‟s rules define the premise of the game and form the boundaries of what may be done, creating

an inside-outside relationship. Each of the three core rulebooks of D&D is around 200 pages long. In general,

I have found that groups adhere closely to these reams of instructions. So when the Monster Manual says that

an elder red dragon has the ability to cast the power Immolate Foe (83), it is unusual for this rule to be changed

by any of the players or DM. The DM, of course, is in a sense sovereign (in the same way that Agamben writes

about the sovereign power of the state) over the rules and may suspend them at any time if need be. The DM‟s

sovereignty, however, is only constituted by her tendency to uphold the rules. Subjective use of her rule-

breaking power, therefore, cannot be a common occurrence. The frequency of such suspensions is the

exception, not the rule.

48 See Castronova‟s chapter “The Almost Magic Circle” in his book Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of

Online Games for a look at how the magic circle plays out in digital gaming.

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49 The body of criticism on Huizinga has not neglected to complicate the overly artificial nature of the magic

circle, realizing it as a superimposition on physical reality. Morson tends to agree that games may have their

own space, which, using Huizinga‟s idiom, players may “step” into or out of. However, even as someone

moves out of the real world and into the space-time of the play-world, she of course sees the important

difference between the two worlds: the play-world may be entered and exited, but exiting the real world into

the play world is not exiting the real world at all (134). Ryan, though, points out that the magic circle does not

apply to all games, such as some word games and other non-spatial games (“Playfields” 162).

50 There is room for scholarship to be done on the connections between rules in games and modalities in

possible worlds theory. It seems that modalities, or “logical constraints that frame a state of affairs,” are quite

similar to rules in games (Punday, “Creative Accounting” 132). See Doležel, Heterocosmica, 1998.
51 Ironically, there is a card game called Fluxx produced by Looney Labs in which the rules of the game

themselves change, and this is the point of the game.

52 Golumbia later concedes that it may have been Derrida‟s intent to suggest the former interpretation as a

possible “misinterpretation” (183).

53 This sense of play as freedom within rules corresponds to Caillois‟s usage (8).

54 Waskul and Lust argue that D&D is more like mimicry games than alea games, since D&D is obviously a role-

playing game (336). Yet instead of it being a matter of one or the other, D&D has the essential qualities of both,

and although it presents the make-believe setting necessary for games of mimicry, its rule system is premised on

chance and probability.

55 Although my thesis contends that violence produces play, here is a case when play produces a quality of

violence. An additional way of seeing violence might be as perceived randomness, that which is unknown and

always seems a violation to what one would expect. This is not simply to say that violence is unpredictable, but

rather to say that the qualia of violence seem to touch some unknown aspect of inner life. For related

thoughts, see The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Scarry, 1985, chapter 1.
56 Punday points out that D&D has realized this need for unknowns since its inception. He quotes a pertinent

passage from cofounder Gygax‟s original handbook for the DM, explaining that the DM is privy to certain

information that the players are not. As the handbook states about itself, “you must view any non-DM player

possessing [the Dungeon Master’s Guide] as something less than worthy of honorable death” (“Creative

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Accounting” 126). If the players learn all the strategies or data about the campaign world, then their unknowns

are too reduced to be interesting. The playfulness breaks.

57 This random variable nearly always coincides with violence in D&D. Consider the following specific

mechanisms of variability. This list, of course, is not exhaustive. Randomness may be ad hoc incorporated into

any aspect of D&D. As a DM, I often rolled dice to see which “random encounters” the group would face.

PCs, too, sometimes roll dice to make decisions for their characters. Randomness becomes a tool or prop, just

like the handbooks or game miniatures (figurines used on the battle grid).

Six dice make up nearly all the random actions in D&D. The twenty-sided die (D20) is the most

relevant of these. Its primary use is the attack role. But the D20 is rolled in other cases besides just attack

roles. It is the variable in determining the characters‟ order of attack, it is rolled when making any skill check

(such as jumping across a pit), and it is sometimes used in various randomly-determined charts and tables. For

one player or creature to attempt to attack another, the D20 is rolled and its result added to other modifiers.

Modifiers are numbers which are added on to the roll of a die. For example, if a player has a high strength

score, her strength modifier will be added on to skill checks which use strength, such as Athletics checks. This

random, albeit partially adjusted, number is faced against a static number of the creature being attacked. This

second number is known as Armor Class (AC). The attacking number—the one most correlated with

violence—is the random mechanism in the base sequence of D&D battles. Admittedly, the second edition of

D&D used a random number for the defense instead of the attack. The attack was then the static number.

When Laura rolled a critical fail in my sample battle scene which opened this chapter, the roll of her die was the

direct cause of her character‟s arrow missing its mark and hitting Torag (Phillip‟s character). Randomness of

violence plays out quite directly through the dice.

Other dice include the D12, D10, D8, D6, and D4. These are chiefly rolled both for character

creation, which I have discussed in relation to violence, and for determining the damage inflicted by a particular

weapon, spell, or other power. Take the battleaxe, for example, a common weapon for dwarf paladins. It deals

one D10 (plus modifiers) damage, the sum of which is subtracted from the enemy‟s health score (hit points

[HP]). Not only, then, is the major method of attack largely determined by a random result, but the amount of

damage dealt is also determined randomly. While PCs will often do their best to mitigate the randomness by

adding external modifiers, the core engine relies on a random mechanism.

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58 Recall my discussion of “ordering” as violence in D&D earlier.

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