TRPG (tabletop role-playing games)

OVERVIEW This document attempts to summarize with a brief list the pros and cons of each role-playing game (RPG) format. The hope is that this differentiation between formats will improve the quality of future research studies and program planning for those professionals in various disciplines using these recreational activities as intervention modalities. UPDATED OVERVIEW This is still and ongoing work in progress, continuing to be updated as the body of new research and evidence-in-practice data grows. This document has been intermittently updated based on the research and evidence-in-practice available from public and private third-parties, as well as the evolution of the Hawkes-Robinson Role-Playing Game (RPG) Model and the Four Major RPG Formats initially outlined in 1983 and 2004.

Tabletop role-playing games originated in the 1970s with the introduction of the popular role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. Today, tabletop role-playing games make for valuable investments in libraries as they are effective tools for providing rich environments for learning and developing a variety of social and technical skills. This paper largely focuses on collecting tabletop role-playing games in libraries, as well as provides an introduction to role-playing games, their systems and mechanics, and how games are published.

The chapter examines how wargaming directly influenced roleplaying games, both in their tabletop and digital iterations, to the point of establishing combat as a core component of roleplaying, narratively as well as in terms of game rules. In particular, it charts the central role combat customarily assumes in roleplaying games from the creation of Dungeons and Dragons in 1975 to current Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. Firstly, through an interdisciplinary viewpoint which combines historical and cultural studies' perspectives with narrative theory, the literature review examines the history of roleplaying games in direct connection with the hobby's wargaming origins, as well as with the games' literary and cultural sources. Following this, a textual analysis of selected influential games, both tabletop and digital, aims at revealing the role of combat in each game by examining both quantitative and qualitative elements in the games' artwork, narrative elements and ruleset. In addition, the chapter examines the role of player readings according to both cultural and narrative theories. The findings underline the fact that the legacy of wargames, along with several cultural elements inherent in speculative fiction, have allowed combat encounters to remain entrenched in the core of the roleplaying experience, even when the designers have previously stated antithetical intentions in terms game design. Along with further research which would determine the exact benefits players

H. P. Lovecraft (1890 – 1937), the most important American author of Weird Fiction, is known best for creating the Cthulhu mythos: an alternative universe, reigned by monstrous Gods, in which humanity eventually became meaningless. A contemporary audience can identify with the posthuman world depicted by Lovecraft; he is credited with inventing Cosmic Horror, a genre which makes explicit the insignificance of humanity within the vastness of space. It is within this dichotomy we find the horror in Lovecraft’s stories. The protagonists of Lovecraft’s stories are frequently struck by ‘Cosmic Fear’ after encountering a supernatural scenario, turning them into impotent and insane individuals. During past decades, various boardgames, videogames and tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) have been trying to implement the characteristic of Cosmic Horror into their game play. In 2017, the Deutsche Lovecraft Gesellschaft e.V. created FHTAGN, the latest Lovecraftian TRPG in German. FHTAGN is named after a quote from Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu (“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn", which can be translated as "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.") FHTAGN is partly designed on the American TRPG Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium. Both games promise to rely heavily on Lovecraft’s concept of Cosmic Horror within the game’s story world(s), as well as in the ways in which creatures and rituals are handled in the game. This article will trace the extent to which the characteristic narrative structures of Lovecraft’s oeuvre were adapted in FHTAGN in order to outline the various possibilities and limitations of such a transmedia adaptation. For instance, it will examine how the powerlessness of the protagonist in Cthulhu’s universe subverts the agency of the player and how Cosmic Horror is implemented in example scenarios from FHTAGN.