Tangible Pleasures of Pervasive Role-Playing

The traditional forms of role-playing include tabletop roleplaying, larp and online role-playing. In this paper I describe a fourth form, pervasive role-playing, which often follows many conventions of larp, but break out of the magic circle of gameplay in order to interact with surrounding society. The central pleasures of pervasive role-playing are related to playing for real, with the environment and having a tangible, unmediated experience of being a part of a complete and physical world of fiction. Author Keywords pervasive role-playing, pervasive game, role-playing game, social expansion, magic circle TOWARDS A NEW FORM OF ROLE-PLAYING The history of various forms of role-playing games has been written several times by different authors [1, 13, 15, 17, 25]. The contemporary types used for entertainment, recreation, education and artistic expression evolved since the 70’s, when Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson published the first editions of Dungeons & Dragons, Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle created Multi-User Dungeon and the first larps (live action role-playing games) were played out. The cultural environment allowing the birth of the tabletop, live and online role-playing cultures included many crucial elements. Renaissance fairs, creative anachronism, Tolkien influences, wargamer cultures, assassination games, performance arts et cetera played their parts in the emergence and evolution of role-playing games. Influences are hard to track, but looking into the history of different forms of role-playing it appears that role-playing is something that is often built “on top” of earlier forms of playful action. Role-playing is not a direct descendant of wargaming or history enactment, but they were central circumstances making the emergence of role-playing games possible. I have earlier discussed the three typical forms of roleplaying: tabletop role-playing, larping and online roleplaying [14]. In this paper my aim is to describe a fourth form of role-playing, pervasive role-playing that combines the elements of pervasive gaming with those of role-playing, providing an interesting style of play where ludic and ordinary reality can be seamlessly mixed. Before going into how early assassination games paved the way for pervasive role-playing, we’ll have a look at the concepts of roleplaying and pervasive gaming. Defining Role-Playing I have elsewhere [22] discussed role-playing through the invisible rules guiding the social process of play. Interestingly, few role-playing rulebooks actually disclose the rules of role-playing. They focus on algorithmic game mechanics, while discussing the process where they are used only implicitly in sections on “how to role-play” and “what is role-playing”. Analyzing different forms of role-playing, I have concluded that three elements are central to the process of role-playing, whether it is done in verbal, physical or virtual environment – whether it’s tabletop, live action or online role-playing. First, role-playing is based on an interactive process of defining and re-defining an imaginary game world. Every player has a subjective understanding of what the imaginary game world is like, and the game consists of creating and communicating those understandings. This defining work can be done through speech, but other methods of representation are also used – larp is based on physical acting and online role-playing games communicate through virtual environments. Background music, cultural references and other allegoric methods are also often used. Second, all role-playing is based on a power structure that governs the process of defining. In tabletop games and larps it’s especially critical to establish the limitations of each participant’s power: The environment is classically controlled by one player (the game master), while the others take over individual persons within the environment (see [4] for discussion). Often some power is allocated to a ruleset or a digital virtual environment, but even in the virtual worlds the players can utilize make-believe techniques to redefine the game world. Third ubiquitous feature in role-playing is anthropomorphic characters portrayed by players. Classically the playerparticipants have one character each, and characters delimit their defining power: In a typical game, players have the final say to decide the actions, emotions and thoughts of