[Commlist] CfP: Monsters, Magic, Mediality – The Tabletop Role-Playing Game as a Link between Analog and Digital Game Studies

CfP: Monsters, Magic, Mediality – The Tabletop Role-Playing Game as a 
Link between Analog and Digital Game Studies

At first glance, the tabletop role-playing game seems like an analog 
medium par excellence – even if pen and paper represent the mediality 
and materiality of tabletop role-playing games only incompletely, they 
are nevertheless clear symbols of the analog.

A group of usually three to six players who sit around a table together, 
with their character sheets and a few dice in front of them, at the head 
the game master behind a cardboard cutout called a “game master's 
screen”, in the middle of the table a battle map  with miniatures, which 
mark the positions of the characters in the room, weighed down by some 
books – this is how we usually imagine a typical role-playing group 
(see, for example, the television series Stranger Things). This type of 
archetypical gaming group was dealt a hard blow by the start of the 
COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, because contact restrictions and voluntary 
self-isolation made it impossible or at least inadvisable for 
role-playing groups to come together. After a brief slump in gaming 
activity, tabletop role-playing as a hobby (like so many other areas of 
life) shifted to the virtual world, although digitisation had already 
begun beforehand – platforms such as Roll20 (2012) or Foundry VTT (2020) 
were already available in 2020. This development did not end when the 
lockdowns subsided: New platforms continue to emerge (e.g. Alchemy 
(2023)) and new media conventions are established.

In its simplest form, tabletop role-playing over the internet uses voice 
chat or video meeting software to replace usual face-to-face 
communication, while retaining physical components such as character 
sheets and dice. The required game components can also be substituted 
digitally as desired. So-called virtual tabletops (VTTs) provide a 
completely virtual gaming environment that offers everything you need to 
play at the table. VTTs also offer functions that no longer have an 
equivalent in analog games – but do have them in digital (role-playing) 
games. These include audiovisual elements such as animated battle maps, 
background music or sound effects, but above all convenience features 
which, for example, automate dice tests and thus partially delegate the 
responsibility for maintaining the game system to the computer. By 
transferring face-to-face communication at the gaming table to remote 
communication, but above all through the aforementioned automation, the 
mediality of the “classic” tabletop role-playing game is, on the one 
hand, approaching the mediality of the digital game, and on the other 
hand, genuinely digital formats are also emerging by explicitly taking 
up the digital communication situation and make it a game principle 
(e.g. Alice is Missing (2020)).

Another parallel can be observed in the area of secondary reception: 
Watching someone play obviously has a certain appeal not only in the 
digital game sector – Let's Play videos, which are sometimes called 
Actual Play videos in this context, are also flourishing in the tabletop 
role-playing game scene (e.g. Critical Role), also in a similar 
function. On the one hand, they serve as entertainment for recipients, 
but on the other hand, they also help them to get to know unfamiliar 
games and improve their own acting skills through observational 
learning. They superimpose or extend the communication situation of 
role-playing, which we would like to characterise as “mediatised 
imagination”, to a further level, whereby feedback effects arise between 
the different levels.

The process of remediation between tabletop role-playing games and 
digital games has been reversed: The mediality of the tabletop 
role-playing game takes on the peculiarities of the digital game; at the 
same time, however, it also borders on the mediality of the board game, 
which now also regularly exceeds its analogous nature – consider, for 
example, supporting apps or programs such as the Tabletop Simulator 
(2015), which is used in both board games and tabletop role-playing 
games as a virtual gaming environment. We see complex board games with a 
strong narrative component, such as Eldritch Horror (2013) or Tainted 
Grail (2019), as closely related. These games allow acting in character 
and even promote it to a certain extent, but they also work without this 
acting component. But even minimalist games like the “campfire” game The 
Werewolves of Millers Hollow (2001), which uses very few game materials, 
can exhibit role-playing in their performance. Also worth mentioning are 
legacy games (e.g. Pandemic Legacy (2016)), in which the results of one 
game affect future playthroughs similar to a role-playing game campaign.

With this call for papers we would therefore like to invite you to take 
the term “game studies” seriously in its literal sense, to understand it 
inclusively and thus to understand all these different manifestations of 
“role-playing” as a single media continuum. It does not seem useful to 
us to determine what is “still” a tabletop role-playing game and what is 
“already” a board game or digital game, but rather to accept the fluid 
transitions as such. We accordingly welcome perspectives from both 
digital game studies and board game studies, but also from all other 
disciplines that can contribute to the specific mediality or medialities 
of the tabletop role-playing game and its current developments in more 
detail and to examine them from different angles.

Possible topics could be:
* the influence of the digitalisation of tabletop role-playing games 
(medium, narrative forms, gaming practices)
* the influence of Actual Play videos (medium, role-playing discourse, 
gaming practices)
* the influence of audio/video recording on role-playing practices
* exploration of methodological approaches (hybridity, 
performativity/performance, mediality)
* characteristics of semi-oral storytelling (e.g. proto-, para- and 
transtextuality)
* effects of different medialities on communication practices in a game 
context
* media convergence of digital role-playing games and tabletop 
role-playing games
* historical development of media conventions
* reception studies
* case studies on titles that are particularly interesting in terms of 
their mediality
* examination and comparison of different Actual Play formats

Information about the process:

Contributions should not exceed a maximum of 35,000 characters 
(including spaces).

If you are interested, please send an abstract with a maximum of 300 
words by 5 February 2024 to (paidia /at/ germanistik.uni-muenchen.de) 
<mailto:(paidia /at/ germanistik.uni-muenchen.de)>. Please use a common file 
format (.doc, .docx, .odt). Since all proposals are reviewed using a 
blind peer review process, please ensure that your text document is 
anonymized.

You will probably receive feedback from us by the end of February 2024.

The deadline for submission of complete contributions is 30 June 2024.

The issue is scheduled to be published in the fourth quarter of 2024 in 
PAIDIA – Zeitschrift für Computerspielforschung (paidia.de 
<http://paidia.de>).

While PAIDIA is mostly in German (and the official CfP at 
https://paidia.de/cfp-monsters-magic-mediality/ 
<https://paidia.de/cfp-monsters-magic-mediality/> is available only in 
German), we welcome contributions in English as well.

There are no article processing charges or any other kind of payment 
from the authors required for publication.

The editors of the special edition will be happy to answer any questions 
you may have. Please also send emails to 
(paidia /at/ germanistik.uni-muenchen.de) 
<mailto:(paidia /at/ germanistik.uni-muenchen.de)>.

Franziska Ascher (University of Innsbruck) – (franziska.ascher /at/ uibk.ac.at) 
<mailto:(franziska.ascher /at/ uibk.ac.at)>
Lukas Daniel Klausner (FH St. Pölten) – 
(lukas.daniel.klausner /at/ fhstp.ac.at) <mailto:(lukas.daniel.klausner /at/ fhstp.ac.at)>
Tobias Unterhuber (University of Innsbruck) – 
(tobias.unterhuber /at/ uibk.ac.at) <mailto:(tobias.unterhuber /at/ uibk.ac.at)>
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