Variations on Vampires: Live Action Role Playing, Fantasy and the Revival of Traditional Beliefs
2010; Western States Folklore Society; Volume: 69; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2325-811X
AutoresYvonne J. Milspaw, Wesley K. Evans,
Tópico(s)Narrative Theory and Analysis
ResumoDedicated to memory of Cathryn HintzeLike all forms of fantasy, role games or RPGs, both computer based and live, create simplified worlds, where rules are clearly articulated and inhabitants behave in fantastic ways. Bad guys are irredeemably bad (though they are often good guys under spells), good guys are predictably helpful, and ambiguity is rarely to be found. Enchantment is a to which we escape whatever drudgeries assail us in our real world. The enchanted is still a real one. Cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan argues that What escapes to is culture - not culture that has become daily life, not culture as a dense and inchoate environment and way of coping, but culture that exhibits lucidity, a quality that often comes out of a process of (1998:23).Lucidity and simplification characterize magic world, a lucidity that makes everything visible (Luthi 1976:22). The narrative worlds created in RPGs draw on of fantasy and science fiction literature from which they frequently borrow their subject matter, but, more importantly, they create structures that mirror those of traditional narrative genres. As gamer enters game, his or her avatar is a heroic double. Steve G. described his experience with video role-playing game Final Fantasy this way: You begin as nobody. Then you are sent out on a mission for a city you are in. Then you work your way to a major city [and go on missions for them]. Then you can [move up and] save world (Steve G. 2005). SK, a live-action role player we interviewed for this article, connected her character's adventures to Joseph Campbell's hero quest: Do you know Joseph Campbell's book, The Hero iuith 1000 Facesi Well role playing, it's a way for people to act out their own hero journey. There's a part of person in [his] character, and that's hero's journey. . . . Science has taken away our dragons so we must create our own myth. It's a way to act out and tell your own story as part of a larger one (SK 2005).Denis Dyack, a game designer and head of Silicon Knights (a game development company), also liberally quotes Joseph Campbell's concept of monomyth as a major influence on video role-playing game design: We're our own paradigm - we have a new paradigm of entertainment, and it's all about who can tell best stories (qtd. in Perry 2006). Janet H. Murray (1999) likens storytelling possibilities of RPGs to oral formulaic theory of Parry and Lord and suggests that Vladimir Propp's morphological system provides the specific algorithm for producing multiform stories (1999:195). In gaming, however, far more depends on interaction of characters than on plot line. As a result, gaming provides an opportunity to look at process of narrative formation as choices dictated by a group form a pleasing aesthetic product.Our study of a particular kind of RPG, called live action role playing or has been conducted over past seven years. Though game has been going for nearly a decade, it was at that time established as a student club on campus of a local college. One of authors serves as faculty advisor to club; other began as a student with this LARP, and though he is finishing a graduate degree, still serves as a Storyteller.We examine several aspects of this particular LARP that make conscious use (and often creative re-use) of folklore. Using a Levi-Straussian style of structural analysis, we will closely examine four texts that are transcripts of scenes from these games to illustrate an innovative re-use of traditional folklore. We will look first at this LARP's controlling master narratives. These narratives are written and published works that contain an inventive back-story that is, in fact, an inverted, ironic, and believable mythology. Then we will consider several collected narratives. We will dissect an interactive story of an encounter of vampires and werewolves to discuss process of communal narrative formation. …
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