Many modern single-player role-playing games offer the player a power fantasy where the experience is designed to make the players feel powerful right from the start, with enemies and challenges that scale to the player characters level and abilities. This study explores what happens with play when power fantasy is replaced with decentralization and especially how this decentralization affects the player’s experience of failure and death. To explore this, three experienced The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim-players played the game with the modification Requiem - The Roleplaying Overhaul. After the participants had played at home for at least 8 hours they each participated in individual semi-structured interviews about their experiences. The interviews were transcribed and a grounded theory coding was performed. Finally the results were analyzed to find common themes. The study found that there was initial frustration due to expecting a power fantasy experience but once players adapted, the increased difficulty of decentralization was enjoyable as long as the player’s agency was not taken away and the world and its difficulty was logical. While the scope of the study is too small to draw generalizable conclusions it nevertheless shows that decentralized, difficult games work well for certain players. Future research is required on how to mitigate the effects of the initial obstacle. / Många moderna single-player-rollspel erbjuder spelaren en maktfantasi där denne ska känna sig kraftfull direkt från spelets start genom att spelets fiender och utmaningar är baserade på spelarkaraktärens nivå och förmågor. Den här studien utforskar vad som händer när denna maktfantasi ersätts med en värld som inte anpassar sig efter spelaren, en så kallad decentraliserad värld. Specifikt undersöks hur decentraliseringen påverkar spelarens upplevelse av misslyckande och spelardöd. För att utforska detta spelade tre spelare The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim med modifikationen Requiem - The Roleplaying Overhaul i åtta timmar. Efter att deltagarna spelat utfördes individuella semistrukturerade intervjuer och intervjuerna transkriberades. Därefter genomfördes en grounded-theory kodning och analys för att finna gemensamma teman. Resultatet visar att det till en början uppstod frustration hos spelarna på grund av att de väntade sig en maktfantasi. Men när spelarna anpassade sin spelstil kom det fram att svårighetsgraden i en decentraliserad värld ökade underhållningsvärdet så länge spelaren kände att denne kunde påverka sin situation och att svårighetsgraden är grundad i spelvärldens logik. Emedan omfånget av studien är för liten för att dra några generella slutsatser visar den att decentraliserade spel med hög svårighetsgrad är underhållande för vissa spelare. Vidare forskning behövs på hur spelare lättare ska komma över den initiala tröskeln.

This thesis is a project-based work accompanied by this short, written component. Entitled, Radical Roleplayers, the project takes the form of a digital roleplaying blog in which the the translation of roleplaying and identity performance is translated from a digital space to the organic, or “real world” environment. The blog serves to critically dissect my own roleplaying, and to challenge what it means to be a roleplayer both in gamespace and online by stepping outside of the rules that allow the community to remain insular and uncontested. Radical Roleplayers explores how I, as a gamer, identify with my digital self, and how I have explored identity through my avatars, role playing games, and game creation. In the form of roleplaying journals, videos, and other digital content, the blog challenges what we know about gaming, identity, and roleplaying, and explore ways in which the notion of radical play allows gamers to develop methods of resistance, expression, control, and safety. Please navigate to http://radicalroleplayers.tumblr.com/ to experience the project.

This paper covers the JRPG subgenre as it compares to the greater RPG genre. These will be compared through how games can, through their mechanics, be traced back to which types of society the games originate from. These societal types are collectivism and individualism, as defined by Richard Brislin (2000). The games are divided into Japanese games and Western games, and are examined for evidence of societal ties in their gameplay mechanics that tie them to their country of origin, or evidence that contend those ties. / Detta examensarbete täcker JRPG-subgenren och jämför denna med den bredare RPG-genren. Dessa jämförs genom hur spel kan, genom deras mekaniker, spåras tillbaka till vilka typer av samhälle spelen härstammar från. Dessa samhällsformer är kollektivism och individualism, enligt definitionen av Richard Brislin (2000). Spelen är uppdelade i japanska spel och västerländska spel och undersöks för bevis på samhällsband i deras spelmekanik som knyter dem till sitt ursprungsland eller bevis som strider mot dessa band.

This study explores the archetypes, motifs, and stages of the Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey as they are found in the Moldvay revision of the rules to Basic Dungeons & Dragons, that emerge from playing the game using the seven adventure modules printed for these rules. Using narratological concepts, the definition of what makes narrative is expanded to include the narrative that emerges by playing story-based roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons. These narratives, based on the seven adventure modules, are the analyzed using Campbell's monomyth as an interpretive tool, showing that these types of narratives are up to similar academic scrutiny as other forms of narrative. Such scrutiny shows that the types of narrative that emerge from playing a tabletop roleplaying game like Dungeons & Dragons need an expansion of the models for narrative analysis. This expansion presents a myriad of opportunities for future study.

This study used a research through design method to examine time in roleplaying games, particularly with regards to the emotional impact of time skips as affected by various mechanical and narrative factors. The design in question drew from prior work in games, films, and other narrative works with time skips, based on the assumption that time skips can have a great emotional impact, but that impact may be lesser or greater depending on how it is handled. I based the design on a theoretical framework which suggested that roleplaying games would be more impactful given a deep immersion into the reality of the gameworld, and specifically a sense that time’s passage in the gameworld realistically reflected the way humans experience time in the real world. As such, the game was built to reflect specific theories regarding the human processes of memory and aging. The tabletop roleplaying game ran over the course of three 2.5-hour sessions over several weeks, with three participants roleplaying pre-built characters who aged with the time skip that occurred between sessions. Following the final session, I moderated a focus group interview to collect data about the emotional impact of the experience. Generally, the game did have a profound emotional impact. I found that the most impactful game elements were those which highlighted change on several levels; in particular, mechanics and narrative moments which emphasized character growth – or losses which characters had undergone – were very effective. Though this study used a tabletop roleplaying game as its medium, the design was built to be general enough that certain findings could be tested with other mediums as well, which I explore in the discussion section.

By examining the results of an iterative design process, specifically a tabletop roleplaying game, Oceania 2084, this thesis aims to formulate a generalizable design process applicable when translating a work of fiction into a ruleset. The object that was translated into a ruleset was the book Nineteen Eighty-Four written by George Orwell in 1949. The iterative game development process spanned over 2.5 years and the author provides documents from 2phases of playtesting and discusses how the playtest results influenced design choices. In addition to the analysis of the effects of playtest results, the author also explores various game design decisions by means of auto-ethnographic analysis, and semiotic analysis. / Genom att undersöka resultatet av en iterativ designprocess för ett bordsrollspel, Oceania2084, så syftar denna uppsats till att formulera en generaliserbar designprocess för översättningen av ett skönlitterärt verk till ett regelsystem. Objektet som översatts till ett regelsystem är boken 1984 skriven av George Orwell år 1949. Den iterativa utvecklingsprocessen sträckte sig över en 3 års period, och författaren inkluderar dokumentation från 2 speltestningsfaser och analyserar hur dessa resultat påverkade de tagna designbesluten. Utöver att analysera speltesternas resultat så utforskas en mängd designbeslut genom autoetnografisk analys, och semiotisk analys.

This project aims to explore how interactive tangible playthings can be designed to enhance the roleplaying aspect of Dungeons & Dragons. Further, the project juxtaposed D&D and interaction design as practices to examine if D&D can contribute to interaction design. The project adopted research through design methodology and applied different methods, emphasizing playful and movement-based approaches. A handful of tangible electronic prototypes were created using Arduino Nano BLE Sense, gesture recognition combined with a NeoPixel Circle, a Humidifier, and a Vibration motor combined with 3D-printed objects. The prototypes were tested during a D&D playing session to evaluate their impact on the roleplaying experience. The result of the project suggests that interactive tangible artifacts enhance the experiential, expressive, and sensory qualities of roleplaying in D&D by adding interactivity and tangibility. Furthermore, the results suggest that the playthings increase the player's connection to their character. Finally, the project's result suggests that interaction design can learn from D&D's playful and creative nature by adopting the Magic Circle concept to interaction design methodology.

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Video games are one of the largest cultural industries in the world and an important part of life for billions of people. This medium offers much more than just entertainment and that is especially true for the field of cultural heritage, although there has not been sufficient research of video games from this perspective. This work sets out to explore the medium of roleplaying video games from the point of view of their players as a key to access and understand cultural heritage, looking into the forms cultural heritage plays in video games, the advantages of engaging with cultural heritage in this way and offering an outlook into its implications regarding its significance for the field of cultural heritage. The core of this thesis is formed by an analysis of a topical survey created by the author that has been completed by 564 players, followed by a discussion of results and other written sources. Using the results of the survey this thesis concludes that roleplaying video games are a valuable asset for cultural heritage. It is an improved (interactive, immersive, captivating) storytelling medium with a great potential for benefiting its users' cultural knowledge and skills, as well as conserving, sustaining, and sharing the value of cultural heritage, and the field should acknowledge it as such and take advantage of it.

Tabletop roleplaying games are a type of social, narrative game driven by a group conversation in which a narrative which is co-created by the participants and propelled forward by some mechanical component (for example dice rolls used to determine the narrative outcomes of actions). As mode of spontaneous conversation that has a unique set of specific characteristics, it might be fair to claim that TTRPGs constitute a unique oral genre (or, in conversation analytic terms, a unique speech-exchange system).  One of the most notable characteristics of TTRPGs as conversations is the intensive use of footing shifts. As the players alternate between orienting toward the conversation as players of a game with mechanical components and as co-creators of a joint narrative, various different resources are used to signal what footing a particular turn-at-talk is produced from. Using video from Critical Role, a live-streamed Dungeons & Dragons show, this paper examines the use of footing in TTRPGs and what resources are used to signal these.  The results of the study showed that several different types of footing were used in this material, with a large amount of overlap between them. Though it was possible to identify the primary resources for signalling some of them, for others it was not clear.