Agency and Authority in Role-Playing "Texts"

Jessica Hammer explains that “roleplaying shares three core qualities: narration, improvisation, and collaboration” (p. 69).  It seems that all group members can influence each of these three core qualities.  However, to what degree they can be influenced, depends on the primary and secondary author, especially if the game is online. 


While trying to understand this text (I had absolutely no background knowledge to bring with me), I searched YouTube for some sort of explanation.  I found 2 videos that were particularly helpful. 

1.       Home Game: RPG Documentary

Two statements were particularly interesting to me.  First, Samantha says, “…I’ve kind of been giving up on the video games because…I’ve been hating the camera angles, how restrictive they are and…you want to explore the world but you can’t, you know? So I kind of want to have a wider world to be able to explore.”

Samantha goes on to say, “I hope that…popularity in these table-top games increases because it seems like a good outlet for your imagination so hopefully more and more people learn about this…escape instead of...playing video games and having their minds sucked away by visuals maybe they can expand their minds a bit.”

Jeff says, “I think that it’s kind of sad that all of the online RPG’s…they’ve lost the whole social element. I suppose they are gaining that back a little bit with voice chat, but there’s still something about table-top RPG’s that the online games just don’t have.  It just feels more adventurous, more social.  It’s just funner to play table-top than it is to play something online.”

2.       Porch Talk: A Discussion of Role Playing and Literacy

Matt Brotherton explains how Role Playing Games have played a part in his literacy development. 

·         Read a lot of Role playing game books…mechanics books

·         Sharing books with each other within the RPG community.

·         Technical reading skills improved

This chapter reminds me that literacy can be fostered in many ways.  This chapter could be applied in my content area.  I think I would first survey the students to see if any of them were into RPG, and then see if they had any ideas for a project to do because my understanding is very low, even after reading this chapter.  The good news is, however, that I have now been exposed to it, so I will be open to allowing my students to do such a project.