Workshop: Pen-and-Paper Role-Playing

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, a phenomenon of human-to-human interactive storytelling has developed, known as fantasy role-playing games (RPG), beginning with the publishing of the game Dungeons & Dragons in 1974. Since then, a role-playing culture has emerged, incorporating concepts from theatre, board games, history reenactment and storytelling, remixed in an almost post-modern way. A role-playing session is in its very nature an interactive storytelling session, and the game master usually solves problems similar to those involved in Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS) systems. The goal of this workshop is to offer researchers in IDS valuable insights into principles of pen-and-paper RPGs, in particular in strategies of the game master. This is why the authors bring such a session to the conference, and moreover involve workshop participants as active players.