Tabletop Role-Playing Games: A Unique & Deserving Narrative Form

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Tabletop Role-Playing Games (TRPGs), the best known of which being Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), are a little analyzed narrative form, despite being incredibly unique, decades old, and extremely popular. With an estimated 40 million people playing D&D alone, not including the many other TRPG systems which exist, and with shows, podcasts, award winning comic book adaptations, and more, it is baffling we don't see more scholarly work on the TRPG form. Thus, this project aims to explore the TRPG narratologically, from the wider, core, unique approaches to play and narrative, to the nitty-gritty of TRPG minutia. With the forms highly specific mixing of both storyworld and table fabulae, the live-play, improvisational, collaborative, and immersive way TRPG stories are told, and the near-infinite level of freedom provided by both the forms ability to give direct access to the setting's designer and the TRPG's emphasis on bending rules and ideas to fit however you wish to play, it should be clear the TRPG is extremely unique and thus deserving of far more scholarship. This project dives into a narratological approach of the TRPG while also dipping toes into sociology and TRPG history in order to prove the TRPG's special status, and call to other scholars to both study, and play, the TRPG. Hopefully every reader, scholar or no, will consider trying out the TRPG form via joining or creating a game with friends, as this unique form will surprise many with its allure.