Watch us roll : essays on actual play and performance in tabletop role-playing games

Author(s)

• Jones, Shelly

Bibliographic Information

Watch us roll : essays on actual play and performance in tabletop role-playing games

edited by Shelly Jones

（Studies in gaming / series editor, Matthew Wilhelm Kapell）

McFarland, c2021

Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Actual play is a movement within role-playing gaming in which players livestream their gameplay for others to watch and enjoy. This new medium has allowed the playing of games to become a digestible, consumable text for individuals to watch, enjoy, learn from, and analyze. Bridging the gap between the analog and the digital, actual play is changing and challenging our expectations of tabletop role-playing and providing a space for new scholarship. This edited collection of essays focuses on Dungeons and Dragons actual play and examines this phenomenon from a variety of different disciplinary approaches. Authors explore how to define actual play, how fans interact with and affect the narrative and gameplay of actual play, the diversity of gamers (or lack thereof) within actual play media, and how audiences can use actual play media for more than mere entertainment.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vi Preface Shelly Jones 1 Introduction: From Actually Playing to Actual Play Shelly Jones 5 What Is Actual Play? Actual Play Reports: Forge Theory and the Forums Evan Torner 20 Birth of a New Medium or Just Bad TV? Framing and Fractality of Actual Play Julia J.C. Blau 32 Audience, Framing and Flow Critical Role and Audience Impact on Tabletop Roleplay Robyn Hope 56 Communal Narrative in Actual Play Environments: Roles of Participants, Observers and Their Intersections Anthony David Franklin 74 "Your fun is wrong": Actual Play and Fans Diversity and Audience Interaction in Critical Role and The Adventure Zone G.L. van Os 88 Critical Fails: Fan Reactions to Player and Character Choices in Critical Role Christine Dandrow 118 Actual Play Audience as Archive: Analyzing the Critical Role Fandom Shelly Jones 136 Commodification and Pedagogy: Other Approaches and Uses of Actual Play Consumable Play: A Performative Model of Actual Play Networks Mariah E. Marsden and Kelsey Paige Mason 158 Actual Play as Actual Learning: What Gamers, Teachers and Designers Can Learn About Learning from Actual Play Videos Alex Layne 189 Conclusion Shelly Jones 208 About the Contributors 213 Index 215

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BC08785787
• ISBN:
  • 9781476677620
• LCCN: 2021030884
• Country Code: us
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Jefferson, N.C.
• Pages/Volumes: viii, 218 p.
• Size: 23 cm
• Classification:
  • LCC : GV1469.62.D84
  • DC23 : 793.93
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Dungeons and Dragons (Game)
  • LCSH : Webcasting
  • LCSH : Fantasy games -- Technological innovations
• Parent Bibliography ID:
  • BB25939303