2nd Tabletop RPG Conference in Paris [program]

« Engagement et résistances [Engagement and reluctances] »
June 16-18, 2017, Université de Paris XIII.

https://www.facebook.com/ColloqueJeudeRole

A simulated night shift in the emergency room increases students’ self-efficacy independent of role taking over during simulation

Stroben, F., Schröder, T., Dannenberg, K. A., Thomas, A., Exadaktylos, A., & Hautz, W. E. (2016). A simulated night shift in the emergency room increases students’ self-efficacy independent of role taking over during simulation. BMC Medical Education, 16 (1). 

Both the students practicing and the students observing the simulations increased significantly their self-efficacy. These simulations are expensive, so its a good way to double the participants and to add more peer-feedbacks.


Self-efficacy is an emotion RPGs can help to improve. Known also as situational confidence, its the feeling of preparedness when people knows they can do things well. Self-efficacy leads to taking efficient actions in challenging situations. Low self-efficacy leads to distress and can contributes to mental health problems.

Note: open access article + open peer review + additional files on methodology + dataset = wow!

Le jeu de rôle, une autre forme de narration sérielle ? [peer-reviewed article]

Périer, I. (2017). Le jeu de rôle, une autre forme de narration sérielle ? Itinéraires. Littérature, textes, cultures, (2016–2). https://doi.org/10.4000/itineraires.3453

Pen and Paper Roleplaying Game, Another Serial Narration?

Tabletop RPGs are a kind of serial narration based on the principle of expansion. Its fertility and consistency depend on internal mechanisms. There is a transmedia expansion (movies, novels,...) and a publishing expansion (core rulebooks, screen, supplements, modules,...). These expansions are limited by the finances of the players.
The last type of expansion is ludic: a lot of game groups are playing long-lasting and engaging campaigns. Inside these small interpretative communities, the social contrat between the players drives the creativity and regulates the expansion by enforcing its consistency.

Educational Games for Soft-Skills Training in Digital Environments [book]

Dell’Aquila, Elena, ‎davide Marocco, Michela Ponticorvo, Andrea Di Ferdinando, Massimiliano Schembri, and Orazio Miglino. Educational Games for Soft-Skills Training in Digital Environments. Advances in Game-Based Learning. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017.

This essay analyzes the outcomes of some digital RPG for training soft-skills, mostly based on interactions with PCs and programmed NPCs. Chapter 2 describes very well all the RPG techniques traditionally used in real environment (from Moreno to now). Chapter 3 lists some general guidelines for designing such games. Chapter 4 observed that the digital RPG has the same effectiveness as a face-to-face experience. The participants appreciated the anonymity but they mentioned a lack of emotional involvement.

The gamemaster is extremely important, especially for his immediate feedbacks and for his expertise during complete debriefings. Rule-based digital games ease the work of the gamemaster, they are suited for more cognitive learning (acquiring knowledge, problem-solving, decision-making,...). Drama-based games, played in a traditional way, are better for emotional awareness, self-assessment and self-confidence.

Anthropology and role-playing games

A list of links between RPGs and the discipline of anthropology (+ethnology +sociology).

a)  games and role-playing games sessions are mainly small societies with rules, structures and values.

b) a lot of role-playing games have their game design based on retension-fascination where players like to explore and to investigate. Also, a lot of game settings like to run thoughts experiments with imaginary cultures. To decipher the story the gamemaster cooks to them, the players are building guesses and theories based on perspective-taking, and they are negociating differents points of view.

c)  Call of Cthulhu, a major RPG for 40 years, has Academic professor as character profile, with a lot of skills related : Anthropology, Archeology, Cthulhu Mythos, Geology, History, Languages, Library Use, Occult, Psychology, Psychoanalysis (sic)...

d) the sociologist Gary Alan Fine was the first renowned scholar to study RPG players (sociology). Now, several academic scholars are studying RPGs through [anthropo/ethno/socio]-logy : Sarah Lyne Bowman, Olivier Caïra, Nicholas Cragoe, Sébastien Kapp, Nicholas J. Mizer, Heather Shay; Laurent Trémel,...

e) several famous game designers have an anthropology background :
- M.A.R. Barker,  linguistics: Empire of the Petal Throne
- Pete Fenlon, anthropology: Rolemaster, MERP
- John Snead, anthropology: Blue Rose, Exalted, Trinity, Mage
Or they created game settings with a strong anthropological flavor :
- Greg Stafford: Glorantha/RuneQuest
- Greg Stolze: Reign
- ...

f) this spring 2017 an anthropology undergrad course is taught on RPGs (UC Davis)

g) anthropology can help understand RPG what happens at the game table (rituals, liminality, symbolic manipulation,...).

h) a blog about geek stuffs with an anthropological point of view : The Geek Anthropologist

De l’expérience ludique aux compétences humaines : le potentiel formatif des jeux de rôles ludiques [chapter]

Daniau, S. (2015). De l’expérience ludique aux compétences humaines : le potentiel formatif des jeux de rôles ludiques. Dans L. Mermet et N. Zaccaï-Reyners (dir.), Au prisme du jeu: concepts, pratiques, perspectives (p. 137‑153). Paris : Hermann. 

The trans-formative role-playing game is a concept explaining, from a role-playing game experience and through an important self-reflection debriefing, how to offer the opportunity to transfer emerging learnings from the game to the real life of the players (active listening, critical thinking, detachment, oral expression, creativity,...).
This self-reflection debriefing is facilitated by the gamemaster. It takes place after the game for at least 30% of the game time. It is collective but also can be individual. It is structured: fisrt, a return on the game played; then some contextualization and search for sense and meaning of what happened; finally, multiple points of view are shared and they offer the opportunity of transforming the way of thinking of the players.
Without this debriefing, there is a risk that the game experience stay at the table (at the levels of the character and the player). Thanks to this debriefing, it's offer an opportunity of transformation (at the levels of the person and the human).

This chapter precedes the article published in Simulation & Gaming and commented on this blog.

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Idea read : Winnicot (1971) has said that people suffering from depression, paranoia and schizophrenia are facing difficulties to immerse an imaginary character in a fictional world. [Winnicot Donald W. (1971), Playing and Reality, London: Tavistock].
My comment: need to check.

Virtual Edgework: Negotiating Risk in Role-Playing Gaming [peer-reviewed article]

Shay, H. (2017). Virtual Edgework: Negotiating Risk in Role-Playing Gaming. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 46(2), 203-229.

Can we consider playing role-playing games like an edgework activitie (ie. a voluntary risk-taking activity that can put yourself in danger like base jumping) ? It seems RPG players are engaged in a safe/virtual edgework where they experience freedom, mastery, control and excitement without danger. Examples: clearly delimitating emotions of game and emotions of real life, pushing the limits of lack of sleep, feeling compression of time in game, pseudo-controling the dice roll results, keeping the experience in the community and not trying to explain to non-gamers.
In the observed players, RPGs were "better than their real lives, that it served as an escape from feelings of boredom, anxiety, and powerlessness." RPGs have the potential to help imagine and push to work for a better world, but they also can stay a "therapeutic relief that inclines gamers to tolerate political marginalization, crave physical safety at all times, and accept a brave new world of state surveillance" (p.225).