This Blessed Metaplot, This Oerth, This Living Realm : A Study on Player-Driven Story Continuity in the Living Greyhawk Campaign 2000-2005
Särkijärvi, Jukka (2024)
2024
Master's Programme in Game Studies
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2024-12-02
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-2024111910301
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-2024111910301
Tiivistelmä
Living Greyhawk was a global role-playing game campaign using the Dungeons & Dragons 3e ruleset that was organized by the RPGA and ran from 2000 to 2008. It had tens of thousands of players and saw over 2,000 published adventure modules. Among its unique features were the regional system and the campaign consequences system which made it possible for player actions to affect the overarching plotlines of the campaign. After the campaign’s ending, its materials became unavailable to the general audience.
In addition to documenting the campaign, its history, and processes in an effort of grassroots gaming heritage preservation, this thesis illustrates, using Espen Aarseth’s conceptualization of the cybertext, how the campaign’s systems facilitated the playerbase’s narrative control over the overarching plotlines. Furthermore, it studies Living Greyhawk as a part of the realized world of Dungeons & Dragons, as conceptualized by Curtis D. Carbonell, and how the system of the campaign makes this a case where the realization of the world was an ongoing process, in a continuous act of massed player agency that lasted for eight years.
The study was done with a selection of 43 texts from the geographically limited area of Verbobonc, in real world the U.S. states of Illinois and Indiana, from the first five years of the campaign.
In addition to documenting the campaign, its history, and processes in an effort of grassroots gaming heritage preservation, this thesis illustrates, using Espen Aarseth’s conceptualization of the cybertext, how the campaign’s systems facilitated the playerbase’s narrative control over the overarching plotlines. Furthermore, it studies Living Greyhawk as a part of the realized world of Dungeons & Dragons, as conceptualized by Curtis D. Carbonell, and how the system of the campaign makes this a case where the realization of the world was an ongoing process, in a continuous act of massed player agency that lasted for eight years.
The study was done with a selection of 43 texts from the geographically limited area of Verbobonc, in real world the U.S. states of Illinois and Indiana, from the first five years of the campaign.