Paper short abstract:

Between game, oral narratives and theatre, RPGs are a collective exploration of imagined places and selves. Braiding anthropology of performance and post-dramatic theatre to understand how settings and characters are inhabited by gamers, simultaneously actors, players, storytellers and spectators.

Paper long abstract:

On the fringe between game, oral narratives and theatre, roleplaying games are a collective exploration of imagined places and selves. Imaginary entertainment environments are accessed by players and game masters (referees), in order to create attractive scapes, characters and plots that are performatively explored and inhabited. The present paper is part of a collective research conducted by the Center of Anthropology, Performance and Drama (NAPEDRA) of the University of São Paulo. The research was carried out with gamers from São Paulo and online forums, the analysis braids anthropology of performance and post-dramatic theatre, in order to understand how scenarios and characters are created and inhabited by the bodies and interaction among gamers, who are simultaneously actors, players, storytellers and spectators. The several juxtaposed planes of presence and representation, physical and virtual stages and places, binds players and fiction in subjunctive forms of sociality, perceptions and senses. The flow connects gamers' memories, aspirations and references to the "game setting" books and manuals, and the plot proposed by the game master. Through roleplaying and recollecting, a common background of belongingness is threaded. The scenarios created by collective narrative are transformed by the course of events decided by the choices of the players, the game rules, the dice results and the game master mediations, configuring what Ingold (2008) calls a meshwork of paths. The text created is not only a dramatic text, for it is not only a figurative speech, but acquires an autonomous theatricality composed by different linguistic surfaces.