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Dungeons, Dragons, & Star Wars: Sound in TEmmaab Jensenletop Role-Playing Games
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COLLEGE OF MUSIC
DUNGEONS, DRAGONS, & STAR WARS: SOUND
IN TABLETOP ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
By
EMMA JENSEN
A Thesis submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music
2020
Emma Jensen defended this thesis on March 30, 2020. The members of the supervisory committee were:
Michael B. Bakan Professor Directing Thesis
Denise Von Glahn Committee Member
Stephen McDowell Committee Member
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my parents, Robin and Cindy. You have given me endless love and support throughout my life. I don’t know if there is anything I can say to match that, but thanks for believing in your daughter. To my brothers, Eli and Isaac, thank you for (sometimes) wanting to play games with me. From Clue to Mansions of Madness, Pokémon Colosseum to Guitar Hero: I couldn’t ask for better moments to cherish with my siblings.
Thank you to my thesis advisor, Dr. Michael B. Bakan. Your enthusiasm, guidance, and attention to detail have been instrumental in the formation of this thesis. Thank you for answering all my questions and for pushing me through the moments when I felt stuck. Thank you to the other esteemed members of my committee, Dr. Denise Von Glahn and Dr. Stephen
McDowell. Dr Von Glahn, your brilliant questions, careful reading, and thoughtful critiques helped polish my thinking and my writing. Dr. McDowell, thank you for your perceptive assessments and encouraging me to foreground my theoretical offerings. You have been a wonderful committee, and I look forward to the possibility of working with you all again in the near future.
Thank you to all the teachers and professors who have guided me to ethnomusicology.
Mrs. Antoinette Babcock, Mr. Darcy Brandenburg, Dr. Julia Chybowski, Dr. Elizabeth
DeLamater, and Dr. Alison Shaw: you have all kindled and rekindled my passion for music throughout my life. I can’t thank you all enough for the dedication and care that you have gifted to me and your numerous students. Thank you for helping me arrive here.
Finally, thank you to all of my informants and friends who let me borrow some of their words to write this thesis. Adam, Alex, Ben, Chris, Chuck, Eric, Esteban, I R NUB, Kent, Lexi,
Mike, Noah, Robert, Sam, Samantha, Sarah, Shaine, and Shannon: this thesis would have never
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come to fruition without your expertise. Special thanks to the Star Wars and Restona groups who allowed me to watch their gaming sessions and take notes at their tables. Thank you all for sharing your time, your thoughts, and your passion. I hope I have done your words justice.
This is only a small measure of my gratitude, but none of the following pages would have been possible without you all. Thank you.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ...... vi List of Common Abbreviations ...... vii Information on Informants and Interviews ...... viii Abstract ...... ix
PREFACE ...... 1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 5
CHAPTER 2: MUSIC IN TABLETOP ROLE-PLAYING GAMES...... 24
CHAPTER 3: VOICE IN TABLETOP ROLE-PLAYING GAMES ...... 72
CHAPTER 4: HAPTIC AUDITION AND AMBIENT NOISE IN TABLETOP ROLE- PLAYING GAMES ...... 109
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ...... 137
APPENDIX: LIST OF INTERVIEWS ...... 142
Bibliography ...... 143 Biographical Sketch ...... 146
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.1 “Red Dragon City Raid” SoundSet (screenshot by author)...... 29
Figure 1.2 “Red Dragon City Raid” SoundSet featuring “Dragon Fire” shortcut button (screenshot by author)...... 31
Figure 1.3 “Brindol Town” SoundSet (screenshot by author)...... 31
Figure 1.4 “Market Morning” shortcut button created by author (screenshot by author)...... 32
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LIST OF COMMON ABBREVIATIONS
1e, 2e, etc.: A numbered edition (e.g., 1e means 1st edition); most often used in the context of Dungeons & Dragons
CR: Critical Role podcast
CRPG: Computer role-playing game
D(#): Dice with (x) number of sides; e.g., a twenty-side dice is a D20
D&D: Dungeons & Dragons
DM: Dungeon Master
DMing/ DMed: A verbal form of “Dungeon Master” (i.e., Dungeon Mastering or Dungeon Mastered)
D/GM: Dungeon or Game Master, meaning both could apply in the given context
GM: Game Master
MMORPG: Massively multi-player online role-playing game
PHB: Player’s Handbook (from D&D)
RPG: Role-playing game
SWRPG: Star Wars Role-Playing Game
TAZ: The Adventure Zone podcast
TRPG: Tabletop role-playing game
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INFORMATION ON INFORMANTS AND INTERVIEWS
Most of my informants elected to be called by their first or full actual names. Only one of the eighteen total participants decided to use a pseudonym. In the instances when I refer to players who I do not directly name as my informants, especially in public gaming situations at conventions, I have changed their names and omitted any details that might otherwise identify them. References to anonymous players are included in relation to my own experiences, or to quotations from my identified informants, and are not meant to represent the views of these anonymous players. Unless otherwise noted in the text, all quotations originate from single interview sessions with informants. Interviews are listed alphabetically by first name of informants in the Appendix at the end of the text and include dates and interview methods (in person, by phone, or via email).
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ABSTRACT
In this thesis I posit that sound – including music, the voice, and ambient and environmental noises – is necessary for creating immersive environments in tabletop role-playing games
(TRPGs). It is the first ethnomusicological study to examine the role of sound in these TRPGs, although previous, related musicological scholarship has focused on video game and computer role-playing games (Cheng, 2014; Miller, 2012). Throughout the thesis, I draw on my own experiences with these games, participant-observation and observation of other TRPG groups, and interviews I completed with eighteen informants. Through analysis and interpretation of data collected using these fieldwork methods, I examine specific examples of how music is used in gaming sessions, explore how the use of music relates to Daniel Mackay’s “imaginary- entertainment environment” (2001), and offer the term “movie simile” to describe common comparisons that players make between film and TRPG soundtracks. My theoretical framework on voice draws from Brian Kane’s model (2014) to discuss how players utilize echos, logos, topos, and technê to create meaning and worlds in their games, as well as to illustrate how real- life experiences with the voice affect a player’s reception of natural and character voices.
Additionally, I offer the term “haptic audition” to describe how tactility and space affect the ways in which players experience these sonic gaming environments. Throughout the thesis, I describe my model of sonic and perceptual layers that include the musical layer, the vocal layer, and the third and fourth layers, which include ambient and environmental noises, respectively.
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PREFACE
My name is Annika Washington. I am a ballet student at The Juilliard School of Dance – or, at least, I was until two days ago. Unfortunately, it seems that being admitted to Emily Card’s
Sanatorium has branded me a “liability” to my own safety and that of other students. The letter I received told me there is a possibility that I could be readmitted when my “condition ameliorates,” but… well, whatever. We’ll see. In the meantime I guess I’ll just use the grounds to practice. Who says you need a bar to do ballet? … Right?
It’s not all bad here. Plenty of sunshine, a piano in the sitting room, and even people I get along with pretty well. I can’t remember their names right now, but there’s an old guy, a young dude who has way too much energy, and a girl my age who likes to hang out with herself more than us. Nothing too weird. Well, there is one thing. I’ve been having dreams, and people from the sanatorium are in them. In the dreams, we – well, we’re different. Long story short, I’m a shapeshifter who has a sick blue pixie cut and scimitars and my friends here are all some fantasy version of themselves. I mentioned my dreams to them in conversation and they all have the same ones. Every night. Maybe it’s not that strange because we’re all stuck in this place and see the same things every day, but everything in the dreams feels so real. I mean, last night we took down a chimaera together! It’s nice to at least feel powerful and have some control – at least, in my dreams.
One last weird thing. I can’t seem to remember why I was admitted here in the first place.
I’ve had trouble with my emotions changing quickly but never a problem with my memory. They tell me my meds will help me feel more like myself. I know I feel better now – except for the whole having my dream of dancing at Juilliard ripped out of my hands – but I just wish I could remember what happened.
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A few days later…
The dreams are changing.
We’re always together in them, off on some quest to kill a monster, find a castle, and track down Elara, the elf queen of the realm. And we’ve done all that! But last night it was just me, and I wasn’t Anqi the Shifter. I was Annika, the ballet student at Juilliard. I was in a bathroom at school, the one nearest to the stage that we always used for rehearsals. There was blood everywhere. I was frantic. I needed to know what had happened and I searched for anyone else in the bathroom. But then I caught my reflection in the mirror. My wrists. What happened to my wrists?
I don’t remember what happened after that, but I know I wouldn’t have done that to myself. I love ballet. I couldn’t have done that to myself. I love my life. But if I didn’t do it, why did I wake up with tears in my eyes and a horrible sense of dread – the kind of dread that only comes with the acknowledgement of a terrible truth?
The following day…
Ms. Card said I could go home. She doesn’t think treatment here can help me any further but that I could stay if I wished. I already called my mom. It will hurt to leave the others, but I need to get back to my life. I can’t stay here forever, and, well, ballet is my future. Fantastical dreams and friends can’t be all I have left.
I just hope Juilliard will let me re-enroll.
~ ~ ~
The above description is a narrative re-telling of parts of a session of Dungeons &
Dragons (3.5 edition) led by Esteban and his partner, Ezra, at Gen Con 2019. Annika was the
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character I selected to play for our four-hour session, and the sections I narrated above are shortened versions of moments that were important to my character. Annika’s entire background was written out for me on one side of a piece of paper by Esteban and Ezra, including information like my age, gender, height, weight, occupation, mental health diagnosis, the letter I received from Juilliard, and even an allergy to dairy that my character had.
The back side of my paper contained stats on Anqi the Shifter, a level nine Dervish
(shapeshifter) who was the fantasy alter-ego of Annika in her dreams. Esteban was the Dungeon
Master (DM) and he led TJ, John, Ezra, and me through the adventure. (Ezra1 had helped write the campaign, but they stepped in to portray a character because two people had not shown up for the session that night.) Esteban prompted us to describe our daytime activities (practicing ballet on the sanatorium’s grounds), what we would do in battle at night (fighting a chimaera together), and how we reacted to emotionally charged stories (finding out my character had tried to commit suicide).
Each morning, Esteban would ask us where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do, and who we wanted to talk to. Each player decided for themselves, but we would often all meet in the sunroom to gently play piano or discuss our dreams from the night before. In fact, I narrated my character playing the melody of a song that appeared in our dreams on the piano, which triggered us all finding out that we were having the same dreams. When Esteban was sure that we had all gotten a chance to do what we wanted in the daytime, he would ask us to flip over our papers to our “fantasy” side and we would narrate the story of our dreams together.
As the session neared its end and increased in intensity, he pushed the days to go faster and made it easier to be kicked out of dreams – meaning only the characters left in the dream
1 Ezra’s pronouns are they/ them/ theirs, so I use the singular “they” when I reference them.
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were able to control the narration at that point. Additionally, none of us were given the exact reason why we were at the sanatorium. When finding out the purpose of our stays, we each had a solo dream. Everything that happened in that four-turned-six-hour session was prompted by
Esteban and Ezra’s narrational foundation, but we characters decided our actions and reactions to those prompts, excepting the moments when we needed to roll dice to utilize a skill or ability
(e.g. attack rolls, skills like investigation or stealth, etc.)2 To make our creativity flow more freely and immerse us in the game, Esteban also played a piece of music at the beginning, middle, and end of our session that somehow foreshadowed the events to come.
From an outsider’s perspective, it probably sounded like a group of four friends heatedly discussing a long, twisted fever dream from the night before with one rational friend prompting us to continue our fantastical narration when our conversation paused. To us, it was an emotional gaming session that allowed us to explore Esteban and Ezra’s world as well as how our characters (and to some extent, versions of ourselves) would react to each situation. Tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) such as Dungeons & Dragons offer the chance for people to play, create, socialize, and imagine – none of which would be possible without sound.
2 The general rule for triggering a dice roll in D&D is whether an average person could do said action. If a regular person would not be able to tell if an orderly was lying, the character would need to roll dice to see if they succeed in using their skillset. This adds a layer of chance to the game and its necessity is decided by the DM or GM (Game Master).
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
In this thesis I posit that sound – including music, the voice, and ambient and environmental noises – is necessary for creating immersive environments in tabletop role- playing games (TRPGs). It is the first ethnomusicological study to examine the role of sound in these TRPGs, although previous, related musicological scholarship has focused on video game and computer role-playing games (Cheng, 2014; Miller, 2012). It is necessary to separate TRPGs from their digital counterparts because the physical presence of players forms a social space that constructs and transforms the sonic environment of these games. Based on fieldwork methods such as my own experience with TRPGs, participant-observation and observation of other TRPG groups, and interviews with my eighteen informants, I provide an original model of four sonic and perceptual layers that shows the complexity and inter-relatedness of types of sounds in tabletop role-playing games. This model demonstrates one way of understanding how sound contributes to immersion in TRPGs; for the purposes of this study I define immersion in terms of its ability to capture the attention of the whole body, especially through sight, vision, and touch.
The lack of literature focused on both sound and TRPGs is concerning because sound is an integral part in these games; they are rooted in the oral transmission of stories. Whether groups employ musical playlists for every aspect of their gameplay, block off their play area to limit sonic distractions, or simply use their voices to tell a unified story, I posit that sound is the deciding factor in defining the unique type of sensory immersion that is specific to tabletop role- playing game experiences. The typical tabletop role-playing environment would be impoverished, even impossible, without sound. I aim to bring the indispensability of sound to the forefront of discussions about TRPGs and everyday situations of play.
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While earlier studies have focused on video and/or computer games and their sonic environments (Cheng, 2014; Miller, 2012; Collins, 2008), similar scholarship involving tabletop games is nonexistent. Concepts such as virtuality versus reality, character embodiment, and environment creation can easily transfer from video games to tabletop studies, but the sonic environments and their relation to space and tactility has been largely ignored. Rather than compare the experiences of digital games to analog games, it is more effective for my study to make the case for why TRPG environments are unique in their own right.
As I demonstrate throughout this thesis, tabletop role-playing games are not separate from the overarching culture of which they are a part, including the media with which they inevitably interact and the communities they create. TRPGs are not only connected to film, literature, TV shows, and comic books, but also form a feedback loop between themselves and these media (Mackay, 2001). These games affect the community that interacts with them, as well as the communities that interact with TRPGs in our increasingly digitized society. With websites like rpggeek.com, boardgamegeek.com, and Reddit, the TRPG community is continually expanding and finding new audiences. In other words, these games affect and influence a large portion of our population, not just those who play them.
Like the many ludological (game studies3) studies that have come before my own, I see play as an integral part of human activity. Tabletop role-playing games offer valuable insight into how humans tell stories, play games, and use these games for social and creative purposes.
When asked “What do you do?,” most people will respond with a description of their profession.
Hobbies such as TRPGs are not highly valued in professional settings and, therefore, are rarely mentioned. However, the people who play in these groups are aware that such a hobby requires
3 Game studies, or ludology, should not be confused with game theory. Ludology is the study of games and their players, as well as games (and players) within culture. Game theory involves mathematics and strategy.
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months of commitment, hours of their time on a weekly basis, and significant mental and emotional energy to create a story with their fellow party members. This study contributes to a growing body of ethnomusicological literature that shows the importance of games and play in our daily lives as exhibited in tabletop role-playing games.
Finally, the study of sound in tabletop role-playing games is important because the sonic environments of these games are doing social work. I believe this will become apparent to readers as they meet my informants in the following chapters, but I take the time to list a few poignant examples here. Esteban and Chris each used these games to find a new group of friends and a sense of community when they moved far from their homes. Lexi, Shaine, and Shannon and Adam and Robert play TRPGs to strengthen familial bonds and spend time together. Sam reconnected with her estranged father when they started gaming together. Samantha (not Sam) found strength in the decision-making process of TRPGs after the passing of her father.
These games and their sonic environments are not an abstraction from daily life, nor are they trivial matters to be dismissed by people who do not play them. Music, voice, and even ambient noises play a part in creating the immersive environments of these games, and the experiences within these environments in turn play a larger part in our society than is immediately evident. When players come together to participate in TRPGs, each individual has their reason for playing, but they are all inevitably affected by the unique environments of tabletop role-playing games. My objective is to describe these environments and present a realistic model of being in these spaces.
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Review of Literature
Though there is no previous, published scholarship that addresses the intersection of tabletop role-playing games and sound studies, there is a significant amount of literature on
TRPGs relating to and interacting with other disciplines. One of the earliest and most cited works in tabletop gaming is Gary Alan Fine’s Shared Fantasy (1983), which asserted the social importance of role-playing games less than ten years after their invention. Daniel Mackay’s The
Fantasy Role-Playing Game is another important work that examines such games as a space for performance, unlike the competitive objectives of other games (2001). He labels the interaction between role-playing games and other types of media (e.g., video games, literature, movies) the
“imaginary-entertainment environment.” The “imaginary-entertainment environment” describes how, throughout their lives, players’ gaming experiences are influenced by their exposure to other media.
Other noteworthy works include Jennifer Cover’s The Creation of Narrative in Role-
Playing Games, which discusses the narrative and social functions of TRPGs (2010); Sarah
Bowman’s The Function of Role-Playing Games and her analysis of how players build community and identity (2010); and the series of essays titled The Role-Playing Society that asserts the importance of role-playing games in society and in other media (2016). Finally, Jon
Peterson’s Playing at the World provides an expansive history of tabletop role-playing games – including the history of their progenitor, wargames – and discusses cultural phenomena that made the success of tabletop games possible (2012).
While the present study represents the first on tabletop gaming within the scholarly realms of sound studies and musicology, ethnomusicological scholarship on sound and video games, online role-playing games, and the internet is an established and growing area of study.
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In her seminal book Playing Along, Kiri Miller examines embodiment and access through Grand
Theft Auto, Guitar Hero, and online instrumental and yoga tutorials (2012). Her phrase “playing along” problematized the notion that virtual music experiences were less important than “real” experiences or that they lost value when taken out of their virtual contexts. Her work was instrumental in bringing sound and video game studies into ethnomusicology as a viable area of study.
William Cheng further complicates the line between the real and the virtual in Sound
Play (Cheng, 2014), which was heavily influenced by Miller’s Playing Along. Cheng analyzes game soundtracks to address questions of agency and immersion which further blur the real/virtual divide. He moves beyond music in his last chapter and discusses how assigning age or gender to voices – or being unable to – affects the gaming experience of all parties. While neither of these works addresses my topic directly, each offers valuable theoretical frameworks for addressing the real/virtual binary, studying communities impacted or created by the internet, bringing play into scholarly works, and examining how games seep into our everyday lives.
In talking about immersion and environment creation, I find it necessary to include sources that question strict boundaries between bodily senses. Although my study focuses on sound and its contribution to the tabletop role-playing game environment, sound is experienced by and throughout the entire body and cannot be separated into a phenomenon involving only one sense. Music and sound are associated with hearing, but it is challenging to translate personal reactions to them into the written word. Text-based descriptions that rely completely on hearing, without acknowledging the contribution of other senses, exacerbate this issue. For this reason, I have included a range of literature that examines the interdependence of the senses.
Tabletop games are heavily dependent intersections of tactility and other senses; therefore, I have
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included Touch by Laura Marks for its haptics-centered approach (2002). Marks discusses how touch is translated into different forms of media and how this translation attempts to extend the life of ephemeral phenomena associated with touch. In Ubiquitous Listening, Anahid Kassabian takes this concept and applies it to listening (2013). She questions how the constant stream of music that present-day people are exposed to affects daily living and the environments these sounds create. Finally, Nina Eidsheim’s Sensing Sound, which makes use of both ethnomusicology and sound studies, focuses on the bodily event of experiencing sound (2015).
Rather than limiting hearing to a single sense, she examines how the entire body experiences and reacts to sound and how these bodily experiences transform with varying environments.
Tabletop role-playing games are social by design. Although there are numerous theories regarding social organization and its importance in life and/or in games, I engaged most with
Interaction Ritual Chains by Randall Collins (2004), which builds on the main theoretical concept of Erving Goffman’s Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (1967).
Goffman investigates how face-to-face interaction – including the smallest socio-behavioral cues, such as facial expression – affects emotion and focus in a group context. He labels this series of in-person behaviors and reactions in social situations “interaction rituals.” Collins uses
“interaction rituals” to create “interaction ritual chains,” which, he states, “[…] is a model of motivation that pulls and pushes individuals from situation to situation, steered by the market- like patterns of how each participant’s stock of social resources […] meshes with those of each person they encounter” (xiv). Social interactions within TRPGs, then, are influenced by a player’s previous social experiences, as well as by how they “mesh” with the social and gaming histories of the other people at the table.
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Theoretical Approach
To describe how players interact with popular media in their gaming sessions, Daniel
Mackay’s The Fantasy Role-Playing Game, provides a TRPG-specific look into how these games have influenced and been influenced by popular culture, both of which are increasingly dependent on virtual media for dissemination and relevance in everyday life. His “imaginary- entertainment environment” concept is vital to understanding the complex relationship between tabletop role-playing games and other media such as literature and cinema (2001).
A player’s unique imaginary-entertainment environment – how they have engaged with media in the past and continue to do so in the present – affects how their mind and body react to sonic cues within a game. For example, a player who has no exposure to the Star Wars universe might feel a sense of dread when “The Imperial March” plays in the background of their game session, but that dread will not be associated with Anakin being denied the rank of Master on the
Jedi Council or the appearance of Darth Vader on the screen. Instead, it might be tied to other sonic tropes they have heard in movies or TV shows that foreshadow undesirable events.
Imaginary-entertainment environments affect how players react to sounds with origins in popular media or tropes that are informed by such media.
My study relies heavily on an understanding of listening that requires coordination with the other senses as well as the entire body. I believe that the physical, face-to-face interaction of tabletop role-playing games changes how we experience sound when compared to digital RPGs.
Therefore, theoretical frameworks that have physically holistic foundations inform how I build my theoretical approach. In Sensing Sound: Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice, Nina
Eidsheim problematizes “figures of sound,” which she describes as linguistic tropes that people use to translate, and thereby limit, the experience of hearing to written words (2015). She
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emphasizes embodiment and the literal vibration of sound throughout the body as well as how changing environments affect how we hear and react to musical pieces. Eidsheim presents a theoretical framework for thinking differently about hearing and sensing sound with our entire body. Laura Marks provides an excellent foundation for understanding how touch can work in conjunction with other senses (2002). For example, she discusses “haptic visuality” as a way for the body to use touch as an extended form of seeing (2-3).
Building on this framework of intersensoriality, I offer the phrase “haptic audition” to explain how tactile and auditory elements work together to create an immersive gaming environment. Just as Marks states that touch can inform our sight, I believe that touch influences how we hear. However, it is important to note that the idea of “touch” that I use throughout my thesis project includes physical touch – as in fingers pressing against surfaces – as well as the haptic state we experience by simply being in a specific space, especially in the presence of other people. I may not be pressing my hand to the player sitting next to me at the table, but I know they are there because I can see them, hear them, and feel them within the shared space. The perceived quality of the gaming space and the human company in TRPGs, therefore, influences how we respond to sonic cues within these environments. By combining Eidsheim’s ideas on the connection between specific environments and sonic experiences and Marks’s thoughts on haptics and other senses, I am able to form a theoretical framework on haptics and audition that shows how the sonic environment of TRPGs is unique and worthy of study.
Another important source in understanding the complex spatial nature of sound in tabletop role-playing games is Listening to War (2015) by J. Martin Daughtry, whose concept of auditory zones is especially germane. In my study I have developed a theory of sonic/ perceptual layers in ludological settings, which are inspired by Daughtry’s zones. I understand the layers of
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sound in tabletop role-playing games as factors that insulate players from events and sounds outside their gameworlds, similar to how putting one’s head under a blanket slightly muffles external sonic influences. The overall shape of these layers also follows this blanket analogy, as my conception of them is not flat, concentric circles. Instead, I visualize them as layers that shift and change shape depending on the attention and mental movement of the players – much like the shifting of people under a blanket fort will cause certain parts to collapse while others are stabilized or strengthened.
The types and number of layers vary among specific groups, but common examples include music originating from a Bluetooth speaker that covers the entire playing environment, the DM’s storytelling that draws in players’ focus to the table area, side conversations that only involve two characters, and even the individual tactile zone of each player that directly influences how and what they hear. Layers do not grant immunity from external sounds, but they do insulate and preserve the gaming area for extended periods of time. Although soundscapes of war zones and gaming areas are radically different, Daughtry’s concept of mapping sonic experience was instrumental to my creation of these sonic layers. Whereas Daughtry focuses on bodily, psychological, and ethical concerns of belliphonic sounds and how they affect people within warzones, my study demonstrates how ludological sound creates varying layers of immersion while dealing with factors such as bodily perception, attention, and role-playing.
My model of sound in tabletop role-playing games consists of four layers: the musical, the vocal, the third, and the fourth. The inconsistency in names is purposeful. The vocal layer is more exact than the third or fourth, both of which can contain any number of sounds; the musical layer is not present in every group, but it is easy to separate and define when used in a gaming context. Because voice is present in every iteration of TRPGs, I also refer to it as the “first” layer
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in Chapter 3. The musical layer is also known as the “second” layer because, although it is not present in every group, it is the sound that players recognize the most, after the voice. Ambient and environmental sounds in the third and fourth layers are less commonly discussed, but they contribute to the social and physical aspects of these games. I could have labeled the third layer as the “ambient noise layer” and the fourth as the “environmental/ real-world layer,” but the flows between these two layers are more ambiguous than the musical and vocal layers, and – because they are noticed less often by players – their sounds are harder to define.
Just as my study depends on a whole-body understanding of hearing, an explanation of the complexities of the human voice is also necessary. As previously observed, the voices of players create entire storylines and worlds within a tabletop RPG. I find Brian Kane’s model and terms in “Why Voice Now?” (Feldman, 2015) to be the closest representation of how voices function within these games. Kane states that voice (phoné) consists of three major parts: echos, logos, and topos (sound, meaning, and site/source). While he separates voice into these three components, he emphasizes that voice is dependent on all three. As a fourth element, Kane adds technê, meaning both technology and technique, to showcase how experiencing voice changes with our dependence on media and technology. Finally, he posits that voice, an ephemeral medium dependent on sound waves moving through air, is transitional and exists among the spaces of echos, logos, topos, and technê. The physical atmosphere of TRPGs is one in which this concept of voice has the potential for rich theoretical application. The intimate and engaging space of sonic encounters between players, the emotionally charged atmosphere, and the technologically mediated space of these games are inextricable from the performance and experience of voice thus conceived.
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Although most people would not consider tabletop role-playing games as a part of everyday life, I view these games as integral to the daily lives of players due to how they affect the interaction ritual chain of each individual. Randall Collins expanded Erving Goffman’s
“interaction ritual” to “interaction ritual chains” to describe how people move through their daily lives. Each social situation is affected by all the ones proceeding it, and that social situation in turn affects the following encounter (2004). When players have positive contact with other people within the context of the game, they inevitably carry that emotion to their next social encounter. Games are often considered liminal spaces within daily life, but they cannot be separated from everyday experiences. Games are inherently social and happen within the context of “real” life. Therefore, the more positive interactions that players have within a game, the more likely it is that their next out-of-game social encounters will also be positive. Games, especially those that are immersive and provide us with social experiences that we crave, are an inexorable part of life.
Finally, the people who play tabletop role-playing games and my analysis of how they interact with sound and each other are the most important aspects of my study. By interviewing and surveying people who attend conventions, I found individuals with a shared passion for the tabletop community that encompassed various ways of interacting with role-playing games, including computer, tabletop, and video game versions. Although my informants all belong to an overarching community of TRPG players, TRPGs and the experiences of these players are becoming increasingly varied. Therefore, the responses from my informants are integral to my theoretical approach because they provide real-life examples of how people interact with these games and demonstrate the variety of TRPG players’ experiences with sounds and tabletop role- playing games.
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Methodology
Throughout this study, I employed four different methods of data collection: observation, interviews, surveys, and participant-observation. During observations I joined each group at the table for their entire session but tried to be as uninvolved as possible. I rarely spoke to any of the players closest to me but did occasionally engage with them by reacting to heightened narrative points in the game. Interviews consisted of questions regarding a participant’s background in
TRPGs, how sound (and, by extension, music) affects their engagement, and how current technology influences the sonic environments of their gaming sessions. Interviews either took place in person or over the phone. Only two out of eighteen total participants opted to complete a survey via email in “rounds” of questioning. (When participants responded to my first round of questions, I prompted them for clarification or expansion on some of their answers and then sent the next flight of questions.) Finally, during participant-observation at conventions, I played in several two- to six-hour gaming sessions with random attendees, including some players who later volunteered to participate in my study. 4 I made audio recordings of observations and interviews and archived emails from survey respondents.
The main subjects of this study were a tabletop role-playing group with whom I have personal connections in Fargo, North Dakota. I attended their gaming sessions of Star Wars
Roleplaying Game from mid-June to late July of 2019, observed their gameplay, and completed interviews with the majority of the group. Each session lasted from two to six hours on a weekly basis for six weeks. During observation, participants allowed me to make audio recordings of their sessions and take notes but were not asked to do anything outside their normal gaming
4 Players at these gaming sessions were random in the sense that most people, myself included, were not aware of who they would be playing with ahead of time. However, there were some pairs or groups of people who attended conventions together and coordinated beforehand to ensure they would play in the same session.
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activities. I did not normally participate, but I filled in for one player on weeks when he was unable to attend, mostly for the purpose of rolling dice for his character at certain points in the game. Four of the six participants completed interviews with me.
Beyond my work with this principal group of subjects, I attended two gaming conventions: CONvergence in Minneapolis (July 4-7) and Gen Con in Indianapolis (August 1-4).
At both conventions, I played in several sessions of D&D (editions 5, 3.5, and 2) and one session of another popular TRPG called Pathfinder (affectionately referred to as “D&D 3.75” because of their similar mechanics and gameplay). While at CONvergence, I met two people who regularly play in the same D&D group and interviewed them. Two weeks later, I observed their normal, non-convention group play during one of their bi-weekly, four-hour sessions.
After each session I played at Gen Con, I gave a brief description of my research and distributed my contact information; players who wanted to participate contacted me in the following weeks and completed phone interviews or email surveys with me. In this way, informants from the groups I played with were self-selecting based on their willingness to contact me on their own time and answer questions about their experience. Other informants who were not a part of the Fargo group or any of the convention attendees were found through either online research or personal connections. No participants were financially compensated.
Finally, my research includes self-reflection because I am deeply interested in tabletop gaming as a player. Although I have more experience playing board games, the board games in which I have historically been interested include a fair amount of role-play, complex combat situations, and an abundance of intricate rules. As someone who had little experience in TRPGs at the beginning of my research, I depended wholly on my informants to lead me through their own tabletop experiences. While I am by no means an expert – in fact, I’m positive I’ve barely
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scratched the surface on the sheer number and types of tabletop RPGs – I believe I have gained a deeper understanding through my own involvement in the community by listening to The
Adventure Zone,5 playing various one-shots6 at both CONvergence and Gen Con, and even running my own campaign with graduate school cohorts. I do not have decades of playing under my belt, but, as I have learned throughout my research, enjoyment is not equal to the length of time one has engaged with tabletop role-playing games.
Background
Dungeons & Dragons was released in 1974 by TSR, Inc.,7 but it was the product of a tradition that had existed since the nineteenth century: war gaming. War gaming was created by
Prussian military officers and originally used for simulating battles and training officers within the context of actual war. Moving from Prussia to the rest of Europe, and eventually to the
United States, war gaming was a hobby that existed in a small, yet healthy community spread throughout the nation during the 1960s and 1970s (Peterson, 2012). 8 The exact rules of war gaming are not necessary for this thesis project, but the general idea is that a single person controls an army and battles another person. Games were most often set in real historical battles, especially those in World War II, and aspects such as exact number of men, unit position, and type of ammunition all counted toward success or failure. The opposing armies would take turns making moves in battles that could take anywhere from days to months to finish. Battles did take
5 The Adventure Zone is a podcast run by Griffin, Justin, Travis, and Clint McElroy. Its original campaign used D&D’s 5th edition. They have also dabbled in Fate Core, Monster of the Week (Powered by the Apocalypse) and most recently have returned to D&D 5e. 6 “One-shots” refer to adventures that are meant to be played in one role-playing session. Occasionally, they will stretch into two or three sessions, but their purpose is to present a game in a shorter time than a regular campaign. 7 TSR stands for “Tactical Studies Rules.” 8 Peterson estimates that the community could have been in the tens of thousands by 1964. There was not an official registry of all players, but an analysis of Avalon Hill – the producer and distributor of many early war games – puts sales at around 60,000 games. However, this does not factor in sales to repeat buyers (Playing at the World, 5-6).
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place in person, but, because the community was limited in number and spread across the nation, battles could also happen through snail mail with regular challenges being posted in various fanzines that were circulated to the paying membership. For more details on the history of war games, see Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World (2012).
Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson were avid war gamers. However, they both became dissatisfied with the limiting parameters of doing battle within historical contexts. In 1971,
Arneson created the world of Blackmoor, which was a war game set in a fantasy setting, not based on historical battles. Also in 1971, Gygax created Chainmail, which was similarly fantastical in nature. Although there is some contention as to whether Blackmoor or Dungeons &
Dragons marks the beginning of TRPGs, the general changes in mechanics were that players now controlled small groups, there was a referee who decided the winner, and the setting encouraged fantastical imaginings rather than historical accuracy. In 1974, Gygax and Arneson collaborated to create Dungeons & Dragons, a game in which each player controlled a single character instead of a small group, the referee became the Dungeon Master, and the fantasy setting stayed intact.
Dungeons & Dragons was the first tabletop role-playing game, but it has evolved into a very different game than it was in 1974. The classic game often pit the Dungeon Master against the other players, focused heavily on combat, relied on lore released by TSR, Inc., and contained many rules that were hard to understand even with the help of rulebook. The history of D&D is intriguing, but, as this project focuses on present settings of tabletop role-playing games, I find it more useful to examine how players engage with the game today.
First, players have the option of playing any of dozens of systems. Some engage with
Call of Cthulhu, Vampire: The Masquerade, and Dungeons & Dragons; some only play
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Dungeons & Dragons; some only interact with Star Wars Roleplaying Game. Second, different systems offer varying balances among the three pillars of TRPGs (role-playing, storytelling, and combat), and, therefore, attract different players to each type. On that same point, systems can belong to various literary-based genres. For example, Dungeons & Dragons is typically fantasy,
Call of Cthulhu is gothic horror, and Blue Flower is a romantic, anime-inspired TRPG. Third, within those systems, players might only have experience with a single edition. (For example, the majority of my informants were more likely to play D&D 5e, or to heavily favor it.) Fourth, even if players do happen to play within the same system, in the same edition, and even the same, widely shared story, there is no guarantee that the group will follow the exact narrative or even follow the basic rules of the system. Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, most systems allow for and encourage “homebrew” material that Dungeon/ Game Masters or character players can incorporate to make the game work for their specific, homemade setting. Players are not required to follow the expected genre, the typical balance of the three pillars, or even the rules or classic lore of a gaming system, and TRPG players today engage with these games in a myriad of ways.
Among the many categories of sound that make the sonic dimensions of TRPGs so integral to gaming, vocal interaction is arguably the most significant of all. Game Masters (GMs) relay the story to their players through their voice, and character players craft their actions and reactions. This constant feedback loop between the GM and character players (and among the character players themselves) creates the gameworld reality as the session progresses. Some players use “character voices” (voices that personify what they imagine their character’s voice sounds like) that add a layer of sensory immersion to the game. Additionally, most GMs address the other players by their character names. This helps everyone stay focused on the game and
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helps players think “in character” (i.e. consider how their character would act in a given situation).
Even extra-vocal sounds, such as dice rolling and other ambient timbres, contribute to the richly textured soundscape of TRPGs. Some groups play music for added ambiance while they play. Players often make playlists that include pieces from video games, movies, and other forms of media that add to the atmosphere of their imaginary-entertainment environment. Players can find themed pieces and playlists created by composers who write music specifically for TRPGs, on websites dedicated entirely to tabletop RPG soundscapes, or on sites that serve a larger community but have content related to TRPGs (YouTube, Reddit, etc.). In the world of tabletop role-playing games, sound is inescapable, and current technology encourages its inevitability.
Chapter Overviews
Because I am writing an ethnomusicological thesis, I feel compelled to begin this project with an examination of how players use music to assist their creation of immersive environments at the gaming table. Players have a plethora of musical options available to them for their background soundtracks, and the informants in my second chapter show this variety in the genres of music they use and when/ how often they choose to use it. Chapter 2 details five ways that my informants use music, or create their own, in gaming sessions. Informed by their musical preferences and experiences in TRPGs, I then examine when and why certain musics are not accepted. Next, I discuss the “movie simile” that many of my informants alluded to when comparing their TRPG experiences to film soundtracks. I conclude Chapter 2 by describing the musical layer and its purpose in tabletop role-playing games.
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In Chapter 3, I introduce the most important layer of my sonic model: the vocal layer.
This layer consists of the Dungeon /Game Master’s voice and how they narrate the scenarios they create, as well as the voices of the player characters who act of their own accord – not only in response to the prompts of the D/GM. Among the five individuals and groups that I discuss, their uses of voice vary from employing character voices (changing the qualities of one’s voice to match that of an imagined character), speaking with unchanged, natural voices, utilizing a voice modulator, or some combination of these. While decisions about the TRPG voice are often painted as creative choices, politics of the voice are inevitable and players may lean into, or purposely subvert, vocal expectations that other players have based on real-life experiences or sonic tropes from various media. Finally, I return to my model of sonic/ perceptual layers to discuss the special complexity of the vocal layer.
I discuss the role of ambient and environmental noise in Chapter 4. Here, I return to
“haptic audition” and its role in linking touch, hearing, and space in TRPGs. I discuss how changes in venue – from conventions with thousands of people, to public gaming spaces with a few tables full of gamers, to private residences with only one group – greatly affect how players experience sound in and around these games. I examine the sounds and outside influences that distract players and then explore which of those sounds are acceptable (to a degree) and which are unacceptable distractions. I end with a discussion of the third and fourth layers of my model to demonstrate the differences between ambient and environmental noises. Whereas ambient noises that exist at and near the table form the third layer, the fourth layer contains sounds that typically come from greater distances from the table and have the power to remind players of life outside the game. However, sounds in all layers – the musical, the vocal, the third and fourth – are able to cross from one layer to another because the perception of these sounds is holistic and
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indivisible. Therefore, these layers are not meant to model how people experience sound in
TRPGs. Instead, they provide one example of how we as scholars, and we as players, can understand the fluidity and complexity of sound in these gaming experiences.
In my concluding chapter, I first summarize the findings of the earlier chapters within an overarching reconsideration of the importance of sound in tabletop role-playing games. The final section of this chapter is dedicated to a discussion of potential areas for future exploration that I hope will be investigated in my own scholarship or that of other researchers.
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CHAPTER 2
MUSIC IN TABLETOP ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
In the worlds of D&D, words and music are not just vibrations of air, but vocalizations with power all their own. The bard is a master of song, speech, and the magic they contain. Bards say
that the multiverse was spoken into existence, that the words of the gods gave it shape, and that echoes of these primordial Words of Creation still resound throughout the cosmos. The music of
bards is an attempt to snatch and harness those echoes, subtly woven into their spells and
powers.
- “Bard: Music and Magic,” from DnDBeyond9
Ben the Half-Elf Bard/ Paladin
I first learned of Syrinscape in January 2019. 10 I had been frantically Googling key words similar to “tabletop role-playing game music” to get an idea of whether my topic was a viable thesis project. Syrinscape, along with several YouTube channels and a couple other websites, popped up, and I stored the unique name in my brain for later reference. The second time I encountered Syrinscape, I was combing through the exhibit hall of the Indiana Convention
Center during Gen Con 2019. Hundreds of vendors butted up against one another in the enormous, bustling, crowded space. I couldn’t even find the Syrinscape booth during my first pass of browsing; I resorted to using the Gen Con app that showed me the grid location. After buying a monthly subscription to the fantasy-based set of ambient soundtracks from someone
9 “Bard: Music and Magic,” DnDBeyond, https://www.dndbeyond.com/classes/bard (accessed February 1, 2020). 10 Benjamin Loomes, Syrinscape, https://www.Syrinscape.com (accessed 10 December 2019).
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working at the booth, I secured a business card for the “Community & Partnerships Manager,” sent him an email full of doubtful hope, and two months later was on a call with Benjamin
Loomes (the CEO and creator of Syrinscape) before his 9:00 AM meeting near Sydney,
Australia. It was 6:00 PM in Tallahassee, Florida.
“So, Ben, when you first started this company, there was really no one else doing this sort of thing. The oldest video I’ve been able to find of you is about five years old. Is that how old
Syrinscape is?” He responded:
The company as you see it now started six years ago. And, sort of eleven years ago, I
basically looked around for this because, as a musician and as sort of an audio-, turned-
on-to-the-movie-watching sort of person, I was sitting at the table and just found it
awkward that there was just, you know, the sound of the fridge buzzing. I looked around
for Syrinscape, and there were a couple of things that were sort of a bit like it, but the
sound design was awful, or the repetition factor was super, super bad. For example, there
might have been a sample of a fire crackling, so it was sort of like ‘raKnknraKnkn’
[imitation of a fire with badly looped audio and an obvious loud point]. Or, there were
fifteen-minute recordings and they just kind of went ‘round and ‘round and ‘round. And,
as I say in the videos, we’re set up to notice these patterns. [He’s referencing the videos
he has done on Syrinscape.com and YouTube. At the beginning of our interview, I had
mentioned to him that I had watched many of them.] So, then I wrote a version of
Syrinscape in Python, which is a really, really simple programming language. I was
always an amateur programmer, but the program was good and had some good audio
plug-ins. I was building SoundSets and sharing those online, and Syrinscape was free as
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donationware. Some people donated and stuff. Actually, if you search by time on Google,
you can see some chats that are still on RPG.net about that original version in 2008,
which is kind of amazing (16 September 2019).
Within this extended quotation from the transcript of my interview with Ben, he provides a plethora of details that are important in examining the use of music in modern tabletop role- playing games. (Here, I use the term “modern” to refer to the last decade of gameplay.) Without going into much detail at this point of the chapter, but with a promise to return to them in greater detail before its end, these are the points that stood out to me in order of appearance.
1. Services like Syrinscape have become popular within the last decade. (However, this
does not mean gamers were not looking for this type of simulation before that time.)
2. Movies are a major source of inspiration for Ben. As we will see in interviews with
other gamers, this inspiration extends to soundtracks from video/computer games,
podcasts, and TV shows.
3. Outside noises (like a buzzing fridge) are not typically welcome in these gaming
environments, and music can help cover those up.
4. According to Ben, obvious sonic markings or repetition are mood killers.
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5. People who play tabletop role-playing games are the forces that are pushing for and
supporting this type of sonic stimulation during their games. The majority of tabletop
gaming innovations are coming from players themselves, not from outside companies or
conglomerates.
In the remainder of this chapter, I draw from interviews with Ben and other gamers to tackle a series of questions about the use of music in tabletop role-playing games that are related, directly or indirectly, to the above five points. What can Syrinscape, as well as other TRPG music, tell us about the typical gaming environments of these players? What exactly is included in “TRPG music?” What is excluded? How else do gamers find their music? And, finally, what does music do, or how does it function, in these tabletop gaming environments?
Syrinscape
Syrinscape is a website that was created to cater to the soundtrack needs of TRPG players. Through Syrinscape, gamers have access to hundreds of themed, ambient
“SoundSets.”11 Four Sound Designers/ composers have joined the Syrinscape team within the past six years, but Benjamin Loomes was responsible for most of the content creation in its beginning stages. As a gamer, musician, entrepreneur, programmer, and composer, he has what he calls a “peculiar set of skills” that made the creation of this service possible. Tutorials on how to use it, including step-by-step instructions from Ben on how to create specific sound effects
11 Each SoundSet is modeled after a specific environment or encounter. They may describe a place (tavern), an event (a battle with a monster), or even provide a set of pre-recorded vocal responses for NPCs (non-player characters).
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used in the soundscapes, are free through Syrinscape’s YouTube channel, which has been updated regularly by the creator since February 2013.12
For access to the actual SoundSets, users can commit to various levels of patronage through monthly subscriptions, which in turn determine how much content they have at their disposal. They can access the Syrinscape application through their smartphones or computers. To give a small sample of the SoundSets that exist within Syrinscape, some titles include “Red
Dragon City Raid,” “Undermountain Forest,” “Exotic Palace,” Windsong Caverns,” “Insane
Asylum 1920,” “Starship Weapons,” “Friendly Tavern,” and “Jungle Planet Dinolaser Battle.”
These soundscapes show a wide coverage of narrative settings (from battles to caverns and asylums to taverns) as well as fantasy genres (fantasy loosely inspired by medieval times, horror rooted in our obsession with demonizing insanity, and futuristic dreams of space travel common in science fiction). Syrinscape has acquired licensing through several gaming systems such as
Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, and Pathfinder, and has been featured on the podcasts
Critical Role and Glass Cannon. The library of SoundSets, which is available through the app and an online player, is continually growing and is only expanding in the genres of games and music being covered.13
One of the biggest selling points of Syrinscape is that its SoundSets are customizable. As an example for readers, and to showcase Ben’s go-to sample, I have included a screenshot of the
“Red Dragon City Raid” below (Figure 1.1). The furthest left white box on the picture shows three settings within the SoundSet: “Peaceful Morning,” “Dragonfire,” and “Aftermath.” The basic idea is that players will begin their exploration of a village, hearing sounds like “Relaxed
12 Syrinscape, YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UCGRzCq1ilBAjQdmIGmYAxJA (accessed January 10, 2020). 13 Benjamin Loomes, Syrinscape Online Player, https://www.Syrinscape.com/online/ (accessed 1 April 2020).
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Chatter,” “Sandpoint Gulls,” “Town Dogs,” and “Flirty Laughs.” The top, middle box encases two separate sounds: “Stone Music” and “Relaxed Chatter.” The play button under “Relaxed
Chatter” is lit up, but “Stone Music” is not, indicating that “Stone Music” is not playing at the moment. The vertical bars on the horizontal lines by each sound indicate individual volumes, which are also adjustable. As highlighted by the lower, middle box, the “play” buttons that are lit up each have a small circle around them that indicates how much longer that sound will last.
“Happy Town Life” has only a moment of play remaining, “Sandpoint Gulls” has the longest time remaining, and “Passing Carts” has slightly less time left than the sound preceding it.
Finally, the lowest box surrounds the overall volume control that Game Masters can increase or decrease at will.
Figure 1.1 “Red Dragon City Raid” SoundSet (screenshot by author).14
14 All screenshots are used with explicit, written permission from Benjamin Loomes, CEO and creator of Syrinscape.
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With the click of a button – the “Dragonfire” button, shown in the furthest left box of
Figure 1.2 – the entire SoundSet changes. The town is thrown into chaos as “Crowd Noises,”
“Red Dragon Growls,” “Guard Cries,” and “Burning Buildings” overtake the sounds of peaceful town life. Users can see more ominous sound possibilities when they scroll down on the sound listing, as demonstrated by the large, middle box. If that isn’t enough chaos for the GM, they can add impromptu “Crumbling Buildings,” “Cathedral Warning Chimes,” “Weapon Impact,” “Red
Dragon Growl,” “Red Dragon Roar,” “Red Dragon Flame,” and “Woman Screams” using the one-click buttons on the right (the top, far right box); these buttons can also aid a GM in matching the narration they create with the character players in real time. The volume slider below these six buttons, encapsulated by the lowest, right box, controls the dynamic of this added sonic chaos. When the adventurers presumably defeat the dragon, the GM can press the
“Aftermath” setting on the left which subtly fades into sounds of “Dogs Upset,” “Fire
Aftermath,” and, interestingly, “Happy Town Life.”
Along with the customization available within this single SoundSet, users may borrow sounds from other titles to create their own shortcut buttons which can then be shared with the wider Syrinscape community. Figure 1.3 shows a SoundSet titled “Brindol Town” (highlighted by the small, left box), which includes sounds of “Market,” “City Square,” “Animals,” “People,” and “Passing By” (the large, middle box). I can move back to the “Red Dragon City Raid” set without stopping “Brindol Town,” press on the “Peaceful Morning” button, and both SoundSets will play concurrently. Although readers cannot hear the SoundSets playing at the same time,
Figure 1.4 shows the sounds being used in “Red Dragon City Raid,” as well as some volume levels that I customized. The single box shows the “Market Morning” setting I created, as well as the “+” button, which I used to add this setting. By combining sounds from both sets, I have
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Figure 1.2 “Red Dragon City Raid” SoundSet featuring “Dragon Fire” shortcut button (screenshot by author).
Figure 1.3 “Brindol Town” SoundSet (screenshot by author).
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Figure 1.4 “Market Morning” shortcut button created by author (screenshot by author).
created what I think is a fuller, busier soundscape and can quickly return to these settings by clicking my newly created “Market Morning” shortcut button.
As described above, Syrinscape does not depend solely on music to create atmosphere. In fact, in the “Red Dragon City Raid” SoundSet, the marker of chaos comes from the sudden screams and dragon roars, rather than a dramatic change in music. The low drums, foreboding brass, and cymbals crashes remain in the background of the SoundSet, while voices and dragon noises are foregrounded. In most SoundSets, there is only one source for the music while vocal and ambient noises come from several sources with separate volume controls. The number of non-music sounds is important. Ben described several processes for collecting these sounds, including taking samples from pet noises, the hubbub of the crowd at conventions, hanging a
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ruler over the edge of the desk and hitting it to make a vibrating sound, using raw chicken breasts to make squelching noises, and many other strategies for doing this Foley-adjacent work.
Ben also stated that he often made recordings of environments as he did “bush walks” or borrowed from open-access websites where people had uploaded, for example, twenty-five minutes of them walking through crowded markets in Turkey and catching chatter in a foreign language. In theory, having this chatter gives the impression of human presence without distracting the people listening (except for those who speak Turkish). It is clear that Syrinscape is designed not solely for the transmission of music, but rather attempts to bring the most realistic sonic environments possible to the table by incorporating human and environmental sounds.
Another important feature of Syrinscape is its easily understood interface that allows the
D/GM to switch from one sound to another without “breaking immersion,” as Ben describes it.
There are hundreds of SoundSets that GMs can choose from. The database is searchable, but it is best if D/GMs plan the SoundSets they want to use before gaming sessions. By doing this, they can transition smoothly from one soundscape to another because there is a fade effect that happens between SoundSets. This allows players to make sudden mood changes without having to fiddle with multiple buttons. The transition between SoundSets, such as that between “Red
Dragon City Raid” and “Brindol Town,” is meant to be felt, but not as easily heard.
Overall, Ben’s goal for Syrinscape is to create a totally immersive playing environment with SoundSets that bring players deep into the story and keep them there.
I would argue if you are using only the power of your words, and the tonality and color of
your own voice as the description power trying to shift the emotions of your players, then
you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage. Why not get an automatic response straight
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away from the music and sound that you create, and then build further from there? You
know, so, not starting from zero and then starting to push with words and description –
which, obviously, you should be amazing at and using all your five, six senses and all
that sort of stuff – but giving yourself a massive head start in creating the scene and the
emotional context by using music and sound.15
There is a seemingly endless supply of searchable, customizable SoundSets available to players via Syrinscape, and they are only increasing in number as Ben and his team constantly look for feedback and suggestions from users. Additionally, players can make their own SoundSets from scratch and share their creations with the Syrinscape community. If players are worried that
Syrinscape doesn’t have what they’re looking for, it won’t be absent for long.
Esteban’s House of Cards
I fidget as I sit at a round table with a thin, white tablecloth spread over its surface. I am joined by Esteban and Ezra, who will run the session, and another player, John. Our fourth player, TJ, is running fifteen minutes late. Esteban mentions that he and Ezra, Game Master and co-writer, respectively, brought drinks for everyone, but that there is also a bar not fifty feet from the room if we prefer something other than vodka tonics. I return two minutes later clutching a whiskey old fashioned. As I discard my subpar coffee courtesy of my Bed and (outsourced)
Breakfast, I remind myself that alcohol and coffee probably aren’t the best combination at 10 PM on a Saturday night. But it’s my third day of Gen Con, I’m exhausted, and I’ve never played
15 “The power of sound effects & music at the gaming table (and in movies),” video from the “Year of Atmosphere” webpage of Syrinscape.com. https://syrinscape.com/YearofAtmosphere/.
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D&D 3.5 edition. I have to stay awake for the next four hours, and I’m hoping that at least one of them will counteract my nerves.
When TJ finally arrives, he approaches the table with a wide grin, boundless energy, and coffee and a donut, likely what made him late. “Oh man, you guys! You are not even gonna believe this game!” He addresses the entire table with these first comments, but then turns specifically to Esteban, “Dude, your game last night, oh! It had me messed up. I did not expect that ending!” His excitement feeds into everyone’s nervous energy as we all glance around the table, checking to see if the other players already feel it, too.
Esteban has each of us pick a character based on the D&D stats on one side. I pick the
Dervish character – a class I am not familiar with, but akin to a shapeshifter of sorts. Esteban makes some last-minute adjustments to his Bluetooth speaker, then tells us we may flip over our paper as “Shape of My Heart” by Sting begins to play. Although there are two double doors that lead into a bustling hotel hallway directly to my back, it feels as if we are the only remaining patrons in a quietly abandoned venue.
The lilting, pensive acoustic guitar that pours out of the Bluetooth speaker should sound tinny and small compared to the size of the room, but the song pulls me in. The opening guitar pattern is used in Juice WRLD’s “Lucid Dreams,” so I am surprised when the first lyrics do not match my expectations.
He deals the cards as a meditation
And those he plays never suspect
He doesn’t play for the money he wins
He doesn’t play for the respect
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He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance
The tenor voice is plaintive yet comforting, and I can’t help but smile as the anticipation builds within me. All three of us new participants – TJ, John, and I – look at each other, and TJ says what we are all thinking. “This is gonna be good.” The next six hours proved to be one of my favorite gaming experiences of my life.
Gen Con with Esteban
The episode described above took place at Gen Con, an annual convention that promotes itself as the “best four days in gaming.” Last year’s meeting took place from August 1-4, 2019, and I attended all four days. Gen Con largely focuses on board games, tabletop role-playing games, and closely related activities, but it does leave room for music, art, and other fandoms.
For this particular session, I selected and bought tickets weeks in advance and did not personally know anyone who intended to participate in this game.16 Typically, players do not know who else will show up to each session, but “House of Cards” had two exceptions: Esteban and Ezra, who are partners in life and gaming, and TJ, who had met both of them the night before at a session they ran called “Chess Men.” In this unusual instance, the only uninformed players were
16 Gen Con attendees buy a badge for admission, either for all four days or a specific date. Additionally, they are required to pick the specific gaming sessions they will attend beforehand by paying for event tickets. Tickets generally cost $2/hour, but more popular events cost more (e.g. a two-hour session that I went to cost $10 total, or $5/hour). Players may have a chance to join a game that they did not originally sign up for, but only in the event that a player with an event-specific ticket does not show up. The new players must produce a number of general tickets (costing $2 each) equal to the price of admission for the event.
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John and I. I describe my general experience at Gen Con in more detail in Chapter 3 but now return to this particular session. More specifically, I discuss Esteban and the evolution of his use of music during TRPG sessions.
Esteban started playing D&D when he was in ninth grade, around the age of thirteen. He joined a campaign that included a group of his friends – some closer to his age, the oldest being eighteen – that he knew through boarding school. (Although he clarifies that it wasn’t really a
“boarding school,” so much as a “public school that was in hollowed-out military barracks.”) He played a few sessions there, in Puerto Rico, but did not return to the game until he was seventeen and in New York for college. He found a group through Meet Up17 that became his “first solid group of friends.” Although it was originally run by another DM, that group was the first that
Esteban DMed.18 When I asked why he wanted to return to these games after more than a four- year hiatus, Esteban replied, “[…] Since I started college, I’ve always enjoyed the storytelling aspect of it. I kind of keep with my first DM in New York very much so over just, like, figuring out how to craft a backstory for this character that makes sense with the lore that you have in this world throughout the campaign. […] I found it to be very compelling. So, as a DM, that’s what I try to do. What I enjoy about it is taking character backstories and weaving them into something that is cohesive” (20 August 2019).19 One strategy Esteban has for creating an intriguing, cohesive story is his use of music during gaming sessions.
17 “Meet Up” (https://www.meetup.com) is a website where people go to find groups with which to “meet up.” It can be used for a variety of activities such as hiking, dancing, or crafting but is also very popular among board gamers and TRPG players. Meetings are more often set in public places, but it is not unheard of for TRPG groups to meet at private residences. 18 As with most TRPG groups, Esteban is clear that the group has evolved and changed over the years, especially since most players are in their 20s or 30s and often leave New York for school or new jobs. However, he explains that a “solid, core group” has remained since he joined nearly eight years ago. 19 All quotations from Esteban in this section are from a phone interview with the author on August 20, 2019.
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Esteban does not play music throughout the entirety of his group’s sessions. For example, during our “four-hour” session at Gen Con, he played a total of three songs: one to set the mood at the beginning, one to end the first half of the session, and one that opened and closed the second half. 20 Esteban played the final piece, “The Lonely” by Christina Perri, a few extra times at the request of TJ and me.
Although my only experience playing with Esteban was during this one-shot at Gen Con, this is not the typical gaming environment for Esteban. Esteban DMs for his own group in New
York. They gather at his and Ezra’s apartment, make food together, and play D&D on a weekly basis. His group has changed and evolved over the course of five years of him DMing, and so has his use of music.
I first started using music probably as soon as I started DMing, just putting something in
the background. It was probably the first one-shot that I really sat down and built the
characters, planned out something that I thought was good, and really put work into it, I
had the idea to just have every single act be proceeded by a song.
Esteban’s use of music is intermittent. Rather than create a playlist for background music during his sessions, he plans moments in his one-shots or campaigns where he thinks a song is
“appropriate.” The songs he chooses for one-shots are pre-selected to fit the arc of the story, which is relatively unchanged in each iteration. During his regular campaigns, “All the songs are character driven. I only very rarely pick the songs for events that I’m either sure or relatively sure will come to pass.” He cannot predict the exact events that will come to pass during his
20 The time period is in quotation marks because the session, although scheduled for four hours, ended up stretching into six hours. Esteban and Ezra humored us players and allowed us to play until we reached a satisfactory ending.
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campaigns, but he mitigates any surprises by typically playing songs at the beginning of “acts” and also requiring all his players to have a theme song for their character. If he has a vague idea that a specific character will come upon a pivotal moment, one of his strategies is to have a cover of that theme song readily available.
Unlike many players who use music during their sessions, Esteban has no qualms about using popular music that contains lyrics. He uses Spotify as his main source for finding songs.
He informed me that he has found music for his campaigns by accident while streaming Spotify stations, but has also searched for the perfect song to incorporate into his campaign. He occasionally borrows songs from previous campaign playlists if he feels that it will fit a scene that he wants to incorporate into a new story.
From my experience with him at Gen Con, Esteban finds music that works seamlessly for emotional moments. The song he used to open the second act of his House of Cards one-shot,
“The Lonely” by Christina Perri, was only meant to be used once during the session. However, at the insistence of TJ and myself, Esteban played “The Lonely” several times before our session ended at 4 AM. When TJ learned that his character had unknowingly murdered his wife, he broke down crying as the song played in the background. He kept breaking his character to apologize to us in his normal voice, but no one at the table seemed to mind because we were all close to tears. Esteban found a piece that was effective in enhancing the emotions of his players to the point of actual tears.
Toward the end of my interview with Esteban, I asked him an open-ended, but simple, question: Why does he use music in his TRPG sessions? Rather than attempt to paraphrase his answer, I present the entirety of his articulate, thoughtful reply below.
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I use music during my games primarily as a tool of emotional manipulation. I don’t know
the neuroscience of how music works, but I know that a sad song is somehow just sadder
than a sad piece of prose. When we’re talking about music that I’m playing during the
game, it is basically a tool to set the mood. Like, for example, one of the things Ezra said
to me today when we were talking about Chess Men [the one-shot in which TJ had
participated] – we hash all this stuff out together – one of the things they point out is that
“Cactus” [by Gustavo Cerati] is the perfect – and you should listen to “Cactus” too, it’s a
really good song – the thing about “Cactus” is that, basically, for the opening guitar riff,
three seconds into the song, you know that this is a more serious campaign. You know
that this is a story, and I noticed it even in the player’s face. Like, they’ll sit down, and
they’ll say, “Oh, we’re playing D&D.” We start, the first two minutes of this song hit,
and people’s facial expressions change.
Restona: Chuck’s World
I first met Chuck when he redirected me to the sign-up sheet for 5th edition D&D at
CONvergence. I had incorrectly assumed that there would be multiple games of D&D happening concurrently in the designated TRPG room and was surprised to learn that there would only be three sessions throughout the entire weekend. I signed up for the slot on Saturday night (for ages twenty-one and up) and hoped that no one would mind it being my first time playing. I had four hours of time I had planned to spend playing D&D, so I decided to explore the sights and sounds of the convention.
CONvergence took place July 4 through 7, 2019, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in
Minneapolis, MN. Based on a conversation I had with a woman wearing a black dress patterned
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with red, twenty-sided dice (D20s) and a man wearing cargo shorts, sandals, and a plain, blue t- shirt, people were excited that the convention had changed location for the first time in years.
The staff seemed genuinely excited to have the entire hotel overtaken by CONvergence and the attendees were relieved to know they wouldn’t have to rein in any part of their merriment.
About half – most likely more – of the attendees dressed in cosplay, showing their commitment to fandoms from Star Wars to various anime to the then-current characters of The
Adventure Zone podcast.21 Posters advertising a menagerie events (a drag show on Saturday,
Taiko drumming on Sunday) or sharing widely acknowledged wisdom (PANTS DON’T SPARK
JOY) adorned walls throughout the hotel. Signs emblazoned with the CONvergence logo urged attendees to obtain consent before taking pictures or touching costumes, and gendered bathroom signs were covered with announcements stating that entry by all genders was encouraged for the duration of the weekend. The counter of each bathroom, including those previously labeled as
“men’s bathrooms,” had small, plastic containers filled with condoms and menstruation products.
However, it is important to note that most people I saw kept to the bathroom that matched their gender performance. Additionally, the attendees, although spanning a wide range of ages and fairly equal in terms of binary gender, were overwhelmingly white. Although Minnesota is not a state known for its racial diversity, the city of Minneapolis is thoroughly cosmopolitan; the attendees within the convention did not match the racial diversity that I have seen within the city as a whole. Furthermore, attending CONvergence marks participants as people who can afford to not work for four days, travel to their destination, and stay in a hotel or other lodging nearby.
CONvergence presented an image of inclusion and acceptance and pushed for a diversified
21 Readers will learn more about The Adventure Zone in the following section of this chapter. At the time of CONvergence 2019, cosplayers dressed as Aubrey, Ned, Duck, and the Moth Man from the Amnesty arc of the podcast.
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vision of the convention. While these factors made for a more welcoming environment, there were still some groups that were under-represented at the convention when I attended.
After observing the general population of CONvergence for most of the first day of the convention, I returned the following day, went to the D&D table, and asked to watch part of their session. For the first two hours of gameplay, I was transfixed by watching Chuck lead players through Swordhaven, a town of his own creation, and how the players reacted to his voices – a high-pitched, bubbly and innocent kobold;22 a regal, flamboyant elf alchemist; and a gravelly, mysterious innkeeper dwarf. The room around the table of six players was filled with the voices from the game of D&D 3.5e behind us and the Pathfinder game to my left, but everyone seemed willing to lean in closer to catch every detail Chuck sprinkled into his narrative and ignore the outbursts of laughter happening away from their table. I saw no head turns or eye flits that indicated anyone lost their concentration.
At the two-hour mark, Chuck and the players took a brief intermission and I sprang my elevator speech on him: “So, Chuck, I’m doing a thesis project on sound and tabletop role- playing games. You seem like a great DM and I had so much fun watching you. Would you be willing to grant me a half-hour interview?” He agreed to meet with me a half hour before the session on Saturday began.
Although I was unaware of it at the time, one of the players in the session that I observed on Friday belonged to Chuck’s regular group. After meeting Noah and interviewing him for almost two hours on Sunday (July 7th), I asked the players in Chuck’s group for permission to observe their next gaming session. They agreed to let me watch their game on Sunday, July 28, which took place in Minneapolis at the private residence of one of Chuck’s players, Marissa.
22 Kobolds are a small, lizard-like creature that are often servants for larger races; they are not strong by themselves, but they can be fatal when working in packs.
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Chuck was my first contact within his group, but he is not the only person of importance in his party. With that in mind, I refer to this particular group as Restona – the name of the world
Chuck has built over the past three years – to acknowledge the participation and creativity of all the players in the group.
Like many TRPG groups, the Restona crew chooses to play in the room with the most table space. In this case, we were all seated around Marissa’s dining room table. The room was open to the kitchen (to my back) and the living room (to my right) and a corgi-Labrador mix roamed freely throughout the house. The area was well-lit thanks to a large patio door (to my left) and the light streaming in from the trio of windows in the living room. Chuck sat at the head of one side of the table, and I was to his right. Next to me sat Janet, Marissa directly opposite
Chuck, Sarah next to her, and Noah between Sarah and Chuck. A small Bluetooth speaker was placed on the kitchen counter; Chuck had explained to me in our interview that he connected the speaker to his phone, which he always had within reach for quick music changes.
Chuck starts each session with a play-by-play of the group’s last meeting. The players appreciate this not only because he is a fantastic storyteller, but also because there are usually two weeks between their meetings. This particular session, Chuck was a little flustered because he had forgotten his notes at home. I don’t remember any moments where he fumbled or hesitated, but I do remember the fluidity with which he described combat scenes – something that is easier to appreciate when you have attempted it yourself and realized that describing swords and spells hitting monsters needs imagination and creativity to maintain a narrative flow
– and how the other players responded so quickly, effortlessly, and naturally to his prompts.
Although their performance as a group was quite impressive, I was at first more interested to learn that Chuck makes his own musical playlists for his sessions. Chuck employs a
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variety of pre-made YouTube playlists to “set a mood,” “influence how players feel,” and to help them focus on the game (Chuck R., 6 July 2019). During our interview he informed me that, when he first started DMing, he did not use music, but was inspired by hearing the ambient music that Matthew Mercer uses in the Critical Role podcast.23 Chuck’s playlists are mostly named for the setting or mood that he wants to portray to his players. Some of the examples he gave me included “in town,” doing “general exploration” or “battle,” and crawling through
“dungeons.” While he pulls some music that he hears from CR into his sessions, most of his playlist selections come from movies, video games, and TV shows. Video games he has drawn from include The Witcher, Final Fantasy, and Heroes of Might and Magic; movies include The
Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, and Interstellar; Game of Thrones was the only television series that he mentioned by name.
When Chuck creates these playlists, he does not put an entire movie or video game soundtrack into one setting. Instead, he selects his favorite tracks that he believes fit the mood he wants to establish. He does not limit the genre or style of the pieces that he adds to each list. (For example, songs from Interstellar, Final Fantasy, and Gladiator may all be present in a single playlist, as long as they fit its general feeling.) The only constant throughout his musical selection is that no pieces have lyrics, and all are used with the intent of being ambient music.
Although Chuck prepares for each gaming session, he is unable to craft playlists to fit each moment of the game because his players (typically) have full agency and are capable of ignoring or derailing any planned elements. 24 Therefore, not limiting his playlists to a specific genre or
23 Critical Role is a podcast/series on YouTube where several trained voice actors play through D&D campaigns written by Mercer. The first episode of CR was released in March 2015, and the show is now in its second campaign. 24 Most players frown upon a D/GM suddenly taking agency from them, e.g., taking over the player’s actions due to a spell or NPC’s actions. When a D/GM does take over a player character’s body, it is normal for them to discuss it before the gaming session so players can consent.
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movie is also a strategic move to keep the music flexible enough to avoid any aesthetic-specific soundscapes.
What Chuck chooses to put in his playlists and how he finds this music is interesting, especially because methods of musical dissemination have changed so much within the past decade. But it is also important to know how his players feel about the music he chooses, which is where Noah and Sarah return to the narrative.25 I wondered how music from so many genres and medias could be cohesive, but, as Noah described it to me, the origin of the music doesn’t matter to him – as long as it doesn’t interfere with his internal image of the action.
So, you got your combat themed music that is upbeat and high energy and great. You’re
all going, and [the music] could be something that is, you know, more stereotypically
time-based, like, in terms of the sound and the instrumentation used. Or, it could be
something like Sonic [the Hedgehog]. […] None of this bothers me. Like, whether it’s a
video game, whether it’s music from the score of a movie – but it has that association
with combat, from some other media, I find it to be acceptable. If, suddenly, any other
type of music pervades that pattern, that’s where I have the immediate problem with the
music (7 July 2019).
When I asked Noah to expand on what he meant, he clarified that the original source of the music or the genre of the music doesn’t matter to him. But, when music does not fit the scene he is envisioning, then the music distracts him and detracts from his immersive experience.
25 Although I wanted to obtain interviews from Marissa and Janet as well, they did not volunteer and seemed otherwise uninterested in participating beyond allowing me to observe their group gaming session.
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Although Noah stated that he liked hearing music during sessions and Sarah said she
“could take it or leave it,” both agreed that there have been moments when the music was distracting to the otherwise immersive environment. These moments included times when players either recognized specific pieces or the change in atmosphere between songs was too abrupt. Sarah described an example that demonstrates both issues of familiarity and mismatched sonic/setting cues.
Chuck uses a lot of music from The Witcher 3, and one of the background arias from The
Witcher 3 is this really kind of sad, haunting, just, wordless woman singing. It works for
The Witcher 3, but we’re in a desert. We’re not doing anything creepy, we’re, like, going
through town. [She laughs.] Whenever that comes up, we always comment on it to the
point where I believe Chuck has taken it out of his playlist, because we comment on it
every single time it comes up (5 August 2019).
Even Chuck admits to this issue of familiarity. For example, he avoids using too much of the The
Lord of the Rings soundtrack because players will stop the gameplay to announce, “That’s Lord of the Rings! I know that!” Additionally, as Sarah notes, the aria from The Witcher 3 does not mesh with her own imagined space of their in-town adventures.
To help create an immersive environment for the world of Restona, Chuck uses music that fits his desired mood at the table. He creates entire playlists for different scenes and pulls pieces from video games, movies, TV shows, and some of his favorite ambient music composers.
It seems that his players generally agree that music helps them get into the game, although moments of dissonance or recognition can momentarily distract them from their gaming session.
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Restona is a world of Chuck and his players’ creation, and music helps contain and define this gameworld.
The Adventure Zone
The Adventure Zone is an “actual play” podcast (a podcast where the hosts actually play through a game, typically a TRPG). Three brothers – Griffin, Travis, and Justin McElroy – and their father, Clint, host and produce the podcast. Interestingly, it began as a joking spin-off between episodes 213 and 214 of the brothers’ parent podcast: My Brother, My Brother, and Me, or MBMBaM for short. Balance, the first season of The Adventure Zone (TAZ), ran for sixty- nine episodes and followed D&D’s 5th edition gaming system. The quartet took several months after this to let each player DM their own game in new systems before deciding to use the
Monster of the Week system from Powered by the Apocalypse in their second season, Amnesty; it lasted thirty-six episodes that stretched over two years and nine months. On October 31, 2019, the McElroys debuted their third season, Graduation. Griffin DMed both Balance and Amnesty;
Travis is DMing Graduation, which returned TAZ to the D&D 5e system. Their podcast has become wildly successful, allowing them to sell merchandise related to the show, do regular tours of live shows, and even adapt parts of their first campaign to comic books.
It may seem strange that listeners are willing, even excited, to sit through hour-and-a-half episodes (or longer) of other people playing D&D, but actual play podcasts are only increasing in number and popularity. Critical Role, One Shot, Campaign, and The Broad Swords all include actual play of various TRPG systems. Although my interlocutors were more likely to mention influence from Critical Role in their interviews, my experience with tabletop role-paying games began with The Adventure Zone.
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I was introduced to The Adventure Zone by my partner, Aaron, on a road trip from
Wisconsin to Indiana in the winter of 2016. I spent the first two hours of the car ride stubbornly ignoring the narrative coming through the car’s speakers, but the mysterious plot and constant jokes from the McElroys slowly drew me into the arc titled “Murder on the Rockport Limited.”
By the next week, I had already listened halfway through the Balance season and have consistently tuned in to the bi-weekly releases since then.
The Adventure Zone is significant to this chapter because Griffin McElroy composes most of the music that is featured on the podcast.26 During the Amnesty campaign, each episode of TAZ begins with Griffin announcing, “Previously on The Adventure Zone…” The sound of a slow, foreboding acoustic guitar alternating between rhythms on octave C pitches (C2 and C3) simmers below the voices of the McElroys, which are edited into a cohesive recap of the previous episode. At the end of this recap, the octave Cs are joined by a twangy, MIDI string orchestra that plucks its highest notes. The orchestral vamp continues as the guitar moves to a half-note bass line, and fiddles fill in an aggressive, syncopated rhythm. After a few more seconds of the foregrounded fiddles, the MIDI orchestra plays its final run of notes as the guitar returns to its solo ostinato on octave Cs. The actual sound is important, but it is necessary to put
Griffin’s music into the context of the podcast to show how it affects listeners. To do this, I describe a short scene from Episode 47 of TAZ titled “The Eleventh Hour – Chapter Seven.”
During this episode, Magnus (Travis), Taako (Justin), and Merle (Clint) are trying to save the town of Refuge from a time loop that repeats the collapse and utter destruction of their town at 11:00 AM. The boys have just met Istus, goddess of fate, destiny, and time, in a temple as she
26 Griffin’s album, Journey’s End: Music from The Adventure Zone was instrumental in helping me write many portions of this thesis. Along with being great music to add into a podcast, it is also spectacular background music for writing. He shares and sells his music at https://griffinmcelroy.bandcamp.com/.
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weaves what is presumably a tapestry depicting the future. The adventurers are each gifted an item that is meant to help them on their journey. She offers to answer any final questions they may have, and leaves them with this final monologue:
[Griffin, in Istus’s voice]: I have one last blessing for you, my emissaries. Your fate is
guiding you – not today, not tomorrow – but to a moment that will challenge you in a
new and horrible way. I cannot make the difficult decision that lies at the end of your
quest for you, but I can grant you the time that you need to make that decision.
[Griffin, narrating in his normal voice]: And then she just disappears for like a couple of
seconds, and when she reappears, she is wiping a tear from her eye. [Here, a softly
sustained vibraphone begins to play in the background.]
And she says, “You’re going to be amazing.” And then the building comes down. [A
synthesizer slowly grows underneath the vibraphone before a bittersweet chiming takes
the foreground. The music slowly fades into the commercial break.]
My description of the music here is minimal, but the effect is enough to make Istus’s final words stand out: “You’re going to be amazing.” These words became even more significant because the time and place to which Istus disappeared does not come to pass until the final episode when the three heroes are facing their final enemy called “The Hunger.” As someone who raced through the first half of The Adventure Zone and caught up before the final episodes were released, months had passed between me hearing episode 47 and episode 69 (the final one).
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However, I remembered that moment because Griffin made it feel significant with his voice and original music. This is a strategy he adopted for majority of Balance, even using music as one of the final riddles that Magnus has to solve.
The Adventure Zone, as Sarah puts it, is a “highly beautified version of D&D” (5 August
2019). By using original music that is added in post-production, creating characters with in-depth backgrounds, and editing playthrough to move faster, the McElroys have created a TRPG sonic experience fit for public consumption. Most TRPG players agree that TAZ is not an accurate representation of how games happen. “Real” games move more slowly, get sidetracked more often, and don’t always have neat, definite session endings. However, this does not mean that actual play podcasts like TAZ are not important to the TRPG community.
During our interview, Chris remarked, “You know, they have a funny stat where they say there’s more people watching Critical Role than people playing the game” (1 August 2019). It is hard to test the validity of this statement because the numbers for both are difficult to confirm, but the exact comparison is not important.27 What is significant is that actual play podcasts and
YouTube channels have impacted the world of TRPG players to the point where it is common practice to talk and hear about them throughout the community. Podcasts like The Adventure
Zone present tabletop role-playing games in an engaging manner that inevitably draws more players (like me) to the table.
27 Both podcasts and gaming companies share a problem here. They can keep track of how much merchandise they sell and how many episodes are downloaded, but the information is not analyzed enough to know how many of those sales result in actual players and/or listeners. However, there are some sites and companies that keep track of their data and allow the public to view that information. For example, Critical Role on YouTube regularly receives over 1 million views on their campaign videos. Roll20.com, a virtual TRPG site, released their quarterly Orr Report that shows thousands of players engaging in different gaming systems. It is not impossible to get an estimate of players vs. listeners, but the need for exact numbers lies outside the scope of this thesis.
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Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Shannon’s Playlist
Although many players are methodical about their musical playlists, it is not the only way gamers use music to increase the immersive quality of their game. Enter Shannon, the Game
Master of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game group I observed during June and July of 2019. He creates playlists for his gaming sessions that contain music from the Star Wars franchise. Unlike
Chuck, he does not order his playlist by themes; rather, he adds music that he likes to one main playlist, hits shuffle, and starts the session.
The role I played in this group was mainly as observer. On occasion, I was asked to roll dice, but I tried to remain part of the background as much as possible. However, this was immediately complicated because I am close friends with Lexi, Shannon’s daughter, and I have previously played a three-session campaign of the Star Wars RPG with Shannon, Lexi, Shaine
(Shannon’s son), and Isaac (my brother). Additionally, it seemed more natural for everyone involved that I join the players at the table, rather than sit slightly behind everyone else, which meant my involvement was neither physically nor emotionally distant.
I observed Star Wars Roleplaying Game (SWRPG) for a total of six sessions that varied in length from four to six hours each. Shannon Wanner was the Game Master, joined by Lexi and Shaine (his children), Scott and Eric (friends from his work), and Isaac (best friends with
Shaine). Shannon informed me that he had a pre-written adventure he wanted to run from the
Edge of the Empire edition of SWRPG, that he was looking for four players, and that he would recruit them because, as he put it, “RPG groups are tricky things.”28 Additionally, he let me know that we would have to wait until June to begin our adventure because the Wanners were remodeling their basement. I discuss the Wanners’ gaming space in more detail in Chapter 4, but
28 Shannon Wanner, text message to author, May 8, 2019.
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I focus this section on Shannon’s use of music, his own history and feelings about it, and his players’ reactions to it.
Shannon has been playing tabletop role-playing games since the early 1990s, nearly three decades. He informed me that he always wanted music playing when he first started DMing. He described the five-CD changer that he used to play grunge music like Nirvana and Nine Inch
Nails when he began DMing, the change to downloading music from Napster in the late 1990s, and the soundtracks he eventually turned to such as Conan the Barbarian and The Crows.
Throughout Shannon’s TRPG career, he has seen and been a part of a technological revolution in the music industry. Now, he uses digital technology to curate playlists from Star Wars media, including video games, TV shows, and films.
As evidenced by Shannon’s playlist curation, the Star Wars franchise is a perfect example of the imaginary-entertainment environment created by the feedback loop of multiple media. Daniel Mackay defines the “imaginary-entertainment environment” as “fictional settings that change over time as if they were real places and that are published in a variety of mediums
(e.g., novels, films, role-playing games, etcetera), each of them in communication with the others as they contribute toward the growth, history, and status of the setting.” He continues, “Because they appear in so many mediums, imaginary-entertainment environments are always collaborative” (29). Six original films, five more by Disney, comic books, animated series, an online RPG, and a tabletop RPG – it seems the more popular Star Wars gets, the more popular
Star Wars gets! This allows players who are even casual fans of the franchise to refer back to their memories of seeing the movies or interacting with any other media that takes place in that universe.
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As Shannon explains, this imaginary-entertainment environment allows him to rely on the Star Wars media and universe to help him weave more immersive storylines.
I think it’s easier, then, because [the players] have seen all the movies, seen all the other
stuff, read the books. They have better visuals in their heads, unlike in D&D if I don’t
properly describe the scene. I think it’s easier for them to visualize. You just have to give
little clues and hints and they get the idea, better than you can describe it. Well, better
than I can describe it (8 August 2019).
The imaginary-entertainment environment of Star Wars lets Shannon build worlds with fewer words. But how do his players feel about his musical selection in their gaming sessions?
Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Eric, Shaine, and Lexi
A wide range of Star Wars media influenced Shannon’s musical playlist, which features pieces from various Star Wars films and games, and player reactions to this music varied physically and mentally. The players in Shannon’s group were either big fans of the Star Wars franchise or have at least seen the six main movies. They had visual and sonic references they could rely on when a song from one of the film soundtracks played through Shannon’s computer speakers. During my observation, songs that were easily recognizable – for example, “The
Imperial March,” “Star Wars (Main Title),” and “Cantina Band” – triggered physical responses such as humming, swaying, whistling, or drumming from the players. Unsurprisingly, players informed me that recognizing these songs was one example of moments when they were most aware of the music playing. This reality is captured in a statement from Eric.
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If you recognize [the music], you’ve probably seen it in the movie. And, like any other
song in a soundtrack, the scene pops up, if nothing else the feeling from watching it the
first time or the 100th time. Case in point, “The Imperial March.” When it’s Darth Vader,
something bad is coming (1 September 2019).
Eric makes three relevant points here. First, he acknowledges that visual media (the movie scene) and sonic media (the soundtrack) are unavoidably entangled in the mind and memory of an attentive viewer. Second, he states that a sonic cue from Shannon’s playlist can cause the scene during which that musical piece played to appear in his mind without any visual cues. Finally, in the case where a scene does not come to mind, he can recall strong feelings he had toward that cinematic moment, even if he can’t quite visualize it.
The imaginary-entertainment environment, then, creates a complex way of listening and reacting to music in gaming sessions. The goal of the TRPG is for players to be engaged in what is happening at the table, and music is meant to immerse players in that environment. However, music that originates in other media has the potential to pull players’ minds away from the table and back to cinematic or digital gaming experiences. Especially when a player has experience with this media and recognizes the musical piece, the player’s mind begins a balancing act between the TRPG world and the media world from which the music originates. Players may give physical cues that indicate they recognize the music (e.g., swaying, humming, etc.), but it is difficult to know in which world the individual’s mind is present. The player’s mood and focus, what is happening in the game, how much experience they have with this other media – these can all affect what their mind focuses on during these moments of competing influences.
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Because of Shannon’s multi-media playlist, it is difficult to say where the lines between
Star Wars end and Star Wars Roleplaying Game begin. However, his players are more interested in the humor and spontaneity that the music brings to the table. Shannon adds all his favorite songs from the various media to one long playlist and hits shuffle. He does not group the songs by mood or by setting. Instead, he lets iTunes do the work for him, and his players seem to love it.
Both Shaine and Lexi stated that the “Cantina Band” piece was one of their favorites to hear in their dad’s playlist. It typically played once per session and its joyously abrasive timbre inevitably led to humorous mismatches of in-game settings. For readers who cannot readily recall the sound of the piece, its main melody is reminiscent of the upbeat, fuzzy, and bright sound of hot jazz of the late 1920s. It features a clarinet, three saxophones, a subtle trumpet, and a steel pan for rhythmic ornamentation. It sticks out from the typical orchestral scoring of the rest of John Williams’s original soundtrack and is appropriate in very few TRPG settings.
The following portion of the transcript of my interview with Shaine shows how he feels about these sudden bursts of cantina music.
Emma: You’ve told me in the past that you remember specific moments when the music
did not match [what was happening in the game] and you thought it was just great. Were
both of those times with the cantina music?
Shaine: Oh, they most certainly were. It kind of makes sense for all the other music, but,
yeah, the cantina music definitely throws everything for a loop.
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E: But you love those moments. You don’t think they’re distracting in a bad way?
S: No, I think it’s hilarious.
E: Do you like that the music is shuffled?
S: Yeah, I don’t think I’d enjoy it that much if I knew what was coming. Because then I
would be like, “After this one... after this one... after this one, it’s cantina!!” I just like
randomly being hit with cantina music.
E: What if your dad went through the playlist and organized it by battle, tavern, travel,
etcetera?
S: I’d be a little disappointed (8 August 2019).
Shaine expects and enjoys the spontaneity of Shannon’s playlist. Whereas players who are not used to this specific musical dynamic at their table might not appreciate its randomness, Shaine finds joy and humor in the moments when the “Cantina Band” piece is jarringly out of place.
Because Shannon’s playlist is on shuffle, there are many times throughout the session when the music does not match the scene in the TRPG. I noticed during my observations of the group that, when these moments were obvious, players often took the time to joke around in a way that forced the narrative to somehow fit with the music. For example, Lexi stated the following:
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If it’s, like, the occasion where we walk into a room and it’s full of hostile droids and [the
playlist] starts playing cantina music, we’re gonna go “Oh, those droids like to party!”
And then it’s kind of off topic, but still on topic. Then we make jokes like it’s a rager for
droids (30 July 2019).
Shaine and Lexi appreciate the humor and spontaneity in Shannon’s playlist, find ways to work music into the gameworld’s narrative, and accomplish a sort of play within play. But do they find any of this distracting?
As stated earlier, Shaine finds those moments hilarious, and Lexi informed me that she thinks it turns the game into a group bonding experience. Even Eric, after stating that he feels that he is the most aware of the music, stated, “If it’s a distraction, it’s very minor.” He continued:
I have this mental image of what’s going on. And, like, when a movie and the soundtrack
doesn’t quite match the – it’s a serious moment and you just have joking music going on
in the background. But then you just ignore it, tune out the music and keep playing (1
September 2019).
After observing the group for six sessions, I think it is a fair observation that Eric is the person most conscious of the music. Isaac drummed along, Shaine hummed, Lexi rocked back and forth,
Shannon vocalized melodic lines on the syllable of “doo” – but none of them seemed fully aware of what their bodies were doing. Eric, on the other hand, would vocally express amusement when the music lined up with the action and would drum short, purposeful phrases with his hand and a
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pencil in the other. If the most self-aware of the players could ignore music that didn’t fit the scene, it seems plausible that any of them could do so.
For all the times that Shannon’s playlist does not line up with the in-game action, there are many moments when it fits the TRPG setting. In those moments, as Lexi says, “The universe knows what’s up.” Overall, Lexi, Shaine, and Eric agreed that music made them feel more immersed in the game, especially when outside noises would otherwise distract them from the game. Eric explained to me:
It’s nice playing with sound in the background because in the past I’ve played other
places, and it gets really quiet. And that’s when you really do notice outside noises – the
neighbor mowing his yard or somebody hot rodding up and down the street or something.
But with the music playing in the background, it gives you a layer of insulation.29 It helps
you immerse yourself a little bit. And then when something syncs up – like, you’re
heading into a fight or an intense situation and next thing you know the drums start
beating – it’s like, “Hey, here we go!” Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I almost wish we had
somebody who was just sitting there and controlling the music and the background
noises. Like, you’re going through a jungle and you hear jungle noises. You’re in a cave
and you hear dripping water and underground bat squeaks. That’d be neat (1 September
2019).
29 I want to note that Eric’s use of the term “layer” was without any coaxing from my prompts or questions. At this point in my research, I had been thinking of my sonic model in terms of layers, but I had yet to share it with any of my informants.
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Eric states that silence or lulls in conversation are examples of instances when players could easily listen to noises outside the game, rather than focusing in on the table. Shannon’s playlist – whether it lines up with the in-game events or not – provides a layer of sound between the players and ambient or environmental noises. Eric admits that he might like to have a more event-specific musical playlist, but he doesn’t mind the music as it is now. Additionally, it helps preserve the playful, gaming mood around the table.
When I asked Shannon what he thought the purpose of music during his gaming sessions was, he stated, “I think it just gets me more in the mood. It just puts me in a more creative place”
(8 August 2019). Lexi echoed this sentiment, saying, “It kind of pulls you from your everyday, individual lives into the game where you’re co-oping [playing cooperatively] together and you’re not really yourself. I think it sets the stage” (30 July 2019). The music in these Star Wars games helps players focus on the events happening at the table and transforms the space into one conducive for immersive role-playing.
All the players that I interviewed in this group stated that they would rather play the game with music than without. Because music in this setting is disseminated from a shuffled playlist, there are many moments when the music doesn’t align with the in-game action, but players easily work around this by employing humor and reworking the musical narrative to fit into the game. No matter the tone, music manages to help these players become more immersed in their gaming experience. As Eric described: “Sometimes it’s like a missed chord. The song is out of tune with what’s going on, or maybe you just don’t like the song. There are a couple of those.
But then when something comes up that fits what’s going on, personally, it gets me a little more pumped up, a little more ‘Woohoo!’” (1 September 2019).
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Non-TRPG Music
Syrinscape, House of Cards, Restona, The Adventure Zone, and Star Wars – these varied settings all use music to encourage and increase immersion during gaming sessions. However, music is not always seen as a positive aspect of the game. Most players I interviewed said they would be more likely to want to play with music than without, but this wasn’t to say that every moment was perfectly timed to create an ideal gaming environment. Occasionally, players get distracted by, or even outraged over, the music that their D/GM decides to play. Just as easily as it can help, music can quickly and dramatically break the immersive environments that TRPG players have worked so hard to build. I hope to answer the following questions by examining the responses of my informants: What kind of music does not belong at the table? Why? Do these unwelcome musics belong to particular genres? What about when the music simply does not match the mood of or action in the game? And finally, do these moments of cognitive dissonance break the game, or are they simply part of the gaming experience as a whole?
Whenever I interviewed new informants who stated that they used music during their gaming sessions, I followed up with questions regarding the type of music they used, how they encountered that music, and its purpose in the game. Patterns emerged, but for every unofficial rule for tabletop role-playing music, there is a group or individual who breaks it. For the remainder of this section, I begin each paragraph with a common theme that I found in the responses of my informants, followed by an example of someone who disregards that theme.
“I don’t use music that has lyrics in it.” I have already discussed one person who breaks this unofficial rule: Esteban. “The Lonely” by Christina Perri has evocative lyrics, depicting “the shell of a girl” who is missing someone who had a significant impact on her life, possibly a
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lover. When I asked Esteban why he chose this song, he described a scene that he created specifically to match the chorus of Perri’s song.
Dancing slowly in an empty room
Can the lonely take the place of you?
I sing myself a quiet lullaby
Let you go and let the lonely in
To take my heart again
He explained that the complete scene had made its full appearance in the regular campaign that he ran for his group, but that this scene ended up becoming the basis for House of Cards.
It didn’t totally make the transition to House of Cards. In the original session it was the
character of this very powerful elf wizard who had basically been in love with another
wizard, and the other wizard killed herself. As powerful as she was, resurrection and
general healing magic is very limited in this setting, and, also, wizards can’t really do that
anyway. Basically, the best she could hope to do is just tear open this rift between the
ethereal plane and her plane. So, she basically got to spend time with the ghost, which,
again, made it into our game in a surprisingly different way in our session. Basically,
their relationship was depicted by this idea of the scene where they’re dancing and they
are touching, but they can’t touch, and they’re sort of dancing around. Together, but
obviously alone (20 August 2019).
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For Esteban, lyrics are not only welcome in his campaigns, but they are instrumental in his creation of scenes or arcs.
“I like to use music from video games and movies.” Or “I like to use music that comes from a specific franchise because it helps people think of that specific world.” Chuck and
Shannon are the two players who follow these statements. However, Ben Loomes and Griffin
McElroy are both examples of people who have created their own music to use in their games.
Another person who stays away from pieces from video games or movies is one I discuss in more detail in the next chapter: Chris. He informed me that he used music all the time in his earlier campaigns, repeatedly citing his use of the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack when he was still living in France. When he moved to the US, he began using a soundboard – with no music involved – that mimicked specific environments, including a tavern.
You hear the people laugh, like shops and drinks, the glass “ting, ting,” chatter in the
background. It puts you in the room. It’s not music. It’s just sounds, like, in the
environment of the tavern, and I find that very immersive. It doesn’t cover my voice as a
DM, so it’s background noise.
Chris also explained that he no longer likes using music from Conan the Barbarian because “the soundboard doesn’t require you to have an experience with the music” (1 August
2019). Chris steers clear of music from popular media because he feels the goal of that music is to bring forth emotions that one felt while seeing that film, whether consciously or unconsciously. He does not want to assume that everyone has the same experience with popular
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media as he does, and therefore avoids that issue by using sounds that evoke memories of basic environments that people are more likely to have experienced.
“I don’t mind different genres of music being played, but there are particular genres I stay away from, such as rock, pop, etc.” On August 14, 2018, Ben Loomes posted a video titled
“What do you think of this for D&D music?”30 The SoundSet he introduced included sounds evoking a fight with a troll, but the music – rather than including pulsing drums and dramatic strings in the background, as one might expect in a fantasy setting – contained electric guitars, a rock beat on the drum set, and a thundering bass. Responses to the video in the comment section suggested that most people liked it, but they were not likely to use it for D&D or other fantasy settings.
When I questioned Ben about this specific video and the response to it, he stated that
“Actually, it’s been hugely popular and played back the most out of any SoundSet in Syrinscape, ever” (16 September 2019). The disapproval within the comment section did not reflect the actual reception of the playlist, so somebody must be using rock ‘n’ roll during their sessions.
Other examples of departing from this orchestra-centric music in fantasy settings includes
Adam’s roommate, who plays Top 40 pop music using earbuds under his over-ear headphones, and the McElroy brothers, who used country music in a one-shot titled “Hootenanny – Live in
Nashville!” that they dubbed a “country western space opera.”31
While there are dominant trends in the type of music used in TRPGs, it is important to remember that there are exceptions. Groups may choose to play campaigns that lie outside the
30Syrinscape, “What do you think of this for D&nD [sic] music?!” YouTube video, 2:53. Posted [14 August 2018], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4qkruD6VqM. 31 Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, and Clint McElroy, “Hootenanny – Live in Nashville!” The Adventure Zone, Distributed by Maximum Fun, August 3, 2019, Podcast, MP3 audio, 1:48:13, https://maximumfun.org/episodes/adventure-zone/hootenanny-live-in-nashville/.
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literary genre of fantasy, or just feel like a non-fantasy-type music is more suited to their ideas.
After Ben and I discussed the response to his rock music offering, we moved to why the comment section of that video was so negative and why people cling so tightly to orchestral music to fill the backgrounds of their TRPG settings.
Fantasy movies have decided that epic, symphonic fantasy music of the style of Lord of
the Rings is what it is. So, they’ve educated us as to what the sound of a fantasy film is,
and we have accepted that subconsciously, basically. When we wanna place ourselves in
that world, that’s the sound we expect. So, when someone is telling us it’s gonna be rock
music, then we’re like, “We object!” (16 September 2019).
Here, Ben touches on the reality that popular media and tabletop role-playing games have interacted with each other since the inception of TRPGs, otherwise known as the imaginary- entertainment environment that I described in the previous section (Mackay, 2001). I discuss the imaginary-entertainment environment in the context of what I have termed the “movie simile” in the following section.
The Movie Simile
Interview with Chris, Indianapolis, August 1, 2019:
If you play music from the scene where Conan beheads the evil guy and all your players
have seen this movie, they’re gonna behave differently than if you don’t play the music,
for sure. They’re gonna be enthralled with the memories and emotions and feelings they
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had while watching the movie. You see these guys taking risks that they never would
have taken in-game, just because they wanna relive that moment.
Phone interview with Sarah, August 5, 2019:
For me, it’s like, have you ever watched a really ridiculous movie, like, maybe Jumanji
2? Like, it’s ridiculous, but all of the actors are obviously having a blast doing it. That’s
what role-playing is to me. A bunch of actors having a blast doing whatever they’re
doing.
Interview with Lexi, Fargo, July 30, 2019:
Yeah, [the music] also helps you get into the game, especially in the ones where you can
see what’s going on, like, in your head. You can see that we’re fighting and music’s
playing. You can hear it and you can see it like your person’s in a movie. And you’re
watching them walk into battle. It’s way more intriguing. It’s way more exciting. And it
adds a certain level of determination because you wanna win. You wanna do well, you
wanna help your team, you wanna complete the mission and save the day.
Phone interview with Eric, September 1, 2019:
I like the Star Wars soundtracks with blaster sounds and R2’s [mimics R2D2’s famous
beeping noises]. In fact a lot of times, when the group is discussing something and rolling
dice and describing what they’re up to, I’ll just sit back and close my eyes and watch it
play out in my head. It’s pretty fun. The guys probably think I’m dozing off, but, really,
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I’m not. I’m just sitting back and watching a movie in my head and just enjoying the
adventure. So, yeah, I do hear it. I can kinda visualize it too.
Phone interview with Sam, August 31, 2019:
I envision it like a movie. Like, I’m the director. I say, “Okay, action!” and they’re gonna
come down the stairs. I can see it in my head. […] I don’t describe it like, “Oracle comes
down the stairs. She says her line. He says her line.” It’s like, you’re the director, and the
storyteller, and the book, all at the same time.
Tabletop role-players often draw from the imagined environments created by cinema.
Whether they take inspiration from a specific movie, a common scene trope, an entire franchise, or the roles created within these works, they all somehow relate their experiences to the combination of the soundtrack and the visuals in movies. At first, I worried that this theme was emerging because my questions led my informants toward these conclusions; however, upon discovering Syrinscape’s “Year of Atmosphere” page, it was obvious that the movie simile was bigger than my circle of interviewees and that it was useful in describing the type of environments that DMs look to emulate in their playlist curation.32
After scrolling past Syrinscape’s newest tag line (Epic Games Need Epic Sound),
Syrinscape’s “Year of Atmosphere” logo, and a small blurb from CEO Ben Loomes,33 users see
32Benjamin Loomes, “Year of Atmosphere,” Syrinscape, http://www.Syrinscape.com/YearofAtmosphere/ (accessed 10 December 2019). 33 For those interested, the blurb reads “’Syrinscape is a powerful tool,’ says creator amd [sic] CEO Benjamin Loomes. ‘In its first season of Atmosphere, expect a deep dive into some of its most useful content. Come explore with me how to get the most effect out of Syrinscape with the leaset [sic] ‘at table’ effort. Creating real tension is about watching your players carefully, paying enough attention to really turn the screws on them at just the right moment, and you set yourself up with Syrinscape just right, you’ll barely have to look away from the table, to get exactly the ‘mood’ you’re looking for.’
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the first video on the page: “The power of sound effects & music at the gaming table (and in movies).” Underneath the title are five numbered questions which outline the content that Ben
“takes a deep look at” in the video, the second of which is “What do sound effects and music DO in tabletop games (and movies)?” The title and the second question tell me the exact connection that Ben makes so often when he discusses Syrinscape, but watching the video is even more enlightening. More specifically, he shows a YouTube video created by another user who demonstrates how changing the music in a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean completely shifts the feeling of the moment. The user demonstrates examples titled “scary and foreboding,”
“comical,” and “sad and thoughtful,” to showcase the effect music has on movie scenes. Ben plays this video to demonstrate how he envisions Syrinscape working at the table: as a type of soundtrack that manipulates the thoughts and emotions of the players through the use of musical tropes found in movies.
The movie simile among TRPG players is fairly common, but why do they connect movies – and not other media – to tabletop role-playing games? Why is it significant? The answer partly depends on Daniel Mackay’s imaginary-entertainment environment (2001). At its inception in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons was heavily influenced by fantasy literature, namely
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (Peterson, 2012). However, Mackay posits that tabletop role-playing games have exerted a similar influence on popular media of all sorts since their creation. The imaginary-entertainment environment results from the flow of information and influence between TRPGs and movies, video games, and literature. It explains why we compare tabletop role-playing games to other media, but it does not answer the question: why are movies more often on the other side of the comparison than other forms of media?
Return here frequently to get more & more out of Syrinscape and more & more out of immersion at your gaming table.”
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The answer to this question is twofold: First, movies are one of the oldest media to match sonic and visual cues, exemplified by soundtracks that closely follow the action of the film.
Second, it is not the only comparison to other media being made. As Joseph Lanza states in
Elevator Music, “Anyone growing up on movies carries a sound library of tunes and leitmotifs that, in turn, get superimposed on the ‘real’ world. The twentieth century may have gone haywire, but cinema soundtracks have surreptitiously imposed a much-needed order” (62). Film has irrevocably impacted the lives and sonic expectations of citizens of the twenty-first century, even though fictional literature created the very lore on which TRPGs were built. This movie simile is mentioned primarily when players are discussing the sonic experience of TRPGs, especially when they use music. Even when two of my informants compared their experiences to reading or writing a book, they had been referring to the effect created when using character voices – not when using music or recorded sound to enhance their experience. 34 Movies provide a sonic experience that match the visual focus of each film, whereas books are not accompanied by a set soundtrack.
Curiously, video and computer games also utilize both sonic and visual media, but comparisons to these digitized games are less commonly made in the literature I have read and with the people I have interviewed. When I questioned informants about the link between digital
RPGs and TRPGs, most were reluctant to equate the two types of games, stating that they were very different experiences. For example, video games depend on pre-creation and cannot be changed by the whims of their players; TRPG players can reroute an entire session with a single
34 These informants were Samantha and Sam. Samantha discussed how the voices of everyone at her table, whether using character voices or not, helped her envision the game as a novel being read aloud. Sam described the experience of DMing using a mixed simile between film and literature, stating, “It’s like you’re the director, and the storyteller, and the book, all at the same time. […] It’s like you’re every part of the script.” Readers will meet Samantha in the next chapter, but I do not discuss Sam at length within this thesis project.
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line of dialogue that the DM did not expect. They are both tactile and social experiences, but video games can be played alone, whereas TRPGs require the presence of other people.
However, video game soundtracks act in a similar manner to the mood-motivated songs or playlists that DMs curate for other players. I believe that players default to comparisons between
TRPGs and movies because video games also emulate common film tropes. It is not that players do not see similarities between TRPGs and digitized counterparts, but rather that they both attempt to emulate the cinematic experience.
Movie music provides an inescapable comparison for music in tabletop role-playing games. Cinematic tropes have influenced TRPG players in their quest to create immersive environments, and the above remarks by my informants and Syrinscape’s marketing logos provide proof. The songs and playlists chosen for TRPG sessions are not meant to copy the exact environment created by movies, but they are both influenced by – and themselves influence – the imaginary-entertainment environment that informs the experience of players from all over the world. I end this section with some final thoughts from my interview with Ben on September 17,
2019. At the outset, Ben compared the experience of watching TV series (which he ultimately deemed more social) and watching movies:
[…] a movie you deliberately go and settle yourself down and you drop into darkness and
the screen and the sound is presented in a completely overwhelming way. You disappear
even more into the characters. And that’s what we’re all searching for – sorry, not
everyone, I can’t say that. I’m always searching for that moment of actual true immersion
where I get to experience what life [is like] in the shoes of that character and experience
that character’s selfishness or bigotry as it grows. And maybe that’s the kind of
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immersion that’s the holy grail for tabletop immersion, that maybe movies are more
appropriate for (16 September 2019).
The Musical Layer
Each section of this chapter thus far has shown how a specific group or individual uses music to enhance their TRPG sessions. Ben composes and markets ambient SoundSets meant to play throughout a gaming session; Esteban chooses exact moments for maximum emotional effect; Chuck creates themed playlists that include various genres; Griffin McElroy writes his own music for use in a podcast campaign with his brothers and dad; Shannon borrows music from the famous franchise that inspired the Star Wars RPG. Depending on the campaign and its players, it seems as if any music has the potential to be appropriate in some sort of TRPG setting.
Finally, I discussed the movie simile, which has inspired TRPG music both through relation to a movie soundtrack and the feeling that those musics provide to players during games. In all these situations, music is meant to increase immersion, but how does it help players achieve this goal?
I return to the questions I asked in the introduction of this chapter: what does this music do, or how does it function, in these tabletop gaming environments?
In Eric’s words, “With the music playing in the background, it gives you a layer of insulation” (1 September 2019). When DMs play music during their gaming sessions, it makes it more difficult for other sounds to distract players. As Ben remarked, he disliked hearing the humming of his refrigerator and wanted a sound to cover it up. When I spoke with Noah during his interview, he informed me that having a layer of music for your players to listen to helps give the DM a brief break if they need to take a drink or just breathe for a bit. Instead of the players’ attention turning to other sounds around them, music has the power to capture their imaginations
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and keep them thinking about the game. The music used in TRPGs is especially appropriate for this because it is typically loud enough to mask small, unwanted sounds in the immediate environment, but not so loud that it covers the sounds of players’ voices.
Insulation against the outside world is not TRPG music’s only function, because it is also meant to inspire players. This music has the power to reinforce and augment the emotions that players are feeling, which is why D/GMs devote so much attention to curating their playlists or finding the perfect piece to play. However, in the case where music is borrowed from other sources – video games, movies, TV shows, etc. – it is not always clear whether players feel elevated emotions because of the music’s original contexts in popular media, its adoption into the narrative of the game, or a combination of the two. The function of music in TRPGs, then, is to create a layer of sound between the world and the real world, but also to augment emotions that players are already feeling.
Music is a valuable tool for defining space and elevating emotions, but groups that do not use music are also capable of creating immersive gaming environments. As I discuss in the following chapter, the voice is a powerful tool for creating imagery and manipulating players when used in tandem with music, or all on its own.
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CHAPTER 3
VOICE IN TABLETOP ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
“When you’re introduced to an NPC,” I asked Chris, “do you think you can learn anything from their voice right away? Just their voice.”
“Just their voice? Probably not,” he replied. “You understand that as I was playing the druid, he was a bit of a [jerk], right? Well, it was not so much the voice, but the attitude, right?
And the attitude can transpire in the voice, but if it’s just the sound, I don’t think so” (1 August
2019).
The above dialogue with Chris points to a problem I confronted on several other occasions while interviewing informants. When I asked interviewees if they thought they could learn anything from the sound of a voice alone, they typically replied that they didn’t think they could. They often stated that they relied far more on character actions or attitudes than on voices to learn about non-player characters, or NPCs. This surprised me since I had assumed that the kinds of vocal stereotypes used by players and their D/GMs during games would have the capacity to influence how they felt about and understood the new NPCs they encountered. For example, players often portray dwarves as drunkards with Scottish accents, elves as high-class characters with British dialects, and NPCs with low intelligence as “rednecks” with southern
U.S. drawls.
Such vocal stereotypes are problematic because their essentialisms are often grounded in pejorative representations of entire groups of people. These stereotypes are informed by literary and cinematic tropes inspired by media commonly associated with TRPGs, such as the The Lord
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of the Rings novels and films. While I did not expect that all or even most of my informants would prove my assumptions correct, I was surprised to learn that so few thought voices could provide more than abstract sonic information. Here was an instance of how informants rarely, if ever, follow the “script” running in the researcher’s imagination. Additionally, it points to a flaw in how I phrased the question and how the definition and understanding of voice varied between my informants and myself.
Turning partly away from the reliance on ethnographic data privileged thus far in this thesis, I shift toward a more theoretically grounded approach in the present chapter to explore the framing and significance of voice and vocal quality during gameplay of TRPGs. I build upon
Brian Kane’s model of echos, logos, topos, and technê (Feldman, 2015). I describe this model in more detail in the following section and then give a brief description of typical uses for voice in tabletop role-playing games. Using Kane’s theoretical framework, I describe five ways that selected informants in this study use their voices, discuss how their uses of voice impact the game and connect to life outside it, and examine how they contribute to the sonic environment of
TRPGs more broadly.
Brian Kane’s Vocal Model
A definition of voice that relies on aspects of vocal production that lie outside of its understanding as only sound or only meaning is crucial to my study of voice in tabletop role- playing games. Rather than use a single, static definition of voice that attempts to describe it, I engage with Brian Kane’s concept of analyzing parts of the voice that pick it apart and present it as a moving, multi-layered idea. Kane’s understanding of voice (phoné), first presented in his
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2014 book Sound Unseen35 and developed in the JAMS colloquy “Why Voice Now?”,36 is dependent on three intersecting and overlapping concepts: echos, logos, and topos (sound, meaning, and site/source).
Throughout his discussion, Kane insists that no one of these three aspects can capture the entire meaning of voice; rather, voice exists as an entity constantly moving between the spaces and intersections of echos, logos, and topos. He explains that most early scholars on voice were mainly concerned with logos, that is, with understanding the meaning of statements made by the voice. He demonstrates instances in which scholars in certain disciplines have found the intersection of two of the terms invoked in his model useful, and discusses how such terminological intersection changes the questions they ask. For example, he states that musicologists tend to be concerned with the intersection of “echos + topos” – the sound and source of the voice. Most often, this takes the form of examining intersections of the body or space in connection with the singing or speaking voice and how these intersections change the sonic experience. He also discusses the “logos + topos” pairing for how the source/site of the voice affects meaning, and the combination of “echos + logos” and the difficulty of drawing a boundary between the two.
The fourth component of Kane’s model, technê, adds more depth to my own understanding of what “voice” encompasses. As he states, “Technê includes both technologies and techniques” (674). He explains that technologies such as radio and television have predictably changed what constitutes voice and how that transforms our idea of phoné. Just as
“technology” transforms our way of experiencing voice, technology in turn has the power to
35 Brian Kane, Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 36 Brian Kane, “The Model Voice” In “Colloquy: Why Voice Now?” Martha Feldman, Convenor, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 68, No. 3 (2015): 671-6.
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provide the different “techniques,” or mediations, of technê, which Kane illustrates with the example of not seeing the source of what one is listening to (e.g., how the radio hides the speaker from the view of the listener).
This fourth component of voice is especially important because current technology has significantly altered the landscape of how TRPG players interact with each other and the community at large. For example, more people are being introduced to systems like Dungeons &
Dragons by way of podcasts or YouTube shows like Critical Role or The Adventure Zone than ever before. Players are informed by these sonic media and tropes in movies, TV shows, and video games, all of which influence how they hear voices and use their own in gaming contexts.
The Voice in Tabletop Role-Playing Games
Before considering how players use voice in the idiocultures of their small, personal gaming sessions, I will describe how voice is generally used during TRPG sessions, beginning with the role of the Dungeon or Game Master. There are exceptions for the following observations, but this generalized information is based on my own experiences, the experiences of my informants, and the information that I have gleaned from literature on tabletop role- playing games and exposure to popular media such as Critical Role and The Adventure Zone.
Most Game Masters prepare their sessions ahead of time – sometimes up to a week in advance, occasionally leading directly up to the time when their group is set to meet. Their pre- planned scenarios often include places they think their party will visit, storylines they wish to advance, and NPCs with whom the players might interact – either totally new characters, cameos, or ones with recurring roles from previous sessions. Scenarios can be taken from mass- marketed campaign collections, created purely by the GM (“homebrewed”), borrowed or bought
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from another GM, or draw upon a combination of any of the above sources. Regardless of where the GM gets their campaign materials, that person typically fulfills the “narrator” role of the party.
Depending on the GM’s personal style, this narration may fall anywhere on the spectrum of speaking for the majority of the session or only facilitating game flow when absolutely necessary. Some GMs prefer to guide players through their world, prompting them to discover and explore, while facilitators may only speak when a player has a question or concern.
Whenever D/GMs do speak, they may follow a pre-written script or “flavor text,” reply in an improvisatory manner, provide general descriptions or answer questions about such descriptions, or speak in any other way that follows or diverts the action of game. 37 Whatever their style, the omniscient role of the D/GM is necessary to TRPG sessions and their voices are an invaluable resource for progressing through the game.
Although D/GMs typically adopt a leadership position in TRPG gaming sessions, it is not accurate to say that their voices are the most important or even the most prominent. GMs can plan adventures for weeks only to have their players veer off-book to spend their day at the village spa and ignore any monster-related summons by the town’s mayor. Throughout the gaming session, all players can exercise autonomy through their voice. They can describe the actions they take, ask and answer questions, tell jokes related or unrelated to the events in the game – all using their natural speaking voice or a character voice. Players can direct their voice to the D/GM, to the group, or to specific players in a normal, secretive, or aside manner.
37 “Flavor text” is text that adds narrative “flavor” and is commonly triggered by the actions of the group. For example, when a group comes upon a fork in the road, the flavor text for the situation might read, “Suddenly, your party is faced with a decision. The road to the right looks well-traveled with tracks that are barely a day old. The left seems more unkempt with various flora blocking parts of the path. The well-maintained road may lead to unwanted interruptions from too much foot traffic, while the other has various physical obstacles. Which road does your group take?” Flavor text is meant to add drama and narrative flair.
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However players decide to use their voice, it is clear that it is an integral and necessary component of tabletop role-playing games.
Chuck the Amateur Voice Actor
In the previous chapter, I discussed Chuck’s musical choices for his Restona group, but music is not the only sound that ties this group together. Chuck’s character voices are what caused me to stay for the first two hours of a game in which I wasn’t participating at
CONvergence; in fact, I knew I would be playing the same one-shot adventure the next day, but I chose to stay past my self-allotted, one-hour limit. I was at my first ever convention and I wanted to take in as many experiences as possible, but Chuck’s enthusiasm and well-practiced voices pulled me into the game as if I were one of the players. The only reason I left during the short break was because Chuck suggested it would help me avoid meta-gaming. (He described “meta- gaming” as a player already being aware of the intended outcome of a game and therefore making choices that would complete the objective, but simultaneously cause one to act out of character.)
Due to my limited experiences at the time, I was unaware that Chuck’s gung-ho, all-in vocal performance was unexpected, even atypical, of D/GMs running one-shot adventures at conventions. In my experience, GMs are less willing to fully commit to character voices for
NPCs they will voice for a single, two- to four-hour session. It can also feel awkward and inappropriate for GMs to perform at peak level when they are playing with (and performing for) new, unfamiliar people. I didn’t know it then, but as Noah informed me the next day during our interview, “Good DMs are hard to find. When you do find them, keep them forever. They’re a treasure. […] I can say with great confidence that, far and away, Chuck has been my best DM. I
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mean, there’s nothing that comes even remotely close” (7 July 2019). Chuck draws his own maps – intricate ones, with details down to individual shrubs – and cherry picks only the best music from his favorite composers, movies, video games, and TV shows. But his most valuable attribute? I posit that it is his voice. In support of my position that Chuck’s voice is his most valuable attribute as a DM, I first discuss how Chuck uses his voice and how he feels about character voices in TRPGs. I then move to how the rest of the Restona players feel about
Chuck’s voice and the general use of voice in D&D.
Chuck has a talent for making his character voices very distinct, to the point that I felt I could envision the person he was voicing without having any kind of visual aid. When he voiced a kobold (a dragon-like creature that stands only two to three feet in height) in our CONvergence adventure, he adopted a stuttering, timid, high-pitched voice with hunched shoulders and nervous facial expressions to match. When he voiced a tavern keeper dwarf whose main goal was to get players drunk and make coin while doing it, Chuck employed a gruff, shifty voice and added plenty of wry smiles and side glances to his compatriots when tricking our wizard into buying a particularly potent brew. When he voiced a high elf alchemist, his voice brimmed with enthusiasm and condescending humor, often accompanied by significantly more hand motions and knowing smiles than his other characters. Chuck does not merely voice NPCs; he embodies them.
When I asked Chuck whether it was important to him as a DM to use character voices, he replied:
It is important to me because it is a part of my style. I believe that every DM has a style.
Some don’t feel comfortable narrating or giving characters voices, but for me I’ve found
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that I enjoy doing that, especially because it helps diversify the NPCs and makes
individuals stand out to the players so they can recognize them. It’s more about providing
the performance to help immersion.
While Chuck finds that using character voices is important for his personal style, he does not demand this from his players.
It’s always more immersive, I feel, when players are willing to use different voices for
their characters. But, at the same time, I understand that some people are not necessarily
comfortable with adopting a voice, so they just may voice their character with their native
voice. Or, they may not speak very much. They may just do motions. Or, some may even
just narrate what their character does in third person without necessarily speaking directly
through them. […] I find that if people do try to make the effort to voice their character, it
can help them in developing the personality and, then, later on, an attachment for that
character (6 July 2019).
Chuck’s overall perspective on character voices is that, while they can contribute to more immersive and engaging gameplay, it is best to default to each player’s comfort level. He also clarifies that character voices are not necessary for participating in a game; players may describe the actions of their character in their natural voice, choose to speak less than others, or even opt to pantomime or act out their decisions.
We have the DM’s opinion, but how do the other players feel about using character voices during gameplay? It depends on who’s using them. As Noah explained to me, “I find that
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it is important to me that the DM, as opposed to the players, has some element of voice change.
For the characters, I find that the players voiced as themselves can typically express more emotion and genuine feeling using their natural voice as opposed to a forced character voice” (7
July 2019).
Similar to Noah’s thinking, Sarah agrees that character voices are more typical among
DMs. “I love it when everyone uses character voices. […] I find that DMs do it more than players. I think it’s because they don’t have to do one voice for four hours or more” (5 August
2019).
In their experience, both Noah and Sarah point out that players (i.e., not the DM) are less likely to feel comfortable with changing their voice, although they suggest different reasons as to why that may be the case. Sarah refers to the fact that players using character voices are tasked with vocal consistency over the course of several hours. The DM, on the other hand, typically voices several NPCs within a session and spends less time using a single voice. While having several voices at the ready is a demanding task, the constant switching necessitates less consistency, especially when players are less likely to hear minute differences in a single voice when the DM constantly is shifting between characters. Amplifying Sarah’s point, Noah believes that it may be easier for players to stick with their natural speaking voice because it allows them to utilize the fullest expressive range of their voice. When players aren’t required to expend mental energy on staying within their chosen accent or dialect, they have a greater ability to focus on the game and role-play their character to the best of their ability.
As Noah stated later in our interview, DMs are less likely to be able to choose whether they use character voices or not because they play the role of so many different characters. “The reason that it’s important that the DM uses character voices is to differentiate from NPCs and
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other significant elements of the plot. […] The differentiation between characters in that regard can create such a memorable experience that the voice association becomes so much more than the voice. It ties into the entire identity of the character” (7 July 2019). Here, Noah also tells us that an NPC’s voice becomes an integral part of their identity. This assists the DM and the players. It allows the DM to create a personality and mental image of the NPC without describing everything in second person, and it gives the players a chance to make more informed decisions about that character. Do they seem trustworthy? Are they intelligent? What kind of information might they have? The assumptions players make about the character and their voice may not be correct, and the DM may purposely be deceiving them. Nonetheless, it provides more data for players to weigh and analyze, which ultimately allows for a more informed, holistic way of playing.
Aside from their importance in providing extra information, character voices can also be used to signal a higher level of dedication to the game or a willingness to try new, more immersive techniques. As Sarah states, “You can do so much more with someone that is making it very clear that they’re willing to role-play with you. […] And voices are usually a very good indication of someone that’s willing to role-play.” She continues, “However, you don’t have to be able to do character voices to role-play well. So, character voices are important inasmuch it reflects how much someone is willing to role-play. On a not-important scale, they’re loads of fun and I like having fun when I game” (5 August 2019).
According to Sarah, as well as a handful of my other informants, character voices can signal to other players that you are ready and willing to be fully immersed in the gaming session.
This act of sonic commitment can set the tone for the entirety of this social gaming encounter, even if it’s a single player (often the DM) leading the charge. Sarah’s final sentence reveals
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another simple, but important, reason players love character voices: they’re fun! Character voices don’t have to be perfect – they typically are not – but their mere existence provides players with another tool for playful and immersive environments.
I now briefly return to Kane’s vocal model to examine what I learned from the Restona group. First, players are drawn to using character voices because they sound fun (echos) and for their meaning (logos) on a deeper level than pure lexicon: it signals a commitment, or a willingness to commit, to the game. Secondly, the importance of using character voices depends on the source, or topos, which applies to who is speaking in this instance. New players (at least in Restona) are not expected to use character voices because they might not be comfortable with that performative aspect. However, DMs face more pressure to differentiate between NPCs. In other words, they must use the echos of their voice to demonstrate separate topos (different
NPCs as vocal sources) in the gameworld, which in turn provides a more complete logos (the meaning of the words providing a mental picture of the space) for the scene they are describing.
Although the three Restona players I interviewed agreed that character voices can make for a more immersive experience, especially when DMs use them, this is not the only reason
TRPGs depend on the voice. For example, Noah explained that Chuck does a particularly great job of describing new terrains, narrating important moments of the plot, and retelling combat actions in a way that fits into the larger story.38 As I demonstrate in the following sections, character voices are only one way that players use their voices to fill their sonic environments.
38 As a hypothetical example, one of the Restona players might say to Chuck, “I want to try to hit the goblin in the head with my hardened piece of bread.” Depending on the number the player rolls (the higher the better in D&D 5e), Chuck might narrate, “As you raise your trusty baguette above your head and prepare to deal a final death blow to the puny, green goblin, it suddenly crumbles to nothing before you are able to use it to defeat your foe.” or “You slash your baguette into the side of this nasty goblin and his eyes go wide as he doubles over in pain and sinks to the ground.” With this re-narration of combat actions, players get a clearer picture of the battle and usually find it more entertaining.
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Chris the Storyteller
I met Chris within two hours of arriving at Gen Con in Indianapolis, Indiana. Although it started as a small convention in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, that had only ninety-six attendees
(Peterson 2012, 11), it has grown into the “largest board gaming convention in North America”; the number of attendees topped out at over 70,000 in August 2019, when I first attended.
I expected to be able to walk into the Indiana Convention Center, grab my tickets from will call, and head to my first event within a half hour of entering the building. When I reached the will call booth, a sense of dread spread throughout my entire body as I realized how wrong this assumption was, and, coincidentally, just how many people had come; hundreds of them stood in a single-file line to pick up their previously purchased tickets. Workers from the convention center stood at strategic spots to direct the flow of foot traffic, manage the line, and ask attendees to stand closer to the wall when needed. I walked from the front of the line, past a stretch of attendees lined up against a wall approximately the length of a city block, down the stairs of the back entrance, around one corner of the building, and finally came to a stop at the entrance at the exact opposite side of the ICC. All hopes of getting to my first event on time were crushed as the end-of-line ushers reassuringly informed me “The wait is under two hours. Ya should’ve seen it this morning!”
I looked around to see – and hear – if anyone else was worried about missing an event they had paid for. I gathered from the snippets of conversation around me that one could use general tickets (i.e., tickets not meant for specific events) to pay your way into a session where players didn’t show up. Upon hearing this, I quickly looked up events that I could rush to if the line moved fast enough. I settled on “Kingdom of Lothmar,” which required no previous experience with D&D 5e and had the following description: “The roads of Barony of Holheim
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are growing less and less secure. Travelers complain about shipments, and even good folks, vanishing without a trace. Will you dare solve this mystery?”39
Since looking for a new event had only taken a half hour of my time, I spent the rest of the time in line wondering if I should be interviewing people around me while concurrently worrying that they would see me for the phony I felt like. I had played two sessions of D&D 5e and a few sessions of Star Wars Role-Playing Game before attending the convention, but I didn’t know the culture and I didn’t feel like I could pass for the aficionado that Gen Con attracted, which was easily confirmed by listening to the two men behind me discussing battle strategies and miniatures of a game that I’m still not sure I could find after a lengthy Google search. Even after passing a Renaissance cosplayer and lightheartedly informing the men behind me that the instrument they were seeing was in fact a hurdy gurdy and not a “hoidy doidy,” I couldn’t convince myself to take advantage of my own expertise to initiate an interview with these attendees.
Outwardly, I patiently waited in the will call line, but inwardly I was quickly filling with doubts about whether I was even qualified to step foot in my first event. Thankfully, meeting and talking with Chris reset my whole thinking about the attendees of Gen Con, convinced me of the amiable nature of most TRPG players, and – perhaps most importantly – allowed me to focus on the task at hand: fieldwork and finding informants.
I had finally made it to the hotel conference room where Chris’s session was, and I only had two minutes to spare. Breathlessly, I asked if I could use general tickets to join the game if players hadn’t shown up. Chris motioned to the three empty seats around the table – only three
39 This adventure was created by Griffon Lore Games. Griffon Lore Games was created by Christophe Herrbach (my informant, Chris) and Anthony Pacheco. You can find out more about them at https://www.griffonloregames.com.
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others were occupied – and informed me that it was highly unlikely the missing players would join before it was time to start the game.
To my surprise, Chris had each of us describe why we had joined his session that day and what kind of experience we had with D&D before we started. I was the only female at the table and, after I admitted my limited experience with TRPGs, Chris said in a half admiring, half confused tone, “Wow, you’re very brave for coming to Gen Con if you’ve only played D&D a couple times!” I worried that my inexperience would discourage him from wanting to talk about my research. However, immediately after our four-player team defeated a druid disguised as a chicken, Chris and I stayed in that same conference room for an hour-long interview.
I learned quickly that Chris defines himself as a storyteller. This label first came up when we were discussing his favorite edition of D&D (5th edition because it’s “in the spirit of 2e” but has more elements of storytelling) and again when he informed me that quizzes, articles, and other sources exist that enable RPG players to classify themselves. Several classification systems exist, but the version he cited originated in Robin Laws’s Robin’s Laws of Good Game
Mastering (2002), which includes labels such as “The Tactician,” “The Method Actor,” and “The
Storyteller.” Unsurprisingly, he places himself in “The Storyteller” category because he’s “the guy that tells stories, even if I’m not the DM. […] Even when I play [as in, playing a character and not the DM], I drive all the DMs nuts because I tell stories on top of the DM’s stories.” 40
It is important to note that Chris draws a line between storytelling and role-playing.
According to him, storytelling is about listening and enjoying a story, whereas role-playing grants players the ability “to influence the outcome of that story, to the point where you feel you are a part of the story, and to the point where you think it’s your story.” Put another way, “When
40 All quotations from Chris H. in this section are from an in-person interview with the author on August 1, 2019, in Indianapolis, IN.
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you’re low levels, you react to a story. But after a while, your actions trigger what the rest of the world does. And that’s when you’re not part of the story. You are the story, and the story evolves with you. Role-playing is the ability to stay in character.” For Chris, the main distinction is that players are more passive in storytelling and role-playing requires them to be more involved.
Because Chris is so interested in the narrative functions of TRPGs, it might surprise you to learn that he does not use full character voices.
If I have a character that I enjoy playing, I usually come up with their own voice, but I
won’t have a voice for every NPC in the game. If I have a dwarf with a German accent, I
don’t do German accents well, so I’m not gonna do it, all right? I’m not gonna use that
voice every time now, because I’m gonna speak as this character for three hours tonight.
In Chris’s experience as a DM, players only need a taste of a character voice to realize a fuller vision of the character in their minds. “What you create is something in your imagination that you give a real representation of by giving it a voice, right? And that translates into someone else’s imagination. […] As long as you have a representation in your mind, I can leave it there and I don’t need to speak in a German accent for the rest of the evening. Because I know that you have a representation in your mind for how this player behaves and acts.”
Additionally, Chris doesn’t see character voices as a way to increase immersion. Instead, he uses them to give players a better idea of the scene he is imagining. “[Character voices] help players have a fair realization of that scene in their mind. Sometimes they’re like, ‘Oh, there’s a barkeeper and a wench? Sorry, I thought they were the same character.’ In their mind, one guy
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was at the bar, and everyone else in their mind had two guys behind the bar. So, if you use two voices, it’s easier for everyone to just have two guys behind the bar in their mind, right?”
Although other interlocutors had informed me that character voices helped players differentiate among NPCs, Chris was the first to imply that they helped players navigate the scene created by the DM’s narration, which creates a clearer storyline for everyone.
Much like Sarah and Noah, Chris says that another purpose of character voices is to show commitment to the game. “[Using character voices] communicates to the rest of the players that you’re trying to immerse yourself in the game. So, even if it’s not immersive, communicating the intent changes a lot of behaviors around the table. […] It’s like you have a sign that says, ‘Hey,
I’m invested in this game!’” Even though Chris uses character voices more sparingly, he posits that they fulfill the same purpose as those that are used throughout the gaming session.
A final element that Chris includes in his style of DMing is supplementing the sonic environment with recorded sounds. For example, when his payers enter a tavern, he plays a recording that includes sounds such as laughter, glasses clinking, and people chattering. “I find that [using recorded sounds] very immersive. It doesn’t cover my voice as a DM, so it’s background noise.” Although Chris sees value in playing recorded sound for a richer sonic environment, he still gives primacy to the voice. He uses only brief character voices, so we know that the voice itself – unchanged and unencumbered – has a narrative and immersive value all its own. In terms of Kane’s vocal model, then, Chris finds that a brief change of the echos of his voice is enough to portray and transmit his intention of commitment to the game (logos) and the imagined voice of the NPC (topos) to his players.
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As Chris summarized: “For me, the outcome needs to be this ‘theater of the mind.’
Whether you do this through role-playing or through a description or through music, there are tools to get you there, right?” Indeed, there are.
Father and Son: Robert and Adam
By Adam’s estimate, he and his father have been playing D&D intermittently over the past two years. I have known Adam for two years and was able to interview him during
CONvergence, but I have never met Robert in person. Whereas Adam lives in Minnesota, his father lives in Alaska. This meant that I had to interview Robert by phone, but it also means that their sessions of D&D are much different from those of the Restona and Star Wars groups.
Adam, Robert, and the three other members of their group – originally Adam’s two roommates and one of their significant others – currently meet every Wednesday through a downloadable computer program called Fantasy Grounds. The program is marketed as a “virtual tabletop,” complete with the slogan “Prep Less. Play More.” Users can choose any of the eighteen gaming systems officially licensed by Fantasy Grounds – including Dungeons &
Dragons, Pathfinder, Starfinder, Deadlands, and more – and build a campaign with a chosen aesthetic theme (e.g., “dungeon,” “wood,” etc.). The application allows players to create and view maps, roll dice with automatic totals, run combat using a battle map and images of combatants, share images of monsters and places and NPCs, create magic items and keep an inventory of them, and track changes to characters sheets. Fantasy Grounds seems to have everything players could want or need. However, it is missing one digital equivalent of a necessary component of tabletop role-playing games: a voice chat.
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Although the absence of voice chat seems to be a major obstacle, it is one with which
Adam and Robert never had to concern themselves. As Robert explained to me, they talked on a weekly basis through Discord, self-described as a “Free Voice and Text Chat for Gamers.” That weekly meeting only became a D&D session when Adam suggested that his dad DM a game for him and his roommates. Fantasy Grounds does have a text chat, but a DM typing out each event would take longer, ruin the narrative flow, and force players to respond at different rates. Players need detailed descriptions of their surroundings and they need them delivered at the same time because, as Adam stated, “[…] anything can probably kill you, so the more detail you’re given the better understanding you have of your surroundings, which increases your chance of survival” (6 July 2019). Robert informed me that he uses the text chat when he wants to send a private message to a player, usually because what he needs to say is known only to that player, but otherwise depends on Discord for communicating with his group.
Fantasy Grounds relies mostly on visual media, but voice still occupies the most important sonic position in Adam and Robert’s games. It is the only sound that they hear, and want to hear, on a consistent basis. “One thing we’ve found is music distracts me.” Robert discovered this when he was DMing a game for his family during a vacation in Costa Rica. His daughter had started to play combat music, which he didn’t notice right away, but, eventually,
“We had to shut that off because I couldn’t concentrate with that going” (17 July 2019). He had never considered playing music during his gaming sessions before this incident, but that experience only confirmed that layering constant sounds with the voice are too distracting for him. Adam agrees that music adds too much sonic information to their digitized D&D experience because he has bad hearing and “need[s] to focus on [other player] voices more than the background noise” (6 July 2019).
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Adam and Robert agree that music playing in the background would be distracting for them or even make it impossible for them to fully participate in the game. While music is an optional sound, hearing the voices of their fellow players is necessary to their character’s survival, to communicating with each other, and to enjoying themselves. However, because players are not in the same room, they can more easily customize their personal experience without bothering anyone else. 41 As Adam explained to me, one of his roommates at the time listened to popular music using earbuds placed under his over-ear headphones. All players also had the option of muting sounds such as dice rolling and sword slashing that Fantasy Grounds played. Adam informed me that he didn’t mind those sounds because they happened at appropriate moments, were brief, and added a sonic layer that he felt he would miss if he turned off his sound; nonetheless, the option of muting everything is available to everyone. Turning off the voice chat in Discord was the only customization that players couldn’t make in their individual sonic environments.
How Adam and Robert experience Dungeons & Dragons is different than any of my other interlocutors. Their D&D is mediated through the computer with players communicating and responding to vocal cues in real time. Although Fantasy Grounds is a digital program,
Discord allows the group to experience similar sonic environments through their headphones.
Adam still hears players sigh in frustration if they feel his character makes the wrong move; everyone still laughs at Robert’s humorous orc and goblin character voices; and Robert still knows when players are engaged based on their vocal reactions.
41 Although Adam lived with three people who played in their D&D group at the time, being in the same room as them would cause echoes in Discord. Playing in the same room was possible, but it was undesirable because it ruined the quality of the sound.
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Adam and Robert’s group is the only one included in this thesis that deviates from the use of voice in face-to-face gaming interactions. Whereas the Restona group and Chris all play in person, Adam and Robert’s interactions are filtered through their online voice chat. Although the topos still begins with the human origin, the voice is mediated through a Discord server, thereby affecting how players perceive both the echos and the technê. In this situation, it is possible that the echos becomes even more important because the voice is not accompanied by facial cues from other players, which puts them at a sensory disadvantage in decoding the logos of the voice compared to typical TRPG settings. For this D&D group, the voice is mediated through technology, but that does not prevent their gaming sessions from being effective and immersive.
Subtle Shannon
Although Shannon has experience with D&D, he and his group are unique among my informants because their Star Wars system exists more in the realm of science fiction than fantasy.42 The Star Wars group has music playing during their sessions, but their voices contribute significantly to the sonic environment of their gameplay. As I demonstrated with the
Restona group, character voices can increase immersion for players and demonstrate a willingness to wholly participate in an adventure. However, not all groups choose specific voices for their characters. The Wanners and company are one of those groups. In this section, I describe how the Star Wars group’s voices are an important and necessary aspect of gameplay, even though they have no desire to change the voices of their characters from their natural speaking voices.
42 Many of my informants have experience with and enjoy playing more than one TRPG system, but, of all tabletop RPGs, D&D has the most players and is therefore the easiest for which to find parties.
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I have learned from many of my interlocutors that they feel that the pressure to use character voices falls more heavily on the D/GM, especially when they are voicing NPCs.
Because of this, I was very interested to hear why Shannon didn’t feel the need to use character voices during their gaming sessions. Throughout the six group meetings when I observed him and the group, I had never heard Shannon use a character voice and he informed me that, even in other games, he usually does not, unless “it’s an NPC [he] really like[s].” He isn’t opposed to the idea of character voices, even citing Matthew Mercer (the DM for Critical Role) as someone whose creativity he admires. But he recognizes that keeping a consistent voice for hours at a time requires significant effort and practice.
If I did [voice an NPC], it wasn’t for very long because most of the guys just wanna roll
dice and play. They don’t wanna get that involved. You know, it depends on your
players, too, and, this Star Wars group, they’re not that interested in fully acting it out.
[…] I’ve seen it more so in conventions. You know, people do more of the role-playing
part of it, where other people just wanna describe what they’re gonna do and then just roll
dice and make something up that goes along with it.
As with most D/GMs, Shannon defaults to the comfort level of his players. If they want to use their natural speaking voices, he’s not going to force them to adopt a character voice.
Although Shannon doesn’t recall using character voices recently, he reflected, “Probably when it was earlier, I did more stuff like that, but now I spend my energy elsewhere,” referring to his almost three decades of experience in TRPGs and the fact that he has other preparations on which he focuses his mental energy and limited time (8 August 2019). For Shannon, character
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voices are a creative tool for players, but one that he recognizes takes effort, time, and a certain level of comfort. But how do the rest of the players in the Star Wars group feel about them?
When asked whether they use character voices, both Lexi and Eric replied that they only resort to them for a brief time when they desire a comedic effect. For example, Eric stated he would occasionally make Wookie noises and Lexi cited their previous campaign where she would often mock her brother’s robot character in an automated, android-like voice. Shaine, on the other hand, simply replied, “Not really. I mean, no” (8 August 2019). The two remaining players, Scott and Isaac, did not use character voices during the time I observed their group.
Players in this Star Wars group did not use character voices, but that did not stop them from using their voices in other ways that enhanced the sonic environment of the gaming sessions.
As Lexi noted during her interview, although she doesn’t utilize a full-on character voice, she does change her vocal tone when speaking as her character, including a change of vocabulary to suit the character’s speaking style. Rather than a total change of voice, she slightly alters the cadence of her speech and switches her point of view while addressing other players. For example, rather than asking Shannon, “What is that droid doing?” she would instead ask, “Hey!
What do you think you’re doing?” Eric also informed me that he changes his vocabulary, depending on the type of character he is addressing. As he puts it, “I’ve been known to drop a
‘your majesty’ or ‘sir,’ just doing enough to indicate that it’s my character speaking” (1
September 2019).
Shaine did not indicate that he had similar changes in his vocabulary but noted that he was more likely to manipulate his voice for brief periods of time if he was playing a droid or a
Wookie – both characters that have distinctive, short bursts of sound in the Star Wars franchise.
Also notable during the sessions I observed is that all five players made sound effects during
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battle scenes at least once; after the first sound effect was made, it became much more likely that another player would join in either at that moment or a short time later. Common sonic imitations included the sound of blasters, noises of distress from their characters, or even mock explosion sounds. The Star Wars group still manages to manipulate their voices in ways that increase their immersion and invite other players to join in the vocal play.
The group achieves an immersive environment without using character voices and does not feel inclined to use them. When I questioned Shannon as to why that might be, he made the claim that none of them are really “theater-y people.” However, Lexi, Shaine, and Isaac have all participated in high school theater, including singing and speaking parts on stage (all of which I witnessed) and Eric informed me that he also did theater in high school. Furthermore, Shannon started DMing not long after he was first introduced to TRPGs – not a small feat in performing for other people while following an intricate set of rules.
As I learned from my informants, the main disinclination to using character voices stemmed not from a lack of performance experience, but from the absence of anyone else doing so. As Shaine told me, “I think my dad’s friends would think it was weird” (8 August 2019).
Lexi also stated that her dad never used character voices when she was growing up, but she also added that she felt it took away from the relaxing nature of the game. “I feel like the purpose of using a character voice is, like, someone who’s taking it super serious. If someone did a very distinct character voice, however their character sounds, I would just end up getting annoyed”
(30 July 2019). While Lexi felt strongly against using character voices, Eric stated that he
“would give it a shot” (1 September 2019). However, both he and Shaine were adamant that they would be unwilling to be the only player using a character voice.
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For the players in this Star Wars group, not using character voices is a decision based on the precedent set by senior players and is enforced by the desire to keep the gaming environment relaxed and comfortable for everyone involved. Changing their vocal tones and vocabulary and adding cinematic sound effects are all ways of enhancing comedy and immersion in their gaming situations. In Kane’s terms, they use the echos of their voices to keep the logos of their words and sound effects light and fun. Any significant or constant changes in echos would disturb the environment they want to preserve.
Overall, I attribute the absence of intentional character voices to a matter of experience for this particular group, rather than a matter of a different literary genre, lack of performance experience, or personality type. While Isaac’s, Lexi’s, and Shaine’s gaming involvement have been heavily influenced by the precedents set by Shannon, Shannon and Eric have both played various systems, including D&D and Basic Fantasy. 43 The level of familiarity with various gaming systems among these five players is different, but the common result is an absence of character voices not only in their Star Wars sessions, but also a lack of character voices in any
TRPG sessions. The most common reason given for not using character voices is that no one else in the group did them and that using a character voice would feel awkward or like they were
“trying too hard.” By all accounts, it seems that these Star Wars players are perfectly fine using their own voices for their characters and feel no loss of immersion with their absence. They are not accustomed to them, they don’t want them, and they have a great time anyway.
43 Shaine has also played D&D and Basic Fantasy, but he was introduced to TRPGs by his father and almost all of his sessions have been with his dad acting as D/GM. In the instances where one of Shannon’s friends was the D/GM, his dad was still present as a player in those sessions. Shaine is an autonomous player, but his father’s influence on his playing style is undeniable.
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Samantha and Jack and the McElroys
Among all my informants, Samantha was the newest to playing tabletop role-playing games. She began playing 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons with her boyfriend, Jack, in May of
2019 – three months before I interviewed her in August of the same year. We became close friends when we met as undergraduate music majors, and we reconnected over dinner one night to discuss her newest foray into tabletop role-playing games. She regularly plays in two different campaigns with three other people: Jack, his roommate (Kevin), and his roommate’s girlfriend
(Ally). The personnel are the same for both, but Jack is the DM for one game and Ally is the DM for the other.
Being in two campaigns concurrently is not abnormal for TRPG players, and Sam takes full advantage to make her characters very different from each other; they’re different classes, different races, and for only one does she use a character voice. Like many other players who use character voices, hers is based on a specific person. Whereas others may model their voice on specific celebrities or movie tropes, hers is based on a co-worker.
She’s Jamaican and I’ve always really liked her voice. When I go into my character, I try
to talk and imitate her. It does not always come out right, but when it does, I’m really,
really proud. […] When I see her, I try to really listen and understand her. She does
Catholic church services – I saw her here on Sunday – and I try to really get her voice.
There are times where I feel bad because I feel like I’m not always getting it right.
When Samantha informed me that she imitates a Jamaican woman’s voice, I immediately worried about the racial, exoticizing connotations of this imitation. However, she addressed my
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concerns before I could ask her about it. “At first I kind of felt bad about the voice because I was like, ‘Am I being racist by doing this?’ I think no because I’m still trying to educate myself at the same time. I’m trying to be creative, but I’m also trying to be logical, using both sides of my brain to just keep learning about how to speak like that and still just enjoying it, too” (13 August
2019).
Although Samantha recognizes an issue with imitating her coworker’s racialized voice, she sees it as a way to educate herself about another way of speaking. In her mind, she is not presenting a vocal caricature of someone she knows. Instead, she tries her best to speak in a way that is closest to the original voice as possible and pays extra attention to when she hears her speak in person. This does not erase the racialized and exoticized connotations of the voice, but
Samantha is trying to present it in a respectful manner based on personal experience.
Also significant about the campaign in which Samantha participates is how much current technology has affected its storyline and its gameplay. For instance, Jack uses a voice modulator to move between different character voices. According to Samantha, the program that he uses orders them from higher to lower in pitch, with an added “other” category for vocal effects.
Creatures such as ghosts are high in pitch, goblins are middle to low, and trolls and orcs are lower. Miscellaneous vocal effects include names like “Boombox” or “Cathedral,” which makes the voice echo.
Jack’s campaign is also dependent on new media from the Balance campaign created by
Clint, Griffin, Justin, and Travis McElroy on The Adventure Zone podcast. Using Kane’s concept of technê and the voice in the introduction of this chapter, this showcases both the “technology” and “technique” components of technê. Jack’s voice is changed through the voice modulation, but what he says (logos), how he says it (echos), and how he presents the originating character
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(topos) are all filtered through a widely known campaign from a podcast. Without podcasting technology, his campaign would not exist; without the voice modulator, his character voices would not be as distinct. Without the constituent of technê, I would not be able to present or fully analyze Jack’s specific use of voice, and might even dismiss it as unimportant. Technê allows a nuanced evaluation of how voice exists in the modern tabletop role-playing game environment.
Samantha has been able to amplify her own voice by playing D&D. Giving her character a voice – whether it is her natural speaking voice or an altered form – has helped her become more decisive and confident in her daily decisions.
For me, D&D has just helped me make more choices. Growing up my dad was the one
who always helped me make decisions. And, since he’s passed, I’ve been always like,
“Oh, I don’t know what to do and I’m so lost.” I feel like D&D honestly has been helping
me be more assertive in what I choose. I remember the first day I started playing I was
like, “Oh man, this is hard, and I’m not good at this.” And now that I play, I feel more
confident in my choices. I don’t have to think about it as much. I just do what I’m gonna
do. It’s not really a question anymore. It’s a statement (13 August 2019).
For Samantha, Dungeons & Dragons has allowed her to find her figurative and literal voice in the context of the game and in her real, everyday life. As I discuss more in the next section, it is important to remember that the voice is not an entity separate from everyday life, but rather an integral part of regular life in substantial, real ways.
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Politics of the Voice
Interview with Noah, Minneapolis, July 7, 2019:
D&D – I think this may have been brought up yesterday – but D&D is a horrendously,
horrendously offensive and biased game. The culture of D&D is very much so
exclusionist. It is based in a fictional time period where this sort of thing would be
commonplace. There is a caste system, there are echelons of nobility, and there are falls
from grace. I mean, you are effectively a racist no matter what you do. It is very hard not
to be, in some way, shape, or form, bigoted in D&D as a player. Your player can be the
best player in the world, the most morally upstanding, and, still, there will almost always
be a case where you can’t be good to everything, you can’t be good to everyone, because
of the nature of the created reality that you’re a part of. That, by itself, makes judging
much easier, and, strangely, you feel less guilt about it as a player.
Whether players use their voice to create a character, to add sound effects, through a voice modulator, or in a regular speaking tone to communicate in-game and non-game information, how players hear and process voices within gaming sessions is not divorced from their daily life. As Sarah put it, “In the same way that we judge people in real life, we judge people based on the voices that Chuck gives them in D&D” (5 August 2019). Games, and play in general, are often seen as a respite from or separate from our regular lives, but how we act and how people act with us during these games have real-life consequences.
In the fifth chapter of Sound Play, William Cheng discusses this phenomenon of real and virtual worlds colliding through the voice chat of online video games. Cheng discusses how
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players who engage in voice chat are harassed if they have feminine, young, or “foreign” (read: non-English) voices and will often remain silent in order to avoid being degraded in these social spaces. For the young, perceived-female, and/or ESL voices in the chat, harassment is not an experience that goes away as soon as they turn off their gaming console. Rather, those experiences follow from the screen and proliferate into many subsequent human interactions.44
The reality of the voice chat becomes an extension of their daily life into those game worlds.
They don’t get the benefit of their voices being heard on an equivalent level to white-sounding, male voices, and the attitudes in the voice chat reinforce that. Additionally, the offending players are more brazen with their abuse because they are separated by physical miles and a computer or
TV screen. Just as Noah observed, players use the game to justify their provocative attitudes, either because it fits within the fiction of the world or because it’s “just a game.”
There are important differences to point out between Cheng’s described situations and
TRPG sessions. In tabletop role-playing games, players typically know each other – and know each other well – before they meet. They meet face-to-face, so players cannot hide their identities. In addition, because players meet in person, there is not a boundary between “virtual” and “real;” there are still distinctions between “real” and the game, but these lines are more easily blurred, especially when players engage in talk that is geared toward their everyday lives and not focused on the gaming session. Finally, TRPG players do not experience voices as
“acousmatic sounds,” a sound whose source is hidden from the listener.45
44 As Randall Collins explains in Interaction Ritual Chains (2004), “Perhaps the best we might say is that the local structure of interaction is what generates and shapes the energy of the situation. That energy can leave traces, carrying over to further situations because individuals bodily resonate with emotions, which trail off in time but may linger long enough to charge up a subsequent encounter, bringing yet further chains of consequences” (6). Following his logic, every interaction we have leads us to a new pathway and ways we can react in following encounters. Negative energy traces have a higher chance of negative effects, and positive energy traces have a higher chance of positive effects. 45 The definition of the term was famously included in Pierre Schaeffer’s Treatise on Musical Objects: An Essay Across Disciplines (Traité des objets musicaux: essai interdisciplines) (1966).
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As posited by Cheng, matching the voice to an identity – gender, education level, socioeconomic class, race, age, ethnicity, etc. – is a common tendency among video gamers.
Similar stereotyping can happen among TRPG players.
So, a great example from last night would be our lovely alchemist, who we immediately
assume – because of his flamboyant attitude and the fact that he’s a high elf and he’s got
this ridiculous, ridiculous voice – we assume that he is clearly gay. We immediately go to
our stereotypes. And, it’s entertaining for me, being part of that [LGBTQ+] community,
that that’s immediately where my mind goes and I’m like, “Well, of course, this is the
metrosexual elf voice,” because I’m familiar with Chuck’s metrosexual elf voice.
Here, Noah tells us that, although he is part of the very community that is subject to this type of stereotyping, he still finds himself falling into the traps of vocal politics. He continues:
Whenever I think about it in retrospect, I’m like, “Wow, this is horrible of me!” But at
the same time, I’m like, “Wow, this is also D&D.” So, I draw conclusions just based on
some of the voices that I will hear on a consistent basis, because those voices will often
dictate whether I’m looking at a friend or a foe, whether I’m looking at someone who I’m
going to be able to have a dialogue with in-game, and whether or not it’s going to turn
into any type of interaction that might be positive for me or serve me better in game (7
July 2019).
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Again, Noah finds justification for these vocal caricatures because they are mediated through the screen of D&D vocal politics. He accepts this as part of playing the game, even though he second guesses the vocal stereotyping during and after the game session.
The Restona group has found itself in another situation of vocal politics in past sessions, not with an identity based on gender or sexuality, but perceived intelligence based primarily on the accent Chuck chose to use for an NPC. As Sarah narrated to me:
There was a mayor of a small town, he was one of our favorite characters. He’s a wyvern
guy that Chuck kept mentioning. We thought he was dumber than a brick, but he wasn’t
dumber than a brick and we got into a lot of trouble for making that assumption. […] The
accent he chose for this guy, not only was this character really excitable and happy, he
also just had this dumb accent. Like, this guy clearly, clearly has to be low intelligence.
He’s too happy, he’s too excited, and he talks like he’s, you know, a Slavic housewife on
helium (5 August 2019).
Consequently, D/GMs can use common TRPG vocal stereotypes to play with or push against players’ assumptions about character representations. After my session with Chris, he wanted to make sure that I understood that the druid character he played was a jerk, but he didn’t want to tell me that directly.
I would not describe to you a character as annoying. Because it could be annoying to him
but not to you. So, I don’t wanna force an emotional interpretation of an NPC on you,
right? I would describe him and do things and you might be annoyed with him. Or, I
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know how to push your buttons if I’ve played with you for a long time. You can use the
voice to carry over a message, but you would not imply the reception of a message (1
August 2019).
Here, Chris makes the point that when the DM knows their players, it is easier for them to take advantage of the assumptions their players have made in past sessions. He also clarifies that, while he doesn’t believe the sound of the voice can decide the personality of an NPC (for example, if that character is annoying or not), the actions that the character takes give players a chance to learn more about the NPC. While I agree that dialogue in TRPGs is not a reliable source of information on its own, the only way DMs can portray NPC actions is through their own voice. Whereas Chris focused on the sonic aspect of the voice (echos), I include the actions in the logos part of the voice because those actions are a representation of the meaning that a DM seeks to communicate to their players. The accent or dialect that Chris uses to represent a character may not affect the players’ perception of them in a meaningful way, but the actions that
Chris details should not be excluded from how voice affects the TRPG experience.
As Chris clarified, a DM’s familiarity with their players allows them to influence the players through NPC voices, but it also leaves players more prone to manipulation. One example of this is giving an NPC a voice, or even using a specific vocabulary, to convince players that a new character is trustworthy. I witnessed an example of this deceit during my fieldwork with the
Wanners. Shannon purposely used short answers, a calm delivery, and noncommittal wording to convince his players to allow a shipment of evil robots board their ship without question. When
Shannon revealed the deception, players claimed to have known it was a trick the whole time,
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but none of them alerted their teammates in the moment because the character seemed trustworthy and unproblematic.
DMs will often combine their knowledge of stereotypes in TRPGs and the assumptions they know their players are likely to make, only to subvert those exact stereotypes and assumptions. An example of this comes from Alex, one of my first informants who answered my questions on three separate occasions.
I think that the way you present your character and their voice tries to inform the listener
of what to generally expect from the character, which is why it’s always a surprise when
the troll you’ve been talking with with the scraggly voice says, “How lovely, would you
like to join me for dinner?” and just pulls out a whole bunch of bread or something. That
really throws [players] for a loop because they think they’ve got to fight this mean nasty
troll who is really just ready to communally eat with some people. Yeah, it’s the
character voices that I do that try to inform my players of what to expect. So, like, if I do
a high-pitched nasally voice, they tend to know that it’s more like a hoity-toity person,
sort of high up in the upper echelons of society, something like that, rather than using a
very slang-covered vocabulary for the sort of roguish character. So, it’s definitely to set
expectations, and then also to subvert those expectations when some sort of event calls
for it (21 October 2019).
Alex explains the exact reasons that voices in tabletop role-playing games, whether natural or character, can never truly be neatly categorized. At any moment, players can assert
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their vocal autonomy by playing into or purposely subverting stereotypes as a way to keep everyone else alert.
The Vocal Layer
In this chapter I have demonstrated that voice is the most fundamental, inescapable dimension of the soundscape in tabletop role-playing games. The players of Restona have subtle character voices, but their DM employs a handful of fully formed accents depending on the type of character he wants to play, some of which are based on previous parts of their campaign together. While Chuck keeps his character voices going throughout the session, Chris posits that players only need a taste of an accent. From there, they are fully capable of filling in the sound of the character’s voice using their own imaginations. Adam and Robert and the Star Wars group don’t use typical character voices, but that does not prevent them from manipulating their voices in other ways to engage players through humor, references to popular media, or through unexpected plots twists while taking full advantage of their vocal autonomy. Samantha and Jack take character voices even further than Restona or Chris do and filter them through modern technology to create more options for voices that weren’t previously possible. Whether players decide to use their natural speaking voice or change it, tabletop role-playing games are created and recreated through the voice. I present voices as the first sonic layer in tabletop role-playing games because they are fundamental to the very existence of these games.
Of all four sonic/ perceptual layers that I propose, voice is the most complex and expansive. When I asked Adam what types of sounds he expects to hear during D&D, his immediate response was, “People talking over each other. […] If we were in a scenario where,
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you know, we had eleven people and we heard a monster in the other room, we’re not gonna all run in there at the same time. We need to think about it, talk about it” (6 July 2019).
When people talk in tabletop role-playing games, their voices are bound to overlap and occasionally overwhelm each other at various points in the session. The DM may be addressing two players who decided to go the market and run into a talkative NPC, two players not involved in the market scene discuss what they’re going to have for dinner, and a third uninvolved player tries telling jokes to make fun of the accent of the market NPC. Even if the group is working toward a single goal – band together to fight the sudden monster that appeared! – there are bound to be differing opinions of how to defeat it. In tabletop role-playing games, voices are meant to overlap and travel. They come to the foreground when the DM is speaking but hide under music or ambient sounds when players whisper to each other. They center on the table and focus inward, but travel to the kitchen when a player decides to grab a soda. They erupt into cacophony when a player rolls a natural 20 but fade into shocked silence when a character is killed.46
Voices are the first and most important sonic layer of TRPGs, but the position of this layer is more fluid than that of music. The music used in these games typically originates from a single source that stays in the same position throughout gameplay. While the DM can vary the volume of the music at any time, it is more likely that they will set the volume and leave it unless it becomes intrusive. Voices, on the other hand, are dependent on their human speakers and change depending on the information players absorb from their surroundings.
For example, Robert bases his narrative decisions on how his players react to voices he gives NPCs.
46 Rolling a “natural 20” is the best number one can roll on a twenty-sided dice in most situations of D&D 5e. When they are rolled, players usually celebrate because it means the character will cause double damage in combat or pass their skill check with no problems.
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If I have a certain inflection or something happens where we get a persona defined and
[the players] are like, “Huh, I don’t trust this because of the way that he sounds.” I’ll use
that as feedback and usually kind of go with it and make them even more distrustful. I
mean, it’s very fluid. It’s very tough online, and I’m still getting used to that with that
group. Over a tabletop it’s really easy because you can watch people as you’re talking,
and you get that instantaneous reaction. You know, I use too loud of a voice and
everybody kind of cringes. Or, they say something, the first thing that comes to mind, and
I can attach that to the persona and give an identity to it and kind of go from there (17
July 2019).
Robert acknowledges several aspects of the voice here. First, that the feedback players provide to the DM – whether it is a facial expression or a vocal reaction – can change the course of an encounter. Second, the players are as important as the DM in building these stories, and their voices and opinions create elements of the world at the same time the DM is relaying that information. Finally, he admits that meeting in person streamlines this process of a vocal feedback loop.
The vocal layer is fluid and changes along with the whims of all TRPG players. While the sonic portion of the voice (echos) can determine a character’s mood or aura, logos provides players with linguistic meaning, technê takes into account through which medium the voice travels, and topos can tell us more about the speaker’s identity. By using Kane’s model for voice, describing specific contexts and aspects of the voice in TRPGs, and discussing how the in-game vocal presentations mimic our everyday experiences, I argue that voice is inseparable from tabletop role-playing games. Although I believe the vocal layer is the most important to these
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games, it would be inaccurate to claim that ambient noises and tactile sounds do not affect players as well. I discuss these layers of sound and perception in the following chapter.
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CHAPTER 4
HAPTIC AUDITION AND AMBIENT NOISE IN TABLETOP ROLE-PLAYING GAMES
The Wanner’s Game Room
A large portion of the Wanner’s basement is dedicated to “the game room.” It’s hard to know what a newcomer’s eyes would be drawn to first as there are several interesting features in the room. Perhaps the three 2’ x 8’ white folding tables, arranged so two lengthwise tables run perpendicular to a single, horizontal table, and the surrounding chairs would capture your attention. Perhaps the wall that is directly opposite the main entrance and covered in Star Wars memorabilia – everything from figurines to Lego recreations to collector beer bottles – would occupy any fan for a few minutes. Upon stepping into the room, perhaps the main site of fascination would be the left wall covered with boxes and boxes filled with comic books, the right wall overflowing with board games, or the wall connecting to the main door chock full of role-playing manuals like Dungeons & Dragons, SWRPG, and Vampire: The Masquerade.
Whatever the first-time observer finds most interesting, it is clear from the moment they step into the room that this is a space for gaming, and gaming with others.
However, there is a portion of the room that includes two small couches and a large armchair facing a television mounted to the wall. When I asked Lexi, Shaine, Eric, and Shannon about distractions, they most often stated that the TV being on as they played – usually being watched by the Wanner’s youngest child – was the hardest to ignore, especially if the player happened to sit facing the TV. Other distractions included any of the three resident cats vying for attention, noise coming from the upstairs TV, or even rollerblading on the top floor in years past, according to Eric. It’s also interesting to note that the Wanners keep the door to their game room
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open during their sessions and Shannon’s wife and youngest child will often come down to say a quick hello or even offer snacks.
Tabletop gamers are particular about the areas in which they play. It’s true that the space described above was largely designed by Shannon, so it doesn’t speak to the taste of every player in the room. However, from interviews with Shaine, Lexi, and Eric, it is clear they all enjoy seeing tabletop memorabilia surrounding them, having plenty of space to spread out their various sheets and rulebooks, and being comfortable both physically and mentally. Throughout this chapter, I build the case that the design of and lived gaming experiences in these rooms contribute to the spatial and tactile qualities that players desire for maximum immersion.
Furthermore, these spaces give us clues as to what kind of sonic distractions are accepted or even expected during sessions.
First, I describe “haptic audition” and how the listening done in TRPGs closely involves social, tactile, and spatial aspects of the game. Then, I discuss gaming in private residences and how ambient noise affects that type of environment. Next, I examine my own experience at conventions as well as my informants’ experiences in other public spaces, then further describe how ambient noise has the potential to be harmful to immersion in gaming (i.e., sonic distractions). To conclude this chapter, I revisit my model of sonic/ perceptual layers to describe the third and fourth layers.
An Introduction to Haptic Audition
In this study of tabletop role-playing games, “haptic audition” involves the multisensorial nature of TRPGs, especially the interplay between touch and hearing. As the name suggests, audition is the main activity and “haptic” modifies and defines it as being related to tactility,
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which in this context relates to both physical and mental presence during TRPG sessions. This concept is inspired by Laura U. Marks’s “haptic visuality,” which describes the phenomenon of touch contributing to a comprehensive visual experience. She pairs haptic visuality with optical visuality, stating that haptics can help us understand our vision at close range, but that we rely on our optical visuality to view things that are far away. For example, I may be unsure of whether the dots on dice are concave markings or merely painted spots on each side. I can make this distinction when I touch any side of the dice, suddenly helping my eyes understand what they are seeing. However, if I am curious about the player’s dice across the table from me, I would need to rely on visual cues to answer my question. It is also important to note that Marks uses the term in the context of a filmmaking strategy where viewers undergo a visually haptic experience, which video and film essentially don’t do. Haptic audition in tabletop role-playing games, however, deals with two senses that are foregrounded in the gaming experience.
I have argued for the inherently sonic nature of TRPGs in my previous chapters on music and voice, but haptic audition involves the type of sound that is not easily separated from tactility and physical presence: ambient noise. Ambient noise in TRPGs comes from dice rolling, paper shuffling, pencil scratching, and whatever other sounds human actors cause while manipulating objects around them. Additionally, humans create bodily noises that are not traditionally classified as “voice.” They take sharp inward breaths when they have a bad dice roll, pound on the table when they’re shocked by the sudden appearance of a monster, laugh when an NPC tells an unexpected joke, and crunch on chips when they have a moment to eat. Finally, in the cases where groups do not have music or recorded sound playing during gameplay, ambient noise will include sounds within their immediate vicinity – the fridge running, the air conditioner turning on, etc.
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All these sounds heard separately amount to nothing extraordinary, but their combination constructs the underlying sonic/ perceptual layer of all TRPG sessions. Although players in my study rarely acknowledged being consciously aware of any of the above types of sounds, I posit that they keep players in an interactive state of mind even when they are not strictly related to the game. Ambient noises remind players that they are physically and mentally present in a specific place while reinforcing human, tactile, and interactive elements of gameplay.
As Nina Eidsheim discusses in Sensing Sound (2015), one’s bodily reaction to a piece of music changes when the space in which it is performed changes. It follows that one’s reaction to sound in general also changes depending on the surrounding environment, a topic I discuss in the following sections, which focus on a comparison of public versus private settings for tabletop role-playing games.
Gaming in Private: Space, Sound, and Tactility
In this section, I examine how sound, space, and tactility contribute to playing environments by consulting responses from my informants. Near the beginning of interviews, I asked my informants to talk about the spaces in which they typically played, discovering that their own private residences or those of friends were by far the most common. The exact answers varied. The garage, the dining room, the living room, and a room specifically for gaming were all settings that one or more of my informants named. But they all had one thing in common: a table. In TRPG environments, the table – or a similarly large, flat surface – is the most necessary piece of furniture. Players need to have room for their character sheets, dice, writing utensils, and rulebooks (unless they put everything on a tablet or phone). As Esteban explains, “Sitting at a table, it lends the experience formality such that it’s not like we’re sprawled on various couches
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and loveseats. We’re all sitting at the same table doing the same thing” (20 August 2019). The table is important for practical reasons, but the way it defines the gaming session as a unique space where players come together to accomplish a common goal is just as significant. The table marks sessions as liminal moments and spaces where real life can be suspended for hours but can and will return when the game ends or is interrupted.
To stave off potential interruptions, players tend to be choosy about the rooms they select for their gaming activities. The Restona group plays in a dining room with plenty of natural light and an open view of the kitchen and the living room. Esteban and Ezra play in what was meant to be a second bedroom in their apartment, but they converted it into a makeshift game room complete with a large dining room table and shelves of games along the walls. The Wanners, as I described, have a large gaming room dedicated to comic books, TRPG rulebooks, and fandom- inspired figurines. Chris’s friend has an entire room dedicated to D&D. There is a semi-circular table in the middle of the room, each seat has a drawer with a laptop that can be pulled out for that player, there is a snack and minibar in the room, and there are white boards along the walls where players can draw or display maps. To quote Chris’s description, “He went full nerd on it”
(1 August 2019).
Clearly, players put a lot of thought into where they want to play, and their answers reflect this. However, when I asked about sounds within their playing spaces – sounds beyond those associated with voices or music specifically – it was generally harder to get direct answers.
Some mentioned dice rolling or paper shuffling or pencils scratching, but I was surprised by how difficult it was for players to come up with a list of common ambient noises in TRPGs. I had a list of sounds in my head that I thought they might bring up, but they often did not. I thought this might be the result of my hyper-focus on sound when I play in these environments – a type of
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focus perhaps more common among musicians and musicologists than non-musician TRPG players – but I now believe it is more likely that players simply didn’t think those types of sounds were important to the sonic environments of TRPGs. According to Adam, “It’s background noise that you expect to be there, and if all of a sudden the sounds were taken out, we would be like, ‘What? Why isn’t it making any noise?’” (6 July 2019). Ambient noises might be vital to creating the haptic environment that players subconsciously expect, but they are by no means the noises that are foregrounded in their minds.
What surprised me most when I asked about expected sounds was how often players mentioned noises created by human vocal tracts, especially when I specified that voice should not be included in their response.
Chuck: I’ve already mentioned that you’ll hear people cheer. They’ll laugh, they’ll ask
questions, they may speak up in, or out of, character (6 July 2019).
Noah: You get a lot of small, familiar sounds that are associated specifically with your
table and how it is run. And those sounds are actually strangely comforting, but you also
have various associations with them. So, I will take sounds like the way in which Chuck
sighs. Chuck will sigh one of two ways, depending on how he has rolled, and I don’t even
have to look up anymore to know whether he rolled wonderfully well or just
horrendously (7 July 2019).
Adam: I guess [one would hear] people laughing, people scooting around in their chairs,
getting up to go to the bathroom, doors opening and closing when they leave the room.
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Snacks, I guess. Everyone has chips or whatever. Like, that’s white noise to me (6 July
2019).
All three informants mention vocal noises – laughter, cheers, and sighs – but Adam also describes noises that he associates with people eating and moving around. Many other informants pointed to these humanly enacted sounds, and none of them found these noises distracting, unless they were done to purposely be disrespectful and disruptive. Sounds relating specifically to humans, then, are not understood as sounds that don’t belong in the game. Players process all those sounds as part of the experience and are not distracted by them, even when they exist outside the gameworld.
Ultimately, players want to be comfortable, and they want to have time and space away from their everyday lives. Carefully chosen and designed spaces help provide that comfort, time, and space, and they improve the sonic experience. When people feel comfortable in and are familiar with their gaming space, they don’t need to ask where the bathroom is or if they can have a soda from the mini-fridge or incessantly fidget in a low-quality plastic chair. Being comfortable allows players to move throughout their gaming space without being self-conscious, giving them more energy to focus on the game.
Sound and space are closely linked in these game settings, and so too is tactility. This is where I turn to the concept of haptic audition. My use of haptic relates to physical touch and incorporates the idea of being present – physically and mentally. I focus on testimony from
Robert, who has had considerable experience with in-person and online campaigns, to expand on the interconnection between sound, space, and touch. Robert explains that, “There’s a real difference between playing online and playing around a table. You get that immediate feedback.
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One of the things for the DM to do is try to keep everybody interested, right? It’s easier if you can see somebody whose attention may be wandering to kind of pull them back in” (17 July
2019).
It is easy to say that seeing a person’s face is visual, not tactile, but this ignores the complexity of being in a shared space with other people. When Robert plays campaigns online, he does not have visual cues from players’ faces, but he retains the ability to hear them. Physical presence in live gaming environments allows everyone full access to sonic and visual cues that players manifest during gameplay. Haptic, then, is describing being physically present in these spaces and having the ability to draw on sonic, visual, and tactile cues.
In Elevator Music Joseph Lanza explains, “When entering a public space such as a supermarket or a mall, shoppers are entitled to an aural escape – a sound mark that delineates the safe retail environment from the more cacophonous and unwieldy world outside” (228).47 Lanza focuses on the use of music in public spaces, but the same concept can be applied to private spaces and ambient noise/ human sounds. Players expect a certain sonic environment, and when those noises are missing – as Adam remarked at the beginning of this section – players notice and are unsettled by their absence. Games set in private residences rely on intersections of space, sound, and tactility to create an immersive environment that marks that space as different from the “unwieldy world outside” (Lanza 2004, 228).
47 Lanza’s use of the term “sound mark” is a reference to R. Murray Schafer’s description of soundscapes in The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (1977). Schafer characterizes a “sound mark” as a sound that is significant and recognizable within the space of a specific community.
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Gaming in Public: Conventions
Private residences are the most typical setting for tabletop role-playing games, which are customarily played in the room containing the largest table. However, at least since the late
1960s when Gen Con first ran as a wargaming convention, conventions have served as spaces for communal gaming as well. Many people who are not introduced to the activity through family or friends have their first experience with TRPGs in comic book, hobby, or gaming stores. Gaming in public spaces is a reality for thousands of people and I feel my thesis would be incomplete without at least addressing this fact and describing how these spaces change the TRPG experience. This section focuses on my own experience at conventions, convention participation through the eyes of my informants, and their exposure to other public gaming spaces.
My fieldwork at gaming conventions led me to two very different settings. Unlike Gen
Con with its primary gaming focus, CONvergence is conceptualized as more of a “fan” convention, including fandoms ranging from TV shows, anime, literary fiction, and, of course, board and tabletop role-playing games. Although Gen Con involves similar fandoms, most of the convention is dedicated to tabletop gaming of all sorts. CONvergence is less than a tenth the size of Gen Con in terms of attendees (approximately 6,000 people versus 70,000); attendees at
CONvergence take over a single hotel, whereas Gen Con spans the Indiana Convention Center,
Lucas Oil Stadium, and a network of nearby hotels. CONvergence’s overall theme has a wider scope and encourages both casual and dedicated fans and players, whereas Gen Con has a more specific target audience. Gen Con attracts more hardcore gamers of all sorts, but popular media and casual fans are not excluded from the convention.
As a researcher whose main goal was to find informants and observe the public gaming environments of these events, I was surprised to find that I felt more relaxed at Gen Con. The
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number of attendees was at first overwhelming, but this also presented me with more chances to meld into the crowd and identify myself as a researcher at appropriate moments. CONvergence had a smaller pool of total attendees, and the people who were interested in playing TRPGs during the convention could mostly fit in a single conference room with five tables offering a different gaming system at set times. I felt more pressure to make a good impression on the smaller group at CONvergence, whose attention I could not avoid if I offended anyone. Gen Con was so large that I rarely encountered any of my informants on more than the single occasion of an interview or gaming session with them.
During CONvergence, I observed one session of D&D 5e, played one four-hour session of the same system, and interviewed two attendees: Noah and Chuck. My ability to join in TRPG sessions was severely limited because there were sign-up sheets for each session, a fact that was not mentioned in any advertising materials for new attendees but that returning players already knew. Gen Con’s marketing was clear about the need to purchase tickets to sessions well in advance, so I was able to participate in two sessions of D&D 5e and one session each of D&D
2e, Pathfinder 2e, and D&D 3.5e. Sessions ranged in length from two to six hours. I spent the rest of my time taking in the sights of cosplay, Cardhalla, musical performances, and games happening in the halls of the Indiana Convention Center, or perusing the exhibit hall looking for vendors related to TRPGs and sound.48 Chris was the only in-person interview I completed while at Gen Con, but the connections I made while at the convention allowed me to interview Sam,
Esteban, and Ben over the phone and Mike and I R NUB via email.
48 Cardhalla is an event that Gen Con runs every year where attendees build city structures out of donated gaming cards throughout the four-day convention. At the end of the con, attendees throw coins at the structures to destroy them, all the coins are collected, and donated to charity.
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I had my first ever tabletop role-playing game experience at CONvergence. I worried that the idealized, edited, fast-paced movement of The Adventure Zone would ruin any live games of
D&D for me, but the session I played on Saturday was better than I could have hoped for in a one-shot game. I can say with complete confidence that the level of hype for Chuck that Noah and Sarah shared with me during our interviews was entirely appropriate. Rather than attempt to describe the whole four-hour session here, I will detail one scene that demonstrates how this type of public gaming environment is unique and different from private settings.
Swordhaven at CONvergence
Chuck gave all six players at the table the option of creating their own character or choosing a number of pre-generated characters that he had created for this adventure. I decided to create my own character and came to the table with a tiefling rogue who I named Dahlia
Cinderghast.49 Three hours into the game, we had moved through the town of Connie’s Tree; met a baker, an alchemist, and a barkeep; came across the burned remains of a house (which Dahlia and the barbarian decided to loot); and finally reached the castle of the goblin king.50 In order to find and defeat him, the party had to make it through the back entrance of the castle – the barbarian decided that he would distract all the goblins at the front entrance while we snuck in – but we were at a standstill.
Chuck described the hallway to the back entrance as having scorch marks along the wall and a foreboding angel statue at the end of the hall, which meant that it would likely burn us if
49 “Tiefling” is Dahlia’s race, which is a half-human, half-demon creature that starts out with minor magical properties and can have any combination of human/demon physical traits. “Rogue” is her class, meaning her role within the party was similar to a thief or a con person, using charisma or stealth to achieve her goals. 50 “Barbarian” is another class in D&D that refers to a fighter type who usually fights at close range. They are often the “tank” of the party, or the person who can take the most damage without dying.
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we tried to come any closer. I attempted a minor spell (a “cantrip”) to put pressure on several stones to see if that would trigger the trap, and the wizard casted a spell to see if motion would set it off; neither worked and our party brainstormed solutions for nearly ten minutes before
Chuck graciously chimed in that “somebody in the party has a resistance to fire,” as he looked pointedly at me. Dahlia’s demonic half provided thicker skin and she would take only half the fire damage than anyone else. As the entire party realized my mistake, the seasoned players laughed because it took them so long to remember, and the newer players (myself included) took delight in knowing there was a solution to this puzzle. The solution seemed obvious, but I was still worried that my character would die and began to feel nervous that I wouldn’t be able to play anymore.
Right before Chuck rolled his dice to decide my fate, a sudden uproar of voices barged through the open doors to the TRPG room at CONvergence. All the players in our party looked toward the doors to see what the commotion was, and I was reminded for the first time in a couple hours that there were two other groups in the room with us. Chuck, one of the three people able to see the cause of the commotion, matter-of-factly informed us, “There is chicken dancing going on out there.” The player to his right simply agreed, “Yep,” and we returned to the goblin king’s dungeon.
We quickly regained our focus, but that moment of distraction is something all TRPG players at conventions know: you cannot control the playing area outside of your table. As
Chuck explained, “In settings like [conventions], sometimes sound from other tables can be distracting if they get really noisy. Or, hearing crowd noise, especially since, in a setting like this, you cannot necessarily use music in your sessions” (6 July 2019). Here, Chuck reinforces his point that music helps mitigate outside distractions. Additionally, he shares that surrounding
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tables or general noise from convention goers has potential to distract players from their own games. I believe that these outside noises also help define group spaces more clearly.
Group Dynamics at Gen Con
At Gen Con, it is not uncommon to walk into a conference-style room containing five or six circular tables already filled with a group of players. The tables may be a few feet apart to give groups a little space, but no matter how far apart the tables are set, there will still be multiple parties filling the room with voices and noises that cross over and occasionally overwhelm each other. In the D&D Adventurers League session in which I participated, even placing the tables further apart was not possible because there were at least fifty tables in the room.51 The session I participated in was late at night and the majority of the tables were empty, but another party sat on the other side of a temporary wall and there were at least ten other groups spread throughout the space. I don’t recall any major interruptions, but the environment felt less immersive than my experience with Chuck at CONvergence, despite being in a larger room and physically further away from the other groups.
In my experience the physical proximity to other parties was not likely to alter my immersion. Instead, immersion in these convention settings relied heavily on the group I played with and the sonic cues we gave each other to indicate our commitment to our own party. One example of this happened while Esteban, Ezra, John, and I waited for TJ to arrive for the House of Cards session at Gen Con. We chatted about the characters we had chosen from Esteban’s
51 As the D&D Adventurers League’s website states on its homepage, “The D&D Adventurers League is an ongoing official campaign for Dungeons & Dragons. It uses the fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons rules, and features the Forgotten Realms setting. You can play D&D Adventurers League games literally anywhere. Players use the fifth edition rules to create a character and bring that character to games anywhere D&D Adventurers League play is happening.”
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selection of pre-generated sheets, and Esteban explained how this session of D&D would be different from the high fantasy we might expect. Esteban was interrupted by the group at the adjacent table as they all emitted loud shouts of protest and dismay. We turned our attention to their table to understand the reason for the shouts, and Esteban remarked that he knew the game.
Rather than be distracted by their interruption, he drew our thoughts back to him to tell us the rules of the game, including a small vignette regarding one of his memorable losses while playing it. Rather than allow us to be overwhelmed by this group’s sudden outburst, Esteban returned our attention to our table, offered a brief story, and effortlessly slipped back into telling us about the session he had planned for us. He demonstrated his skills as a DM by subtly reminding us of our function as a group and simultaneously set the tone for the rest of the session. He was perfectly fine with us controlling the flow of the story, but he would not allow us to become distracted by any unnecessary outside influences. I came to recognize this as a kind of pattern during my participant-observation of TRPG sessions.
The chicken dance from the hall caused genuine confusion, but Chuck described the disruption in a light-hearted manner, we laughed together, and then we reunited as a group. The people at the table next to us cheered loudly at their victory over the monster, yet Chris paid no attention, repeated his question to Garrett regarding the druid/chicken, and returned, along with the rest of us, to the problem at hand. The GM for the Pathfinder session in which I participated had a soft voice that was hard to hear over the chatter of seven other groups, but all six players leaned in further and listened more carefully to catch every word he said. In the face of too many voices and too many noises, convention players understand that there will be distractions, but they all have their own ways of adapting to this challenge.
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When the strangers you play games with at conventions are willing to adapt to the sonic environment, the experience is more enjoyable for the entire table. However, the challenge of playing with complete strangers and getting used to a new party is not one that all players are able to overcome. Players who disrupt the table dynamic break immersion for the rest of the party, often through the use of sonic cues.
Group Dissonance at Gen Con
I played my first and only session of D&D 2e at Gen Con in an environment that was tense before the game even started. “Ah, man, I hope that one guy doesn’t show up again today.
Literally, if I see him walk in, I’m just going to walk out the door.” I gathered from talk around the table that a player from the day before – I will call him Carl – had angered the entire table by ignoring other players’ vocal cues and detracting from the autonomy of the other gamers. The
DM for the session explained that Carl had been obsessed with the Player’s Handbook (PHB) before carrying out any of his spells, ruining the narrative flow of the game and wasting everyone’s time. To everyone’s dismay, Carl appeared five minutes later. The tension throughout the game was palpable until, finally, the player to my right snapped, chastising Carl for trying to delegate the actions of his character. “Look, I’ll play my character. You play yours,” he told Carl angrily. The brief outburst was followed by Carl sheepishly nodding and apologizing, but the playful mood around the table was ruined.
Another example rooted more deeply in my personal experience occurred in the
Adventurers League session I mentioned earlier. Throughout my time at Gen Con, women were either in the minority or not present at all. This particular session fell into the latter category; I played with a male DM and six other male players, and I was by far the least experienced TRPG
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player at the table. Throughout gameplay, my cognizance of being the only female flowed in and out of my consciousness. When the bard made sexually suggestive comments – including naming his character “Fingers” – I could feel the other players look towards me to see my reaction.52 There was some uneasiness when I informed everyone my character was male, but no one seemed surprised when two of the male players decided to play as female characters.
Moments like these made me hyperaware of my gender, but the most troubling incident occurred when the DM suddenly started discussing the rise in female representation in the PHB.
“Oh yeah, there are so many more female villains in the D&D modules.” He must have seen from the look on my face that an increase in demonized representations of women wasn’t a positive thing, because he quickly added, “Oh, and there are more female NPCs in the stories too! I think Pathfinder even changed all their pronouns to ‘she/her/hers’ in their rulebook.” At the time, I was cognizant of every male at that table nodding and supporting the DM. Any possibility for immersion or peak enjoyment during that session evaporated with the silent compliance of my fellow players. “Yes, of course women – and people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community and people differently abled – play TRPGs because we can see them in rulebooks!” was the argument, but the irony of our complete whiteness and me being the single female at the table was lost on (or willfully ignored by) those players and the DM. For the first time since my excursion into TRPGs began, I wondered if this type of gaming truly had a place for me.
If the recurring issue of inclusivity is relegated to representations in rulebooks – representations that do not depict or reflect actual players – how inclusive are these games? The
52 The bard is a character class that is stereotypically hypersexualized. Their “charisma” trait is typically high, so charming people with their songs and tales is their specialty. Players often take advantage of this built-in stereotype and overplay the sexuality of their character.
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answer depends on which systems your party plays, how the DM chooses to frame worlds, and how players react to and participate in these worlds. The uncomfortable session I joined in the
D&D Adventurers League happened within the system of Dungeons & Dragons, but I had a wonderfully immersive and inclusive session during Esteban and Ezra’s House of Cards one-shot that they ran using D&D 3.5e.
Each of our characters was diagnosed with a serious mental condition that required us to be under full-time surveillance, temporarily or permanently, depending on the nature of the event that caused our admission to Emily Card’s Sanatorium. I was nervous about playing a woman diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder because I knew nothing about it, but Ezra has a degree in neuroscience and provided me with more detail on the condition. The game could have easily devolved into stereotypical portrayals of mental illnesses, but we were all determined to play our characters in more realistic and sensitive ways, often pausing to ask Ezra about common symptoms and triggers to see if an action we wanted to take would match our diagnosis.
Esteban and Ezra ran House of Cards using an edition of D&D that many of my informants believed was tedious and more combat-focused (3.5e), but their homebrewed one- shot was built on role-playing and character development more than any other TRPG session I have played. The system did not decide how the game was played; rather, the DM offered their vision of a unique and nuanced world and the players agreed to follow this vision by carefully maintaining this fantasy world through the portrayal of their characters. The system (although not the same edition) that had caused me such great discomfort in the Adventurers League is the same system that gifted me one of my favorite TRPG experiences to date.
It is important to clarify that D&D and Pathfinder are not the only tabletop role-playing games. They are the most common for people to play, but games that are specifically marketed to
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marginalized people and subjects are increasing in number as the TRPG market makes room for players with more varied life experiences. For example, Allen Turner, a Lecturer in Game
Development and Interactive Media at DePaul University, designed Ehdrigohr: A Role-Playing
Game to follow the lore of Native Americans and indigenous peoples rather than the European- centric, Tolkien-inspired high fantasy of games like D&D. One Child’s Heart, written by
Camdon Wright, deals with childhood trauma; ImagiNation from Postmodern Studios focuses on coping with depression; Dream Askew by Avery Alder is set in a post-apocalyptic world that centers on queer life and coping methods; Bedlam Beautiful by D. Vincent Baker and Meguey
Baker deals with physical and emotional violence against people with mental illnesses, especially women. New systems and campaigns are constantly being written to include people of different abilities, the LGBTQ+ community, and non-white subjects, but they are not part of the dominant culture of tabletop role-playing games.
Gaming in Public: Gaming Stores, Libraries, College Campuses, and More
In this section, I discuss how public gaming space has impacted the experiences of some of my informants. Common settings included comic book and hobby game stores, libraries, colleges, and even casual dining areas that allow patrons to stay for multiple hours and have plenty of table space.
Alex, an informant referenced in the previous chapter, has had gaming experience in both comic book stores and at Hood College, a liberal arts college in Maryland. While he only played one session of introductory D&D at the comic store, he played a long-term campaign while at
Hood College. He also played a separate, concurrent campaign at a friend’s residence. When I asked him which setting he preferred, he responded that he prefers gaming at his friend’s house
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because the space is private and “you don’t have to worry about anyone else barging in or what have you.” They play in an area that he described as “the commuter lounge,” which is open to the public 24/7; he elaborated that people will often interrupt their session to ask what they are doing, where a specific room is, or just interrupt their “flow” (as he described it) by getting the group off topic (21 October 2019).
I played with Mike during Chris’s session at Gen Con; through my email interview with him I learned that he plays one of his campaigns at his public library and DMs the other at his own house. He didn’t prefer either location, stating that he “can obtain immersion in both.” He remarked that hearing noises from other tables was the only aspect he disliked about playing at the library, but that it was “good training for Gen Con.” There, he gets to be a player rather than a DM, and he has a chance to play with gamers of all ages during library sessions. Mike also noted that his wife “does not like it” when he hosts games at his house.53
Sarah from the Restona group also splits her TRPG time between the Restona campaign – hosted at either her or Marissa’s home – and weekly sessions of D&D Adventurers League at a comic book store. While the personnel of each group is designed to change week by week, she informed me that her group always got there early enough to play together and get the same DM.
Rather than feeling limited due to noises from other tables, she feels that the presence of other groups restricts her from using her voice to the extent she would normally. For example, she feels uncomfortable swearing in public because she worries that she will offend others. More importantly, role-playing with the entire table is more difficult for her because she worries about being too loud in a public setting.
53 Mike E., email correspondence with author, September 20, 2019.
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I find that sometimes on Wednesday nights, when there’s so much background noise, I
can only role-play with the two people sitting next to me and ignore the rest of the party.
Occasionally, you just have to say something to another character and that character is
sitting across the table from you, but, when you’re just gonna role-play for funsies sake,
like, “Let’s make fun of Mordar, the NPC!” I’m gonna make fun of the NPC with the
person sitting next to me (5 August 2019).
In all three examples, my informants felt more limited in their ability to control and filter sounds, mainly due to the presence of people outside their group. Alex dislikes dealing with sonic distractions from people interrupting their game; Mike dislikes noises that distract him from his own table; and Sarah dislikes having to limit her voice to avoid distracting other tables.
They experience and navigate these various spaces in different ways, but they all recognize that changing their space from private residences to public places inevitably affects their expectations and experiences. Just as the changing spaces in convention settings influenced my ability to immerse myself in games, the quality of public gaming spaces is not necessarily worse than private residences, but it is altogether different because of the presence of other gamers. Private residences allow one to control who does and does not enter that space; public gaming areas are harder to manage. The sonic nature of TRPGs morphs in response to and to fit its setting, and the players adapt.
Distractions
Discussing sonic elements that encourage immersion in specific gaming environments is important to understanding haptic audition, but it is also necessary to know the types of
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situations that players find challenging. As Jennifer Cover notes in The Creation of Narrative in
Tabletop Role-Playing Games, distractions break the socially immersive environments of TRPGs
(116). Players are, ideally, united around a tabletop and anything that takes players’ attention outside that unified setting is harmful to immersion. This section describes what distracts players and how these distractions actually affect gameplay.
The first type of distraction cited by many of my informants was that created by digital technology devices used at the game table, whether just by virtue of the fact that other players were using them or more specifically because of the sounds they generated when used. Both the sounds and devices were external to the game and thus deemed distracting. Adam observed that phones interrupted the flow of games, especially when a player was supposed to make a decision but hadn’t been paying attention. Digital technology can be disruptive for the ways it affects the group narrative and the sonic environment of TRPGs, but the mere sight of cell phones or tablets is enough to thoroughly distract Chris from games that he DMs.
No, it’s not making sounds. I think it’s more, like, the other guy has his iPad and is
checking Reddit. So, he reads through a Reddit post, and then he goes [imitates loud
laughter] “Oh, sorry! I just read a funny joke.” So it’s distracting to everyone around the
table. […] It disrupts the experience. It makes the games longer. I think it’s not fun for
the guy that’s actually doing it. They don’t realize it. They feel like it’s harmless, but it’s
not, and I think it’s harmful to their fun (1 August 2019).
Chris identifies two important issues. First, immersion is interrupted for the people who have to deal with the fallout of phone use. Second, the person who is using the phone, even if not
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in an intentionally disruptive manner, is taken away from the game. For most of my informants, it is not the sight or the sound of digital technology devices that interrupts the game. It is the inevitable disruption caused by the phone that makes them wary. However, I should also note that if the DM and the other players are aware of the reason for cell phone or tablet use, they are less likely to be bothered by these devices at the table as long as the volume is muted.54
Other sounds that my informants found distracting included other sentient beings interfering with their environment. For example, one of my informants (who wishes to remain anonymous) explained to me that it was hard for them to have their little sister around while they played. They were often left to deal with her because they are closer in age to their little sister than other family members and feel that they are responsible for keeping her entertained. Noah informed me that he found pets distracting, and Sarah stated that she thinks Chuck most likely finds her cats distracting. As she described it, they are fairly vocal and often interrupt Chuck when he is speaking. Although Sarah is responsible for her cats, she has grown used to their noises and sees them as a comical addition to their games.
Sounds further from the table also have the potential to distract groups while they game.
Sam, who I briefly mentioned in the first chapter, recounted an instance when the entire table investigated what sounded like a child falling down the stairs. It turned out to be a shoe that the child had kicked down the stairs, but the sound at the time was unknown and had to be identified.
Sarah reminisced about the time someone had hit a light pole and caused a commotion in her neighborhood, and Chris specifically mentioned sirens as being disruptive. Loud or continuous acousmatic sounds often cause players to locate their sources. These types of sounds take players away from the table (physically and mentally) and break immersion.
54 Some players use apps to keep track of their character sheets, roll dice, or look up items or spells. Other players may need to have their phone near them in case they need to be taken away from the game for work purposes.
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Interestingly, music was another sound that distracted some of my informants. Both
Adam and Robert find it hard to have music playing in the background because they have trouble hearing the narrative of the game when music competes with voices. Noah and Sarah from the
Restona group said they found it distracting when the music did not fit the mood of the situation or was too recognizable. Sarah described an occasion when the group was in the middle of an intense fight and techno music suddenly started playing. The entire group burst into laughter.
Chuck was distressed because he could not regain the tension of the moment, and Sarah says they still reference it to this day. She also informed me that if she recognizes a song from a video game (her example was The Witcher 3) but cannot name it, she feels compelled to stop and ask
Chuck for the title of the song. For this reason, Chuck explained that he tries to stay away from popular soundtracks such as The Lord of the Rings because people recognize them too easily.
Through these examples, we see music – often a tool used to increase immersion and minimize distractions from the outside world – become the source of distraction.
In order to avoid becoming a distraction, sounds need to somehow fit into the context of the game. Players shifting and coughing and sighing are not problematic because they are human sounds, and no one can remain completely silent for four hours. Sounds that originate from digital technology, which remind players of the world outside the game, are among the most distracting for players, closely followed by sounds with no obvious source, that are loud and constant, or indicate that the thing or person making the sound needs to be addressed. Finally, music can also be a cause of distraction when players are unable to hear everyone else or if it does not blend into the narrative of the game.
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The Third Sonic/ Perceptual Layer
The intersection of sound, space, and tactility forms a significant node of the third layer in my model of sound in tabletop role-playing games. While the voice and music arguably have their own ways of making players feel more present during games, ambient noises in the third layer work at a lower level of consciousness. Players have the ability to tune out voices and music, but it takes genuine focus to completely ignore them. Ambient noises are easier to forget because they are subtle and tied to action in these games, e.g., “I roll the dice, and the rolling of the dice is the important process, not the sounds they make.” But I know that these sounds are powerful. My informants’ testimonies and my own experiences with these games have demonstrated that sounds and space and people have the potential to create, or destroy, immersive environments.
The third layer is not as easily defined as the vocal and musical layers, but ambient noises in the third layer share three key traits. First, these sound sources are physically close to the players. Second, this proximity means that players can typically see the sources of “third layer” sounds. Third, players exert a certain amount of control over these sounds. Sounds in the third layer can be related to objects and people at the gaming table, as well as anything that has the potential to make noise in the immediate gaming environment. Typical examples of these sounds include dice rolling, paper shuffling, electric appliances humming, and players shifting in place.
For the most part, players can control anything that might make noise in their immediate area
(dice, papers) and can choose to cover more subtle sounds (humming appliances) with music or recorded sound. However, this control ends where another player’s autonomy and haptic audition begin. One can ask the player next to them to stop shuffling their feet but cannot enforce such a
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request. Intrusive sounds can be reasonably mitigated within the third layer by the group, but an individual player is not able to impose their own sonic preferences onto the rest of the gamers.
The third sonic/ perceptual layer, then, consists predominantly of the noises that happen at or directly surrounding the table. The table in TRPGs is not just a place for players to put their character sheets. It is, rather, a space for uniting everyone in their desire to participate in a cohesive game, physically apparent in the way players face each other when sitting at a table.
Directing visual focus toward a shared point also helps limit distractions from outside sources, which is a useful practice when games are played in public. The combination of visual focus and a closely shared physical space demonstrates why haptic audition is an important concept to use in conjunction with the third sonic/ perceptual layer. Visual cues such as character depictions, town maps, and facial expressions of other players all affect how gamers experience their sonic environments, and, although vision is not included in the term, haptic audition embraces the holistic, intersensorial nature of TRPGs. Examining the relationship between space, tactility, and sound is essential to understanding how players experience these games. While sounds included in the third layer are not those that players first think of when describing their sonic gaming environments, they are a vital part in creating immersive experiences, nonetheless.
The Fourth Sonic/ Perceptual Layer
The fourth sonic/ perceptual layer of tabletop role-playing games is important to my model because it situates these games within the sounds of everyday life. TRPGs are not separate from our lives, but situated within them, which inevitably impacts every aspect of these gaming experiences. I define the fourth layer as the layer of sound that exists outside the context of the game and has the power to break immersion, but not necessarily to ruin the gaming experience.
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In contrast to sounds in the third sonic/ perceptual layer, origins of sounds in the fourth layer often exist outside a player’s immediate vicinity, therefore making many of them acousmatic. Additionally, sounds in the fourth layer are more likely to be distractions over which players have little or no control. Common sounds may include traffic or siren noises filtering in from outside, a neighbor slamming their door, or a roommate dropping something in the next room. Players may deduce the origin of these sounds without seeing them or find their sources by looking in an adjoining room or out a window, but most sounds in the fourth layer happen outside the immediate gaming environment. As with sounds in the third layer, players can attempt to mitigate these sonic interruptions by using music or recorded sound, or they may be able to tune them out entirely. However, players lack any direct control over sounds that filter in from outside their game. The inability to control these noises is one distinct marker between the third and fourth sonic/ perceptual layers. Sounds in the fourth layer are not typically fundamental in building an immersive gaming environment, but they reflect a part of the lived, sonic realities of gamers everywhere. The fourth layer is always present, but, like the third layer, the extent to which its soundscape is noticed and has on impact on the game depends on each player’s sensitivity to outside sounds.
While I observed the Wanners during a Star Wars session, their landline phone rang. I looked around to find the source of the ringing, but all the players seemed unbothered by the interruption. During their interviews I asked Shaine, Lexi, and Shannon about the phone ringing.
Both Lexi and Shaine only agreed that it was distracting after I asked them about that specific sound, but Shannon freely offered his opinion that the ringing phone was an example of a noise that distracted from the game. Shannon noticed it because, when his wife is absent during gaming sessions, the responsibility to answer the phone falls to him, whereas neither Shaine nor
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Lexi feel pressured to answer the phone if their parents are home. Everyone heard the phone ringing, but only Shannon and I came out of the game remembering that this sound tied us to the outside world. Lexi and Shaine registered the sound, but not enough to mark it as solely belonging to the third layer. The placement of the sound would depend on where their thinking went after they became cognizant of the noise.
Whether a sound belongs to the third or fourth layer is often unclear and dependent on many factors. If a humming fridge is close to my playing area, is that considered part of my immediate playing environment, or is that part of the “real world” layer? What about pets that constantly move between being directly in one’s personal space to resting in the room next door?
Unfortunately, I do not have a clear-cut answer, but rather must say that it depends on how each player experiences such phenomena. For example, pets seeking attention from players may seem like an endearing, expected part of being at their friend’s house. Those pets and their sounds
(barking, toenails clacking on the floor, collars jingling) have been fully integrated into their playing experience after years of playing TRPGs in that environment. They may have started as a part of the fourth layer, a reminder that life outside the game exists, but over time they have moved into the third layer. The owner of the pets, on the other hand, might recognize that their dog is rubbing his head against their thigh to ask to go outside, and that player is immediately reminded of the world outside the game and the need to take care of their pets. Therefore, sounds that remind players of responsibilities outside the game are more likely to fall into the fourth layer than the third.
My model for sonic/ perceptual layers is not a static representation of sound in tabletop role-playing games. The musical layer is meant to immerse players in the game and cover up any soft ambient noises that may filter into the gaming experience, but recognizing a piece from The
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Witcher 3 can evoke memories of playing the game, technically bringing that sound into the real- world sonic layer. Voices create the worlds that TRPG players and characters navigate, but they also have the power to distract and drag everyone back into the fourth sonic layer. The third and fourth sonic/ perceptual layers are constantly negotiated by individual players, who might not even be conscious of their mental negotiations between the gaming session and the world outside it. The model I have provided is separated into four layers to assist players and observers in understanding the complexity of TRPG sonic phenomena, but my understanding of sound in tabletop role-playing games is best described as a holistic, interconnected sonic environment that tells a story within unique, tangible gaming spaces.
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CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
This thesis project began as my personal journey to assess the importance of sound in tabletop role-playing games. I saw a lacuna in ethnomusicological scholarship that my work could fill. With the help of my eighteen informants, I have studied an array of sonic phenomena that create the playing environments of TRPGs.
Music can be a valuable addition to tabletop role-playing games to increase immersion, further emotional engagement, and even disguise some ambient noises in the nearby environment. Some players use music throughout their gaming sessions while others find briefer moments in which to insert music for maximum effect. D/GMs may curate themed playlists that match specific settings or simply add a variety of related songs to a playlist and hit shuffle.
Whether their music use in TRPGs is amateur or a way for them to generate income, players find music of nearly all genres to fit their narrative needs, which often inform and are informed by film and other media in imaginary-entertainment environments. Not every TRPG group uses music, but it is an effective aide for immersion that forms a sonic layer between the players and non-TRPG sounds.
Voice creates the tabletop role-playing game environment, led by, but not limited to, the voice of the Dungeon or Game Master. Character voices can contribute to an engaging gaming session, but, ultimately, they are not necessary for most players to have a fun or even immersive experience. Brief samples of character voices or natural speaking voices are enough to draw players into the game and build a satisfying gameworld. However, voices are not free of influences from daily lives. These influences range from seemingly innocent experiences with popular media to harmful stereotypes resulting from intersections of the voice and social and
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personal identities. Just as these games are affected by real-life experiences, so, too, are the voice and our reactions to it. The complex layer of voices from all players crossing over each other – sometimes overwhelming one another, other times interacting to create a single, harmonious narration – are the foundation for any TRPG session and are the most vital type of sound in these settings.
Ambient noise, although harder to define than voice and music, also plays a role in how players experience immersion. However, these are the sounds that players most often are unaware of or purposely ignore, until they can’t. The setting of the TRPG largely decides what kinds of ambient and environmental noises will be present. Public settings will inevitably allow more human sounds in, whereas private settings help mitigate such noises and allow players to listen more carefully to one another. However, no gaming environment is immune to sonic distractions that come from the players at the table, as well as the outside world.
Although my thesis has begun what I hope will result in a larger and continuing discussion in ethnomusicology and sound studies, I recognize that my eagerness to cover the gamut of sonic variables within TRPGs has left certain aspects of my study treated less fully than
I would have preferred, and other potentially fruitful areas for inquiry were left unexplored completely. I include five points of study that I believe are good starting points for future exploration.
First, I would like to see – or even myself complete – a study that more comprehensively examines how social and personal identities affect an individual’s response to sonic cues in these games. I began to cover this in my section titled “Politics of the Voice” in Chapter 2, but I believe that discussion could easily be expanded to encompass music and ambient noise. People of different races, socioeconomic classes, religions, genders, ages, and abilities bring various life
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experiences to the gaming table. To invoke Randall Collins once again, this means that each individual who plays these games has a unique interaction ritual chain with which they enter these environments. Every person will have their individual experience, but I believe it would be informative to see how each social or personal identity influences how people respond to and filter sound in tabletop role-playing games.
Second, I acknowledge that my study was heavily focused on Dungeons & Dragons, especially 5th edition, but I believe that tabletop role-playing games of different genres and varying popularity have more to offer in terms of the sonic experiences they provide. Most of my informants named several other gaming systems that reflected their personal preference more than D&D, but they felt that D&D was the only option available to them because “everybody plays it.” I am aware of many systems that fit into genres such as horror, sci-fi, romance, anime, and more – all of which are not fantasy. Because sound in tabletop role-playing games is so enmeshed with the imaginary-entertainment environment, I believe that studying more genres of
TRPGs will provide a broader understanding of what constitutes these networks of popular media. A study such as this will do more to show that TRPGs do not exist in a single imaginary- entertainment environment, but rather several environments that are informed by various lineages of media.
Third, there are certain aspects of my study that I believe would have benefitted from a more inter-generational approach. I had two informants over the age of forty who informed me that they used to play with CDs running in the back of their games, but I did not have a large enough sample to determine if this was a common practice among older gamers. I know that recorded music was easily accessible during the 1970s and on, but I don’t know in what capacity it was used or if the reason for using it was the same as it is today. It would also be interesting to
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see how much the use of voice has changed in the nearly five decades since the creation of tabletop role-playing games, and whether ambient noises affected play more or less during early gaming sessions. The sounds we hear in our daily lives (especially those related to digital technology) have changed dramatically since the 1970s, so it makes sense that sonic expectations and experiences have transformed throughout the decades. An inter-generational approach to this type of study would help answer questions of what has remained the same and what has changed in the sonic environments of tabletop role-paying games.
Fourth, the model that I provided for understanding sound in TRPGs is my model, filtered through my own experiences of playing and observing these games. Of course, testimony from my informants has also influenced this model, but they have been processed through and impacted by the questions I asked and how I used their answers to fit my narrative. Although players do not conceive of their sonic gaming experiences as separate layers of sound, my model of sonic/ perceptual layers isolates music, voice, and ambient and environmental noises. This concept of layered separation has allowed me to productively engage with the complexity of the sonic environment of TRPGs, and I hope that it will prove useful as a point of departure for future research and researchers in this area. Further studies done through the lenses of other research, theories, and models will enrich the scope of and improve on the groundwork that I have created with my sonic/ perceptual layers model.
Fifth, I believe the term “haptic audition” is a valuable tool for thinking, talking, and writing about both TRPG environments and sound studies more broadly. The character of in- person interactions and the nature of sound are difficult phenomena to translate into written words, but theoretical frameworks involving intersensorial understandings diminish the imperfection of these transferals. I believe that investigating intersections among bodily senses is
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a valuable resource for determining how gamers achieve immersion, as well as how people pay attention to or self-isolate from stimuli in their daily lives. I offer haptic audition as a way of understanding and thinking about the relationship between space, tactility, and sound. These three factors greatly affect how people move, play, experience, and exist in a shared sonic environment. Space, tactility, and sound lend themselves to novel modes of interpretation whether in TRPG environments or others as contextualized within the theoretical construct of haptic audition.
Finally, although I have proposed “haptic audition” as a multisensorial method for understanding the phenomenon of playing tabletop role-playing games, I do not want TRPG studies to end at the intersection of touch and hearing. When I asked my informants to tell me what they thought was necessary for them to have a positive gaming experience, some of their answers included thoughts on the correct amount of lighting, the color of paint on the walls, the memorabilia that surrounded them, the temperature of the room, the snacks available for consumption, the size of the table, and much more. The “Year of Atmosphere” page on
Syrinscape.com even has suggestions for handing out real props and rewards, introducing smells into your environment to coordinate with the action in the story, and experimenting with mood lighting. The bodily experience of tabletop role-playing games is not meant to be separated into one or two senses. It is a holistic, all-body experience that allows players to create new worlds, explore different personas, and, best of all, have fun.
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APPENDIX
LIST OF INTERVIEWS
Adam R., interview by author, Minneapolis, July 6, 2019.
Alex B., phone interview by author, October 21, 2019.
Benjamin Loomes, phone interview by author, September 16, 2019.
Chris H., interview by author, Indianapolis, August 1, 2019.
Chuck R., interview by author, Minneapolis, July 6, 2019.
Eric A., phone interview by author, September 1, 2019.
Esteban F., phone interview by author, August 20, 2019.
I R NUB, email communication with author from August 24 to October 31, 2019.
Kent G., phone interview by author, July 18, 2019.
Lexi Wanner, interview by author, Fargo, July 30, 2019.
Mike E., email communication with author from September 11 to October 28, 2019.
Noah R., interview by author, Minneapolis, July 7, 2019.
Robert H., phone interview by author, July 17, 2019.
Sam A., phone interview by author, August 31, 2019.
Samantha S., interview by author, Oshkosh, August 13, 2019.
Sarah J., phone interview by author, August 5, 2019.
Shaine Wanner, interview by author, Fargo, August 8, 2019.
Shannon Wanner, interview by author, Fargo, August 8, 2019.
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Emma Jensen is an ethnomusicologist from North Dakota. She received her Bachelor of Music in Instrumental Performance (Percussion) from the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh (2018), and her Master of Music in Musicology (Ethnomusicology) from Florida State University in
May of 2020. Her research interests include ludomusicology, virtual musics, music and attention,
Afro-Latin American musics, and sound studies.
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