“Narrative Application in Gameplay”: The Enhancement of Creative Thought of Teaching Staff at the Centre for International Languages, UniMAP

Abstract

This paper discusses the narrative or storytelling aspect of tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs). The primary intention of this paper is to introduce TTRPGs as an effective alternative teaching and learning method that could benefit students in classrooms. The activities implemented could train students to be more creative, think outside the box, and spontaneously generated narrative and infused with characteristics such as – in this case – bravery, comedy, and horror-comedy. The research subjects are 6 teaching staff of the Centre for International Languages, UniMAP. The participants comprise of four English language teachers, one Bahasa Melayu teacher and one Bahasa Melayu lecturer. Each participant has their duties. One is the gamemaster who acts as the general narrator and arbiter of the rules of the game, while the other five are players who play roles within the setting of the game. The TTRPG used in the game sessions was Cubicle 7's The Laundry RPG based on author Charles Stross' series of horror-comedy novels, The Laundry Files. Three sessions were run from November 2018 to March 2019, each taking from 90 minutes to two hours. In helping to develop creative ideas using The Laundry RPG, three episodes of the narrative were derived from the gameplay of the TTRPG, each from one session. First is entitled The New Normal, the second an Unbelievably Wooden Dialogue and the third episode Getting Ahead of Themselves. The Narrative Paradigm theory framework by Walter Fisher (1985) is used in the analysis of the discussion of this paper. The three stories that were derived from the three The Laundry role-playing game activities can be read at this website: https://hishgraphics.com/category/rpg-actual-play/rpg-campaigns/laundry-the-musang-king-directive/.