Repository logo
 

Call of Cthulhu and Vampire: the Masquerade: invocation, spatiality, and ritual transcendence in two tabletop role-playing games

Date

2015

Authors

Brunette, Tyler, author
Diffrient, Scott, advisor
Dickinson, Greg, committee member
Snodgrass, Jeffrey, committee member

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Abstract

In 1974 the world's first Tabletop Roleplaying Game (TRPG) was published, Dungeons and Dragons. Since that time hundreds of TRPGs have been published in multiple genres. In this thesis I explore the rhetoric of two of the most popular horror-themed TRPGs: Call of Cthulhu and Vampire: the Masquerade. I focus on explaining how these games came to be, how they serve their players as equipment for living, how they rhetorically (re)construct real-world places and spaces, and finally, how they encourage transcendence and jamming through ritual play and participation. This thesis hopefully helps to show the complex multi-layered rhetoric taking place in a relatively ignored form of media. Additionally, I introduce the concept of textual invocation as a complimentary theoretical construct to that of textual poaching as an explanation for how players and designers engage in a give and take of authorship.

Description

Rights Access

Subject

games
horror
rhetoric
role-playing

Citation

Associated Publications