Liminal Play: Coauthoring Narratives across Metaleptic, Metadramatic, and Transludic Interactions
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| Title: | Liminal Play: Coauthoring Narratives across Metaleptic, Metadramatic, and Transludic Interactions |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Alex Corbitt (ORCID |
| Source: | Reading Research Quarterly. 2025 60(3). |
| Availability: | Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 17 |
| Publication Date: | 2025 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Research |
| Descriptors: | Role Playing, Educational Games, Story Telling, Play, Narration, Drama, Power Structure, Adolescents, Videoconferencing |
| DOI: | 10.1002/rrq.70036 |
| ISSN: | 0034-0553 1936-2722 |
| Abstract: | Role-playing games (RPGs) are storytelling activities that mediate co-authorship through a variety of in-game, out-of-game, and intertextual relationships. Liminal interactions sometimes occur during RPG play that blur these categories. To understand the purposes and processes of "liminal play," this study analyzed data from a yearlong RPG program co-facilitated by six teenage boys on Zoom. Thinking with three concepts from game studies and narratology--metalepsis, metadrama, and transludology--findings highlight how moments of liminal play helped participants negotiate the dramatic content and authorial procedures of their unfolding narrative worlds. Rethinking theories of play that conceptualize game narratives and game mechanics as discrete phenomena, the discussion examines how a variety of rules, roles, and relationships intersect during moments of liminal play. As a result, study implications consider how researchers and practitioners might account for the complex dynamics of liminal play in ways that interrogate power differentials embedded in playful contexts. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2025 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1478133 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| Abstract: | Role-playing games (RPGs) are storytelling activities that mediate co-authorship through a variety of in-game, out-of-game, and intertextual relationships. Liminal interactions sometimes occur during RPG play that blur these categories. To understand the purposes and processes of "liminal play," this study analyzed data from a yearlong RPG program co-facilitated by six teenage boys on Zoom. Thinking with three concepts from game studies and narratology--metalepsis, metadrama, and transludology--findings highlight how moments of liminal play helped participants negotiate the dramatic content and authorial procedures of their unfolding narrative worlds. Rethinking theories of play that conceptualize game narratives and game mechanics as discrete phenomena, the discussion examines how a variety of rules, roles, and relationships intersect during moments of liminal play. As a result, study implications consider how researchers and practitioners might account for the complex dynamics of liminal play in ways that interrogate power differentials embedded in playful contexts. |
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| ISSN: | 0034-0553 1936-2722 |
| DOI: | 10.1002/rrq.70036 |
