I create stories in two worlds: in theatre as a director, stage manager, writer, and actor, and in games as a creator of tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) and gamified STEM and English language instruction. Due to my passion for gaming, I am in the process of transitioning my career into game design. As part of this pivot, I am learning everything I can about how stories function within games with the goal of becoming a game writer and narrative designer. Luckily, I am working on my PhD dissertation at NYU in Educational Theatre, which enables me to do a deep dive into this most fascinating of subjects!

Overview: Capturing the Lived-Story Experience

“How do we get the feeling of living in a story?”

Brennan Lee Mulligan, Adventuring Academy, Season 4, Ep. 3 (2022)

For this project, I will focus on explicating a phenomenon I will refer to as the ‘lived-story experience’ in attribution to professional tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) narrative designer and improvisor Brennan Lee Mulligan’s “feeling of living in a story”. This is a state which I believe player-performers, and perhaps their audience, can experience when their performance aligns ideally with the principles of narrative game design through the skillful use of collaborative improvisation.

Overview: The Lived-Story Experience as a State of Flow

Some performers of TTRPGs have identified this lived-story experience as a type of flow, as demonstrated through the following exchange that occurred between the cast of Worlds Beyond Number while discussing how they get into character by using elements of narrative design, such as worldbuilding, as anchors for improvisation (2023).

Brennan Lee Mulligan:     There's a moment where you're on stage, or where you're at the table, and the little you inside of your head that is managing your day-to-day activities and sort of logging them in the story of you—the you that watches yourself from within—there's a moment where you're on stage, or at the table, or any other kind of performance, where that thing melts. Where the sugar stirs into the tea and dissolves, and all of a sudden you are existing in a state of being, released from the burden of identity and ego. And, boy, what a tasty little dessert that is. Yum, yum!

Aabria Iyengar:                 A fact. Just my last note on that is—because I've had people ask how I went from sports to this, and it's because it's the same thing. Sports is high level performance, and that same sort of like—they call The Zone more often than not in sports—but it's that same ego death.

Erika Ishii:                        Flow.

Aabria Iyengar:                 Yeah, and Flow. Yeah. So we all just out here seeking flow, baby!

Erika Ishii:                        I. Crave. That.

Lou Wilson:                     We all seek Flow.

According to these performers, the feeling of living in a story is a state of flow that occurs when they become so linked with a character’s reality in an narrative that the anchor to their own identity loosens (“ego death”) and the story becomes real to them in that moment, heightening and interacting with related phenomena like immersion, engagement, investment, and imagination. Experiencing flow has been hypothesized to be unique to human consciousness, or even a defining trait of consciousness, and has been sought out by us since the beginning of time for entertainment, social change, therapeutic benefit, connection, or simply as validation of being alive  (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008; Groos & Baldwin, 2018; Huizinga, 1998; Nachmanovitch, 1990). However, some research on immersion problematizes the assumption that what the players are experiencing could properly be called flow. They argue that total absorption in an activity is required for flow, but theatre and games both require being doubly aware of being in a performance or game and its contrast with the real world, even developing social and cultural ways to negotiate those liminal crossings. The role of the audience being simultaneously aware that they are watching a performance while suspending disbelief to join performers in the “showing doing” of the narrative is another consideration (Schechner, 2020).

I see three levels of depth and complexity in a narrative’s ability to elicit flow based on the format and type of immersion: receptive, performative, and ludic. On the first level, we have hearing a tale, reading a novel, or viewing a film, where immersion is created by relating to a static narrative happening to someone else. When one is performing as a character on stage in a play with a pre-determined script, the dual-logic of performance awakens, where we are both ‘in’ the story and aware that we are participating in bringing the story to life. Additionally, this is the first level where interaction with an audience is part of the experience. The third level of depth occurs in games played for an audience, in which I would consider improvisation as a game, because games break away from the predictable narrative of the scripted performance to create an emergent narrative through the exploration of the multitude of variations found within the rules and structures of the game’s design. This is why I believe that games that employ collective improvisation performed for an audience, even more so if the goal of both the game’s design and players’ intentions are focused on narrative, are the most likely format to produce the potential to experience flow and lived-story experiences. Fortunately for my project, this is exactly what many groups of professional TTRPG players and designers are explicitly seeking, especially those in the gaming communities connected to the creative vision of Brennan Lee Mulligan.

A case study of professional TTRPG performers offers an opportunity to capture the forces at work that can inform storytellers, game designers, and theatre educators how to stimulate a lived-story experience. I will be focusing on the actual play show Mulligan created for Dropout.tv, Dimension 20, and his role-playing experts podcast Adventuring Academy, as well as his actual play podcast Worlds Beyond Number, with Aabria Iyengar, Erika Ishii, and Lou Wilson, and Dimension 20-affiliated podcast NADDPOD, featuring Brian Murphy, Emily Axford, Jake Hurwitz, and Caldwell Tanner. As these expert practitioners have specifically commented on striving to create story-lived experiences in their games, examining their play techniques and the game’s narrative design as a case study will illuminate the factors they feel have contributed most to flow in their games.

To understand precisely what is happening in those story-lived flow moments, a quadratic theoretical framework is needed from the fields of narratology and ludology, explicated through the lenses of improvisation and flow. Tabletop and live-action role-playing games (LARPs) are prime examples of how narratology, ludology, improvisation, and flow intersect in performance. Players take on roles within a structured narrative framework (narratology), interact with game mechanics and rules (ludology), and engage in improvisational storytelling to create dynamic and collaborative narratives that, ideally, support a state of flow. Part of this analysis is discovering what definition of flow may be synonymous with ‘lived-story experiences’, or indeed how theorists in game design may have eliminated flow as an applicable construct for understanding player experience. My case study design will draw upon the methodologies of heuristics, phenomenology, and Practice as Research (PaR) to explore the depth of lived experience of this phenomenon.

Definitions: What are RPGs, TTRPGs, LARPs and Digital RPGs?

The most general definition of role-playing games (RPGs) are games where players create and act as a character that interacts with other characters, narrative elements, and an imaginary world within a specific set of pre-agreed rules (as to differentiate from make-believe). These games are typically led by a game master (GM) or storyteller, who serves as the narrator, rules referee, and actor for characters that are not created by the players (non-player characters, or NPCs, like the antagonist, quest giver, or background ‘extra’). A type of RPGs, striving to add more narrative tension than a simple game of ‘let’s pretend’, add an element of randomness to determine the consequences of an intended action such as dice rolls combined with character abilities. Sub-types of these games include tabletop (TTRPGs, played sitting around a table), live action (LARPs, played with movement in real-world environments), and digital (computer or game console).

Some additional terms and context: Games use rulesets and manuals known as systems (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons). The written narrative content is a prewritten story structure either known as a module (published) or a homebrew (created by the GM), possibly with modified rules. The specific instance of a certain group’s playthrough of a game’s story is referred to as a campaign, which due to players’ choices creating emergent narrative can create different stories from campaign to campaign of the same module. Campaigns can have any number of sessions or episodes from two-hour one-shots to twenty-plus years of weekly play. Recordings of a campaign for an audience is an actual play, deemed ‘actual’ because they are un- or minimally edited to capture a feeling of liveness.

Tabletop and live action role-playing games are a theatrical, collaborative, immersive, and improvised storytelling medium focused on the experiences of actors who role-play and narrate their experiences in interaction with a world, plot, and non-player characters combined with game mechanics and rules refereed by the game master (GM). ‘Affordance’ is a term that refers to the possibilities for action that a game environment provides to players, allowing them to exercise their agency within the game. Alternatively, ‘player agency’ itself is a widely used term in game studies to describe the degree of control and freedom a player has to influence the game world and its narrative. Essentially, TTRPGs bridge the limited affordance that mechanical simulation makes available through digital games, with the full affordance available through collaborative interaction in live theatre modalities like devising, improvisation, interactive theatre, escape rooms, etc.. These games have evolved over the decades to centralize story and increasing levels of immersive player agency, a role in entertainment previously held by live theatre—not only for the audience, but for the actors. The most satisfying gameplay moments come when the mechanics and the roleplay seamlessly reinforce each other; when the ‘dice tell a story’, the combat abilities come from character development, and the authorial agency is passed with trust between the players and the game master. This collaborative atmosphere comes from an agreement between the players and game master during the game sessions, but it is also an artform in and of itself, requiring development and practice of a unique combination of skills.

In digital RPGs, since the game master is a program in a video game, players choose options from character creation and branching dialogue, narratives, and endings, but the player’s agency is limited as compared to RPGs played with other humans. RPG video game players are beginning to expect their digital games to have a comparable amount of depth of story, characterization, agency, worldbuilding, and even character-driven combat design to TTRPGs. It could be argued that what players crave from videogames is coming closer to what theatre provides than ever before, especially when we consider accessibility, representation, and the expanded role of entertainment in our society in general. This might be dependent on emerging technologies like virtual reality (VR), motion capture (MoCap), and artificial intelligence (AI) that increase immersion and responsivity to mimic the experience of having a live GM who can improvise.

Topic Background: Narrative Design Bridges Theatre and Gaming

Narratology is the study of narrative structure, elements, and functions in storytelling, while ludology is the study of games, particularly focusing on their structures, mechanics, rules, and player experiences. Also known as narrative design, ludo-narrative theory is an interdisciplinary field that provides valuable insights as to how gameplay and narrative intersect in pre-designed structured game systems. Theatre and ludo-narrative theory have a shared focus on storytelling, performance, and audience engagement and immersion.

Both theatre and ludo-narrative theory involve the construction and presentation of narratives. In theatre, stories are conveyed through dramatic scripts, performances, and audio-visual elements. Ludo-narrative theory examines how narratives are integrated into interactive experiences where players play an active role in shaping the story through gameplay. This connection is seen through ‘gamified’ theatre performances that consciously integrate player agency, such as immersive theatre and escape rooms, which are becoming increasingly popular.

Theatre is a performative art form in which actors bring characters to life through their performances on stage. Similarly, ludo-narrative theory considers the performative aspect of role-playing games and its impact on narrative. This is referring to digital RPGs with set programming, where players choose options in a conversation tree, pursue relationship arcs with non-player characters (NPCs), complete quests, choose resolutions for those quests, and choose from multiple possible endings for the game as a whole. Each of these decisions exist, from the game designer’s perspective, in an elaborate flowchart of cause and effect that reveals different possible plot points as choices are made. However, the players of digital games are limited to the options provided by the game writers and cannot freely improvise, though some designers predict that may change as AI technology develops. Even within this limited agency and inability to improvise, players of digital RPGs feel immersion due to their ability to make choices that affect their character’s world. This is the sense in which game designers consider players performative in digital RPGs, and ludo-narrative theory provides many insights here.

Both theatre and interactive games aim to create engaging and immersive experiences that transport audiences or players into the world of the narrative. Theatre uses techniques such as set design, lighting, and sound to create immersive environments on stage, which is a rough equivalent to what a multi-sensory novel would be, if one sets aside for a moment the ‘liveness factor’ of the audience-actor relationship. In games, in addition to design elements, players actively participate in shaping the narrative through their actions and decisions. Players of digital games are both audience and semi-playwright, playing out their own story while following narrative parameters that are more or less limited depending on the game. Tabletop RPGs, on the other hand, have nearly infinite narrative potential, limited mostly by the ingenuity of the players and game master. They share with live theatre the influence of acting training on the actor’s experience of the story, as well as the ‘liveness factor’ of performing for an audience, which reveals a need to incorporate the theatrical elements of improvisation and flow into ludo-narrative theory.

Statement of Problem/Deficiencies: Improvisation and Flow

By examining the intersections between theatre and gaming using ludo-narrative theory, researchers can gain insights into the dynamics of storytelling experiences across different forms of interactive and performative media. However, ludo-narratology may not fully account for the role of improvisation in shaping emergent narratives and player experiences in dynamic, player-driven environments such as tabletop role-playing games. Improvisation introduces a level of spontaneity, unpredictability, and player agency that can significantly influence the narrative trajectory and thematic content of gameplay. In TTRPGs, players collaboratively co-create stories through improvisational storytelling, responding to each other's actions, decisions, and contributions in real-time. The improvisational process at the table can lead to the emergence of complex, dynamic narratives that may diverge from or subvert the intended narrative structures or thematic motifs embedded within the game system (Sidhu & Carter, 2023).

There are extensive benefits for game design to consider research from theatre on improvisation, even if that improv happens with a single ‘performer’ in their living room interacting with their Xbox. “Despite being undertheorized in writing about digital games in general, improvisation does play a crucial role in video games that invite players to create emergent variations in actions, tactics, strategies, goals, and play styles” (Jagoda, 2020, p. 253). As it stands, ludo-narrative theory often focuses on analyzing the interplay between pre-defined game mechanics and narrative elements, assuming a more deterministic relationship between gameplay and narrative outcomes. This perspective may overlook the creative agency and interpretive flexibility afforded to players in improvisational game environments, as well as the ways in which improvisation can shape and redefine the ludic and narrative dimensions of gameplay. For example, even though technically my choices are limited by the game’s programming, one of my favorite series are the stealth-based sci-fi Deus Ex games, which allows you to design your character’s abilities to gain multiple creative paths of access to locations far before you are assigned a mission there. The amount of immersion and narrative satisfaction that comes from subverting the assumed order of events and solutions to problems is profound, like when the enemies spring an ambush that you completely disarmed and turned into your own a day before you were even supposed to be there: you are a ghost, and their defeat remains a mystery. In those moments, I myself feel like I achieved something real and the path I built to get there is mine. This type of experience is the intention of the immersive sim(ulation) genre of games, which is specifically intended, like improvisation, to create an emergent narrative beyond what has been explicitly designed by the developer (Brown, 2016).

Therefore, a deficiency in ludo-narrative theory in terms of improvisation may lie in its tendency to underemphasize the dynamic, iterative nature of player-driven storytelling and the ways in which improvisation intersects with, complements, or challenges the established frameworks of game design and narrative structure. Addressing this deficiency would require expanding ludo-narrative theory to incorporate a more nuanced understanding of improvisational practices and their implications for the relationship between gameplay and narrative in interactive storytelling contexts. I believe that it is the incorporation of improvisation that allows moments of flow and living in the story to occur more reliably. In addition to a variety of theories about improvisation and narrative improv in particular, I will be drawing extensively upon the long-form model taught by the Upright Citizen’s Brigade (UCB), as many of the Dimension 20 and Adventuring Academy players have spoken in interviews about how that training lent itself directly to creating satisfying stories and moments in the game. I am also taking courses at UCB Los Angeles and, as of this writing, am in the third course of five.

Flow, as coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is a psychological state of optimal experience characterized by intense focus, deep immersion, and optimal performance in an activity (2008). I posit that flow is at least a key component in the lived-story experience, if not the feeling itself, and can be used to shed light on the psychological and social mechanisms of the experience. As discussed in the literature review, semi-structured improvisation is one of the creative forms that has been studied most closely in terms of flow, as it has the potential to involve each of the features outlined in Csikszentmihalyi’s model: clear goals, immediate feedback, balance between challenge and skill, merged action and awareness, concentration on the present, no worry of failure, self-consciousness disappearing, distorted sense of time, and the activity becoming an end in itself (Csikszentmihalyi, 2008). Analyzing ludo-narrative theory through the lens of flow enables a closer look at how these features can either be intentionally built into the design of a game or emerge through gameplay.

Additionally, a potential deficiency in ludo-narrative theory in terms of flow lies in it primarily focusing on analyzing the relationship between game mechanics, narrative structure, and player experiences within a game. While it acknowledges the importance of player engagement and immersion, it may not sufficiently address the subjective psychological states that players experience during gameplay or even assert that flow is not essential to games. It’s true that flow is not essential for any activity, but the feeling of living in a story, if that is synonymous with flow, provides a memorable experience above-and-beyond the expectations of playing a game for entertainment. Flow theory emphasizes that flow experiences are highly individual and can vary based on factors such as personality, skill level, and personal preferences. Ludo-narrative theory, however, tends to treat player experiences in a more generalized manner, overlooking the diverse ways in which players may experience flow or engage with games. Capturing these individualized perspectives is why interviewing professional TTRPGs players using heuristic-phenomenological methods is important.

Another benefit comes from distinguishing between the construct I am hoping to capture, ‘lived-story experience/feeling’, and interrelated concepts like engagement, immersion, and flow (Bizzocchi, J., 2007). While narrative immersion is an important aspect of player engagement, it may not always align with the conditions necessary for flow experiences. Ludo-narrative theory often prioritizes narrative coherence and player identification with characters and storylines, which may not always coincide with the flow-inducing elements. In Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray analyzes how flow clashes with the negotiation between the real world and the fictional world (1997). Flow theory also emphasizes the importance of autonomy and control in facilitating flow experiences, allowing individuals to freely choose and pursue activities that align with their interests and abilities as like what happens at a masterfully-run TTRPG table.

Purpose: A Quadratic Theoretical Framework and Interdisciplinary Model

Through this study, in the broadest sense I hope to demonstrate what live theatrical practices and game design can offer each other by producing a theoretical framework of how ludo-narratology, improvisation, and flow intersect at the site of highly skilled TTRPG play. By crafting and analyzing interview questions and practice-based experiences from this framework, I will develop a practical model for creating future games, gaming performances, and educational gamified theatre practices that stimulate flow experiences as much as possible.

There are a few challenges I acknowledge about this goal. Firstly, I assume that players who are able to reliably create flow moments with and for each other do so out of some combination of training, skill, and personality that cannot necessarily be reliably replicated by any given group of players if they do not have similar backgrounds, practices, or relationships. Second, although I hope that incorporating my findings into game writing techniques will help increase the efficacy of games in facilitating moments of flow, I am unsure of the extent to which factors dependent on liveness can be captured in static writing like those provided in game manuals, modules, guides and the like. Third, for game designers working in digital games, I’m not sure how many of my findings will be adaptable to game programming with existing technologies. However, this work can be seen as a contribution to the collective efforts of the gaming and performing arts industries to bring these optimal experiences to entertainment, as evidenced by numerous interviews and panels focusing on giving advice to RPG players trying to manifest a satisfying game experience. As such, I believe the insights collated from the industry’s experts will be valuable research for narrative game designers as a stepping-off point for experimenting within an established structure. As more people seek out gaming as their preferred form of entertainment, weaving theatre into its design is a way to keep its magic, like flow experiences, alive into the future.

In terms of game design’s gifts to theatre and university educational theatre in particular, actor training has a long history of using improvisational games as a subtype of training exercise or activity (e.g. Viola Spolin), but the pedagogical focus and rubric for success can be vague or difficult to assess other than ‘increased freedom of expression’. There are a few types of activities with improvisational features occurring in acting training that have clearly defined goals. In a conservatory acting studio, there are skill drilling activities designed around an acting pedagogy which may lose educational potency when brought into university general acting courses because assessing their success outside of their intended context is difficult (e.g. leading a Suzuki stepwork activity in a survey acting movement course without training actors on the rest of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training). There are also ‘serious games’ for education, which are designed to transmit pre-defined knowledge or behaviors. In “Learning through improvisational play: design strategies for serious games”, Costello (2019) describes using improvisation to educate emerging behaviors or knowledge, a concept related to emergent narrative. By bringing game design theory and practice into theatre, we may be able to understand how the design of certain drama games seem to reliably result in student growth while others are more individualized, and how to refine the relationship between their narrative and rules to elicit such growth. Modern students have increased affinity with digital games and so familiar game types may increase their comfort experimenting as beginning actors. Beyond this general intervention, by focusing this research on how flow moments can be facilitated, it allows flow to become a pedagogical aim for which a rubric for theatre games for actor training may be designed. As described below in the research regarding flow, flow provides many benefits as an experience that can be harnessed for artistic, educational and personal growth, so being able to reliably provide such experiences for our students in theatre classes would be a rewarding outcome of this study.

Researcher Positionality and Biography

Given that positionality is a term that includes my worldview and position I adopt about a research task (Gary & Holmes, 2020), some context about my relationship with TTRPGs is appropriate. Identifying as a storyteller in a cross-discipline practice between theatre and gaming is a recent development, even though it has been a part of my life since I created skits based on games I played on my Atari and Tandy 1000. Socially, however, my relationship with gaming has been the realm of complicated and conflicting feelings, stemming primarily from my enjoyment and capabilities as a woman-perceived gamer encountering gatekeeping. Sexism in gaming culture is extensively documented and even now the harmful stereotype exists that gaming is the domain of cis white men. Having grown out of war simulation and strategy games in the ‘70s, the best-known TTRPG system, Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), had such complicated gaming mechanics that the steep learning curve was itself an obstacle for interested players, especially those who wanted to focus on story and character. In all sorts of pursuits, toxic geek culture thrives on establishing social status based on competitions of exclusive, detailed, and encyclopedic knowledge, so D&D as a system was unfortunately an ideal breeding ground for gatekeeping in the wrong hands. However, in the last ten years gaming culture has seen a mighty shift toward inclusivity. That is in significant part due to the visibility and representation efforts of shows like Dimension 20 and Adventuring Academy, which showcased the more accessible game mechanics of 2014’s D&D fifth edition (D&D 5e). In 2020, many D&D games sprang up over Zoom or virtual tabletop (VTT) systems during Covid which also created an upsurge in streaming actual play shows.

I owe my new relationship with TTRPGs to my siblings. During Covid, my brother, who is a D&D game master, took it upon himself to run games where I could do everything that someone had derided and denied before, learn the nuances of the rules in a patient and cooperative way, and really play. Gaming is surprisingly psychologically revealing, and I will always be grateful for his patience while I essentially purged and repaired beliefs and behaviors from the social to the existential. My sister convinced me to watch Dimension 20 as reparative therapy, explaining how ingenious they were at improvising compelling characters and stories, as well as being solidly good, kind, and respectful people. That led me to watch Adventuring Academy, where I learned that other marginalized players of my generation had to persevere in their love for RPGs despite gatekeeping, and that there are now many groups out there for such players.

These role models of gaming culture are why it is natural for me to choose research participants from Dimension 20 and Adventuring Academy as the focus of my study. While I could have chosen any number of the thousands of actual play TTRPG programs that exist, the Dimension 20 cultural network has been pre-vetted as having philosophies, values, and personalities in line with the goals of this study. For example, they make a point to have extensive and broad representation from people of color, women, transgender and non-binary people, queer/GLBTA+ people, and people of different abilities, native languages, and body types in the cast, as game masters, on the crew, and as characters in the stories. As a white, queer, transgender/non-binary person perceived as a woman, this representation is important to me personally as well as vital for my study to distinguish it from historical gaming culture.

Finally, having earned my master’s degree in psychology, my interpretations of some concepts will undoubtedly reflect my interest in playstyles, group dynamics, and the internal experiences of players, and is how I have previously studied the concept of flow. The reason I am so fascinated with players saying they can experience flow while playing is because I personally have never experienced flow while playing a TTRPG. In fact, because my analytical mind sprints ahead of the present I have never experienced flow in a sustained manner during any activity. My experiences of flow happen just in moments that span a few breaths, or a maximum of maybe five minutes, and only occur every few years, during physical activities like bouldering, cycling, kendo, and yoga. When I was young, I had a few flow moments while acting or singing, but my self-critic always broke the spell to make sure I was ‘following the rules’. I would love to experience flow while doing a creative activity. You can see why I might want to discover how to create a gaming environment, ensemble, and narrative design that would allow flow-potential to emerge more readily. Honestly, I am not sure if doing my dissertation on improv is the best idea, given that ‘overthinking’ is the main personal obstacle to attaining a flow state! However, being able to analyze the narrative in order to guide the players is a vital aspect of being a game master, so I need to find a way to retain my potential as a spontaneous writer while not getting pulled out of feeling the moment between actors performing with me. Already, in taking improv classes I can feel the mental habits that stand in the way of flow settling down and allowing me to play more instinctually and mindfully, and it is important to mention that these instances occur more readily when the trust in the ensemble is strong. These are the mental and social skills that the Dimension 20 players possess and describe in interviews. Oscar Montoya, Dimension 20 cast member and my improv instructor at UCB, has given me this feedback and is coaching me through developing these skills. Given that painful social dynamics in the TTRPGs I played were what took me out of flow potential most readily, I am fascinated with collective improvisation and whatever social dynamics and interpersonal skills make successful storytelling possible. The members of Dimension 20 and Adventuring Academy have shown that they are also invested in understanding these phenomena, which will generate valuable answers. I suppose if I have a bias toward TTRPGs is that I long to experience the kinds of games I have seen on these shows, so a lot is personally riding on my research and the experiences I gain while doing it.

Research Questions

Main Question:

How do TTRPGs use collective improvisation and flow to create the feeling of ‘living in a story’?

This inquiry is equal parts about technique and subjective experience, exploring how meaningful experiences can be designed and felt in tabletop role-playing games. I posit that it is through the use of improvisation and features of flow experiences that allow moments of ‘lived-story’ experience to emerge, while also wishing to explore how players make meaning of those experiences based on their prior experience with improvisation and flow.

Sub-Questions:

1.      What phenomena exactly are people describing creatively, imaginatively, psychologically, and socially when they use this phrase? How does this relate to theories of flow?

2.      To what do professional TTRPG players and game masters attribute their most ‘story-lived’ game moments?

3.      How does training in improvisation influence the collaborative creation of such story moments?

4.      What does the narrative design/writing process look like for games that exemplify these types of moments, both by the game master and players?

5.      How do the game system, rules, mechanics, and random factor create narrative?

6.      To what extent does performing for an audience, live or recorded, contribute to this experience? What about audience interaction?

7.      Do the interviewees believe this experience can be recreated in digital games, and what aspects do they consider vital to doing so?

I’m not the only Stark who appreciates a more narrative approach at the table.