Role-Play as a Heritage Practice

Role-Play as a Heritage Practice: Historical LARP, Tabletop RPG and Reenactment

By Michał Mochocki

Routledge: London-New York, 2021

In Role-Play as a Heritage Practice, Mochocki sets out to introduce scholars and educators to the immersive worlds of historical role-playing, as well as to introduce games scholars to heritage authenticity as an aspect of immersion. In so doing, three types of role-play are drawn upon throughout: live action role-play (LARP), tabletop role-playing games (TRPG), and historical re-enactment (RH), which are compared with the heritage experience of site/event visitation (SEV). Mochocki’s central argument is established from the beginning: as a creative engagement with the past, historical role-play is a heritage practice, incorporating tangible and intangible aspects of heritage in both design and gameplay to generate an authentic experience for players. The idea of authenticity and creating an authentic heritage experience permeates the book, as well as the discussion of historical accuracy. This authenticity/accuracy question is typical of historical games studies.

The main methodological approach adopted in this volume is transmedia narratology and the creation of transmedial storyworlds that use historical periods as the shared setting for (non-)fiction narratives (see especially ch. 4).1 Four key facets of these storyworlds together help generate immersion within the setting, and through this immersion players engage with different aspects of heritage practice. These four aspects, which are discussed in detail, are: activity and environment (ch. 7), characters (ch. 8), narrative and authorised heritage discourse (ch. 9), and community (ch. 10). Different ways of building these worlds are explored, for LARP, TRPH, and RH respectively. The processes involved differ depending on the type of role-play involved, as well as the preferences of the respective games master and players. In general, RH (especially Battle rather than Camp RH) has less freedom to explore heritage, being constrained by set roles and moments that reflect the historical event in question. In other cases, a central division is the use of research versus a reliance on generic conventions (i.e., transmedial representations of the setting in question, which will likely be familiar to the players to at least some extent) in the creation of storyworld databases, and a resulting spectrum of fictionality and reliance on the real-world. Where LARP and RH differ from TRPG, in terms of immersion, is the potential use of tangible heritage as part of the gameplay, whether of artefacts or places, which impacts the sensorial perception of the storyworld and so the player’s own embodied experience. Various other aspects of the gameplay can also affect immersion and so the resulting heritage experience, including the need to filter real-world anachronisms around the gaming space (ch. 3.2.3), the game mechanics involved (ch. 5.2), and the potential use of media (ch. 5.3.2).

Despite Mochocki’s frequent discussion of the pursuit for historical accuracy in many games, by designers and players, a distinction between history and heritage is made from the very beginning. History is described as the presentation of the past as a coherent vision, whereas heritage creatively plays with bits and pieces of history, legend, myth, and fiction (p. 8). History is viewed as reconstructionist, trying to reveal objective facts to tell the truth, while heritage is constructionist, selecting a narrative from a specific theoretical perspective. A player driven by history is deemed as judging games for historical accuracy, while those coming from a heritage perspective prioritise creative fun or political agenda (pp. 254–254). It’s also noted that “[w]hat matters in heritage is making the past meaningful to the present” (p. 95). Two implications arise, namely that there is no space for creativity in history, and that making history relevant to the present is not a consideration. Instead, a clear distinction between the two disciplines is not easy to maintain, not only because of the strive for historical accuracy discussed throughout but also because, conversely, Mochocki also subscribes to the description of history as an imaginative reconstruction of the past and historiography as partially fictionalised narratives (p. 6). Instead, role-play also presents a creative way to play around the edges of known history, to explore gaps and silences in the surviving record, and devise new questions to ask of old material.2

The focus on heritage also raises the question of whose heritage is involved? At several points, role-play is noted as having the power to give voice to minorities (e.g., pp. 175, 178) and to promote dissonant histories (ch. 10.2). Role-play can promote historically verified exceptions (e.g., the role of African-American troops in the US Civil War [ch. 8.1.4] or women in the Soviet air force [p. 264]), as well as employ anti-accuracy choices to include diverse players. This aspect of role-play is the focus of chapter 10, which discusses not only community immersion but also raises the issues involved in playing other people’s heritages, especially when this involves playing other ethnicities, e.g., the use of minstrelsy in the first running of the Czech LARP Hell on Wheels (2016), set in the American Wild West (p. 258). There is some discussion about how to avoid such concerns, including abandoning historical LARPs or only playing one’s own ethnicity (p. 260). An option not discussed is the process of co-designing games with representatives of different communities, e.g., with students in the case of edularps (educational LARPs), to help ensure inclusive gameplay and avoid offending or hurting players (edularps are discussed briefly on pp. 259–260).

In terms of whose heritage and inclusivity, one issue that permeates Mochocki’s discussion concerns who his approach excludes. The discourse throughout the volume focuses on the physical and sensorial immersion of both role-playing and SEV, thereby excluding those who engage in different ways with the world around them. For example, SEV is described as relying on physical acts: walking on fixed routes, listening to guides, reading labels; they are performative, require multimodal sensory perceptions, and are relational, sharing and negotiating the space with others (pp. 41–42). Similarly, the label “interactive drama” given to LARP is rejected for TRPG because it “does not fully meet the requirement of giving life to the character by actions of the physical body” (p. 79). The primacy of the physical body is emphasised throughout, without consideration of those who play and engage with heritage without being able to walk, see, or hear (to name just the abilities focused on throughout the discussion).

The global Covid pandemic has also demonstrated how fragile physical engagement can be, both for group play and for site/event visitation. Since 2020, there has instead been an increased use of online resources and remote TRPG play (in particular) has increased significantly, as has the development of digital tools to support role-play in virtual environments. Simultaneously, there has been an increase in virtual exhibitions and tours, etc., of museums and heritage sites. While these points could not have been foreseen – and their omission is certainly not the fault of the author (Mochocki was able to very briefly mention the effect of the pandemic [p. 86]) – the insistence on the tabletop-as-physical-requirement of TRPG (p. 17, 70) is no longer central to the experience, and the implications of distance gaming is a point for future discussion.

concluding thoughts

Despite the above criticisms, Mochocki’s does fulfil his aim of building bridges between heritage and role-playing, demonstrating diverse ways in which LARP, TRPG, and RH facilitate engagement and involvement in heritage, as well as how SEV involves role-playing elements. Role-play is positioned well as a form of public history, with players involved in history and heritage through the world-building process. For heritage scholars unfamiliar with games, useful introductions to each game type are provided (ch. 3) and the book is at its most accessible when examples from actual games are drawn upon (it would have been useful, as well as interesting, to see more case studies among the dense theoretical discussions). Role-play as Heritage Practice does not claim that all role-play is a heritage practice; rather, it demonstrates the potential that role-play has in this respect and provides a framework for exploring creative ways to engage people with both heritage and history.

Notes

1 A transmedial approach to historical games is also central to Ross Clare’s recent monograph, Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames (2021), for which see the MMGC review here.

2 For example, such creative use of TRPG lies at the centre of the Dice on the Nile project, which explores the history of early 8th century AD Egypt (an early gameplay session can be listened to here).

Book ReviewsgamesresearchnetworkMay 3, 2022

Role-Play as a Heritage Practice