Drama, Dice, & Deception Checks

 As in my previous posts about the use of language in D&D, the theory of Dramatism conceptualizes language use and choice as symbolic action. Words are symbols which represent ideas. We use those symbols with motivation to affect the people and world around us. In tabletop gaming, the words by and large create the world within which the players act. Dramatism, for its founder Kenneth Burke, is a method of language (and thought) analysis that seeks to understand the actions conveyed, rather than the information contained. Burke is regarded as one of the twentieth-century’s leading rhetoricians. To him, language isn’t just about transmitting information, but about planning, acting, and responding to others’ language choices. 

A DM’s use of language helps explain character motivation, clarifies goals players may want to achieve, and establishes rules which guide the game’s action. Without language (at least according to Burke), we couldn’t have a host of the key elements necessary to roleplay gaming: choice, consequences, rules, boundaries, strictures, and limitations. Not only is language fundamental to the running of our tabletop games, its employ (which we could seldom get around) brings us into contact with the most negative of human experiences: choosing wrongly, betting on the dice and critically failing, excluding folks, embarrassment, shame, or culpability. In dramatism, “guilt” is the Burkean catch-all term for these less-than-pleasant feelings. As players and game masters, this provides us a keen opportunity to alleviate and assuage that guilt and those unpleasant feelings.  

And just like in D&D, dramatism loves its pantheon. The in-game existence of a host of deities, devils, and demons makes for not only reality-defining battles and planar consequences, but also the clear rule-bound definitions of good and evil.  Evil can be detected. Good can be separated from neutral. The bad, wrong, selfish, and malevolent can be identified by checking a creature or character’s alignment. The righteous are the same. The presence of these many divinities are part of the D&D gaming system and provide a method of alleviating the dramatist’s concern with human guilt. Perhaps this is done through self-blame or through blaming others (and in the process making ourselves into the victim).

I find that it’s a lot of work to draw and maintain my players’ attention at times. Distractions, side-conversations, kids, phones, snacks, and empty drinks can all serve to distance me from my audience of adventurers. It’s in these times that Burke would have me focus on my efforts to foster identification with the players. It’s a term that social scientists will re-label homophily: the perceived similarity between audience and speaker. It’s common ground and it’s easy to create if a speaker can find a common threat, a shared enemy the audience can quickly and deeply fear. It’s a handy technique for dungeonmasters to strike their players with not only fear, but also uncertainty and doubt. Can we get three cheers for Strahd?

As much as it pains me to admit it (over and over) these theorists were not thinking about Dungeons & Dragons when they began postulating their understanding of human interactions. However, as the premise of this writing attests, that’s not stopping me from using D&D to understand the theories in a whole new way. Dramatism, unlike a lot of the other theoretical models I’ve examined, provides a relatively clear framework for that analysis (and it even sounds like a D&D mummer faction): The Dramatistic Pentad. 

Let’s take a classic RPG scene: the adventurers have been called in front of a concerned noble’s council. He speaks, “Our lands were peaceful and healthy but recently fell prey to a blight. Crops wither. Cattle sicken and die. Children go hungry. The people speak of a dark priest wandering the southern woods.” Were a dramatist to observe this rhetorical performance, there would be at least five elements of primary concern:

1. The act: what was done/said (the exact words, images, and symbols spoken).

2. The agent: who did the doing/saying (in this case, the noble).

3. The agency: the process/means of conveying the information (the method of speech).

4. The scene: the background/environment (the council chamber, the lighting, the participants, the audience)

5. The purpose: the implied or explicit motive for the noble’s speech (presumably to get the adventurers to help)

If the DM does her/his job, and the players are persuaded to act, they’ve likely identified with the noble’s rhetorical performance. The symbolic action has worked! If not, (perhaps a player rolled a high Insight Check), the players get the sense that the noble is withholding information, has an ulterior motive, or is otherwise sketchy. The rhetorical act (the dramatic performance) has failed. The noble doesn’t end up luring the adventurers into a trap he has set in the southern woods.

Deeply considering which element(s) of the dramatistic pentad seem most important to a speaker can help rhetorical critics understand a speaker’s motivations. This theory’s utility for DMs strikes me as high when it comes to providing action motivation through NPCs.  If you are seeking to spur your players on to some quest or path, consideration of the speech, letter, or (in dramatism’s term) the act would be a helpful place to start.  The agent doing the act, as well, might provide the players with different motivation for assisting or refusing the call to adventure. Even focusing your narration of describing the scene’s lighting, furniture, ambiance, and feel could also set your players on edge or at ease.