CFP - Rolling Cameras and Dice: Analog Role-Playing Games, Cinema and Media (SCMS Chicago / March 6-10, 2013)

From: Evan Torner <[email protected]>

*Call for Papers - Rolling Cameras and Dice: Analog Role-Playing Games,
   Cinema and Media*
Society of Cinema of Media Studies 2013 Conference
March 6-10, 2013
Chicago, IL, USA

From the the moral panic of *Mazes & Monsters* (1982), *Dungeons &
   Dragons*-inspired fantasy films like *Krull* (1983) and early franchise
   RPGs like *James Bond: Role-Playing in Her Majesty's Secret Service*
    (1983), to more recent televisual representations on *Freaks &
   Geeks* (2000) and *Community*(2011) and franchise tie-in games
   like the *Battlestar Galactica Roleplaying Game* (2007) and *Marvel:
   Heroic Roleplaying* (2012), audiovisual media and analog or
   “tabletop” role-playing games have been in dialog. Likewise, since
   the early days of computers, role-playing games have been one of the
   most significant genres of digital games, from early experiments based
   on Dungeons & Dragons to “AAA” blockbusters like the *Mass Effect*
   trilogy, and this influence feeds back into tabletop versions of games
   such as *World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game* and *Dragon
   Age: Dark Fantasy Roleplaying*.

As Frank Rose has noted in his recent book, *The Art of Immersion*,
contemporary films, television shows, video games, and other media
frequently pivot around the exploration and mastery of immersive,
transmedia fictional worlds, similar to a role-playing game. Similarly,
some modern role-playing games, such as *Fiasco*, *Feng Shui*, *Mist-Robed
Gate* and *Primetime Adventures*, are structured according to the forms and
conventions of film and television narratives.

This panel, to be held at the 2013 meeting of the Society for Cinema and
Media Studies (SCMS), seeks to address the ways in which analog
role-playing games can be understood in context of cinema and media
studies, and how cinema, television and video games themselves have taken
up certain fictional and mechanical logics – goal-oriented quests,
character creation, leveling up, competition against the GM – derived from
tabletop role-playing games. Ultimately the panel is intended to tease out
the aesthetic, narrative, industrial and social connections between
seemingly disparate cultural forms.

*Panel submissions may address a related topic and/or one of the suggested
topics below:*
* Aesthetic similarities and divergences between tabletop RPGs and
film/television
* Narrative conventions derived from television in tabletop RPGs, and vice
versa
* Spin-offs and licensed RPG products vs Gaming in the "spirit" of a film
* Industrial analyses of RPGs in transmedia franchises
* The role of tabletop and digital RPGs in transmedia franchises and
convergence culture
* Fandom in relation to RPGs and other media
* *The Gamers*, *The Guild*, and other RPG-related fan media
* Film theory and criticism vs Roleplaying Game theory and criticism
* Roleplaying games as playable film theory or criticism
* Paratextual analyses of RPG materials in relation to film and television
* The relationship between tabletop RPGs and computer RPGs
* Remediation of film and television in RPGs
* Historical accounts of the relationship between RPGs and film
* Popular representations of RPGs in other media
* The politics of RPGs and other media
* Cross-cultural analyses of RPGs and other media in different global
contexts
* The role of chance and contingency in RPGs and film

Please send a title, a draft abstract no longer than 2500 characters, 3-5
bibliographic sources, and a bio no longer than 500 characters to Evan
Torner at [email protected] by *August 10.*

--
Evan Torner, M.A.
Ph.D. Candidate, German Studies / Film Studies
Program Assistant, Center for European Cinemas Exploratory Committee
University of Massachusetts Amherst