[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] So. Hello, everyone. Um, welcome to session ten of the fantasy Summer school. Uh, my name is Adam Kelly. I'm a doctoral researcher here at Oxford, uh, where I work on melancholy, medieval poetry, cherry stuff. It's my pleasure to be chatting this session with two excellent speakers. We'll have time for five minutes of questions after the first talk and 15 after the second.
So please bear them in mind, and we'll try to get to as many of you as possible in that time. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome Stuart Lee. He's a professor of English Lit here at Oxford, where he has lectured on Old English war poetry, Tolkien and fantasy literature. Stuart's talk today is on gaming and immersive world. So welcome Stuart. Thank you. Uh, and thank you very much. I know what you say at the beginning.
I am not a games theorist by any stretch of the imagination, but I was a gamer for many years of my my life and misspent youth. So I just want to talk a bit about a combination of games, history. Gaming, of course, goes back. Probably one of the earliest things that mankind has, has, has tackled or done a bit like telling fantasy stories.
And I'm going to take you through the history of these various components and then try and pull out some similarities to a few things that we have talked about, um, in the past couple of days. So wargaming, um, has been around for many, many years, but people probably focus in on Prussian war gaming, which started in the late 18th century. Um, AJ Bell week's game, which allowed people to sort of simulate battle battle tactics, etc.
Um, the picture on the right is actually from H.G. Wells His Little Wars. He produced a set of rules for war gaming. This is figures and battles, figure battles, etc. um, ironically, in 1913, when of course, a year later it was all too horrendously real. Um, commercially produced games. They start to appear very early on.
There are the remotes where you see they're in the 16th century, but most people talk about after the Second World War in terms of things like Charles Roberts Tactics or Risk, which appeared. I'm sure we've all played it in 1959. So let's talk about board games and board games. What I find interesting about them is they are trying to simulate what it's like to be in a particular situation. Uh, you as the player, make decisions, but you're often delivered by chance.
And again, you could say, well, that's very like some of the, of what happens to characters in roleplaying. And the challenge generally is, is driven by the role of a dice. Uh, you can be everything from a property tycoon in monopoly to solving a murder in Cluedo. But again, I think, as we've said, with fantasy books or fantasy stories, they emerge from their time, games emerge from their time.
So monopoly, which actually was first touted around in 1906, uh, and then came out in 1935, really is a is a game about capitalism and the Great Depression. Cluedo comes out in 1943. It's a game which follows on from the golden age of detective fiction. You're in the locked house trying to solve the murder. And I think also, which I'll come back to in a second. You do experience a sense of immersion, even with something like monopoly. Oh, what would it be like to own three hotels in Mayfair?
I'm still in that house trying to solve the murder of Colonel Black or whatever it was. Now, you won't be surprised to know that board games embraced some of the key texts of fancy literature. There were probably earlier ones than this, but the one that people, most people point to is 1921. At the oldest books there was a board game, um, for that, which is a very small reproduction there. Um, you'll also come a lot of what they call risk skinning. So risk the Game of Thrones risk score.
The Lord of the rings monopoly. They really aren't the sort of thing we're interested in. We're more interested in a game that attempts to try and take you through the narrative. And because he's my bank, I'm just going to focus or use Tolkien to try and talk about this. And Tolkien games actually appear quite early on 1970, conquest of the ring world, certainly late 60s. Um, there are battle rules for for, uh, taking your figures round by the ring bearer.
The game, which probably I remember playing the most was Spies War of the ring, which is on a grand scale, a map that is the size of a table. Um, and you try to sort of view the characters of The Fellowship of Saruman or Sauron. Uh, then we get some really quite classic games coming out that Kinsey is Lord of the rings, and probably the one that most people saw at War of the ring, which 2000 and 2004, which again.
But you can see the similarity between the spies and that one from the War of the ring. It's dealing with on a grand scale. Middle-Earth trying to get the ring to Mordor. Okay role playing games. And this is where things start to merge, because chain mail, which we often talk about, was about figure battles. But it started to introduce not just muskets, cannons.
You start to introduce magic into it. And some of the developers of that in 1973 74 formed Tactical Studies Rules, or TSR, which of course most famously leads to Dungeons and Dragons by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. And here we get of similarities. So daddy starts that medieval, that fantasy world. Uh, tunnels and trolls without the time, room, quest, Warhammer and so on. But then roleplaying starts to embrace other genres. Exactly as we've been saying again and again, Bushido was an early one.
I remember playing in Japanese culture. Sci fi comes in, we came in with traveller horror with things like Call of Cthulhu from Kaohsiung Games, etc. Again, like we talk about fantasy. You can play role playing games at the individual sword and sorcery level. You go in a dungeon, you kill monsters, you take your treasure out. The end or what became began to form campaign levels, epic levels. And you can go out to to the shops and buy these big packs to take you through these worlds.
Pre-built worlds and campaign. The Dungeon Master in a role playing game is the author. They will world build. They may buy the worlds, but they more often than not will create the world, create their own mythology, um, with pre-designed scenarios. But they're not necessarily the sole author, as we will come on to, because the narrative can and will diverge because of. You, the other players in the game or non-player characters or whatever there's still chance involved in efforts on.
Okay. A couple of things. We've come up against influences. So here is Gary Gygax talking about D and D. How did it Lord of the rings influence the d D game world? Plenty. Of course, just about all the players were huge JRT fans, and so they insisted. I put as much Tolkien influence material into the game as possible. So again, what we tried to do over the past couple of days to show you that everything in a way looks back to what came before.
So D and D emerges from this great desire in the 60s, um, to look at what resurgence in particular in Tolkien and so on. But the second thing I'd say is that we're talking here. Our role playing game is about this idea of immersing yourself.
You could imagine. When you're in a carrier reading a book, you can imagine yourself in the in that other character, what they're experience, etc. in a particularly well written but gaming of course before you the opportunity, as Scott Paul says here, to enter fully into that world, to fully immerse yourself, but also to play out your and I use it lowercase fantasy to be something which you may not be able to be in real life,
to explore all of those options. Uh, and it takes to take new levels, obviously. And some of you may do this live action role playing games. Uh, forget the picture on the right. That's just some people doing it. Picture on the left is probably the more interesting one. That's Pick Fruit and Castle at Cheshire. And in the early 1980s, that was probably the site of the first live action role roleplaying in the UK, uh, called Treasure Trap.
And I used to go to it and I can tell you tales about that. Um, okay. Sorry. Computer games. That seems to have gone slightly wrong. So, uh, just to say again, if we look at token, we have Moria. So we have early computer games coming out, even in 1975. It's all text driven, one which I spent an inordinate amount of time when I should have been doing my A-levels, playing The Hobbit on the spectrum. Incredibly frustrating game, but it worked. Um, and then we get things.
Computer games have worked and moved a lot more, so it changed from that individual playing on, uh, a spectrum in their bedroom to something which became much more multiplayer and so on. And there were a lot of games which developed, and I just put DeMeo up there because that came out in 2021. It's not a Lord of the Rings of Tolkien one, but it's a VR game.
So you wore a VR headset, and the irony is the VR headset what you when you start playing the game, you are transported to a basement, sitting around a table playing D and D, uh, so you're basically on the set of Stranger Things. Uh, so just wrap it up. Just a couple of things about theory. So if we look at narrative theory as, as some of you may know, there's always a narrative at the core of the board games. And to agree role playing games, the scenario if you buy a scenario pack.
But of course it's just there, but it will be then destabilised by you, the players. You can challenge it, you can take it. And believe you me, we used to take it in all kinds of directions. And some people have written about this, that in narrative theory you talk about the fabulous events, act as time locations, and then the story is overlaid by the author and they as the individual, control it. But in a game, we perhaps will think about, well, there's a pool of things in there.
There are the players that run the Dungeon Master says the game system, the rules, and they combine to create the narrative itself. So it's not we got bits and pieces, but are sitting around a table or online or whatever are the ones that will change the narrative. A thing. That is, though there is constant tension, is trying to keep remaining. Um. Uh, faithful to the original text.
Uh, now that happens, of course, we talked about fanfiction earlier where people are trying to sort of take the text in new directions or look at some of the opportunities to explore new areas in that. Um, but what we find tend to find in the, the game, certainly in the game rules, is they are trying to keep faithful to that original narrative. Once we as players get hold of it, uh oh, all bets are off. And then finally, I just want to talk a bit about immersion losing yourself.
And I don't mean in the Jumanji sense where you get sucked into the game physically, but you do get sucked into games even with a board game. You will take a side. Um, you may not like it, but you do take a side. If you're playing it, you start. You want to win. That's the objective of it. Um, and I think the other thing which we've we've touched on again, is that, you know, people will receive a text, a fantasy text in very different ways.
I may read it and get something out of it. Someone else may read it and get something completely different out of it. So there's no one type of gamer either. Some people just go in because they love the rules. They love challenging the rules. Other peoples go in because they just want to have a muck about or whatever. Very different people who will play games. So their experience of a game is very different.
But what you will read if you go into this game theory is things emerge from a bit of psychology about, um, how we immerse ourselves that there is this intense focus when you are playing a game and there's discussion of the magic circle, the games reality starts to dominate you when you are sitting, playing either a board game or a role playing game.
And I guess this is I'm just trying to tie this back to what we talked about already, a bit like Tolkien secondary belief, because there are times if you're playing really intensely, particularly at 2:00 in the morning, an RPG, you are in that game and you're surrounded by it. Um, and then the other extract here, or maybe Sarah Bowman, six facets of immersion where she takes a part. There are all kinds of levels that you can play.
And again, it goes back to the idea that there are gamers who, uh, will experience very different things. It might be the character, the setting, the rules itself, which they really get interested in. But then finally. I think when you've played a game, particularly if you've invested a lot of time, there is that bleed.
There is that sense. You come out of the game, you go into real life, you go back to the mundane, but somehow it can make you see things differently, and it may just be the person you were playing when you go there, a backstabber. I'll never trust them again in real life, but it could be at another level. And I suppose that's beginning to touch on token's recovery. And there's a set of reading if you wish to sort of look on that and explore it a bit further.
Thank you. Thank you for this is really fascinating. When I heard game is my first, uh. But the first thing that my mind went to is video games, actually, because of course, it's where we are. And I just have in mind things that are emerging now. I wonder if it it would be a new sort of era to some of what you're saying here with, with console games like, um, Whole New World being built through Elder Scrolls and that sort of thing.
And then we're also seeing adaptations like God of War and of course, part of what's going on there. And this maybe gets a little bit just the experience of the game. And what it means for the story world is the, the sort of response and engagement with, with console feedback, with, you know, vibrations to get much more immersive. You mentioned, of course, like headsets and stuff. I just wondered if you had any thoughts.
Yeah. So on the second one we are we're moving more into that that sensory gaming as well. Yeah, with the VR headsets. But also the handheld controllers will vibrate will channel and Cetera and you can see where that might head. Um, yeah. And I didn't talk about world building as part of the game, which goes way back to those early games, um, like Kingdom and Civilisation and so on. But now you would certainly see a lot of young people playing robot Roblox and so on.
You know, they're they're constantly building new places or it's pre-built and you go in and you can you can alter it as well. So yeah, that is something which we see if you're tying it back to a fantasy world that still tends to be like Lord of the Rings Online. It's built. But then there are scenarios in there, but there's scenarios which are off the side from the main narrative. They don't let you go in and disrupt what's happening, say in the Third Age. Thank you sir.
Um, I'm wondering if, you know, um, gamers are famous just like fans who write fanfiction, uh, the famous for their communities and like, community spirit, particularly those who do, you know, dungeon Dungeons and dungeons, the more kind of analogue, um, activities. And I'm wondering, we know of, um, quite a few people who became, uh, recognised, either self-published or traditionally published authors coming from, um, fan fiction.
I'm wondering, do we know of any similar examples of people coming from, uh, this sort of gaming communities who then become, uh, recognised, I don't know, screenplay, uh, writers or, uh, um, but I don't know about screenplay, but writers, yes, we do, because we met her yesterday, Samantha Shannon, as she said, I'm a gamer. But, um, going way back, people like Steve Jackson, they, you know, they were inventing games and game rules and then became authors as well.
Sometimes it's like self-play roleplaying Game, folks, and the Fighting Fantasy books, etc. I don't know, to be honest, but I suspect there were quite a few, um, that at least grew up. Playing either a board game or a war game, or a role playing game or video game, and that's and sparked them to sort of think that they can create something that. So I think that's that's probably the time. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Thanks so much. So I actually.