A Closer Look at the (Rule-) Books: Framings and Paratexts in Tabletop Role-playing Games

David Jara's paper examines how the paratextual and framing elements of tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) rulebooks shape the interactive narratives players build during play, despite the technological simplicity of the medium. Drawing on Wolf's and Genette's theories of framing and paratext, Jara argues that rulebooks, through their rules, setting information, genre labels, cover art, and titles, establish expectations that guide players toward particular fictional worlds and themes before any play begins. Central to the argument is the concept of "genesic framing," in which framing devices incite the production of text rather than merely shaping its reception, extending authorial control over play beyond the formal roles of the rulebook's writers.

The analysis draws its primary illustrations from White Wolf's World of Darkness. Its quantified and qualitative traits, such as Humanity and Virtues, function both as game mechanics and as framing devices that steer players toward inner conflict and moral themes. Likewise, storytelling-oriented rulebooks consistently use embedded narratives, prologues, epilogues, and intra-textual passages to set mood, genre, and thematic frames prior to introducing rules, encouraging suspension of disbelief and a serious, narrative-focused approach to play. Jara also draws on Iserian Leerstellen, or semantic blanks, to argue that rulebooks are intentionally incomplete acts of fictionalizing whose gaps are realized only in actual play.

The paper's scope is theoretical and textual, focusing on the design and reception of TRPG rulebooks rather than on empirical study of play sessions or broad industry data. Jara concludes that studying these framings reveals how secondary and tertiary authors shape the story space, while acknowledging that the full implications of this question remain open for further investigation.