Role-playing Games as Storytelling Events

Our definitions of stories vary. Stories are written or spoken, true or false.\ud The study of literature focuses on written forms of the story, while the study of\ud folklore examines the oral tradition. It is debated whether or not modern Western\ud society still has an oral tradition. In 1936 Walter Benjamin! noted that "the art of\ud storytelling is coming to an end," being quickly outmoded by the rise 6f the modern\ud novel and the new technology for the transmission of information. Some believe\ud that TV and radio, has become a suitable replacement for the lost art of storytelling.\ud Others see that the last ten years or so have brought a resurgence of storytelling, a\ud "New Orality" (Creedon 1991:46)/ which has manifested itself in storytelling guilds\ud and conferences that tote sto~ytelling as education, therapy, and entertainment.\ud Still others, folklorists and anthropologists, continue to study the traditions of talltales\ud and campfire stories that have never died out in the American South\ud (Bauman 1991). In this paper I present a new locus of the oral tradition in modern\ud society. I believe that fantasy role-playing games have a place in the tradition of oral\ud narrative