NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
Back to results
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
ERIC Number: EJ1478133
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Jul
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0034-0553
EISSN: EISSN-1936-2722
Available Date: 2025-07-18
Liminal Play: Coauthoring Narratives across Metaleptic, Metadramatic, and Transludic Interactions
Reading Research Quarterly, v60 n3 e70036 2025
Role-playing games (RPGs) are storytelling activities that mediate co-authorship through a variety of in-game, out-of-game, and intertextual relationships. Liminal interactions sometimes occur during RPG play that blur these categories. To understand the purposes and processes of "liminal play," this study analyzed data from a yearlong RPG program co-facilitated by six teenage boys on Zoom. Thinking with three concepts from game studies and narratology--metalepsis, metadrama, and transludology--findings highlight how moments of liminal play helped participants negotiate the dramatic content and authorial procedures of their unfolding narrative worlds. Rethinking theories of play that conceptualize game narratives and game mechanics as discrete phenomena, the discussion examines how a variety of rules, roles, and relationships intersect during moments of liminal play. As a result, study implications consider how researchers and practitioners might account for the complex dynamics of liminal play in ways that interrogate power differentials embedded in playful contexts.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1SUNY Cortland, Cortland, New York, USA