Playing with the Body

So, I’ve been thinking about tabletop role playing games lately, and playing with the body. Quick disclaimer: I’m still very very early in the research, so these initial studies and thoughts are just that: quick thoughts, things to think about, brief considerations. Today’s consideration: the body.

I’m partly thinking about the body because of how close this research is happening to the finishing of the cosplay project. In cosplay, everything was about the body. The body was what was transforming through the art of clothes, the body’s performing and embodying of the pop culture myth. But tabletop role playing isn’t cosplay, even though sometimes cosplay can be involved. The exact boundaries are, as always, a bit fuzzy.

But where is the body in tabletop games? We have the obvious actions that the body must take, like rolling dice, taking notes on changes to stats, and sometimes moving model figures on a map. Some of the brief conversations I’ve had already, the player commented on how they prefer physically rolling dice to doing so on a phone app because of the feel of the dice in the hands. This also comes with small bodily rituals, like blowing on the dice. In one actual play, one player would have another player blow on the dice because they often got more lucky with dice rolls.

Then there are other aspects when playing around a table (as opposed to virtually online). The bodily actions of simply being with others can change attitudes and approaches to the way games and play are understood and experienced. A lot of the stories of the joy of tabletop playing is about the togetherness. There are stories of pizza deliveries, or, in one case, homemade meals instead, shared with a party around the campfire of the game table.

Role play itself is bodily. Even when the players aren’t in costume, and don’t move around, they are still role playing with the body. Maybe they pitch their voice differently in order to make it more obvious when they are speaking as their character versus themselves as player. Even the ways of speaking can be different, using different sentence structures or vocabulary in order to fall into the way a character would speak and move rather than the player.

The body is definitely actively involved in role playing, even if the play is entirely different from the cosplay type of play. While one may be more obvious, the other is still there and actively present. One of the determining words in defining these types of games is tabletop - which actively encourages images of gathering around a table to look at something together. An active bodily action. What kind of differences are there when exploring tabletop role playing online? How do these actions change or differ? What bodily actions are transferred, despite the virtual location? I’ve still got a lot of questions to unpack.