Gry fabularne RPG jako szczególny przykład adaptacji tekstów kultury popularnej

Abstract

RPGs as a special example of adaptation of popular culture texts

Role Playing Games (or narrative games) constitute an important phenomenon in the modern culture. RPGs consist in the players adopting fictitious character roles in the reality created according to a pre-established scenario, which is related to particular texts of culture - mainly popular culture. The games are a peculiar type of adaptation, as the adapted layer is not the text itself, but the vision of the world that the text presents. Both the texts and the corresponding games are transmedial in character, which associates this form of play to the process of media convergence. The phenomenon of RPGs is also inscribed in the cultural current of “participation culture”, in which people are not passive recipients of prepared messages, but active participants in their creation. In the case of RPGs, the participation involves enacting situations which reflect cultural archetypes, and creating cultural messages.