http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/hhpthesis_21theses/rss Recent eScholarship items from Humanities Honors Theses 2021 Mon, 22 Jun 2026 10:51:25 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2gw1d97n Over the last two decades, Dungeons & Dragons, a tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG), transformed from a niche subculture to a mainstream aspect of popular culture. Tabletop gamers now utilize new media to create “actual play” experiences, in which a group of people play TTRPGs for an audience. In traditional tabletop, Dennis Waskul and Matt Lust propose that role-playing engenders three unique roles within one person, that of the person, the player, and the persona. In this thesis, I propose that actual play TTRPGs necessitate the addition of a fourth role: the performer. Because of the nature of live television and theatre, both the actors and the audience experience the effects of this fourth role, in recorded actual play and live actual play. I will explore how the division of self into four tangible roles reveals in and out of game identity negotiation. Through a case study of one of the most popular actual play shows, Critical Role, this thesis aims to uncover the ways... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2gw1d97n Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Burton, Adrianna