This paper discusses the narrative or storytelling aspect of tabletop role-playing games
(TTRPGs). The primary intention of this paper is to introduce TTRPGs as an effective
alternative teaching and learning method that could benefit students in classrooms. The
activities implemented could train students to be more creative, think outside the box, and
spontaneously generated narrative and infused with characteristics such as – in this case –
bravery, comedy, and horror-comedy. The research subjects are 6 teaching staff of the Centre
for International Languages, UniMAP. The participants comprise of four English language
teachers, one Bahasa Melayu teacher and one Bahasa Melayu lecturer. Each participant has
their duties. One is the gamemaster who acts as the general narrator and arbiter of the rules
of the game, while the other five are players who play roles within the setting of the game.
The TTRPG used in the game sessions was Cubicle 7's The Laundry RPG based on author
Charles Stross' series of horror-comedy novels, The Laundry Files. Three sessions were run
from November 2018 to March 2019, each taking from 90 minutes to two hours. In helping
to develop creative ideas using The Laundry RPG, three episodes of the narrative were
derived from the gameplay of the TTRPG, each from one session. First is entitled The New
Normal, the second an Unbelievably Wooden Dialogue and the third episode Getting Ahead
of Themselves. The Narrative Paradigm theory framework by Walter Fisher (1985) is used
in the analysis of the discussion of this paper. The three stories that were derived from the
three The Laundry role-playing game activities can be read at this website:
https://hishgraphics.com/category/rpg-actual-play/rpg-campaigns/laundry-the-musangking-directive/.
