Wagner’s aesthetic idea of the total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk). However, despite our efforts to be cinematic at times, role playing can never be a movie, just as a movie can never be real life. However, can roleplaying be like an opera?

Similar to opera, the details of a role playing game must stand out: clues must be plentiful and obvious, character development must be

done in broad strokes, and actions must be, if not epic, at least archetypal. Like the audience at an opera, players will have different

views and viewpoints, different capacities for attention and retention. And, like the performers in an opera, the player characters have their limited time on the stage to make an impact. Just as an opera conductor must satisfy the requirements of their audience as well as their performers, so must a Game Master. For a GM, however, those are one and the same.4  When a GM points their baton, they are signaling for players to perform, or to note a performance, even if that particular aria belongs to a Non-Player Character or to the GM’s own exposition. Regardless, the signal should be obvious and, whenever possible, underscored by the music of the moment (whether that is literally music or the figurative sense discussed below).

Repetition in roleplaying plays a similar role, so to speak, as that it plays in the theater. While we may be waiting to see how NPCs act and react and how the story unfolds, some of the substance of an adventure is already familiar to its players in the sense that they are the ones composing it. The surprise moments are rarely as exciting to players as what they decide to do about them.

Further, most roleplaying adventures rely on some tropes familiar to its players. These tropes manifest not so much in grand, Campbellian archetypes, as in the practical phrases that connote action, decision, or transition. We are excited by the simple phrase “roll for initiative.” “You see three doors before you” offers choices numbering three to the power of your party. And who hasn’t heard a GM ask “Are you sure?” without questioning their most fundamental beliefs?

That is not to say that roleplaying games don’t have their archetypal characters, typically found in the mythologies and worlds in which an adventure takes place. But more palpable to players are the tropes found in the classes, races, and occupations of the game system. Inherent in these vocations are sets of traits that may be exemplified, subverted, or transformed as the player sees fit, once again creating a story that is their own, rather than passively observing something new.

 

One might ask why I compare tabletop roleplaying to opera rather than a play or any stage production. First, opera tends to be performed within a broader, epic context (e.g.: Norse mythology in Wagner’s Ring, post-Revolution Paris in Puccini’s La Bohème, Shakespeare’s Venice in Verdi’s Otello). Although this is not a universal depiction of opera or stage plays, the sheer spectacle of opera seems to lend itself to epic stories and grand ideas, to the historical and the heroic. Likewise, the archetypes in roleplaying tend to put us in a frame of mind to consider character and plot more broadly, eschewing mundane details for the sake of exploring fundamental moral and epistemic questions.

Second, unlike a script for a play, words in a libretto are written in order to be put to music. Consider Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. The libretto, organized by the composer himself, very closely follows certain passages in Alexander Pushkin's 1825-1832 novel in verse, retaining much of his poetry. In a sense, opera has its own language (or languages) which is coequal with its music, and metered verse is well-suited to do just that. Similarly, roleplaying has its own language which must suit the cadence of the game and communicate complex ideas and actions in an economical fashion. Much of the conflict in roleplaying would be impossible (or at least boring) to enact without the use of game jargon. This jargon ranges from abbreviations (XP, AC, Nat 20) to highly descriptive terms (meta-game, railroad, sandbox), and can be efficient, dramatic, or just fun to say. What these terms have in common is that they suit the rhythm of the game, whether the goal is to hasten combat, or to devolve into a discussion (or meta-discussion) of the adventure itself.

So, what is the music of a tabletop roleplaying game? It seems that the essential component of roleplaying is found in the word itself － play. This observation may seem facile or trite, but I speak here of a particular notion of play, one that I have developed in a separate article,5  that is basically this: play occurs when we exist in two worlds at once, where we are able to think and say and do things that are authentic to ourselves, within a framework of rules to which we have agreed. It is the “unreal” arena wherein we are most free to explore reality. As music is to opera, the lifeblood of tabletop roleplaying is that combination of freedom, vitality, and self-determination that we call fun. Maxims like The Rule of Cool speak to this point. When we play tabletop roleplaying games, whether the moment is grave or lighthearted, the adventure a heist or a horror, the player a thespian or a tactician, we enter into an agreement with others to have fun. It is the ethos, logos, and pathos of the enterprise, and our words and actions as players must fit into this framework.