Daniel Mackay, The Fantasy Role-Playing Game: a New Performing art, McFarland & Co., 2001

THE TAXONOMY OF THE ROLE-PLAYING GAME PERFORMANCE

Worth noting here is an area in which the gamemaster exerts important control over the theater of the event: the decision about who will play. Because so many integral elements of the performance are contributed by the players--from their influence on the narrative's script to the script's materialization in the performance itself--the question of who plays is an important one. In my own experience, I found three or four players to be the optimum number, and I would shy away from inviting more than five. Once our role-playing group of four players established itself as a successful combination of players and characters, I gently vetoed any movement to have other players join the Die Skürgen narrative, unless it was merely to make a cameo for one or two sessions. As filtered through Schechner's performance analysis, the taxonomy of the role-playing game performance becomes the following:

(recommended by Parke Cooper)