Room: Pinni B4117 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
From Speculation to Speculative Agency: The Intertwining of Speculative Worldbuilding and Interactive Game Mechanics in Digital Fantasy RPGs
Fantasy role-playing games, or RPGs, use different ways to create speculation. On one hand, the fantasy genre affords speculative worldbuilding and speculative mimesis, allowing the player to immerse themselves into a world full of fantastical thought experiments. The video game format, simultaneously, heavily builds on speculative mechanics, which are ways to create speculation in more ludic ways instead of narrative devices. This combination foregrounds speculation in the gaming experience of digital RPGs, encouraging the player to use their interpretive skills while playing and constructing the meanings of the game.
In my presentation, I describe these intertwining forms of speculation as speculative agency. Here, players move beyond mere speculation and begin to act based on it, which influences not only how the story unfolds, but also how the players understand the fictional world they help create. This kind of multifaceted and complex speculation also has significance beyond fictional worlds, since the themes discussed within the games as well as the communicative methods used in RPGs draw constant speculative connections between fiction and reality.
This talk is part of Research Centre Narrare’s Narrative Studies Seminar. The aim of the seminar is to allow for a multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories, and the state of narrative research. Sessions consist of introductory presentations by researchers from different career-stages and different fields studying narratives at Tampere University (up to 20 min), and general discussion.
Narrare Seminar – Spring 2026 Programme:
17.2. Markus Laukkanen: News about future turmoil: how a hypothetical war is narrated on Finnish news-media websites
Room: Pinni B4117
3.3. Nanna Numento: From Speculation to Speculative Agency: The Intertwining of Speculative Worldbuilding and Interactive Game Mechanics in Digital Fantasy RPGs
Room: Pinni B4117
10.3. Annika Valtonen: Master Narratives and the ‘Ideal Immigrant Subject’: A Multimodal Narrative Positioning Approach (co-authored with Dorien Van De Mieroop & Melisa Stevanovic)
Room: Pinni B4117
24.3. Minna Harjula & Heikki Kokko: OTUDEM-hanke: Yhteiskuntahistoria 2020-luvun turvallistamispolitiikan vastakertomuksena
Room: Pinni B4117
14.4. Teemu Ikonen: Audionarratologia ja äänikielitaide
Room: Pinni B4113
28.4. Nanny Jolma & Anna Kuutsa: The afterlife of parliamentary storytelling in social media: The portability of narrative features in the Finnish border security debate
Room: Pinni B4113
5.5. Sari Kivistö et al.: The research group “Suffering and Meliorism in Literature and the Philosophy of Literature” within the Centre of Excellence on Meliorist Philosophy of Suffering (MePhiS)
Room: Pinni B4113
19.5. Sanna Turoma: Venäläinen imperialismi ja eurooppalaisen kolonialismin kritiikki: Nikolai Trubetzkoyn euraasialaisnarratiivit
Room: Pinni B4113
Updates and further information will be published on Narrare’s webpage.