Author ORCID Identifier
Presenter
Cristo Leon
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Coordinators
Sarah Lynne Bowman
Uppsala universitet, Campus Gotland
Kjell Hedgard Hugaas
Uppsala universitet, Campus Gotland
Files
Download Full Text (9.8 MB)
Document Type
Demonstration
Description
This PowerPoint presentation presents Playing as Inquiry, a methods-forward account of the León Multimodal Protocol (LMP) for studying transformation in tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) at scale. The presentation is designed for scholarly audiences interested in qualitative methods, game studies, and transdisciplinary research design, with an explicit commitment to accessibility through consistent verbal description of visual materials.
The talk begins by situating TTRPGs as layered narrative, social, and material systems in which meaning emerges across embodied performance, language, rules negotiation, artifacts, platforms, and memory over time. From this foundation, the presentation identifies a core methodological problem: traditional qualitative approaches struggle to scale from single sessions to large, longitudinal corpora comprising hundreds of sessions and heterogeneous evidence types. This “scale problem” motivates the need for a structured, auditable protocol.
The LMP is introduced as a pipeline that moves systematically from play to analytic claims. Key stages include standardized campaign structuring, multimodal transcription using time-bounded transcription boxes, constructivist grounded theory coding, and iterative synthesis supported by CAQDAS tools and digital analysis platforms. Visual diagrams illustrate how raw audio-visual data, notes, maps, and messaging logs are preserved as distinct yet traceable layers rather than collapsed into a single transcript.
Methodologically, the presentation integrates Collaborative Auto-Ethnography (CoAE), Participatory Action Research, narrative inquiry, grounded theory, and digital analysis into a layered methods stack. This stack enables multimodal traceability, cross-session synthesis, and built-in validity through peer review, feedback loops, and transparent data lineage. A phased timeline shows how the protocol is developed, tested, and refined across multiple research cycles.
The presentation concludes by articulating the primary contribution of the LMP: a reproducible, extensible framework for analyzing transformation in TTRPGs that balances depth with scale. By operationalizing collaboration, reflexivity, and methodological rigor, the protocol positions TTRPG play as a legitimate and analyzable site of socio-critical inquiry, while offering tools transferable to other complex, multimodal research contexts.
Publication/Submission Date
1-13-2026
Keywords
Collaborative Auto-Ethnography (CAE), computer-assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS), Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT), experiential learning, identity transformation, mega-campaigns, role-playing game(s)
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Interpersonal and Small Group Communication | Linguistic Anthropology | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Leon, Cristo; Bowman, Sarah Lynne; and Hedgard Hugaas, Kjell, "Seminar: Playing as Inquiry at ROCKET" (2026). STEM for Success Resources. 130.
https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/stemresources/130
Included in
Arts and Humanities Commons, Interpersonal and Small Group Communication Commons, Linguistic Anthropology Commons
Comments
This presentation reflects a genuinely collaborative research effort. Although I am the sole presenter, the conceptual development, methodological refinement, and empirical grounding of the León Multimodal Protocol (LMP) are the result of sustained collective work. I would therefore like to explicitly acknowledge the members of the research team whose contributions are integral to this project.
My deepest thanks to Lic. Marcos O. Cabobianco (he/him/his), Jefe de Trabajos Prácticos (Historia), Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires. Marcos has been a foundational collaborator in the long-term design of mega-campaigns, the articulation of historical and narrative continuity, and the practical testing of methodological assumptions across extended play. His expertise in historiography and pedagogy has been critical to grounding the protocol in rigorous interpretive practice.
I also wish to thank James Lipuma, Ph.D. (he/him/his), Senior University Lecturer and Director of the Collaborative for Leadership, Education, and Assessment Research (CLEAR) at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. James’s work in assessment, evaluation, and collaborative research design has directly shaped the protocol’s validity architecture, feedback loops, and auditability, particularly at the interface between qualitative inquiry and institutional research standards.
My sincere appreciation to Romano Ponce-Díaz, Ph.D. (he/him/his), Head of the Faculty of Literature at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo. Romano’s contributions to narrative theory, literary analysis, and interpretive rigor have been essential in positioning TTRPG play as a legitimate site of socio-critical and literary inquiry.
I am also grateful to Agustina Cinanni (she/her/hers), student at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, whose dual role as participant and research assistant has been central to the development of collaborative auto-ethnographic practices and to the refinement of transcription and coding workflows.
I wish to offer a profound and personal thank you to Diego Téllez Bueno, without whom the escape from Lekar and the exploration of the inner child would not have been possible. That narrative moment is not only a core analytic case but also a reminder of why this research matters. I also extend my heartfelt gratitude to Cynthia Shafer for her patience, care, and unconditional support throughout this process; her presence has sustained both the work and the researcher behind it.
As a visitor to this land from “la Huasteca,” a geographical and cultural region located along the Gulf of Mexico, I strive to deepen my understanding of the local Indigenous communities…. I commit to reframing my responsibilities to land and community. I come with respect for the land upon which we gather, and I acknowledge it is part of the traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape, called “Lenapehoking".
Finally, this project exists because of these collaborations. Any insights presented here are inseparable from the people who made them possible.