Tabletop Role-Playing Games, the Modern Fantastic, and Analog ‘Realized’ Worlds

Tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) harness the flows of modernity within their fantasy spaces. If that statement is not agreeable, then one can at least take notice that the broad category of“role-playing games” has been subjected to a considerable amount of critical commentary in the past decade. Today, the Internet has drastically expanded the reach of such worlds full of imaginary elements. This article offers the term ‘realized worlds’ as a descriptor for the rise of these fantasy spaces, explaining how these new spaces invigorate the discourses of posthumanism — the conception of the thinking subject beyond the constraints of Cartesian dualism—before detailing a few seminal TRPG realized worlds that create these spaces.