Kontrollált határátlépés a szerepjátékban. Érzelmi bevonódás RPG és LARP kontextusában

Abstract

Background and Aims: Role-playing practices – role-playing game; RPG and live action role-playing; LARP – create experiential learning environments in which participants engage with social situations through narrative participation and active decision-making. In these role-player contexts, emotional engagement, narrative structure, and identity processes are closely intertwined, giving rise to distinct psychological dynamics.
Methods: This article conceptualizes role-playing as a liminal psychological space in which the boundaries between player and character become temporarily permeable. This process is captured by phenomena described in the literature as bleed which refer to interactions between emotional and identity-related experiences. The analysis draws on frameworks from narrative psychology, emotion regulation, and experiential learning to examine the emergence and implications of boundary crossing.
Results: The analysis highlights that emotional engagement is not merely a byproduct but a core mechanism of role-playing, shaping both the intensity of boundary crossing and the integration of experience. Character construction, narrative organization, and genre jointly influence how participants relate to the fiction and the extent to which the boundary between character and self becomes permeable.
Discussion: At the same time, role-playing processes are not purely spontaneous. Structured preparation, deliberate modulation of emotional intensity, and reflective processing allow boundary crossing to be shaped and regulated, from this perspective, role-playing can be understood as a model setting in which emotional engagement, identity experimentation, and narrative meaning-making emerge in an observable and applicable form.