Legitimate Peripheral Participation by Novices in a Dungeons and Dragons Community

Roles at the Table

Like a hydra, the dungeon master is a singular entity with many heads. Her role is unique and often described as god-like (Fine, 1983; Waskul & Lust, 2004). She uses the system to provide the players with a story and a framework of what is possible and impossible. She is in a privileged position of power and must maintain a fair game or lose all credibility. It can be a difficult task to show true neutrality or to remember custom rules from previous adventures. She alone decides which rules to keep and which to ignore (Kociatkiewicz, 2000). Her job is to make sure everyone has a good time. This means planning the gaming session, managing the game mechanics, establishing entertaining and accurate concepts within the minds of her players, and occasionally settling disputes between players. She must use clear language and make sure that all the players are conceptualizing the world in the same way. There is nothing more awkward than a fight between players because of a misinterpretation of the imaginary world.

Players have two roles: understand the mechanical and narrative features of their character and do their best to accomplish their characters’ goals. That can mean a myriad of different things. Crandall and Taliaferro (2014) described being a player as occupying a separate identity. “For during that time, I am someone else: I am a mad wizard, a beguiling ghost, or a fire-breathing barbarian. I think speak, and act as a person who does not exist and will never exist, except in my mind” (p. 72). D&D is essentially playing as our childhood imaginary friend with real people who are also pretending to be their imaginary friends. It might seem bizarre from an etic perspective. Why would an adult do this with their free time?

According to Coe (2017), players are motivated to play TRPGs by many factors. One of the largest factors is exploring identity and learning more about themselves. He suggested that players are interested in identity work in three categories: first, to build characters that are like themselves; second, to build characters that are at least partly like themselves; and third, to build characters that act completely opposite to their own identity. Players might be drawn to the darkside, tiptoeing through moral minefields.

For Shay (2013), being a good player means embodying certain characteristics: dedication, cooperation, selflessness, creativity, intelligence, and authenticity. In this case, authenticity means understanding the game, the genre, and displaying one’s bona fides. In general, the players’ primary goal should be to work closely with the DM to incorporate the characters’ backstory into the party’s narrative and work together with other players to make a good story for everyone. A player who hogs the limelight is no different from an actor who steals the show.

Engaging With Personal Identities

Players will build social skills and create interpersonal relationships. They forge individual and collective identities based on their gaming community (Jones, 2012, p. 91). Fine (1983) and Shank (2015) suggested that players enact a fantasy self and put their real self on the sidelines at the table. Hendricks (2006) found that his participants used shared cultural references from the real world in the narrative description of the fantasy world to help solidity player understanding and shift between player and character identity. Players take on different identities as an act of performance and they will gain or lose acceptance accordingly. These identities can vary in purpose and distance from their true self (Bowman, 2010). “The act of taking on a role that one does not normally inhabit in the mundane world allows for the facilitation of self-expression and shared experience” (p. 47).

As in drama, actors explore the limits of what makes them human through immersion in narrative. Goffman (1959) suggested that people accept the way one presents themselves in the real world to protect their face. This concept rings true in fantasy roleplaying as well. At the D&D table, character identity is actively and consciously created within a group performance. The co-creation of these identities allow for a sense of bonding between the players and characters (Bowman, 2010). The player creates the character who influences the player, and “in playing characters, we converse with ourselves: every sentence spoken by our characters is addressed, in a way, to ourselves, and every action taken by our characters is directed at ourselves” (Crandall & Taliaferro, 2014, p. 77).

Expanding on this idea that D&D is identity performance, Mussett (2014) proposed that there is ground to explore the traditional ideas of gender and sexual identity. Drawing on ideas put forth by Butler (1988) and de Beauvoir (1974), she discussed how D&D and roleplaying can be used to demonstrate how gender identity is not as stable as people generally believe. Through the idea of gender as performance, Butler argues that all gender and those associated cultural norms are illusory. These norms produce social and political power differentials that people control and monitor themselves. Realizing that one’s gender identity is mutable and occasionally whimsical, can lead to liberation and a breakdown of those social norms. Mussett (2014) argued that if we can play games with gender and sex in a fantasy world, it might be possible to play the same games in our own lives. Bowman (2010) also hinted that due to the performative nature and conflicts in the fantasy narrative, players can analyze their own personal belief systems with regard to race and gender identification (p. 62). Her participants often stated they played various gendered characters in order to understand the mindset of the opposite gender or avoid the usual power structures of everyday life.

Val Sosure

VS was a 42-year-old American who worked in several universities and has been in Japan for nearly 20 years. As the player with the least experience in the gaming group, his experience and opinions were essential to understanding how D&D knowledge is passed from expert to novice. He played D&D once when he was 14-years old but had not had any experience with it since.

The Dungeon Master

DM was a 39-year-old American who taught at a university in Japan as well. He had been playing D&D continuously as a DM and as a player since he was 14 years old. He had experience of multiple editions of D&D and different roleplaying systems. As discussed previously, the dungeon master of gaming group tends to be the most knowledgeable player at the table.

Flint

The third and final interview was conducted with Flint. FL was a 30-year-old Canadian, native English speaker who taught at an English preschool/kindergarten with one of the other members of the gaming group. At the time of the observation, he was one of the players who seemed to know the game and the rules very well. He understood his character and his role in the group and was often helping the novices during the game. As such, FL was categorized as an expert though in the interview he denied this expert status. He first played D&D when he was 13 or 14-years old and had played the game only occasionally since then. He reported that engaging in the virtual community by watching actual-play D&D videos sparked his interest in D&D again. This group was the first fifth edition D&D campaign he had participated in, but since starting he had branched out and started a second game with a different community of friends.

Player-Player Interaction

There were many interactions between players in the five-hour game session. However, one moment from the observation that illustrated this theme (D&D Ob1, lines 242–248). During Vall’s (VL) turn from the first encounter in the sewers with a vicious monster he declared his action by saying, “I’m going to roast this mother fucker.” However, he was immediately stymied by his lack of mechanical game knowledge regarding how to perform his character’s Eldritch blast action. Without prompting or request, Flint (FL), a more experienced player, stood up from his chair on one side of the table walked over to VL and helped him find the correct set of dice and explicitly taught him how to perform the action using his character sheet. In this event, VL demonstrates surface-level, novice understanding of what his character can do in attempting to use his warlock ability. He knew that the character had certain abilities and magic spells but he was not yet familiar with the mechanics of the game or the dice. In the interview with FL, he stated that he took on this role as a teacher during the game because he had “the opportunity and the chance to spend the time with the rules… so popping up and giving them [less knowledgeable novices] a pointer or pointing on their sheet” would allow them to not have to focus on the mechanics (D&D In FL1, lines 57–65). This interaction exemplifies one of the key interaction events—Player-to-player interaction and expert-novice scaffolding. This type of interaction happened many times throughout the game between players as well as between the DM and the players. Often FL and the DM would stand up and walk around the table helping those players who needed direct assistance.

Player-DM Interaction

The next interaction observed in the D&D adventure was DM scaffolding. The dungeon master is aware of his player’s experience and has spent an immense amount of time creating the adventure. The newest player, Val Sosure (VS), had not played an RPG in nearly 30 years. He was new to the action-adventure-fantasy genre as well. Throughout the game, the DM offered VS hints and suggestions on how he should play his character more like a rogue. In fact, the second half of the adventure was a trap-laden, puzzle dungeon, which was specifically designed to teach VS how to use his character. At one moment, the DM suggested that the rogue might see a trap on the ground. Then there was a long silence. At the time, it seemed like VS did not want to tell the group about the trap. The DM hinted that letting his groupmates trigger the trap would be detrimental to the group. VS relented and suggested that everyone stop.

It seemed at the time of the observation that he may have wanted his group to get trapped in order to make the scene more interesting. Or possibly he just did not know that he could disarm the trap as a rogue. When asked about this moment in the interview, VS confessed that he had no idea what he was supposed to do, and he was trying to process the DM’s suggestion to make the moment his own and not just blindly follow the DM’s advice. This kind of scaffolding by the DM happened often over the last hour of the session. This initiation into the culture and community is a direct example of a situated learning environment with explicit training. The master teaching the apprentice the ropes.

Character-Character Interaction

This type of interaction occurred in the observation but was not as common as expected. Players tended to talk to other players and to the DM much more frequently than characters talking to other characters. The relative rarity of this interaction could have been due to narrative factors. The narrative at the time of the observation necessitated almost constant combat while crawling through the sewer dungeon. There were few opportunities for nuanced character-character discussion.

There were a few situations where the characters requested items from other characters. As they were jumping into the sewers at the beginning of the adventure, the characters realized that many of them could not see in the dark underground tunnels. HF had a magic cream that once applied to the eyes, allowed them to see in the dark. In his character voice, FL requested the item from HF. The player reached out with his hands, took the imaginary item from the other player, and applied the imaginary cream to his eyes. Then he held out his hand and offered the imaginary cream to VS, who also pretended to put the cream on his eyes. This is not an unusual phenomenon in roleplay. When the players act out the action of their characters in real life, it adds a sense of immersion to the game and provides support for the contention that D&D is a type of performance.

Goffman (1959) suggests that in performance there are two extremes of a continuum, sincere and cynical. Performers make choices that put them somewhere on that continuum, those that fully commit are judged as being sincere and those that are not taken in by their own performance are judged as cynical. If D&D is anything like performance, as Mackay (2001) suggests, then these acts of talking in-character and performing the gestures of the character’s actions are ways of signaling to the other players that the player is willing to commit to the collective fantasy. If all of the players are on the same side of the sincere-cynical continuum, the more likely character-character interaction using character voices are likely to occur.

Gaining Metaknowledge

This theme relates to in-game knowledge and vocabulary that experienced players know about through extensive experience. This excerpt involves an exchange between three of the players: Morroc (MR), Flint (FL), and Hunefer (HF) (D&D Ob 1, lines 59–76). It takes place before the official game has started. MR asked FL directly about the differences between two classes, warlock and sorcerer. FL explained to him explicitly that warlock powers are granted by pact magic with a magic entity, but sorcerers are born with their magic. Immediately after this expert-to-novice interaction, FL asked the DM about changes he wanted to make to his character, a druid. Here, FL was trying to justify why his character should not speak Dwarven but rather Sylvan as a language when MR, a novice player jumps in:

MR – FL: “What the hell is Sylvan?”

There are two things happening in this excerpt. First, MR is trying to find out what Sylvan is but no one is answering him. He understood from context that Sylvan is a type of language due to the comparison with Dwarven, a well-known language. But before he receives a direct answer, HF interrupts the conversation with a joke. From a D&D expert like HF, this was a joke and some of the players laughed. What MR, the novice, did not know was that it would be unusual for a druid of any race, other than Dwarf, to spend any time with Dwarves which was FL’s initial point. This is something that someone familiar with the lore of druids and dwarves would understand. This is evidence of an expert-to-expert, player-to-player interaction, but it also served the dual purpose of informing MR about what Sylvan was. The interaction seems to have satisfied MR’s curiosity about the jargon, and he never asked about it again. This could suggest that metaknowledge can be gained implicitly without direct explanation. When asked in the interview, Flint he stated that he never heard MR’s request at all and would have answered if he heard him.

In the interview, FL reported that he started learning the rules passively at first by watching actual-play games online. Then, as he got more interested, he bought one of the rulebooks and started to understand the nuances of the game more. DM reported a similar path to learning the system. In order for people to learn the game the players should, “read the shit…make your own characters” (D&D In DM1, line 205–207). He claimed that he learned the fifth edition system by making a character for every class and combination of subclasses. This is a heavy time investment for someone who is just getting involved in the subculture. In VS’s interview, he remembered one of the more experienced players scoffing at his disfluency with regard to the metalanguage. This topic of learning the game emerged in the middle of VS’s answer to a different question (D&D In VS1, lines 215–233):

VS: We don’t always speak fluently all the damn time, especially in a concept or genre that you’re not familiar with exactly, but you know so. I had a little trouble articulating what I was trying to say, and I kind of remember being oh, but at the same time he’s [HF] an expert. He knows exactly. He knows so much about this stuff and it’s like I started trying to ask him questions. Also the guy [FL] next to me, so I tried to ask them questions about what should I do what’s the thing to do, and I can’t ask [DM] because he’s running the thing as the dungeon master

VS believed that he could manage his lack of metaknowledge by asking more experienced players during the game. In a community of practice, that is to be expected. He thought that in the heat of the game, it was easier to ask other players for help rather than the DM. In addition, he was aware that other novices are learning the game in different ways, and due to lack of effort and time limitations, he had not attempted to learn the game explicitly on his own, yet.

Describing the Scene

This was the most common interactional purpose used in the session. The DM would describe the setting in detail and then would pause, waiting for the players to take action. Hendricks (2006) refers to this interchange as description of the fantasy environment. Occasionally, the players would ask follow-up questions, or the characters would take actions to further the story. Sometimes the lack of cultural knowledge by the novice caused a slowdown in the flow of the game. DM described the situation and asked all the players a dangerous question (D&D Ob 1, lines 150–164):

DM: “What’s your marching order?”

To an experienced player, “What’s your marching order?” means that this is going to be a situation where the position of the characters in the imaginary space will be crucial. It means a fight is almost certainly coming. A player would only know what this means through experience. After this short exchange between players, one player tells VS that he should not be in the front because his character class is less armored. The other more experienced players are helping the less experienced players learn the terminology as well as the unspoken cues.

There are various factors involved in the players speaking in their character’s voice (ICV). These factors include how sincere they are playing the role, their experience, and how well the players know each other. At the planning stage of the research, the utilization of character voices was predicted to be more prevalent among experts. However, this was not necessarily the case in this observation. Most players used character voices at least once during the adventure, but the usage seemed to depend on if they were conversing with a non-player character (NPC) or if characters needed to share information with other characters.

One of the benefits of using character voices is that it is easy to differentiate when the players or DM was asking for clarification about the description of the scene or acting in the scene. In this excerpt from lines 316–320, the characters had kidnapped an enemy Kobold and were interrogating it for information. Hunefer [HF] does not have an in-character voice and the DM misunderstands him.

HF – DM : “How many kobolds are there here?”

The DM misunderstands that the player is talking to the DM and asking for knowledge that his character might know in the imaginary space and not to the Kobold NPC that he is interrogating. The DM always used a character voice when speaking as an NPC to differentiate between NPC and narration.

In-Game Story Talk

In this excerpt, the party found their way down into the sewers and were trying to find clues for their quest. Here, they found a group of “craven reptilian humanoids,” also known as Kobolds, fighting a grotesque three-legged, and tentacle wielding aberration, an Otyugh. During the course of this fight, the party decided to assist the kobolds due to the actions taken by VS in this excerpt (D&D Ob 1, lines 216–234):

VS – DM: OCV “How do I grab one ((the kobold))?”

Here VS asked the DM a question about the mechanics of the game. DM quickly provided him with the correct information to keep the action going out of character. Both of them were switching between their player and character identities as Fine (1983) suggested D&D players must do in order to engage in the gameplay. The DM has the responsibility for setting the challenges that the players must meet. “Roll off” in this context meant the DM and the player made opposing dice rolls to see if the character succeeded in his or her action. VS was successful in grabbing the kobold and the DM gave the party information about kobolds: they speak a different language and VS as able to communicate with them in Draconic. The DM and VS engaged in conversation as their characters: VS as the Draconic speaking rogue and the DM as the scared kobold. The players and the characters then discussed, without using character voices, what they should do with their new friend. MR proposed, as any self-respecting barbarian would, that they solve the problem with violence. Some players laughed at the barbarian’s brutal suggestion. The party continued talking with the kobold and learned that other kobolds had been eaten by this monster and they would not talk or stop until it was dead. They decided to work with the kobolds to take the monster down. This excerpt has evidence of many of the themes: player-to-DM interaction, character-to-character interaction, metaknowledge discussion, and playing their role.

Playing Their Role

All of the players had moments in the game that showed they were playing the role they had chosen and using the skills of their character to actively participate in the narrative. HF the charisma-based sorceress used her spells and skills of persuasion and intimidation to negotiate with enemies. FL the druid utilized healing abilities to bring party members and fallen enemies back from the brink of death. MR the barbarian rejected his fair share of the loot because, “I’m a barbarian, what am I going to do with that money?” (D&D Ob1, Line 304). HV, the paladin, cast divine sense to find the undead in a crypt. However, near the end of adventure, the party had been trudging through a trapped dungeon for nearly an hour when they entered a new room. VL stated, “Should someone stealth in there?” A subtle hint from a more knowledgeable novice to another novice that VS, the rogue, should do his job and investigate the room quietly. However, immediately, VS responded, “I thought I was already doing that. That’s what I’m here for apparently” (D&D Ob 1, Lines 490–493). In the interview, the DM admitted to designing this part of the adventure to help explicitly train VS to play a rogue (D&D In DM1, lines 492–509):

DM: he needs to learn what a rogue needs to do.

When the DM asks if you are sure you want to do something, it is usually a hint that you are doing something wrong. As the newest player who has not learned his role yet, DM knew that VS would need explicit rogue training. He designed the whole dungeon with the explicit purpose of training VS in how to use his character’s skills. Every room had secrets and traps that the rogue needed to perceive and disarm. This decision by the DM and other egalitarian actions to check in with all members of the group throughout the game seemed to run contrary to Fine’s (1983) group dynamic observations. Fine observed that referees tended to spend more time engaged with other experts than with novices (p. 156). As new players became regulars, their status in the group changes. These particular group dynamics and this power differential were not observed in the current research study. This is likely due to the difference in recruiting. All members of this group were recruited directly by the DM, and he knew the experience and abilities of each of his players. This type of cultural and language socialization seemed to be effective because in the interview with VS, he confirmed that it was at this moment in the game when he realized this was his job. He said, “…that was kind of at the sort of point where I was getting comfortable with the fact that I have the skill [referring to his rogue’s abilities]. So now, I think I know why I, they, want me here and what my job is. And what my role is” (D&D In VS1, lines 246–250).

Exploring Identity

There was a moment in the observation when the players took a break from playing the game. The players were asked to explain how they came to choose their characters’ features, in particular about their characters’ genders (see Table 2). All of the players identified as male, but HF and VS chose character genders that did not match with their own. When asked why they made those choices, VS stated, “I play as a male in my day job, so why not be ambiguous.” This line of discussion was explored further in each of the interviews. With VS, he shared that he is approaching his character as a type of Goffman-esque drama with a splash of Judith Butler’s idea of gender as performance. He went on to explain that he views gender as much socialization as it is biology, if not more. So why not play in that space? “It could be fun to see how someone with a different skin would go through the world” (D&D In VS1, Lines 345–346). Mussett (2014) expanded on this exact idea of using roleplay as a way of exploring aspects of one’s own gender and sexual identity. She argued that the identities that we co-construct in the real world are much more fluid than we usually imagine, and D&D can be a way for us to explore that fluidity in a safe space without judgment. Bowman (2010, p. 63–64) believed that alternate gender enactment allows players to “attempt to understand the mindset of opposite genders” and gender-swapping can be a release from the social demands of the real world.

FL had similar opinions and then went further to offer suggestions for dealing with uncomfortable gender and sexuality related situations if they arise in the game. FL explained that sometimes he thinks players just choose to be a different gender because they can, without rhyme or reason. He also recommended that players should be sensitive to issues of gender and sexual identity and not abuse the freedom that roleplaying affords. As he mentioned in his interview:

So there is the opportunity there for some people, maybe to take things a little bit too far. And I think if that does come up, it’s on definitely not just the DM but as game players as well. … Like, you can’t do anything about it if it happens by accident. But after it happens, after a session like that, if somebody’s uncomfortable, that’s something that, like as a group, I feel that we should come together and, like if someone does have an issue, like we should be able to kind of solve that issue and steer the story in a different direction. (D&D In FL1, lines 210–219)

What FL meant by “taking things too far” is that because the game is a fantasy, some players might think that they can do or say whatever they want because it is just a game. They might try to enact their darkest fantasies or engage in themes many would consider inappropriate. This might cause other players at the table to become uncomfortable. FL’s concern for group cohesion is an admirable sentiment and good advice for the roleplaying community members. It is important to explore these ideas, fantasies, and identities in respectful, non-stereotypical ways. While Bowman (2010) and Mussett (2014) concluded that some players can use alternate gender enactment as a way of identity exploration in similar ways to VS’s ambiguous gender choice in this game, it is certainly possible that other players might view gender and sexual identity as just another customizable cog on their character sheet without spending much time thinking about the choice.