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By Root 446 0

As we have seen, social interaction is often the least important to developing the story and has the least degree of narrativity. It is, nevertheless, a key reason why players engage in TRPGs. It also contributes to the sense of agency they receive from their participation. However, my model only looked at the social sphere within individual gaming sessions, not at the larger social sphere of the gaming community. Fans of TRPGs form their own niche group in society and often meet at gaming stores or larger gaming conventions. The significant of the TRPG is not only textual: it is social and cultural.

Gaming culture has recently become a part of the scholarly discussion of fan culture, or fandom. Although fans engage in a variety of activities, which may include role-playing, the genre that has garnished the most attention is fan fiction, where fans write their own stories based on TV shows or other artifacts of popular culture. In order to explain what attracts people to gaming as a particular subculture, I compare gaming to the subculture of television fandom, as presented by Henry Jenkins in his book (1992) Textual Poachers. Aarseth (1997) mentions Henry Jenkins’s work on fandom as another example of textual transformation (p. 164), and the type of productive interactivity that is seen in TRPGs is very similar to the activities Jenkins discusses. It was in fan communities (specifically fantasy and science fiction fans) that Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) first became popular, and it has retained its popularity in these communities (Mackay, 2001, p. 16). In fact, Crawford and Rutter (2007) suggest that gaming in general should be considered as a part of studying fandom (p. 271). Can TRPG players be considered just another group within the larger fandom subculture or does it represent its own culture?

Perhaps gaming is a part of fandom as a whole. Certainly, we see gaming tracks at fan conventions along side science fiction and fantasy TV film stars. But we must keep in mind that a variety of fans exist. To call fandom one coherent community is misleading. In this chapter, I begin by looking at gamers as members of participatory culture and by comparing the way they interact with texts to the way that fan fiction writers interact with texts. I explore what it means to participate in fandom culture, and gaming culture. Ultimately, I show that this participation is varied, and outline a typology of different types of fans and gamers.

Subcultures, Fan Cultures, and Consumer Culture

In his article “How ‘Dungeons’ changed the world,” Bebergal (2004) explains that those who play TRPGs feel marginalized by society, thus pushing them to form their own subsociety. Fine (1983) sets up his Shared Fantasy book as a study of the subculture of the TRPG. According to Fine (1983), a subculture must be distinct from other groups in society, must have common activities, and share cultural elements (p. 25). In addition, a subculture must have a network of communication for its members and both the members and those outside the subculture must recognize it as a separate group (Fine, 1983, p. 26).

Fine (1983) applies these criteria to tabletop gamers, and despite some changes, they still seem applicable. He estimates in 1979 that the TRPG base was 500,000 people, enough for its own subculture (p. 27). Wizards of the Coast estimates that as of 2006, four million people in the United States play D&D each month, with the worldwide numbers being even higher (www.wizards.com). This number also does not include gamers that play other TRPGs besides D&D. It seems, then, that there are still plenty of people to make up a subculture and, in fact, the hobby is more mainstream than at the time of Fine’s study. Fine (1983) went on to note that playing the game is, itself, the activity shared by members of this culture. He also shows that common references and terms indicate that D&D players share cultural elements (p. 29). I would argue that this shared cultural reference has gone beyond terms to include lore surrounding adventures such as The Temple of