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Elemental Evil (Temple). Even if they have not played the game themselves, adventures such as this one form a common cultural background for players. In terms of communication, Fine (1983) mentions magazines and conventions as two of the main methods open for gamers to communicate with one another (pp. 32–33). These are still important aspects of communication between gamers, but the Internet has expanded these to include message boards, blogs, and other online forums. The two main magazines about D&D, Dungeon and Dragon, are now only available online. Finally, in keeping with Fine’s (1983) claim that members of a subculture distinguish themselves as such, I have already shown that both players of TRPGs and members of the larger gaming community distinguish the TRPG as separate from other types of gaming. All of these factors seem to indicate that Fine was correct in calling tabletop gamers a subculture; however, is this subculture the same as fandom and fan fiction subculture?

Both fan fiction writers and gamers use different tools—fan fiction and gaming sessions—but both respond to the dominant mainstream culture and react against the view of texts as objects of consumption. Jenkins (1992) and Mackay (2001) both refer to Roland Barthes’ (1975) idea that re-reading is “not consumption but play” (p. 16). In the case of television fans this re-reading often takes place quite literally as fans continually re-watch episodes of their favorite series. Some fans then use incidents and characters in the series to write their own stories, called fan fiction. Gamers may return to the same game time and time again, but re-playing a TRPG adventure would be so different from session to session that I am hesitant to call this re-playing at all.

Instead of considering it re-reading or re-playing, Mackay (2001) proposes a Barthean-type process in which role-players created a new reality “derived from patterns established in the artifacts of popular culture” (p. 81). Like fans, gamers take bits and pieces of popular culture, such as the fantasy worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien, and re-appropriate them to create their own narratives. As we saw in the previous chapter, in the Sorpraedor campaign, the character Cuthalion was based on Tolkein’s “The Silmarillion,” but still took on his own life in the Sorpraedor world. In addition, the new role-playing games that have come about in the last thirty years often use a pop culture setting and are often based on popular television series or movies such as Star Trek and Star Wars.

In a way, TRPGs based on popular media are gamers’ way of interacting with these worlds, understanding them, and appropriating them as their own. Both gamers and fan fiction writers reject the sort of aesthetic distance that comes from simply reading or listening to a story (that is, from consumption) and instead seek their own narrative control over the text. Jenkins (1992) explains that for many fans, rejection of aesthetic distance is a rejection of authority. Instead of simply accepting the texts as they are presented, fans feel they have the right to offer their own interpretations. They “enter the realm of fiction as if it were a tangible place they can inhabit and explore” (Jenkins, 1992, p. 18). TRPGs offer popular fiction worlds, with the full possibility of exploring and inhabiting them during the gaming session but, furthermore, they offer players the ability to completely transform and control these worlds.

Mackay (2001) states that role-players aren’t consumers because the TRPG is a process-performance. He explains that “the role-playing game exhibits a narrative, but this narrative does not exist until the actual performance” (Mackay, 2001, p. 50). Although players buy products, such as the rule books, the outcome of their games (the narrative that is created through gameplay) rarely becomes a consumer product. Similarly, while fans may invest in buying paraphernalia associated with their fandom, the texts they create through fan fiction remain unpublished and are freely exchanged among members of the group. Although