Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game (TRPG) which offers playersthe chance to create and inhabit a fantastical hero in an equally fantastical world, creating ashared experience with their other players and the Game Master (GM) who facilitates play.Much research has examined D&D as an artifact, highlighting its problematic aspects and thepotential of the worlds and rules it presents as reinforcing real world hegemony orshortcoming such as male domination and racism. While building upon these ideas, thisresearch explores how players’ experiences in D&D interact with notions of heroism, how thegame presents what it means to be a hero and how it truly is experienced within my longtimeD&D playgroup. It does this through semi-structured interviews, to examine how the playersexperience the game, including my own reflections and input as GM for this group for anextended period of time. It utilizes the concepts of coloniality and hegemonic masculinity asframes for understanding the mechanics and narratives of D&D and how they interact withconceptualisations of heroism. Through thematic analysis of the interview data, it highlightswhere the players' experiences line up with conceptualisations of coloniality and hegemonicmasculinity, yet also highlights where players' experiences break with or undermine theseconcepts, highlighting alternatives that move away from colonial and masculine heroism.Ultimately determining that while these players understand heroism in D&D in ways whichreinforce or echo coloniality and hegemonic masculinity such as imperial violence, theiractual experiences with heroism are often removed from this, focusing more on collaborationand problem solving devoid of violence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-532842 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Forde, Michael Christopher |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för speldesign |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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