‘How do you want to do this?’: table-top role-playing games and academic identity

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to explore the intersection of academia and Table-Top Role-Playing Games (TTRPG) with the development of identity through both character creation and maps; these two features are key features within TTRPG games, adding depth and richness to the world of play. The author suggests that TTRPGs provide a unique space for introspective academic inquiry and potential personal growth, as players are able to explore and experiment with different identities and roles within a collaborative storytelling framework. Used as a reflective process, academics can explore how their academic working lives look, and their experience of living them, and consider the impact on their actions including areas which they may need to develop or how to best utilise their academic identity for the varying aspects of their work. This may include a deeper undertanding of both who they are and how they interact with others they meet in their professional lives. Through an autoethnographic reflection on both TTRPGs and academic identity, the author proposes that the two worlds have much to offer each other in terms of personal development. Specifically, how the creation of a character based on the academic’s identity can be ‘played’ within a map representing the reality of their academic working life to enhance their personal and professional development.

KEYWORDS:

• TTRPG
• character
• maps
• identity
• academia
• autoethnography

Introduction

This paper focuses on the relationship and dialogue of the worlds of academia and Table-Top Role Playing Games (TTRPG) and the notion of a shared horizon (Gadamer 2013) whereby we can overcome the limits of our own single perspective through the space that is created for dialogue and development of new understandings of ourselves and others (O’Neill 2007).

Our academic identity is a complex and multifaceted concept that involves both internal and external factors. It refers to how an individual sees themselves in relation to their role, the influence of mentoring or joining professional networks, and how they are perceived by others within the academic community. This includes their values, beliefs, attitudes, skills, and knowledge related to teaching and research. Navigating an academic identity can be a challenging process both for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) (Gale 2011, Djerasimovic and Villani 2020) and those who are more established within their field (MacKenzie 2002, Story 2017). Academics may be viewed as playing an academic ‘game’ finding it necessary to strategise their career, consider the moves of other ‘players’ such as their employer or funding partners, whilst maintaining their own personal integrity and values.

In comparison physical games, such as TTRPG, also have a high degree of focus on developing an identity. In these games, players create characters that they control in a collaborative storytelling experience. The characters often have unique attributes and abilities that the player can customise to fit their desired playstyle or personality therefore creating a link between the character and the player’s identity (Bowman 2010). Whilst TTRPGs may take place in a commercialised ‘world’, many take place in bespoke creations, often called ‘homebrew’ games, which have been designed and built by the controller of the game commonly known as the Dungeon Master (DM). In either scenario, players create personalised characters suitable for navigating the world of play.

Whilst I had an awareness of D&D I was not involved with any in-person games until the COVID-19 pandemic when I was looking for ways to socially interact during the UK Lockdown. I had only recently changed careers from classroom teaching to higher education and was still developing an understanding of my academic role. The upheaval and change of COVID-19 was an opportunity to reflect and focus on my own career development. (Degn 2018)

Scene setting – academic identity

The concept of an ‘academic identity’ is often hard to define and influenced by a wide range of factors (Quigley 2011) including the commercialisation of higher education and individual belief and values about their role (Billot 2010). This can lead to tensions between what academics perceive their identity is and how it is constructed within the larger institutional system (Winter and O’Donohue 2012). In particular, the identity of students as ‘consumers’ of education has impacted on their perception of the role of higher education (Bunce et al. 2017) which in turn has placed greater scrutiny on the service academics provide (Tomlinson 2017).

Personal experiences of academic identities are often harder to locate in research often due to concerns about making public that which should be private (Clegg 2008, Learmonth and Humphreys 2012, Best 2018). This can be due to increased restrictions on academics (Churchman and King 2008), individual experiences of class and gender bias (Clegg 2008), or perceived boundaries which prevented collaboration and discussion about academic concerns (Krause 2014) which in turn could prevent an open discourse on what an academic ‘is’. The voice of academics is therefore often lost or, at least, hidden from view.

Scene setting – fantasy identity

TTRPG developed from an existing wider literary field of fantasy novels and, like an academic identity, a fantasy identify is often hard to define. This is largely due to the unboundaried approach of the fantasy genre (Attebery 1994) which can cross over into other genres such as science fiction or horror. However, a commonality across the fantasy genre is that the fictional is presented as actual events taking place in a secondary ‘world’ created by the reader with its own laws and inherent truth (Tolkien 1983). This ‘world’, which has been inspired by myths and folk law, is presented to the audience as a complete alternative culture (Laetz and Johnston 2008).

The ‘otherness’ in location enables an otherness in the reader’s identity as they are able to escape from real life conventions of time, place, and personality (Jackson 2013). This transcendence enables the reader to see and better understand their world and experiences not by escaping it but through viewing them with a different perspective (Egoff 1988). In this sense, a fantasy identity has much in common with the concept of a narrative identity where stories allow the reader to view different versions of ‘self’ and learn from the insights drawn. (Ricoeur 2014)

Methods and approach

The methodology of this research is drawn from established practices within autoethnographic writing. In particular there is a focus on self-observation and the use of narrative writing as a reflective process (Chang 2016). Autoethnography often requires researchers to be vulnerable (Custer 2014) and may take a reflexive approach (Humphreys 2005). The methodology has often been used to reflect upon academic identity (Pelias 2003, Wall 2006, Tienari 2019) including by ECRs (Belkhir et al. 2019, Wilkinson 2020). However, it has often been misunderstood or not engaged with fully, by the academy (Forber-Pratt 2015) or by the wider research community in general (Campbell 2017).

I have used autoethnographic approaches throughout my academic career as a way of using a single lived experience as an act of meaning to communicate personal experiences through narrative and story (Bochner 2012). This has often meant intersections between my varying identities including those of teacher, cis woman, ECR, and caregiver. These intersections of our multiple identities, and the interactions which take place between them, can aid our understanding of our core self and the meanings we make about our lived experience (Jones et al. 2012).

Recent cultural awareness

TTRPG have come into the awareness of a wider audience in recent years due to the popularity of mainstream television programmes such as Stranger Things (Stranger Things 2016). The programme provides a retrospective look at D&D being played in the 1980s and typifies what many may conceive TTRPG gamers to look like: teenage/early adult males who may be socially ‘outside’ of their peer group. Yet the lives of the gamers represented are enhanced and benefit from the TTRPG skills they have used in play, such as collaboration and strategic combat, by utilising them in their real-life experiences. The fantasy ‘heroes’ of D&D become the actual heroes of their contemporary world.

Coinciding with the popularity of Stranger Things was the global experience of Covid-19. With many countries introducing tight lockdown and social control measures, online social activities increased in popularity. This increase may have been related to finding ways to cope with the pandemic (Garfin 2020, Eisenman and Bernstein 2021), as a means for an increased sense of social connection (Okabe-Miyamoto and Lyubomirsky 2021), or developing from an existing sense of seeking ritualistic community behaviour often lacking in our lives (Bowman 2010). There was also an increase of playful activities, such as jigsaws and adult colouring books (Beresin and Bishop 2023). This pandemic also saw an increase of people seeking to join online TTRPG groups such as D&D. (Scriven 2021)

Use of online platforms such as YouTube or Twitch have allowed people to observe TTRPG game play with groups such as Critical Role opening up what was once a closed environment (Sidhu and Carter 2020). The increasingly blurred boundaries between the fictional and ‘real life’ can be seen in the development of Role Play conventions, such as ComicCon or the UK Games Expo, and the subculture of performance identity found in cosplay (Rahman et al. 2012, Lamerichs 2014, Abramova et al. 2021). This increased accessibility has led some of the audience to take the move to become players in their own games and the franchise has extended to creating a TV cartoon series for the adult market. (Van Os 2021)

D&D character creation and personal reflection

Character creation in D&D is a key element of the game and one in which players often reflect upon their own personalities as a starting point (Bowman 2010). These reflections can often be profound and existential in nature (Crandall and Taliaferro 2014). Within education, character creation using D&D has been used to support student self-reflection both for older students (Clarke et al. 2018) and those within compulsory schooling (Carter 2011). The self-refection by players is often linked to developing a sense of moral awareness (Wright et al. 2020) or develop their metacognition (Clarke et al. 2018). There appears to be a gap in research when considering the use of D&D characters by academics as a tool for self-reflection.

Brogh Onnen – a reflection of my academic identity

Brogh was created on D&D Beyond, a free online resource, prior to the first game. Characters in D&D are created by choosing a race and class with each of these giving the player specific personality traits and equipment as well as number of points that they need to award to categories such as strength, healing, and intelligence. No single character in D&D is therefore able to be skilled and proficient in everything. The collective group of players in a game will therefore try to have a balance across skills and competence with different players fulfilling roles which will be needed during gameplay.

The DM had given us access to the homebrew world with an extensive history and mythology (Haynes 2020). I created Brogh to be a male who was in the race of wood elves and was a druid by class. As an elf, there was a sense that Brogh would be an otherworldly type of person and not fully part of the here and now; he would have a tendency to be aloof and be slow in forming relationships; he would be reclusive and untrusting due to his wood elf nature His class as a druid gave him a love of nature and the spirituality and power of it. (W.R. Team 2014)

Brogh had a backstory which had the intention of adding depth to his character as well as developing a sense of his motivations for the choices he would make (Ewalt 2013). Whilst I was mindful of not making it too complex as to be irrelevant for the game play (Crandall and Taliaferro 2014), there were a few key elements, such as his views of a universal belief system or his passion for reading, that felt important to include.

As I began to play Brogh, I became interested in how his personality was often connected with my own. Research into TTRPG character creation has suggested that there are nine typologies for how players create their character which have varying degrees of overlap with the player’s actual identity from those that are mirror images of the player (The Doppelganger Self) to those that enable the player to experiment with acting in a way counter to their beliefs and values (The Oppositional Self). (Bowman 2010)

After I had played the character of Brogh for a few months, I reflected on how he operated to try and identify which typology he fell into. Whilst Brogh acted in public in ways I would not, such as his open snide rudeness to people often signalled by eye rolling or sighing if he found people too tedious to converse with, I found many overlaps between us and he therefore appeared to fit within The Doppelganger Self which Bowman suggests is something which many inexperienced TTRPG players do My reflections led to a growing awareness that as this character was not ‘me’ but Brogh, there was a degree of safety in being able to hide behind his persona (Williams et al. 2014) whilst inadvertently enhancing my sense of self-esteem with the successes Brogh achieved through choices which mirrored those I would make in real life. (Bowman 2010)

Gender identities and leadership in academia

Whilst this initial character of Brogh did not represent ‘me’ in full, the development of Brogh over the years that I played him began to show closer comparisons than I had realised and raised several questions about myself. This included my choice to play a male character and how Brogh approached leadership and authority.

Issues of power relationships such as racism, are often perceived as being a systemic part of the D&D landscape (Garcia 2017). However, there are signs that other power relationships such as gender, are developing from a binary understanding within the neomedieval settings game play is frequently based in (Johnson 2020). This is an evolution of the original game play which tended to be more male-centric and misogynistic in approach (Garcia 2017). As a new player in a group which included LGBTQ+ players, I felt a degree of freedom to play a male character rather than one aligned to my own gender.

Over the course of the game, I repeatedly returned to this question of gender choice as a specific aspect of identity. As my understanding of Brogh as an archetype of my own identity become more apparent, so did my awareness that I often took on a more masculine identity in my professional life especially in my approach to leadership. Within academia, women have historically been less visible in leadership positions than their male counterparts (Allen et al. 2021, Bhatti and Ali 2021). This has led some women to adopt traits more often associated with male leaders in order to be accepted in a leadership role (Eagly and Carli 2018). Women are less likely than men to perceive that they have shown leadership skills (Bolden et al. 2012) and may often discount themselves from leadership posts and display a reticence in applying unless supported to (Chesterman et al. 2005). Playing the character of Brogh allowed me space to reflect on this and acknowledge that in my academic identity I had often chosen to act in a more ‘male’ way and wanted to be perceived to be emotionally stable and decisive as opposed to compassionate and compromising (Alexander and Andersen 1993). I recognised that the way in which Brogh navigated his world was similar to my own approach to academia. Within game play, these personality traits were visible in the choices Brogh made: he never showed high degrees of either fear or excitement but tended to be calm and distant, when he did get embroiled in a long running subplot about a love affair the experience emotionally floored him and ultimately resulted in his withdrawal from social life altogether. Brogh was someone who analysed situations and then committed himself to the ‘correct’ course of action regardless of how others felt or if it became apparent that the choice he had made was wrong. He was also someone who hated direct conflict and fighting and would instead try to understand what the monsters were and how they operated to try and consider other ways to overcome them.

To acknowledge the parallels between myself and Brogh was the starting point for thinking about the ‘world’ of academia which I was a player in and how I could use this understanding to develop my own academic identity. I therefore decided to complete the same process of character creation but this time for character playing in a world which represented my academic life. In order to achieve this, I needed to create a representation of that world in the form of a map.

The use of maps in TTRPG and academic development

Maps in TTRPG

Maps are an essential feature of TTRPG games as they support players in being able to immerse themselves into the fictious game world and are the location of the narrative which the DM and players co-create create (Röhl and Herbrik 2008); they create a liminal blurred space between the imagination of the game play and the reality of the players (Ekman 2013). This is achieved through a sense of being both inside and outside of time (Turner 1969) and enable participants to enter a space where change and development are possible (Beech 2011) unhindered by the restrictions of reality.

Maps also create a sense of the physical in a game, which is often a theatre of the mind, as they lead to opportunities or restrictions on what a character can do within a grounded ‘real’ place This is particularly true of physical maps where characters can be placed and moved, however this notion of journeying through a map is also a feature of online game play as well. Whilst paper-based maps remain a feature for some TTRPG groups, online TTRPG groups have benefitted from software aimed at creating maps, such as Inkarnate and DungeonFog, which can then be shared with players via video. Whilst these computer-generated maps may be visually stimulating and detailed, they remain more in line with traditional TTRPG play than with the evolution of maps in computer RPG games (Toups et al. 2020).

Maps in academic development

Academia is a place which is perceived to have its own myths, history, language, and cultural practices (Henkel 2000). It can therefore be compared to being a ‘world’ which academics must learn to understand and navigate (King 2013). The creation of island maps with ECRs to develop their academic identify had participants focus on their personal attributes (King et al. 2014). The use of maps by academics has been as a support to identify their ideological viewpoints to enable broader discussions about academic life (Macfarlane 2022) or as a tool to consider academic development (Holmes and Dea 2012).

Similarities between TTRPG and academic maps

In both cases, maps provide a starting point for the character/academic rather than a fixed or linear journey. They offer an overview of the place in which they operate and do not necessarily provide a level of detail without a narrative explanation of what function each part of the island/world serves. For the TTRPG gamer there is the need for context either from published materials such as the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide (Mohan 2015) which provides rich detail about a specific world of play or from homebrew content. Similarly for the academic, a narrative explanation of an academic identity map serves as the detail needed for an external observer to understand the context (King et al. 2014, Macfarlane 2022).

Differences between TTRPG and academic maps

Whilst academic maps tend to have focused on the concept of islands (King 2013, King et al. 2014, Macfarlane 2022), TTRPG maps have a wider scope of viewing a complete or partial world (Mohan 2015; W., Team 2016). Personal academic maps also focus on the representation of the individual on the map as opposed to the individual journeying through the map; this leaves little scope for considering interactions with others as a key part of the experience (King et al. 2014). This is in contrast to a TTRPG map which assumes a world filled with other beings which the player via their character will interact with as part of their journey.

The development of a TTRPG map for academic identity

Island TTRPG academic map

As I had a character representing my academic identity to play, I knew that the existing use of maps in academia would not be suitable. However, the idea of an island and a closed space to work in, seemed appealing when creating a representation of what I perceived to be a closed academic ‘world’ with minimal scope for interaction with other characters. Those I did consider interaction with was limited to academic colleagues and students.

The process of reflecting on my character led to my creation of an initial map based upon the concept of an island but using the rich imagery of a TTRPG map seen in Figure 1:

Figure 1. The isle of Academia.

When I reflected on how Brogh would navigate this world based on my experience of playing him in my initial TTRPG experience, I realised that it was quite restricting. For example, interactions with other characters were largely constrained to the village with no direct route to move from place to place without travelling across other areas. When I related this to experiences in my academic life and development of my academic identity, I realised that the map was not representative of the journeys I made. For example, feeling a sense of being grounded (Woods) was not always connected to having been struggling with writing (Desert). The map also limited how the journey could impact on the character (all journeys were by path) and the size of the island meant that there was a sense of ease of movement which did not reflect my real-life experiences. I was unable to cover all the areas of my academic world which seemed important due to the size of the island which meant that I had to decide which parts of my academic world were the most important to include. Finally, I was aware that whilst the visual look of the map may be similar to TTRPG ones, place names were not and did not give a sense of the island being a neomedieval fantasy world. This led me to develop my approach.

TTRPG world academic map

My second attempt was based more upon a TTRPG world map seen in Figure 2:

Figure 2. The world of Univeralia.

This second map was an iteration of the first and was similar in look to a traditional TTRPG map. The use of a more traditional TTRPG map enabled me to increase the size to cover elements which I had not had space for before. For example, I was able to add in a Ma’King jungle to highlight the fact that marking may be time consuming in my workload but did create opportunities to read original ideas which provided challenge to my thinking. Each region also had some form of habitation leading to possible encounters with others. Movement from region to region could be direct via the portal or take longer with a journey by road or sea. With each area accessible without the need to cross another, journeys could be made which reflected real life experiences to a greater degree.

Developing an academic character – the evolution of Brogh

The process of creating the second map let to me developing Brogh from a Doppelganger Self to an Idealised Self using both qualities I have and those I wanted to develop (Bowman 2010). Whilst a revision of Brogh as a Doppelganger Self may have been truer to my actual academic identity, I wanted to explore and visualise who I may need to be in the world of academia I was in and how this version of myself might both interact with, and be understood by, other characters I came across (Ricoeur 1992). This would mean using the creation of a new Brogh as a tool for self-reflection (Williams et al. 2014) rather than as a character to play in a real TTRPG game.

I decided not to allocate a specific gender to them. This was not related to questioning my own gender identity but was rather to reflect the fact that I wanted my character to be unconstrained by gender stereotypes sometimes associated with RPG game characters (Osborne 2012, Williams et al. 2014). This also impacted on my choice of creating Brogh as an elf as they tend to be easier to imagine outside of a binary gender view (Davies 2021). By playing Brogh as a high elf (as opposed to the former wood elf) there was greater potential for them to exhibit intelligence and allowed for increased positive interaction with other beings Brogh remained a druid however had a background as a sage which enabled them to have a deeper understanding of knowledge or where to obtain it. (W.R. Team 2014)

Brogh therefore embodied an idealised reflection of my academic identity. Whilst these were qualities which I felt that I had to a degree in my real-life academic identity, they were also areas which I felt I needed to develop further in order to successfully navigate the world I had created. The world of Univeralia required a character to be able to identify dangers and barriers and respond accordingly. They would need to be able to independently navigate from region to region and know where they could seek support in each place. They would need to have a broad overview of the whole map and show an awareness of how interconnected all of the regions were. They would need to know how to navigate to and from each and be suitably equipped. They would need to know, and keep central, their personal philosophical beliefs. Ultimately, they would need to achieve all of this bearing in mind how many other characters (each with their own identity and plans) they would encounter on the way.

Discussion

The experience of creating a map, and character which could successfully navigate it, allowed me to reflect upon the wider use of and application of the approach and how my own experiences could provide a starting point for further research.

Strengths

The process enabled me to think though my own academic identity in an honest and open way. There was a sense of distance from the experience which allowed me to think about how Brogh as a representation of myself (rather than my actual self) might act in the world I had made (Ricoeur 1991). This sense of perspective meant that I felt more confident in looking at some of the flaws of my personality in a pragmatic and non-judgemental way (Bowman 2010); I could reflect critically about Brogh without being self-critical directly about myself. This was existential reflective act (Crandall and Taliaferro 2014) allowing me greater perspective. I also saw the potential in experiential learning from the experiences Brogh may encounter, considering how they would act, and transferring those to my real life (Williams et al. 2014). In this sense, Brogh would be a means of practicing skills, or at least having space to think through the process, prior to using them in real life. In particular, to reflect and play with my former career identity as a teacher and see how transferable it was to my current role. (Saito 2013)

The development of an academic world as opposed to a closed island also brought to the forefront the need for an academic life to be about interactions with others. As for TTRPG, success in the academic world depends upon collaboration both for personal development and to support others less experienced (Shagrir 2017). Just as Brogh could not be perfect at everything, so was there acceptance in a recognition of my own strengths and weaknesses.

The processes I went through were playful acts of sense-making linked to developing my academic identity. The act of playfulness in adults can be defined as a sense of creativity, curiosity, pleasure, sense of humour, and spontaneity (Guitard et al. 2005). Playfulness in adults has been associated with increased learning and development (Kolb and Kolb 2010, Whitton and Moseley 2019). Taking time away from the hectic world of academic life to complete a task which was enjoyable made me reflect on the benefits of taking a more creative approach in my own teaching. The use of creative approaches in higher education is often limited due to academic concerns about the risk of failure of such approaches (Moula 2021) and a lack of a clear definition (Kleiman 2008). However, existing use of TTRPG elements such as the symbolism of a journey has been used to support PhD students (C. Williams 2011) and the development of TTRPG gaming elements such as character and map creation are a development of this approach and could be applicable to academic at any stage of their career. The fact that D&D has become part of mainstream culture means that the creative use of it within an academic context may be accessible to a wider audience than previously.

Future directions

This autoethnographic view of academic development through character and map creation is naturally limited by the fact that it is the account and perspective of one person; they are the interpretations of my own experience. It is therefore not possible to generalise but instead only suggest the possible usefulness of such an approach. Further research is therefore needed to enable a broader understanding of how TTRPG can be used as an academic development tool.

Whilst I had found it useful to create the character and map, I was left with a sense of ‘so what now?’. In a TTRPG game such as D&D, these are the starting points of game play and not the end result. I realised that I had no mechanism for revisiting the process and considering how I might reflect on it in the future or how I would meaningfully share it with others.

One must also be mindful about the use of D&D with regards to the idea of mainstream awareness as opposed to mainstream practice. Whilst many academics may be aware of D&D as a game, and have a basic conceptual understanding, that does not mean that it is necessarily an activity they would choose to participate in. It will be essential from further research to identify what may work as a reflective tool and, more importantly, to understand why. Divorcing this from the D&D narrative may be a means to discover whether it is the creative acts themselves which provide the support of if it is indeed the embedded wider system of the game itself which adds to individual experience.

Conclusion

This autoethnographic account has shown that academics can use some of the practical elements of TTRPG as a reflective tool for their own development of an academic identity. It has highlighted a personal account of using two key parts of D&D TTRPG game play (character creation and world of play) to understand how an academic identity can be reflected upon and potentially developed. In particular, how understanding the maps of our own academic worlds can impact on our own academic character.

Acknowledgments

With thanks to the Honourable Bunch and Dungeon Master Aimee in particular.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).