My Information Community: Tabletop Roleplaying Gamers

You enter a mysterious blog. In the background, a pale crescent moon glances down from a dark blue sky, bathing a sprawling ocean in white light. To your left, you see the image of a beautiful library. An elegant glass window looks out onto a dark cityscape. You’ve come to this place searching for an item of great power: the fabled Second Reflection Blog Post. Roll a d20 and add your Perception bonus.

Hello, fellow classmates. For my information community, I’ve chosen tabletop roleplaying gamers. Just what is a tabletop roleplaying game, you ask? Have you ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons? That’s the first thing that springs to most people’s minds as the be-all and end-all example of tabletop RPGs, but there are actually many others. Basically, playing a tabletop RPG requires a storyteller; a rulebook; a sheet with your character’s stats and equipment; pencils; erasers; dice; and most importantly, a powerful imagination.

So, why have I chosen this information community? Well, if you read my introductory post, you know that one of my hobbies is playing tabletop RPGs. You also know that, besides D&D, some of my favorites include Vampire: The Masquerade and 7^th Sea. I’m actually preparing a campaign for my very first run as the storyteller for a Vampire game.

Now, let’s talk about how tabletop roleplaying gamers meet the criteria of an information community. The first criterion listed by Fisher and Durrance (2003) is that information communities “exploit the informationsharing [sic] qualities of technology and yield multiplier effects for stakeholders” (p. 659). This applies to tabletop roleplaying gamers, who share plenty of information online. Some examples include custom character sheets, easily accessible information about game rules (which can be a lifesaver when you don’t feel like wading through a 600-page rulebook to find the one thing you want), and advice for aspiring storytellers. I myself found an incredibly useful character sheet for D&D: 5^th edition. Created in Microsoft Excel, it includes dropdown menus for character race and class, and it automatically calculates stats. I’m constantly impressed that someone put that much effort into something that they intended to let strangers use for free. Video sites like Youtube are frequently used by roleplayers as well. In the video below, a Youtuber known as The Gentleman Gamer gives viewers advice about how to play a vampiric Prince in Vampire: The Masquerade. And he does the whole thing in character.

The second criterion for a group to be considered an information community is that it must “emphasize collaboration among diverse groups” (Fisher & Durrance, 2003, p. 659). In the roleplaying community, information can come from a number of different sources. Many contributors are simply players who enjoy roleplaying games. However, information can also come from people with varying levels of experience working on and helping to create both famous and obscure tabletop RPGs. Sometimes these people contribute directly. On other occasions, they may agree to do interviews with online personalities, as in the video below.

Thirdly, to be called an information community, a group must “anticipate and often form around people’s needs to access and use information in ways that people perceive as helpful” (Fisher & Durrance, 2003, p. 660). Within the roleplaying community, there are plenty of articles and videos addressing common problems and difficulties players and storytellers have when playing games. In this article, for example, a D&D player lists mistakes that dungeon masters often make and gives advice on how to avoid or fix them. In the video below, a Youtuber named DawnforgedCast addresses the common problem of player boredom with D&D combat and suggests a way to make combat feel more exciting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TUX99bNAVk

The fourth criterion for information communities is that they “remove barriers to information” (Fisher & Durrance, 2003, p. 660). Roleplaying can be an expensive hobby. Rulebooks are not cheap, and it is often necessary to buy more than one book at play a game. The availability of information about RPGs online is a lifesaver for many people. It gives them access to information they otherwise would not have and narrows the information gap between players. Unfortunately, this can sometimes head into illegal territory, such as posting free torrents of entire rulebooks online. This concept will be addressed further in a later post.

Finally, “information communities foster social connectedness within the larger community” (Fisher & Durrance, 2003, p. 660). Gaming conventions can be a great place to find other people within the community and exchange information with them. The use of the Internet can also be a big help when it comes to creating connections among roleplayers. There are plenty of places where roleplayers can find information about where to find a gaming group, for example. I myself found my current group through Meetup.

So, there you have it: my choice of information community. I look forward to the blog posts to come.

DawnforgedCast. (2015, January 26). Be a better gamer – How to have truly epic combat!! [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TUX99bNAVk

Fisher, K. E. & Durrance, J. C. (2003). Information communities. In K. Christensen & D. Levinson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of community: From the village to the virtual world. (pp. 658-660). doi:10.4135/9781412952583.n248

The Gentleman Gamer. (2013, July 6). The Prince’s guide to running a Camarilla city [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ_wl1bSQzE

The Gentleman Gamer. (2016, February 6). The Gentleman Gamer interviews Eddy Webb, creator of Pugmire [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ePtKD54Bg

Thompson, Jason. (2015, March 31). 10 dungeon master mistakes (and how I made them all). Retrieved from http://mockman.com/2015/03/31/10-dungeon-master-mistakes-and-how-i-made-them-all/