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Fun & play

1 December 2023

8 min read

Table-top philosophy: role playing games and the identities they help construct

A once derided fantasy genre now influences creative media - from The Big Bang Theory to Stranger Things.

Harry Gibbins

Harry Gibbins is a doctoral researcher at the University of Aberdeen. His PhD concerns the intersection between autism and Christian ministry.

Three teenage boys rise up from a table-top game and celebrate a victory.

Playing D&D in Stranger Things.

Picture this: no longer are you sitting at a computer desk or staring at your phone during your commute. Instead, you are an intrepid explorer, a noble warrior, or a cunning thief. You have left behind the mundanity and anxieties of the 'real world'. Now, you are a protagonist in a new story.

Your choices will shape the world around you; your actions will be written into legend and recounted for centuries. But this is not done in isolation. You are together with friends. You work as a team; you bond, laugh, and celebrate each other’s achievements as a unit. You are not alone; you are an adventuring party.

Behind the grey skyline through the condensation-heavy glass of the train window is a world of infinite possibilities. Here, in your mind’s eye, you shape reality. Here, you become the person that, right now, you want to be. There are no limitations beyond what you believe is possible. You are the captain steering the ship into uncharted waters where the aim is to share a good yarn with your friends.

There's a fine line between fantasy as a genre and escapism as a psychology. As we parade myth and legend within our respective cultures and contexts, we find something of ourselves. We read of Frodo Baggins, the underdog who takes on a responsibility of epic proportions, and see qualities we want to inhabit. We hear of Iron Man's sacrifice to save friends and see something of our own relationships. This is not to say we literally aim to overthrow a dark lord or defeat a purple space utilitarian, but we see the humanity reflected within relatable moments through the fiction. The story we read or watch somewhat touches the cadence of the 'real world' no matter how fantastical.

In an age where this cadence and its story-focused elements are twisted to become more marketable, where is the authenticity? How do we begin to tell our own stories? Is there a way in which our stories can speak of this cadence of the ‘real world’ without the necessity to satisfy business?

As the game creates a safe environment in which players can enact hypothetical scenarios. In other words, to fantasise about who they are and the world around them. Consequently, there is an opportunity to ask again: "What story do I want to tell".

Enter stage left: Table-top Role-playing Games (TTRPGs). The picture painted in the opening paragraph is steeped in my experience of commuting. Although not a universal experience, I found commuting sucked all life from my world. If there is a hell, perhaps it is a continuous never-ending loop of the Northern Line. I found myself recounting the previous evening, time spent with friends playing the fantasy TTRPG Dungeons and Dragons, reflecting on what I had learnt from such an experience. As a theologian, I would ask if there was something of myself that I was seeing in the stories told. When I returned next time, where did I want this story to take me next? What story do I want to tell?

Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D, has been propelled into the cultural zeitgeist in the last decade. Featured in popular television shows such as The Big Bang Theory and Stranger Things, D&D has emerged out of nerd basements and into the mainstream. No longer is D&D seen as something exclusively for 'mega-nerds'. It now stands shoulder-to-shoulder with other culture-shaping fictions, such as The Lord of the Rings and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In 2014, the fifth edition of D&D and aimed to streamline and tighten up the accessibility of the game whilst promoting creative and complex storytelling as a valued method of playing. In its earliest editions, D&D didn't care for character backstory or where the dungeon came from. A player’s aim was simply to kill some baddies and find treasure. However, today’s D&D aims for more nuance. Psychologists Sören Henrich and Rachel Worthington highlight that this has allowed D&D to have a genuine therapeutic application. As the game creates a safe environment in which players can enact hypothetical scenarios. In other words, to fantasise about who they are and the world around them. Consequently, there is an opportunity to ask again: "What story do I want to tell".

Perhaps the most obvious example of this philosophy in action is the role D&D takes in Netflix's Stranger Things. The show is not explicitly about D&D. Rather, the game is used as an illustrative tool, showing the actions of the characters, as well as providing a metaphor for the mystery they uncover and the journey they go on.

The show opens with four young boys playing a game of D&D in their parents' basement. The players discover a Demogorgon, a classic D&D monster, and they must work together to defeat it. However, their immaturity gets the better of them and they fail. In D&D, player characters take on different roles; it is only by working together that their various weakness can be supported, and the villain defeated. This is the lesson that the boys learn: teamwork. It is only when they learn to support one another that are they able to defeat the 'real-life' Demogorgon they discover in their small American suburb.

Nine belonged with his friends, he was not simply 'put up with'. His style of encountering problems and solving puzzles strengthens the whole team. Nine was not a burden.

In Stranger Things we find D&D acting not just as a thematic motif, but also as illustrative of a journey the young people go on. So, what are the philosophical mechanics behind this? How is D&D as a phenomenon transformative and illustrative in our present reality? Philosophers describe this sort of thinking as 'Phenomenology'. In simplistic terms, it concerns the lived experience of a phenomenon, seeking to uncover its essence. What actually makes that 'thing' you experience a 'thing' at all? Are there attributes that are common across all experiences of that phenomenon? Or, more likely, is there a rich and informative complexity to its innermost workings?

Whilst I am far from describing what the essence of D&D as a phenomenon is, I can speak of my own lived experience in the hope that it demonstrates how D&D is the transformative tool Stranger Things positions it to be. I hope that this not only illustrates my argument, even if it is as simple as “D&D is good”, but also provides a window in which my own story can be understood.

I have written elsewhere about the role D&D has played in my theological evaluation of complex theoretical ideas. It has ultimately shaped the way I research and encounter complex questions. However, I want to highlight something different. In my other work, I spoke of a character I played for three years, a Tabaxi Paladin named 'Nine'. Nine was somewhat of an experiment. After I was diagnosed as autistic, I found great difficulty in knowing who I was. Are there parts of me that are not autistic? Am I being autistic subconsciously? Or am I actively choosing to act in a way that a clinical professional has decided is autistic? Who am I? Nine was to be a method of exploring such questions. I wrote Nine as autistic in a way that was a somewhat exaggerated version of myself. Yet, there was a distinct difference. Nine was the 'me' who had come to terms with being autistic; Nine knew who he was and was proud of it; Nine just simply was Nine.

This was obviously not a perfect solution; the world of D&D does not have the clinical vocabulary to describe autism. In fact, whether autism exists in a fantasy world is kind of a fuzzy question. Was I inventing autism within the world by playing a character in such a way? Or is there ever a way I could not play a character as autistic due to being autistic myself? What emerged through Nine's interactions was something that, on a very personal level, I found deeply satisfying, illuminative, and transformative.

Nine developed, some might say unsurprisingly, relationships among the other player characters. He lived as I do, as a social creature in a social world. Whilst his interactions were sometimes unusual, perhaps in much the same way as my own, his friend still came to love him. Following the framework of theologian John Swinton, Nine was more than just included; Nine belonged to this group simply because in his absence he would be missed. Once I had realised this I was taken somewhat by surprise. The differences between Nine and the other characters still mattered, but they were not barriers. Nine was valued, not someone who just was difficult to approach, off in his own little world, or obsessed and hyper-fixated. Rather, he was one part of the whole. Nine belonged with his friends, he was not simply 'put up with'. His style of encountering problems and solving puzzles strengthens the whole team. Nine was not a burden.

D&D highlights the strength storytelling, narrative building, and art in all its forms, have for those who are coming to terms with their identity.

This was where the transformation occurred. I realised that I was the Nine who did not have this understanding. Harry erroneously believed that he did not belong when really he always did. Harry was embarrassed about his challenges with social engagement, his obliviousness to the world around him, and his inability to get through a conversation without talking about Doctor Who. Yet, here I was, among friends who cherished and valued me. Here, I truly did belong, and it was Nine who taught me that.

I hope that this illustrates just a snippet of the potential this game, and games like it, have to offer. I believe there is much more to be said about the philosophical truth spoken through D&D in much the same way we talk about other forms of art or narrative. This is just a portion of what is possible, and I hope I learn much more about myself as I continue along these adventures with my friends. I would encourage anyone reading to give D&D a go. Although, I am aware I have had a very specific and positive experience that is not universal among players of the game. Perhaps the focus should not be that D&D is the best tool for therapeutic action. Rather, D&D highlights the strength storytelling, narrative building, and art in all its forms, have for those who are coming to terms with their identity. Whilst we may be tempted to describe ourselves simply, as I was when I was diagnosed as autistic, D&D reminds us that the stories our lives tell will always demonstrate more depth. Our lives our simply stories that we are constantly engaged with and that we are always telling.

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Politics

8 November 2024

10 min read

How to respond when politicians talk about “our way of life”

Alasdair MacIntyre’s thinking helps us understand what we share across society.

Joel Pierce

Joel Pierce is the administrator of Christ's College, University of Aberdeen. He has recently published his first book.

Four men in suits, sit next to each other smiling, in the House of Commons.

Reform MPs in the House of Commons.

House of Commons, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia.

What is “our way of life”? It’s a phrase which slides easily into the rhetoric of politicians of every stripe. It’s what the Reform Party says is threatened by multiculturalism, but what do they mean by it? What kind of politics is sustained by talk of “our way of life” and is there a better way of thinking about such politics?

This summer, we made an exception to the time limit rule for television in my house, mainly so that I could have the Olympics on from morning to night. It’s a habit I acquired growing up in the United States, where an obsession over the quadrennial medal count is one of the few remaining things which bridges political and regional divides. During the Cold War, the Olympics were a way for Americans to proudly affirm the superiority of our way of life over the rigid training schedules and alien ways of the rival Soviet Union.

Although my memories begin around the fall of the Berlin Wall, old habits die hard, and so the Olympics, to me, was endless coverage of plucky underdog Americans overcoming the odds to defeat the machine-like discipline of a new set of rivals–now Russia and China

I moved to Britain just before the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics at which Britain won exactly one medal. At first I was bemused by the BBC’s coverage, which, of necessity, had to focus on British Olympians with little chance of winning. I was invited to cheer on eighth or ninth place finishers who had committed their life to a craft which would never bring the rewards of lasting fame or financial security. For them the reward was the Olympics themselves, the chance to compete amongst peers, to push themselves to their highest level, enjoying their sport and their performance for what it was, not for any external reward. In the terms of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, what these Olympians displayed was dedication to the internal goods of their sport–those goods that make a particular activity worth doing for its own sake. The Olympics were not about medals for them, but about showing what could be achieved if, as Olympians must do, they made their sport their way of life, dedicating themselves to its unique forms of excellence.

Sports, for MacIntyre, are but one example of a broader category he labels ‘practices’. Although MacIntyre has a technical definition of what counts as a ‘practice’, the general idea can be conveyed through examples he gives such as farming, researching history, architecture, chess, and chemistry. Practices are human activities which are worth doing for their own sake, which require a degree of skill and excellence, and in which what counts as that skill and excellence is, in part, defined and discerned by the people who participate in the practice. This last criterion points at something important about practices for MacIntyre: they are inherently social.

This is obvious in the case of sport. For an individual athlete to compete in a race they need not just other competitors to race against, but also trainers and coaches to prepare them for it, governing bodies to organise it, and, hopefully, spectators to cheer them on. It is, perhaps, less obvious in the case of individual farmer, but even here, one has to be taught to farm and, if one is wise, continues to learn and adapt through consulting with other farmers. A different way of putting this is that practices are the kinds of things which it’s not absurd to call “a way of life”. For an Olympic curler, curling is a way of life, just as much as farming is for a farmer.

There are many ways of life, many modes of being British, as diverse as the professions, hobbies, and passions which we find to have inherent worth.

However, this seems to offer little help in defining “our way of life” if it is being used in the way our politicians like to talk about it. If there’s one thing that I learned from all those BBC features of British Olympians way back in 2010, it was that aside from geographic proximity, there was not much that their way of life had in common with mine. I may be within driving distance of the rink where Winter Olympian Eve Muirhead learned to curl, but my workdays of wrestling spreadsheets and answering emails have little in common with ones spent lifting weights, studying strategy with coaches, and perfecting the just right spin on a stone as it’s released.

And, of course that’s not just true of Olympic athletes. The investment banker who attends our church shares a way of life with his colleagues in Edinburgh, London, and Tokyo, that is completely opaque to my wife and I, immersed as we are in the worlds of ministry and academia. I glimpse some of the internal goods of the practices of our dentist watching her check my daughters’ teeth and our plumber as he fixes our leaking radiators, but their way of life, the rhythms of their days, and what gives them satisfaction in their work as they move from appointment to appointment, eludes my understanding.

Where does this leave the search for a British way of life? If practices are as important to forming us as MacIntyre thinks, then the quest for any singular British way of life will ultimately be fruitless. There are many ways of life, many modes of being British, as diverse as the professions, hobbies, and passions which we find to have inherent worth. And even this characterisation does not go quite far enough, because all of these practices have a way of bursting the boundaries of Britishness if they really are worthwhile. A century and a half ago, football, rugby, and cricket were quintessentially British sports. Now they belong to the world.

Similarly, valuing these practices well within Britain has a tendency to open us to accepting those from outside our borders who can help develop them. The best footballer in Britain is Norwegian. Many of the doctors who ensured my daughters arrived safely after complicated pregnancies were originally from India and Pakistan.

Still, one might wonder if thinking about community through the lens of practices, as MacIntyre does, is too much of a solvent. Isn’t it a way of imagining us living near each other, but not with each other; siloed in our practices, in each of our communities, not understanding what our neighbours are up to? Not necessarily. For MacIntyre, the familiarity that arise from living near someone, hearing their worries at planning permission hearings, arguing with them at the local school’s parent council meetings, organising a community fundraiser together, or, even, being part of a family with them, can help develop an understanding of the internal goods of practices which we do not take part in. I haven’t lifted a brush to paper to since my secondary school art class, but my mother-in-law’s virtuosity with acrylics has led me to acquire an increasing appreciation for painting. Part of what helps facilitate this recognition is that, as MacIntyre argues, although the internal goods and the skills required to achieve them tend to be different for each practice, the virtues which we develop while pursuing them–patience, honesty, courage, self-control–are universal. Part of what helps us recognise others’ activities as practices, as worth doing for their own sake, are the virtues we see them develop as they do them.

This sort of recognition requires familiarity, the sort I might have with my neighbours in our corner of rural Aberdeenshire, but that I am unlikely to have with fellow citizens in Cornwall, Cardiff, London, or Glasgow. How then are we to respond to national politicians talking about “our way of life”? One answer might be: with extreme scepticism. This is MacIntyre’s approach. He rejects the nation-state, which he calls “a dangerous and unmanageable institution”, as a potential channel of communal unity. Instead, he calls on us to admit that modern nation-states exist as a contradiction, being both “a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services” and yet also something treated as sacred, which we are asked, on occasion, to surrender our lives to preserve. He notes with characteristic acerbity, “it is like being asked to die for the telephone company.”

However, here I’d temper MacIntyre’s rhetoric somewhat. While my attachment to bankers in Canary Wharf is largely a happenstance of history, a contingent fact generated by long forgotten necessities of eighteenth century geopolitics, it has nevertheless resulted in both of us being issued the same passport, governed by the same tax regime, and having the same set of regulatory agencies to complain to when things go wrong. Those may be manifestations of what MacIntyre disparages as “a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services”, but they nevertheless do bind us together. As such we both have an interest in making sure this bureaucracy acts as justly as it can, not because it is the embodiment of all that is British, Britain is much too diverse and interesting to be fully embodied in our political institutions, but because we all have an interest in the institutions in which we are enmeshed, British or otherwise, being run as justly as possible.

Surely politics is all about securing as much money and resources as possible for the people most like oneself. That, it seems, is often the unstated assumption when the talk of “our way of life”

Because we find ourselves tied together by these institutions to a diverse collection of people, we have an interest in learning about those with whom we live. Even those who are far away. And to also celebrate when goods and services delivered by our institutions result in success to which we, in a remote way, have contributed. I may not share a way of life with Adam Peaty, but, thanks to the BBC, I can have a glimpse into what his way of life is and can be happy that through my taxes I have contributed, in a small way, to helping him win another medal. Since that 2010 Winter Olympics Britain has come quite a long way and there is nothing wrong with a little vicarious pride in our athlete’s accomplishments.

But I can also be proud of athletes who didn’t win. Ones like BMX rider Beth Shriever who handled her unexpected last place finish in her final with a kind of grace and maturity, the kind of virtue, which someone more dedicated to her practice than to just winning can demonstrate. It is the facilitating of this kind of moral achievement which is more valuable than any medal.

Similarly, I can rejoice when a new hospital gets built in a neglected area in London, or more council housing is supplied to people in need in Edinburgh, hopeful that these lead to my fellow citizens achieving the kind of flourishing lives they deserve. I can be angry, when I discover that the money I’ve paid towards postage has been used to prosecute innocent victims of a computer glitch, and pleased when the opening of a new rail line eases the otherwise stressful commute of tens of thousands in London. The state may be a bit like a telephone company, but a well-run utility can do a lot to supply people with the goods they need to make their lives. As long as I’m a subscriber, as long as I’m tied to people through national institutions like the state, I have a moral duty to ensure that they’re run as well as possible.

This way of thinking about politics may strike some as idealistic, the kind of view only a naive Christian ethicist could endorse. Surely politics is all about securing as much money and resources as possible for the people most like oneself. That, it seems, is often the unstated assumption when the talk of “our way of life” is deployed and why so much coalition building in our politics turns on finding a convenient other against which to define “our” similarity. Take your pick: immigrants, the EU, woke elites, the Tories, or Westminster (among a certain brand of politician here in Scotland).--. Growing up in the USA, the Soviets, and then the Chinese, and now, depending whether one lives in a Republican or Democratic district, the other political party, have served the same purpose. The problem is that we aren’t that similar, we are and always have been a diverse lot with diverse needs. Every nation is. There is no one British way of life and to allow our politicians to try to sustain the fiction that there is lets them off the hook. Solving deep seated economic and social inequality is hard. Blaming immigrants for not embracing our way of life is easy.

So, perhaps the sort of politics that I am talking about here is idealistic, nevertheless it is the only kind that can sustain a just government in the long term. Without acknowledging the importance of goods we only partly understand which are pursued by people whose ways of life are different from our own, we cannot hope to sustain the minor miracle of coordination and mutual aid that history has gifted us with in our united kingdom.