Blog 5

Progress report - How many interviews did you do so far? 

So far I have conducted 4 interviews on players of the table top role play game of Dungeons and Dragons. The interview consists of 10 questions.

The questions include;

1.    Do you believe that your dungeons & dragons character represents you?

2.    What aspects do you usually take in consideration when choosing creating your character?

3.    Do you pay attention to how your character is represented with the equipment or attitude that you give? 

4.    Do you believe you will be able to get along with a person in real life if you’re in-game characters’ work well together?

5.    Does it reflect your relationship with the party members in real life?

6.    What do you think attributes to the identity of the team as a whole?

7.    How important is D&D to you?

8.    Do you change yourself to fit your character? How?

9.    Do you think people play rpg to compensate what is lacking in real life?

10. Would you cosplay/ act out your character in real life? Solo/group.

As of yet, most of the interviewees have opposing ideals and tend to answer the questions vaguely. Therefore, interview questions may be further refined to better communicate with the interviewees. And 4 more interviews have been scheduled for 9^th of April, 2015.

For the literature review, I have only found 1 that relates greatly and directly to my topic. The book is called Shared fantasy: Role-playing games as social worlds by Gary Alan Fine. As this book seem to be very compatible with my research, I have chosen it to be my primary source of information for my literature review.

The data is continuously being compiled and have yet to be completely analysed.

Preliminary findings

A few parallels and commonalities have been observed thus far.

From my weekly observation of the game of Dungeons and Dragons so far, it seems that many of the players take the game personally to a certain extent. For example, many of the players would sometimes call each other by their real name rather than their character’s name while playing the game. It seems from the examples that most players do not realize that they take the game so seriously, sometimes forgetting that it is all just a game. Another example is when a player accidentally kills a side character in the game and gets angry at the game master for allowing his death.

A few preliminary findings from my interviews include the fact that the players do agree that to some extent, their characters are a representation of themselves as a lot of personal interest parallels with the characters they play. And most interviewees, even casual players of the game, consider Dungeons and Dragons as a means to socialize with other gamers.