Dungeons And Dragons: A Discourse Community

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Dungeons & Dragons: A Discourse Community “Everyone ready? While roaming through the forest on a long summer's night, the party stumbles across a pack of rabid ghouls which grumbles and growl at the very sight of you. All must roll initiative and get ready to fight. Critical hit.” Although the conversation above may not make much sense to the common person, a regular player of the tabletop game “Dungeons & Dragons” would be able to comprehend and respond accordingly to that exact situation. I surely believe that the game, (commonly shortened to “D&D”) is an excellent example of a discourse community. For background purposes, this is a discourse community that I am directly involved with. My interest for the game sprouted from a young age. …show more content…

The main goal of the community, as well as any other tabletop community, is to enjoy yourself and create fictional adventures with the other players around you. Secondary goals may include: improving your writing and overall confidence, developing three-dimensional characters, as well as creating lasting friendships with the others playing the game with you. As the game plays out, players commonly find themselves expressing their thoughts on these goals and actively pursuing them. Whether or not the goals are completed is based on the behavior of individual players, but everyone has these goals in mind when they start playing. In realizing these goals, communication is also very important to this community. Without speaking to each other or sending messages back and forth, the game would be made impossible. The game consists of a storyteller (known as the Dungeon Master,) describing a scene to two to six other players. The players then describe their actions in the scene and the cycle rolls on. Without communication, none of that would be made …show more content…

Each player must return back to the game for the adventure to continue. Without them, the game just wouldn’t be the same. Each player provides information to the Dungeon Master, receives feedback on that information to create an ongoing story. This is a very simplified model of how the game works, but overall it all boils down to the exchange of knowledge from player to player. With proper communication and participation of every member in the community, each game can consist of many elements which all revolve around the communities genres. Genres include, but are not limited to: Tabletop gaming, speech, world and character creation, and advanced storytelling between players. Sub-genres of the community include, but are not limited to: Voice acting, the creation of art for the game, map-making, and research of the different fantasy aspects in the game. Although most of the genres are fairly simple, they all make a big impact on creating a unique and exciting story for players of all ages to enjoy. Members of the community all use these genres to communicate ideas and present personalized experiences in the story for everyone to

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