Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is a tabletop role-playing game (RPG) that has long been seen as the ultimate game for nerds. I myself used to believe this until I played it for the first time in my second year of university. Upon playing, I realised that this was not the empty form of escapism that I was led to believe. Instead it was a crash course on how to communicate with and work as a team. In addition to this communication training, the D&D community is very tightknit and have developed their own sort of subculture among the tabletop RPG crowd. This subculture is complete with their own terms, slang, and online forums. Therefore, I believe it to be the perfect Discourse Community for me to share on this blog.

            The main reason I believe D&D qualifies as a discourse community is that it has a very large dictionary of slang terms and game jargon. So much so that a beginner player would find it impossible to play without the assistance of somebody more experienced to translate what has been said. From player terms like armour class and saving throw to lore related terms like beholder and genasi, there is a lot of background knowledge needed prior to playing for the first time. This is why it reminds me so much of the PSI program. Like in D&D, there are a lot of acronyms and short forms you deal with when learning about security and investigations. This is why you feel so connected to others within community, because they are the only ones that understand the majority of what you are talking about. The bond of shared language is a powerful one, even when that language was created around someone’s gaming table.

            The second reason D&D meets the criteria of a discourse community is the sheer number of forums, fan sites and gaming books that are created, released and updated on a near daily basis. These allow players from all over the world to talk, discuss and share gaming related news and stories. If you want to create a story in which your friends fight vampires and werewolves, there is a forum somewhere that has that exact storyline pre-written and ready to go. If you want to gripe with other players about how boring a certain game creator’s fictional world is, you can find a community on Facebook that agrees with you and would love to hear your opinion. One of the things that attracts the D&D crowd is the ability to interact with other players even if you don’t know any in real life. It is not uncommon for four people from all over North America to play D&D over skype without ever meeting in real life. This interconnectedness and constant flow of information is similar to the world of security, which is always being reformed and adapted to fit with the changing world around us.

            The final reason in favour of the D&D crowd being a discourse community is that there is an unofficial hierarchy to the players within. While there is no official league or ranking system, within specific communities such as the one in Peterborough, there are people recognized to be “Masters” of the game. When most people begin playing, they join up with an already established group of players and take the role of a basic character. After a while they play a character that is designed to be more intricate and therefor harder to play. Most people remain at this stage of the game forever, content to sit back and enjoy. Some people, like myself, grow tired of playing other people’s stories and decide to create their own. These people are called “Dungeon Masters” and they essentially referee the games they create and narrate what is happening to the other players. If you become extremely knowledgeable, creative and excel at communication, you may become good enough to be like a man I know in town who is a professional Dungeon Master. He is payed by parties and large friend groups to design his own custom storylines for people to play. If anybody in the city wants to learn how to play the game well, I send them to him. This hierarchy, created by players out of respect and admiration for one another, is the final reason I decided to choose D&D as my discourse community. Much like in securities, your reputation among your peers makes or breaks your career.