Are Dwarves Protestant? American Religion and “Dungeons & Dragons”

Abstract

I analyze the ideology of representation of religion in the tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) Dungeons & Dragons. I approach TRPGs as a type of protostory, an interactive set of stories governed by rules which provides affordances to create different stories. Whether a specific story is relatively hard or easy to instantiate from the protostory indicates if this particular instantiation serves as a preferred, negotiated, or oppositional reading of the TRPG rules. Based on an analysis of the dimensions of religion proposed by Ninian Smart, contrasted with Harold Bloom’s idea of American religion, as well as the concept of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation, I discuss the similarity between the way Dungeons & Dragons simulates religion, and the traditional understanding of religion in American culture.