Light, RyanAlexander, Michelle2022-10-262022-10-262022-10-26https://hdl.handle.net/1794/27728Here I bring together Game Studies, Sociology, and Women's and Gender Studies to explore the scope of digital and analog roleplaying communities. Using interviews conducted with 50 participants who reported playing the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons or the digital roleplaying game World of Warcraft and my own experience of games I present evidence and develop theory in existing literature on 3 major axes. The first is women and marginalized identities' participation in the game space. I detail the ways in which women have participated in not only the play of these games since their inception but also how they have held key roles in the development of roleplaying games. The second is how white, male-identified players navigate rule systems based on unexamined, racist assumptions about rules which are in conflict with their understandings of race. Additionally, I discuss the ways in which players who are subject to cultural ‘othering’ in their lived experiences embrace even further othered bodies in virtual spaces. The third articulates a theory about how gamers have thrown open the "gates" of the pastime, but practice mostly at "kitchen tables" which are highly exclusive which creates a divide between the public "face" of gaming, and it's private "heart." These smaller groups operate simultaneously to the larger discourses on the public face of gaming. In these spaces, players can control their environment, who they game with, and thus create safe gaming spaces where they do not have to confront toxic or aggressive discourses in the larger gaming community. Using this I add nuance to larger theories of cultural practice communities which opt instead of forming hierarchies dependent on the ‘right’ way to do things of self-definition and ousting players who do not fit at their tables.en-USAll Rights Reserved.Dungeons and DragonsGamesGames StudiesMedia StudiesSubculturesWorld of WarcraftElectronic Thesis or Dissertation