Photo caption: UC PhD student Courtney Matthews is researching how tabletop roleplaying games can support wellbeing and social connection.
Rolling dice and battling imaginary monsters might seem an unlikely source of wellbeing, but Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha | University of Canterbury (UC) research suggests Dungeons & Dragons groups can provide meaningful social connection and a strong sense of belonging.
PhD student Courtney Matthews has investigated tabletop roleplaying games as a source of belonging and wellbeing, using the Dungeons & Dragons community as a case study.
Her research, Tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) as a source of belonging and wellbeing: A social identity perspective, explores whether these established gaming communities could provide the kind of meaningful group membership known to support wellbeing.
Matthews says research has shown social groups can be important sources of mental wellbeing and belonging, but not every group provides the same benefits.
"For a group to facilitate good mental wellbeing, it needs to be a positive and meaningful part of a person's life," she says.
That led her to consider the potential of Dungeons & Dragons, commonly known as D&D.
The tabletop roleplaying game involves players creating characters and collaboratively telling a story, guided by another player known as the Dungeon Master.
"The core of it is basically a choose-your-own-adventure game with other people," Matthews says. "You are sitting together; you're not playing it by yourself."
Matthews has played D&D since she was 17 and says her interest in researching it grew from seeing the effect the game could have on players.
She recalls people saying the game had given them "the social confidence to go and join other social groups", while others appeared increasingly confident expressing themselves.
"You're bonding over something that is meaningful that can also facilitate social skills, teamwork, collaboration, diplomacy, problem solving," she says.
The study included 305 existing players from the New Zealand D&D online community.
Participants completed an online survey covering wellbeing, loneliness, self-esteem and their sense of belonging to their D&D group. They also mapped their wider social networks and rated different groups according to factors including positivity, support and compatibility with other parts of their social lives.
Matthews says D&D groups were consistently rated among the most positive and supportive groups in participants' social networks, despite participants spending less time with them on average than with friends or family.
The researchers also found that a stronger sense of belonging to a D&D group was positively associated with wellbeing and self-esteem.
"Despite only spending a short amount of time with their D&D groups, that time had a lasting impact on people's lives outside of the game."
The research could have wider implications for efforts to address loneliness and improve social connection, particularly because tabletop roleplaying games are already established and relatively easy to access.
"Here is this cost-effective, widely available and accessible, established group activity that's already out there," Matthews says.
"If it's possible to get all of these psychological benefits from something that is already established and something that a lot of people put so much passion in, then I think that would be awesome to explore."
One finding that particularly interested Matthews was that 17% of participants identified as transgender or gender diverse, despite the study not specifically recruiting from those communities. She says this suggests D&D may be reaching people who are not always well served by more traditional social activities.
"If just organically we have been able to recruit from these communities and they have found D&D groups engaging, and they partake in them, then I think this has huge potential for hard-to-reach communities," she says.
Matthews says that is especially relevant because not every social group is accessible or appealing to everyone.
Matthews suggests that the next step is to follow people who have never played TTRPGs before and examine their mental wellbeing and sense of belonging before and after they begin playing.
Matthews would ultimately like to explore the potential of tabletop roleplaying games further in community settings, including local libraries and secondary schools.
"In light of a loneliness epidemic and mental health crisis, TTRPGs like D&D could be one of the tools we can use to address a need for social connection in our communities."
The research was carried out with Professor Tegan Cruwys, School of Medicine and Psychology at The Australian National University; Dr Benjamin Riordan, Centre of Alcohol Policy Research at La Trobe University; Associate Professor Damian Scarf, Department of Psychology at the University of Otago; and Dr Taylor Winter, School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Canterbury.
