“Wizards, Warriors, and Clerics: Heroic Identity Construction In Live Action Role Playing Games”
Dani Snyder
Illinois Wesleyan University
Wizard: A hero whose power comes from intelligence, willpower, and strength of personality; wizards cast spells. Warrior: A hero whose power comes from physical strength, agility, and athletic prowess; warriors bash heads. Cleric: A hero whose power comes from moral strength, verbal aptitude, and generosity; clerics heal the sick and wounded. In live action role playing games, participants develop heroic characters within a set of fixed constraints and physically go out and do battle with the forces of evil within a sprawling, live, fictitious world; live action role play developed out of tabletop role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons. Some live action role play campaigns can stretch on for years, as participants develop many facets of characters’ personalities and engage in complex, epic battles to save the world from the forces of evil.
In the Fall of 2005, I conducted a case study of a live action role playing game. My participation was limited to a single “Tavern Night”, or eight hour long game, embedded within what is now a fifteen year long campaign based in Central Connecticut. The major players in this game are now in their 30s; the game I studied took place on the campus of the small liberal arts college from which many of them graduated in the mid-1990s. In this live action role play, adults (mostly men) inscribe heroic identities for themselves as “warrior” “mage” or “cleric.” These archetypes are heavily influenced by tropes inscribed in fantasy novels, but each archetype embodies a set of cultural values defining “heroism” in a different way. This paper will explore the ways in which performances of these narratives reinforce dominant discourses of heroism and construct alternative forms of masculine status.
[1] Alaskan Wilderness Expeditions: An Alaska Outdoors Consulting Company serving The Last Frontier, < [2] Setha M. Low and Denise Lawrence- Zúñiga, “Locating Culture,” The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture, eds. Setha M. Low and Denise Lawrence- Zúñiga (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003), 6.
[3] This quotation is from a contemporary newspaper advertisement for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, reproduced in Arthur Kopit, Indians (New York: Hill & Wang), 1968.
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