Fantasy in Real Life: Making Meaning from Vicarious Experiences with a Tabletop Role-Playing Game Live-Play Internet Stream

This study explores how fans of Critical Role, a live-streamed Dungeons & Dragons web series, attribute personal meaning, growth, and well-being to watching tabletop role-playing games. Positioned against a literature that has focused more heavily on video games than on tabletop play, the work introduces the concept of "parasocial gaming," a vicarious experience in which viewers feel connected to the cast through parasocial interaction. Drawing on phenomenology and parasocial interaction theory, the author uses a narrative, participant-centered approach to define what viewers mean by "benefits" or "transformation" from watching tabletop play.

The empirical core consists of interviews with seven self-identified fans, supplemented by an in-depth narrative case study of one participant, Megan, who credited the show with aiding her recovery from PTSD by evoking childhood memories of safety and fostering courage and relationship skills. Cross-case analysis identified four learning elements, parasocial transference, critical reflection, social learning, and self-determination, and three recurring features: storytelling, role-playing, and parasocial interaction. Across participants, the study found shared themes of Social Connection, Identity Immersion, and Complex Interaction, along with reported inspiration to play tabletop games and benefits for mental resilience.

The findings are exploratory and rest on a small, self-selected convenience sample dominated by a single detailed case. They describe participants' perceptions rather than establishing causal or clinical effects, and the author presents the connections as hypotheses for further research. The author's insider positionality as a player, fan, and personal-growth professional supported rapport but also warrants future work using other perspectives and methods. The study's principal contribution is to identify transferable aspects of vicarious narrative experience and to suggest that parasocial gaming merits investigation as a distinct phenomenon.