Impacts of Tabletop Role-playing Games on Interpersonal Communication: In Perspective of Communication Accommodation Theory

This extended abstract examines how tabletop role-playing games (TRPG) shape interpersonal communication, framing the inquiry through Communication Accommodation Theory and the field of ludology. The authors argue that TRPG offers a structured social space in which players negotiate decisions, build team cohesion, and rehearse communication skills, and that these interactions can be compared meaningfully with everyday interpersonal exchanges. Their central aim is to analyze the structural similarities and differences between communication inside game sessions and communication in real life, including how players relate to the identities of their characters.

The study relies on participant observation carried out over roughly two years, from May 2016 to May 2018, within a single group based in Beijing. The group comprised about 30 members, of whom 10 were core players meeting weekly or more often and 20 were occasional participants. Most members were students or graduates of a Chinese communication university, aged 18 to 29, and sessions were held in a board game club near campus. The researcher attended more than half of the group's activities and served as game host over thirty times, a scope that gives the findings depth but also limits their generalizability to a single community.

The findings describe several patterns. Players often use their characters to explore behaviors they would not enact in daily life, such as different romantic relationships or moral choices, and some even impose stricter ethical standards on their characters than on themselves. Real-world relationships also spill into play, as shown in a case where a player's emotional reaction to his girlfriend's in-game role shaped his actions. The authors further observe that players judge one another's attitudes toward controversial characters as much as the characters' conduct. Conclusions emphasize that participants draw on convergence, divergence, and maintenance strategies, adjusting their behavior to keep storylines moving while asserting distinctive personas, with occasional conflicts arising between in-game and real-world ethics.