Abstract:
Abstract
This work explores the links between table-top role-playing games and the cultural anthropologist
Victor Turner’s theory of liminoid phenomena, as described in his seminal essay Liminal to Liminoid,
in Play, Flow, and Ritual: an Essay in Comparative Symbology. It explores the possibility of using
Turner’s theory to better understand these games and their context within the broader cultural
paradigm. It is argued that the complexity of these (and other) games, in particular the intricacy of
interactions and behaviours that arise when players interpret potentially subversive written rule-sets,
makes them hard to classify succinctly. There is however a great potential for linking table-top roleplaying
to a wider body of academic theory regarding the function of ritual and pseudo-ritual
behaviour in post-industrial societies through the auspices of Turner’s work.
