An Ethnography of Contemporary Tabletop Gaming: Artefacts, Spaces, Knowledge and Community

Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, tabletop games have become increasingly present and embedded into society and culture. This thesis explores the significance of contemporary tabletop games (used as an umbrella term to discuss contemporary board, role-playing, and miniature war games) in Great Britain. To do this, this thesis adopts an ethnographic approach, incorporating interviews, focus groups, and observational fieldwork coupled with archival methods and autoethnographic practice, which were collated and analysed using thematic analysis framed through a constructivist-interpretive framework. Theoretically, this thesis is informed primarily by sociology, game studies, and ritual theory, and it demonstrates the operation of a community centred on the engagement with and transference of material goods. The primary analysis of this thesis is formed around three chapters: artefacts, spaces and knowledge. This thesis contends that when tabletop games are considered as artefacts it offers the opportunity to consider the totemic value of tabletop games for gamers. Regarding space, it documents how tabletop gamers create and maintain spaces for play and that this maintenance of space creates social ties and bonds between tabletop gamers. Knowledge, the final analysis chapter, explores the way in which knowledge is acquired, exchanged and utilised within tabletop gaming communities. Taken together, these chapters demonstrate the unique role that tabletop games have in both the creation and maintenance of communities.