World-Building through Garments and Accessories in Dungeons & Dragons Illustrations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/imaginingtheimpossible.145055Keywords:
critical world-building, role-playing games, game worlds, clothes, pictures, props, gender differencesAbstract
In tabletop role-playing games, the game master and players in a group are encouraged to construct their own fictive world in which they can play. By using a critical world-building approach, we analyse the garments and accessories in the illustrations in Player’s Handbook (2014) for Dungeons & Dragons (5th edition) and find that clothes have four conspicuous functions in establishing a world of possibilities from which a group of players can build their game world. The four functions are: to convey that the world is one of action and magic, to provide a range of cultural and historical alternatives to the traditional pseudomedieval fantasy world, to communicate what is important about particular groups, and to maintain a difference between female wizards as physical and sexualised and male wizards as people of knowledge and military competence.
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