Dimensions of Online Role-Playing: Anchored in the Tolkien Mythos

Abstract

Based on close study of two multi-player games in the tradition of J. R. R. Tolkien, this study documents the complex features of modern role-playing in online virtual worlds and constructs a six-component typology of its dimensions. The Lord of the Rings: War in the North is oriented toward the popular movies based on Tolkien’s novels, and can be played by as many as three people. The Lord of the Rings Online is based directly on the novels and is massively multi-player, even one event reported here having 487 avatars simultaneously at the same virtual location. A brief sociometric analysis of thousands of online stories in Tolkien’s legendarium, observation inside 20 Tolkien Facebook groups, and references to social science published during Tolkien’s lifetime, anchor the analysis in a tradition. The six theory components interact dynamically: identity, function, connection, engagement, representation, and property. They were derived from participant observation and ethnographic methods, but also illustrated by statistics, notably censuses of avatars and their homesteads. A great number of other role-playing computer games have similar components, but often fewer and less clearly represented. Therefore, this pair in the Tolkien mythos were especially suitable for this concept-development project.