Rolling Together: Intergenerational Dungeons & Dragons, Onboarding, and Infrastructures of Care

Abstract

This paper examines intergenerational tabletop role-playing, focusing on Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), as a site where pleasure is collaboratively produced through co-authorship, yet constrained by uneven access to rules literacy, familiarity, and interpretive norms. We present the results from a survey of 227 respondents to an exploratory survey that then led to follow-up interviews.

Most participants played D&D, with the main motivation of bonding. Other major motivations were creative expression and community building. Particularly in the context of intergenerational play, strategic onboarding practices are common, including progressive rules disclosure, visual aids, and “session-zero”.

We argue that intergenerational D&D produces intersectional pleasures through the lived intersection of age, communicative norms, platform literacies, relational roles, and access to care at the table. The paper proposes infrastructures of pleasurable inclusion as a lens for analyzing how groups design conditions for shared joy, and how those conditions can falter when support remains unevenly distributed.