The current study aims to observe whether individuals who engaged in table-top role playing game (TRPG) were more creative. Participants total 170 (52 TRPG players, 54 electronic role playing game (ERPG) players and 64 Non-players) aged from 19 to 63. In the current study, an online questionnaire is used, adopting the verbal subtests of Wallach–Kogan Creativity Tests and the McCrae and Costa Big Five Personality Inventory. It is found that TRPG players score higher in divergent thinking tests. Priming and instruction giving methods lower the performance of all participants, in particular, when the instruction is memory provoking. ERPG players score lowest among the three groups. TRPG could be regarded as a form of improvisation. It could also be a preferable activity for the promotion of creativity. It is low cost and no formal setting is required to play. Many ERPGs are originated from TRPGs, therefore, with the popularity of ERPG, there should be advantages in promoting TRPG.
As pointed out by Plucker and Runco (1999), despite the discussion about the influence of nature and nurture on creativity, creativity can be enhanced because everyone has his or her inborn potential and such potential can be fully realized.
Training is one of the methods used to enhance creativity (Scott, Leritz, & Mumford, 2004). Inspired by table-top role playing game (TRPG), Karwowski and Soszynski (2008) developed a training method called “Role Play Training in Creativity” which aimed to enhance creative imagination. According to them, their method “proved to be one of quite a high overall effectiveness” (p.168).
TRPGs are not board games, card games nor board wargames. They are fantasy role-playing games, a kind of leisure activity. According to Williams, Hendricks, and Winkler (2006), a basic TRPG require players to “create fictional personas…within the rules and genre specified by the game, and then collectively engage in protracted storytelling” (p.3). Although the gamemaster will provide some information according to a rulebook, TRPGs are imagination demanding activities as the players are to create and experience an imaginative adventure together.
TRPG is getting psychologists’ attention. Kaufman (2009) expressed his interest in seeing “how imagination is used in creating role-playing game characters” (p.171). In view of the nature of TRPG and the method developed by Karwowski and Soszynski (2008), it is wondered whether TPRG players would score higher in creativity tests: would people without the TRPG training developed by Karwowski and Soszynski but with actual experience in playing TRPG on their own be more creative than people without the exposure to TRPG? Karwowski and Soszynski indicated that “it would be worth to make sure whether the effectiveness of the training session does not bear just a short-term influence on its participants” (p.168). Would being a more experienced TRPG player (i.e. a player with many years of playing practice) relate to the score obtained?
Electronic role playing game (ERPG) is certainly the most well-known form of role playing game. In the study of Yee (2006) about motivations of playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games, with a sample of 3000 participants, Yee found that one of the subcomponents found in the factor analysis is “Role-Playing – creating a persona with a back-ground story and interacting with other players to create an improvised story” (p.773). Yee's definition of Role-Playing points out a common feature of TRPG and ERPG.
The relationship between creativity and ERPG is unclear. Hamlen (2009) found that for upper elementary school students, playing video games had no influence on their creativity. Another study found that for university students who are media multitaskers, the length they were exposed to media had no influence on their creativity (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009). Would these findings apply to ERPG players?
In relation to priming manipulation in creativity tests, Zabelina and Robinson (2010) found that undergraduate participants scored higher in creativity tests when being asked to imagine themselves as 7-year-olds. Can such priming manipulation be regarded as an analogue of role playing that requires the retrieval of participants’ memory? Because both tactics require participants to lower their self-consciousness, and arguably, in a light-hearted manner, it would be interesting to find out if TRPG players would score differently under such priming manipulation.
The current study aims to explore the areas in the above questions by studying whether differences can be found in creativity level between TRPG players, ERPG players and Non-players under three different treatments, namely without priming (Control Treatment), with age-related memory-provoking priming (Treatment One) and with age-related imagination-enhancement role-playing priming (Treatment Two).
“Affect” is another component of creativity considered by Plucker and Runco (1999). The current study also collects data in relation to mood of participants at the time of answering the online-questionnaire and demographic data, such as age and nationality for further analysis. In the current study, data in relation to personality have been collected.
