Hmm.But then I was the one driving every child psychologist nuts with plucking apart the questions they gave me.
Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about... your mother.
Take the RPG Personality Survey Here!
- Thread starter Dethklok
- Start date
Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about... your mother.
Altamont Ravenard
Explorer
Done and done.
AR
AR
Dethklok
First Post
OK! And just like that, I have over 80 responses! I noticed some of you seemed to be pointing non-roleplaying friends at the survey, which is good. But now I have enough roleplayers; I need controls. I'm amazed that this is going so quickly, but I'm logging onto another forum that should give me the responses I need from non-roleplayers.
Dethklok
First Post
All right! It's taken a lot of time and effort, but I now have a completed set of 100 responses, and the analysis can begin. Now that the responses are in, I can reveal the hypotheses I am testing; I figure many of you may want to comment on them before the results are in.
But before I do, let me give a little big of background. I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons as a child as a game of the imagination, and that's the way I played roleplaying games growing up. But as I grew more familiar with the hobby and the people who played roleplaying games, I started to notice that this wasn't really a game of the imagination at all. What it was was a game of putting bigger and bigger numbers on a character sheet in a way that represented getting more and more powerful. Most people didn't play rpgs for the reasons that I did - in dimly lit rooms with thematic music, using outside research, character accents, and careful timing trying to capture an imaginative experience; they played to kill monsters, get treasure, and make the next level "to the exclusion of other considerations such as storytelling, atmosphere and camaraderie." And my sense is that Dungeons and Dragons is designed specifically with the latter goals in mind. Thus, I am very skeptical about claims that rpgs are games of the imagination.
Secondarily to this, I've seen many people claim that alignment is meaningless. Knowign what I do about personal values, I doubt this - it seems to me that Liberals and Libertarians should be less Lawful, and that Machiavellian individuals less Good, than people with opposing values.
Therefore, my hypotheses are:
I. The more people like RPGs, the higher in psychometric "Openness" (a construct referring to imagination and unconventionality) and "Schizotypy" (related to vividity of imagination and to generalized strangeness of experience) they may be. I personally doubt roleplayers will be different from controls in this regard, but this is a hypothesis I consider worth investigating.
II. Among those who play RPGs, liking for Dungeons and Dragons, either absolutely or relative to other games, will correlate inversely with Openness.
III. When analyzing peoples preferences in roleplaying games, a factor will emerge that broadly pits attitudes towards powergaming against attitudes towards story and aesthetic experience.
IV. This powergaming factor will correlate with a liking for D&D (again, either absolute or relative to other games) and negatively with Openness.
V. Self-ratings on the Law-Chaos dimension of alignment will correlate with political Libertarianism, so that respondents indicating (for example) belief in the freedom to use Marijuana or own guns will tend towards Chaos.
VI. Self-ratings on the Good-Evil dimension of alignment will correlate with Machiavellianism, so that respondents indicating a greater acceptance of lying and manipulation will tend towards Evil.
But before I do, let me give a little big of background. I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons as a child as a game of the imagination, and that's the way I played roleplaying games growing up. But as I grew more familiar with the hobby and the people who played roleplaying games, I started to notice that this wasn't really a game of the imagination at all. What it was was a game of putting bigger and bigger numbers on a character sheet in a way that represented getting more and more powerful. Most people didn't play rpgs for the reasons that I did - in dimly lit rooms with thematic music, using outside research, character accents, and careful timing trying to capture an imaginative experience; they played to kill monsters, get treasure, and make the next level "to the exclusion of other considerations such as storytelling, atmosphere and camaraderie." And my sense is that Dungeons and Dragons is designed specifically with the latter goals in mind. Thus, I am very skeptical about claims that rpgs are games of the imagination.
Secondarily to this, I've seen many people claim that alignment is meaningless. Knowign what I do about personal values, I doubt this - it seems to me that Liberals and Libertarians should be less Lawful, and that Machiavellian individuals less Good, than people with opposing values.
Therefore, my hypotheses are:
I. The more people like RPGs, the higher in psychometric "Openness" (a construct referring to imagination and unconventionality) and "Schizotypy" (related to vividity of imagination and to generalized strangeness of experience) they may be. I personally doubt roleplayers will be different from controls in this regard, but this is a hypothesis I consider worth investigating.
II. Among those who play RPGs, liking for Dungeons and Dragons, either absolutely or relative to other games, will correlate inversely with Openness.
III. When analyzing peoples preferences in roleplaying games, a factor will emerge that broadly pits attitudes towards powergaming against attitudes towards story and aesthetic experience.
IV. This powergaming factor will correlate with a liking for D&D (again, either absolute or relative to other games) and negatively with Openness.
V. Self-ratings on the Law-Chaos dimension of alignment will correlate with political Libertarianism, so that respondents indicating (for example) belief in the freedom to use Marijuana or own guns will tend towards Chaos.
VI. Self-ratings on the Good-Evil dimension of alignment will correlate with Machiavellianism, so that respondents indicating a greater acceptance of lying and manipulation will tend towards Evil.
Mercurius
Legend
Interesting thoughts. I didn't do the survey, but I can say that I disagree with one of your hypotheses - that power-gaming and D&D are opposed to openness and imagination. I just think you're talking about two separate factors that may or may not correlate to a meaningful degree, sort of like liking apples and oranges; one can love both. Just as one can enjoy both power-gaming (to some extent at least) and be quite open and imaginative.
It may have more to do with one's underlying root or primary impulse for gaming. Is it for ego gratification and as a surrogate for deficient self-esteem? Then they might tend to veer towards power-gaming and away from other elements of the RPG experience. But my point is that I think you need to be careful with making either/or distinctions or opposing elements that aren't necessarily contrary.
Now there may be a large segment of the gaming population that is ego deficient, lacking in openness, and prefers power-gaming to other elements of gaming. I'm open to the idea that folks that are into extreme power-gaming tend to lack openness and imagination. But I've know plenty of folks that are extremely imaginative, open, yet enjoy killing things and taking their stuff, leveling up, and pure adventure over heavy melodrama.
To put this more bluntly, World of Darkness folks aren't inherently more imaginative and open than D&D folks (or vice versa). You've got plenty of imaginative and open folks in either camp, and plenty of closed ego-deficient folks i either camp. I would question a strong weighting one way or the other.
It may have more to do with one's underlying root or primary impulse for gaming. Is it for ego gratification and as a surrogate for deficient self-esteem? Then they might tend to veer towards power-gaming and away from other elements of the RPG experience. But my point is that I think you need to be careful with making either/or distinctions or opposing elements that aren't necessarily contrary.
Now there may be a large segment of the gaming population that is ego deficient, lacking in openness, and prefers power-gaming to other elements of gaming. I'm open to the idea that folks that are into extreme power-gaming tend to lack openness and imagination. But I've know plenty of folks that are extremely imaginative, open, yet enjoy killing things and taking their stuff, leveling up, and pure adventure over heavy melodrama.
To put this more bluntly, World of Darkness folks aren't inherently more imaginative and open than D&D folks (or vice versa). You've got plenty of imaginative and open folks in either camp, and plenty of closed ego-deficient folks i either camp. I would question a strong weighting one way or the other.
Well, considering this aspect, you're dead wrong. Alignments _are_ meaningless. At least they're meaningless as a useful indicator of a real person's personality traits, motivation, or set of beliefs. It doesn't even work properly for stereotypical fictional characters from comics, novels, or movies, and it fails utterly when you try to apply it to real persons. There's a reason why alignment discussions in forums always get out of hand and people cannot come to a consensus.
Even your example fails: I'm very much for legalizing Marijuana and totally against people being allowed to own guns. So what am I? Lawful or chaotic? The correct answer is: I'm both and neither. And that's true for every real person. Personalities are too complex and sometimes conflicting to be shoehorned into such simple categories. Even people you know very well and intimately will often surprise you with their actions. You can never safely predict how another person will act, because you cannot read their mind and you are not them.
Dethklok
First Post
OK! Well, I think the best way to answer these posts is simply to present the results. I've spent all yesterday and this morning (all yesterday and this morning. It took a long time) carrying out the analysis. Here's what I found.
GROUNDWORK.
The scales worked as expected. They met minimum criteria for alpha reliability and showed no cross contamination. (I’ll go into more detail if anyone wants a more statistically complete discussion.)
HYPOTHESIS I.
First it was necessary to construct a “liking for RPGs” scale. This was done by combining three things (through factor analysis): 1. the respondent’s average rating for all RPGs listed, 2. the respondent’s highest rating for all RPGs listed, and 3. the amount of overall RPG knowledge, as measured by the number of non “no-opinion” answers given for the RPGs listed. Controls had no knowledge of RPGs and were assigned scores of 3 for all roleplaying games, putting them well below the 1st percentile on the “liking for RPGs” scale.
No significant correlation appeared between this scale and Openness, or Schizotypy. Thus, there is no support for a claim that the roleplayers are more imaginative than others, either in terms of depth of thinking, or in terms of vividness or bizarreness of experience. (On a positive note, Schizotypy often presents in clinical settings; roleplayers may take comfort in being able to say that there is no evidence supporting rumors that the hobby makes them mentally ill!)
HYPOTHESIS II.
To test Hypothesis II, a measure for liking of D&D needed to be constructed. Factor analysis of the five D&D items (OE through 3e) found a clear common factor; liking for these five games was simply averaged to arrive at a strong “Liking for D&D” scale. Interestingly, 4e showed no relationship with liking for the other D&D games, and was therefore treated separately.
There was some question as to whether a respondent's raw preference for D&D, or relative preference for D&D over other games, would correlate negatively with Openness. To measure the latter, the average score given to all non-D&D games was subtracted from the D&D score to arrive at a D&D-NET score. Both this and the raw score were compared to respondent Openness scores. The correlations were r = -.28 and r = -.29; both were highly significant, with one-tailed p-vaules of .0044 and .0036, respectively. Whether one considers absolute or relative preferences for D&D, there is evidence to suggest that greater liking for D&D games appears to go along with lower Openness, and all that this entails.
It should be stressed that these correlations are not particularly large, and that many individuals will easily fall outside of this trend; it is only at the large scale that this relationship becomes clear. (As a final note, no correlations were observed between liking for 4e and any personality trait.)
HYPOTHESIS III.
Factor analysis was carried out on the RPG preferences to determine whether a recognizable factor pitting powergaming against story and aesthetic experience could be identified. Such a factor was readily found, pitting items such as I like the chance to be creative, I like a role-playing game with mystery, I like simple rules, I like plausibility or realism, I play for the story, and I like to be immersed in a different setting against I like the gamebooks, I like many kinds of dice, I play for the combat, I like lots of weapons, spells, and abilities, I like a detailed rule system, I like getting treasure, I like building up my character's abilities, I like collecting powerful items, I like to play characters who are extremely powerful, and I like amazing powers.
Thus, it appears that one can speak of a broad preference for powergaming vs. creativity, aesthetics, and immersion in another world.
HYPOTHESIS IV.
Since Hypothesis III wasn’t falsified, we may go on to Hypothesis IV - this would not have been possible if the factor of powergaming vs creative immersion were not found. But checking Hypothesis IV was a simple matter; the Powergaming vs. Creativity factor correlates significantly with a liking for D&D (r = .226, p = .0175, all values one-tailed), D&D-NET (r = .229, p = .0165), and even with a liking for 4e, though to a lesser extent (r = .180, p = .047). Finally, as predicted, it also correlates significantly negatively with Openness (r = -.27, p = .0051).
This is consistent with the claim that people who play RPGs for the creative and immersive experiences are generally more imaginative and artistic (or as some might say, pretentious) relative to those who play roleplaying games more for the dice, the gamebooks, and the chance to build up amazing powers. Further, it helps to explain why D&D is the game that it is; although there are many reasons to play D&D, Dungeons and Dragons appears to cater better to powergaming than to creative experience. We know this simply because, if these findings are correct, those with a powergaming mentality generally like Dungeons and Dragons better than those who play RPGs for the chance to be creative.
HYPOTHESIS V.
Hypothesis V was easily checked, simply by creating a “Law” scale. Law was coded as 3 for an answer of "Lawful," 2 for "Neutral," and 1 for "Chaotic."
I’d like to note here that many respondents took the time to explain to me that alignment was meaningless. Such claims were amusing in light of the finding of a negative correlation between Law and Libertarianism: r = -.40, p = 8.04×10-5 (one tailed). The chance for a correlation of this magnitude to appear without there being any genuine relationship between libertarianism and chaos is one in over 10,000. This is like being shown a balanced, fair d10, and calling beforehand what it will roll four times in a row. Thus, it seems that the idea of an affiliation with Chaos has a real-world relationship to libertarian sympathy.
Although renaming the Law-Chaos dimension in terms of Liberty vs. Order might compromise the fantasy setting, it could be considered less ambiguous, and engender fewer debates, than the standard terms Gary Gygax used.
HYPOTHESIS VI.
To test Hypothesis VI, a “Good” scale was created analogously to the Law scale—Good was coded as 3 for an answer of “Good,” 2 for "Neutral," and 1 for "Chaotic." The Good scale was independent of the Law scale (r = .03). Running this against Machiavellianism, I found a significant negative correlation, as expected: r = -.34, p = 6.7×10-4 (one tailed). The chance for this to have occurred spuriously is similar to the chance for being shown a balanced, fair d10, and calling beforehand what a person will roll on it three times in a row. Therefore, there is evidence to support the idea that an affiliation with Evil has a real-world relationship with Machiavellianism. So while alignment may be a pain, at this point it seems highly doubtful that alignment is truly meaningless, since the self-descriptions of respondents’ alignment were useful predictors of their personal values.
SUMMARY.
The results of this survey are consistent with the following conclusions:
* Engagement in the roleplaying hobby does not appear to be related to imagination. For many, roleplaying is more likely to be a hobby of beloved game books, favorite dice, miniature figures, and good friends, than it is to be a game of imagination.
* Some people play for the story, setting, or chance to be creative; others prefer powergaming. A preference for powergaming goes along with a liking for Dungeons and Dragons, and both a liking for powergaming and for D&D goes along with greater conformity and lower imagination and depth (or arguably, with less pretentiousness). However, this trend was not very pronounced, so clearly there will be many exceptions.
* The classic alignment graph describes the degree to which one subscribes to notions of liberty rather than order, or to integrity over Machiavellianism. This does not mean that human values don’t include more dimensions, such as conservatism. Nevertheless, alignment is not meaningless.
MY SINCERE THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO MADE THESE FINDINGS POSSIBLE!
I will start on calculating and sending out your personal scores in a few days; you can look for them by next Wednesday.
GROUNDWORK.
The scales worked as expected. They met minimum criteria for alpha reliability and showed no cross contamination. (I’ll go into more detail if anyone wants a more statistically complete discussion.)
HYPOTHESIS I.
First it was necessary to construct a “liking for RPGs” scale. This was done by combining three things (through factor analysis): 1. the respondent’s average rating for all RPGs listed, 2. the respondent’s highest rating for all RPGs listed, and 3. the amount of overall RPG knowledge, as measured by the number of non “no-opinion” answers given for the RPGs listed. Controls had no knowledge of RPGs and were assigned scores of 3 for all roleplaying games, putting them well below the 1st percentile on the “liking for RPGs” scale.
No significant correlation appeared between this scale and Openness, or Schizotypy. Thus, there is no support for a claim that the roleplayers are more imaginative than others, either in terms of depth of thinking, or in terms of vividness or bizarreness of experience. (On a positive note, Schizotypy often presents in clinical settings; roleplayers may take comfort in being able to say that there is no evidence supporting rumors that the hobby makes them mentally ill!)
HYPOTHESIS II.
To test Hypothesis II, a measure for liking of D&D needed to be constructed. Factor analysis of the five D&D items (OE through 3e) found a clear common factor; liking for these five games was simply averaged to arrive at a strong “Liking for D&D” scale. Interestingly, 4e showed no relationship with liking for the other D&D games, and was therefore treated separately.
There was some question as to whether a respondent's raw preference for D&D, or relative preference for D&D over other games, would correlate negatively with Openness. To measure the latter, the average score given to all non-D&D games was subtracted from the D&D score to arrive at a D&D-NET score. Both this and the raw score were compared to respondent Openness scores. The correlations were r = -.28 and r = -.29; both were highly significant, with one-tailed p-vaules of .0044 and .0036, respectively. Whether one considers absolute or relative preferences for D&D, there is evidence to suggest that greater liking for D&D games appears to go along with lower Openness, and all that this entails.
It should be stressed that these correlations are not particularly large, and that many individuals will easily fall outside of this trend; it is only at the large scale that this relationship becomes clear. (As a final note, no correlations were observed between liking for 4e and any personality trait.)
HYPOTHESIS III.
Factor analysis was carried out on the RPG preferences to determine whether a recognizable factor pitting powergaming against story and aesthetic experience could be identified. Such a factor was readily found, pitting items such as I like the chance to be creative, I like a role-playing game with mystery, I like simple rules, I like plausibility or realism, I play for the story, and I like to be immersed in a different setting against I like the gamebooks, I like many kinds of dice, I play for the combat, I like lots of weapons, spells, and abilities, I like a detailed rule system, I like getting treasure, I like building up my character's abilities, I like collecting powerful items, I like to play characters who are extremely powerful, and I like amazing powers.
Thus, it appears that one can speak of a broad preference for powergaming vs. creativity, aesthetics, and immersion in another world.
HYPOTHESIS IV.
Since Hypothesis III wasn’t falsified, we may go on to Hypothesis IV - this would not have been possible if the factor of powergaming vs creative immersion were not found. But checking Hypothesis IV was a simple matter; the Powergaming vs. Creativity factor correlates significantly with a liking for D&D (r = .226, p = .0175, all values one-tailed), D&D-NET (r = .229, p = .0165), and even with a liking for 4e, though to a lesser extent (r = .180, p = .047). Finally, as predicted, it also correlates significantly negatively with Openness (r = -.27, p = .0051).
This is consistent with the claim that people who play RPGs for the creative and immersive experiences are generally more imaginative and artistic (or as some might say, pretentious) relative to those who play roleplaying games more for the dice, the gamebooks, and the chance to build up amazing powers. Further, it helps to explain why D&D is the game that it is; although there are many reasons to play D&D, Dungeons and Dragons appears to cater better to powergaming than to creative experience. We know this simply because, if these findings are correct, those with a powergaming mentality generally like Dungeons and Dragons better than those who play RPGs for the chance to be creative.
HYPOTHESIS V.
Hypothesis V was easily checked, simply by creating a “Law” scale. Law was coded as 3 for an answer of "Lawful," 2 for "Neutral," and 1 for "Chaotic."
I’d like to note here that many respondents took the time to explain to me that alignment was meaningless. Such claims were amusing in light of the finding of a negative correlation between Law and Libertarianism: r = -.40, p = 8.04×10-5 (one tailed). The chance for a correlation of this magnitude to appear without there being any genuine relationship between libertarianism and chaos is one in over 10,000. This is like being shown a balanced, fair d10, and calling beforehand what it will roll four times in a row. Thus, it seems that the idea of an affiliation with Chaos has a real-world relationship to libertarian sympathy.
Although renaming the Law-Chaos dimension in terms of Liberty vs. Order might compromise the fantasy setting, it could be considered less ambiguous, and engender fewer debates, than the standard terms Gary Gygax used.
HYPOTHESIS VI.
To test Hypothesis VI, a “Good” scale was created analogously to the Law scale—Good was coded as 3 for an answer of “Good,” 2 for "Neutral," and 1 for "Chaotic." The Good scale was independent of the Law scale (r = .03). Running this against Machiavellianism, I found a significant negative correlation, as expected: r = -.34, p = 6.7×10-4 (one tailed). The chance for this to have occurred spuriously is similar to the chance for being shown a balanced, fair d10, and calling beforehand what a person will roll on it three times in a row. Therefore, there is evidence to support the idea that an affiliation with Evil has a real-world relationship with Machiavellianism. So while alignment may be a pain, at this point it seems highly doubtful that alignment is truly meaningless, since the self-descriptions of respondents’ alignment were useful predictors of their personal values.
SUMMARY.
The results of this survey are consistent with the following conclusions:
* Engagement in the roleplaying hobby does not appear to be related to imagination. For many, roleplaying is more likely to be a hobby of beloved game books, favorite dice, miniature figures, and good friends, than it is to be a game of imagination.
* Some people play for the story, setting, or chance to be creative; others prefer powergaming. A preference for powergaming goes along with a liking for Dungeons and Dragons, and both a liking for powergaming and for D&D goes along with greater conformity and lower imagination and depth (or arguably, with less pretentiousness). However, this trend was not very pronounced, so clearly there will be many exceptions.
* The classic alignment graph describes the degree to which one subscribes to notions of liberty rather than order, or to integrity over Machiavellianism. This does not mean that human values don’t include more dimensions, such as conservatism. Nevertheless, alignment is not meaningless.
MY SINCERE THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO MADE THESE FINDINGS POSSIBLE!
I will start on calculating and sending out your personal scores in a few days; you can look for them by next Wednesday.
Ahnehnois
First Post
I'm not seeing where creativity and pretentiousness are related. As far as I know, creative and uncreative people can both be pretty pretentious.
I also find myself questioning how some of these conclusions follow from the results. For example,
For example, one might look for a correlation between physical strength and engagement in a sport, say tennis. The absence of said correlation does not indicate that strength and tennis are unrelated, merely that their relationship is not described by the (presumably linear) correlation.
I also find myself questioning how some of these conclusions follow from the results. For example,
I would have concluded that most people have the imagination needed for rpgs, and that perhaps a basic threshold is required to participate, but nothing more. I don't see that a correlation or lack thereof with imagination suggests a preferential involvement of these other contextual factors in the hobby.
For example, one might look for a correlation between physical strength and engagement in a sport, say tennis. The absence of said correlation does not indicate that strength and tennis are unrelated, merely that their relationship is not described by the (presumably linear) correlation.
Personally, I didn't make that case, but there are limits to its meaning.
Schizotypy is a mixed bag, to be sure.
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