You walk into a tavern: co-constitutive imagination in dungeons and dragons

Abstract This paper introduces co-constitutive imagination as a possible and more robust form of social imagination than those currently articulated in phenomenological literature. Whereas existing accounts - such as collective and shared imagination - emphasise normativity and we-ness, they fall short of capturing how people may in a more robust sense be said to imagine the same objects and worlds in a dynamically sustained way. Drawing on a descriptive analysis of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), we argue that imagination in D&D is not merely coordinated between players but co-constituted between them. Co-constitution involves the reciprocal shaping of imaginative content beyond (but not necessarily independent from) coordinated alignment of actions or representations across individuals. Consequently, what is imaginatively co-constituted could not arise independently from any one participant’s perspective. To support this, we identify three central features of this process: accessibility, in that the imagined world and its content is only experientially available through social participation; interdependence, in that what appears is shaped by the imaginative perspectives and acts of others; and immersion, in that the world is sustained through tacit alignment, occasionally revealed through breakdowns. D&D offers a compelling case for rethinking social forms of imagination not as intersubjective achievement - highlighting possible conditions under which co-constitutive imagination may arise.