Museums Play a Role : Learning About and Through Role-playing Games in User-facing Activities at Museums

This thesis examines how role-playing games (or RPGs) are used and can be found within public-facing activities, events and exhibitions at museums, through examining in what ways RPGs are come across by users in a museological context, how the activities are shaped by the different goals the museums have in choosing to use RPGs and by the different abilities and limitations of the museums, as well as what function RPGs take on in the museums’ exhibitions or events. As a theoretical framework, we have applied the perspective of the four-space model in the context of museums by relating it to the two public-facing quadrants in Magdalena Hillström’s model of the four ideal types of the museum. The thesis is a case study using interviews and observations of three different Swedish museums (Tekniska museet, Världskulturmuseet, Västernorrlands museum) and one Finnish museum (Suomen Pelimuseo), which have varying activities and exhibitions related to table-top RPGs and live-action role-play (LARP). The results show that two main ways in which museums use RPGs are to help their users learn about RPGs by treating them as a historical phenomenon and displaying them as part of the museum’s topic, and using RPGs as a way through which to learn about something else that the particular museum covers. These two different approaches overlap to a great extent, and while most of the activities in the case study lean heavily toward one or the other, they all contain aspects of both. All four kinds of spaces in the model can and are created by combining museums and RPGs, although different spaces are primarily in focus for different kinds of activities. The study also finds that the collaborative nature of RPGs makes them a way through which museums can encourage the public to engage with their material, and draw more visitors. Especially, the museums have garnered positive responses in catering to a large and growing group of hobbyists and role-players whose interest has in the past been seen as niche, little understood and at times feared or looked down upon, and who the museum workers believe see the inclusion of RPGs at a LAM institution as a token of appreciation and as reflective of a changing view of RPGs in society at large.