Barovia is creepy. Saltmarsh is haunted. The Sword Coast is...coastal

 Just like the environment of your campaign setting can change the way your players interact with the NPCs, quests, and challenges, our own world is shaped by the media environment in which we find ourselves. Studying the media environment not only helps inform us about the way people interact with media, but also how they understand the culture around them and their day-to-day experiences. Thinking about media as an environment, Marshall McLuhan sought to study the interaction people have with that mediated biome. 

The theory of media ecology blurs the boundaries between medium (the channel through which communication flows) and the message (what information is conveyed via that medium). Taken to the tabletop, this theory makes the most sense for me to think about in terms of gamemasters crafting their play worlds. Your campaign setting (medium) helps to shape, influence, and (to a degree) control what your players do within that world. A serious campaign, taking place in a bleak war-torn world may likely be full of drama, pathos, and serious choices. In contrast, a light-hearted campaign about a party of bards trying to get gigs in each new town will probably influence wackier choices and hijinx. The campaign setting (like the medium of communication) exerts some influence on the players and perhaps even more influence than individual messages conveyed in-game. 

In life away from the gaming table, Media Ecology strives to get us to think about media as a world in which we find ourselves. We are immersed in media, like fish in water. So surrounded by mediated messages that they’re seemingly imperceptible. Just like your campaign setting becomes the unrecognized background of your players’ actions, the media around us are frequently perceived as intangible parts of our everyday experiences. My players probably don’t think often in-game about the strictures of their characters’ lives in a massive alcohol-free desert. The environment, and their actions in it, are taken for granted.

McLuhan goes on. If media compose the fabric around us and, media have changed over the course of human history, then the fabric must have changed as well. Entering Barovia changes your tapestry. Leaving the desert does the same. In media ecology, history can be divided into several epochs based on the primary vehicle of communication technology. 

These ages begin in our tribal pasts, a time McLuhan thinks of as rich, deep, and encouraging of a holistic sense of the world.  He believes this because of the auditory nature by which messages were conveyed in such a tribal age. This could be a valuable starting point when thinking about introducing tribes into your game.  Who would likely be valued in a tribal culture? The elders who know all the stories, the repositories of the past, and perhaps some objects which communicate to a group who they are.

Following the oral tradition, is the age of literacy. For many of us, this is the era in which our campaigns are often set. Some educated people can read. Books are copied by hand (and rare). It is also the age in which literacy encouraged a growth in logical, rational thinking. This historical turning point might make for an interesting seed of conflict in your campaign: spiritual tribe v. educated skeptics. From the formation of written symbolic communication, perceptions changed such that messages were first able to be taken out of their immediate context and participants. People could participate in communication privately, internally, and individually. 

Third, the invention of the printing press brought about a new era in communication media wherein a text was able to be reproduced at little cost and at great speed. Again, I see this as a really interesting potential quest or plot hook for DMs out there. The party is hired by a calligraphy guild to destroy a new-fangled “printing-press”, for instance.  What are the moral consequences of a technology with the power to democratize literacy while simultaneously destroying a prosperous caligraphy industry? An in-game hypothetical is, of course, an historical reality. Languages, systems of spelling and grammar, and national unification were more possible in the print age. The strictures and standards of writing were more easily communicated, making some forms of variety (and creativity) diminish. In game terms, this might be akin to the difference between playing make-believe and playing Dungeons & Dragons. D&D works with a more-or-less commonly held set of rules; make-believe, much less so. 

The fourth age, according to Media Ecology, is the age of broadcast electronic media. In this era of radio and television, our emotions were engaged in a way that was not as easily accomplished previously. The nonverbal paralinguistic elements of communication, the visual representation of relationships, interactions, and violence all served to focus our feelings on mediated messages. 

The fifth age of communication media is our current, digital one. Now the primary medium of delivery for many of our lives is that of personalized news, algorithmically-generated search results, and social media. The technological changes of the past 25 years has been another clear shift in how the mediated environment has power over our perceptions of the world. Speed and simplicity are demanded. Impulsivity is the norm. Incivility results. It’s the perfect environment for Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop roleplay games to thrive...as respite from mediated encounters that are all too superficial, fleeting, and disconfirming.

McLuhan’s most famous quotation with regard to media is that they ARE the message. Nearly one in the same, message and medium, medium and message operate simultaneously and inextricably with one another. As gamers keen to value the tabletop experience, this begs the question of what kind of message is being sent when the medium is a kitchen table, surrounded by comrades engaged in collaborative conflict generation and resolution in an effort to be heroes? It is a transformative environment where hearing and listening are valued, interchanges are complex and intimate, and there is always the chance for epic success.