How to Network with your Cleric

 Roleplay gaming is a web of connections. Friends, family members, coworkers, and neighbors gather together to play a fantasy game at an individual’s dining room table. Perhaps in the basement, strangers who met on a social networking site gather online to play another collaborative game. The networks that hold us together societally, socially, and personally have been studied by at least three different academic traditions. First, scholars employed mathematical graph theory methods. Next, anthropological traditions examined the structure of groups, communities, towns and villages. Thirdly, the interpersonal tradition explored the relationships among individuals. So, while a host of scholars contributed to our current understanding of interpersonal networks, it was the efforts of Linton Freeman who proposed a trio of measures that help us to better understand network organization and centrality (the degree to which you are central to your network). 

A network within this field of study refers to a collection of individual items (sometimes called nodes, vertices, or entities) and their relationship to one another.  Social networks are created when these nodes are people interacting with one another. In my current gaming group, we have five players (and our dungeonmaster). One way to better understand a group and the connections which help it to function is to visually organize the adventuring party and their connections to one another. Crucially for this theory is the focus on the relationships between nodes, rather than the qualities inherent to one node in particular. The primary concern for a scholar looking at social networks is the position of each person in relationship to all the others. In our adventuring party of five, we have the following: two women (Coywyn and Dream), three men (Benvora, Allfred, and Earnst), two military veterans (Benvora and Earnst), and one religious zealot (Earnst).

To illustrate the ways a social network might be analyzed, I have mapped out the relative positions and connections between the party members. There are a number of ways to describe the relationship between the nodes in a social network. First, centrality concerns the degree to which an individual interacts with all others. In the case of our party, that’s Benvora. He is the only character connected with all four others. The more connections the party makes between the members, the more cohesive it becomes.

For example, if I were the DM of this group of adventurers, and I wanted to increase group cohesion, I might plan a quest which called on Earnst and Coywyn specifically. It might be a plot line that ties into each of their backstories or a challenge only those two have the skills to accomplish. This would likely serve to increase the degree of interpersonal influence the party has on one another. Understanding your party and how they are working (or not working) together is a powerful observation for a game master to have.

In addition to centrality and cohesion, social network analyses also seek to understand the patterns of relationships between the nodes. Do any nodes share similar patterns of interaction, similar characteristics, social status or traits? This is called structural equivalence. In the case of our party, both Coywyn and Dream share a gender identity; Earnst and Benvora share a military record. Such direct ties between these characters would suggest that information will more readily and easily be shared between those characters than (for example) Earnst and Allfred. 

What’s most important to researchers of social networks are questions about the quality of relationships, the types of relational ties, the relative position of each node, and the flow of messages within (and from outside) the network. Given the network I have described, what is the likely result of an important message from a powerful monarch if it were delivered to Earnst? What about if it were delivered to Benvora’s hands instead? Since Earnst shares only one connection to the group, any message that had to get passed along has more stops, gaps, and distance than if it were initially given to Benvora.  From the monarch’s initial missive to the rest of the party hearing about it, we have what scholars have long described as a two-step flow model. In the case of actual social science research, these kinds of analyses are usually applied to mass media messages. A mass mediated message (like a monarch’s public announcement) first influences opinion leaders within a network (flow one). Those opinion leaders then go on to influence the other nodes in their network (flow two). However, just looking at the adventuring party network reveals that Benvora would make a very different opinion leader than Earnst.

Opinion leaders usually have influence over a limited set of domains. How influential you are rests on a small list of qualities. First, personality traits (like your Charisma score), perceptions of your gender, age, political affiliation, or socioeconomic status point others toward you as the source (or deliverer) of the message. Second, listeners assess a message-bearer’s competence, expertise, knowledge (Intelligence score). Finally, scholars might also look at the position of an individual within the social network. Crucially for our example, Benvora and Earnst have very different positions within the network, meaning that Benvora is (Charisma and Intelligence being equal) more likely to be an opinion leader for this group than Earnst is. 

Benvora occupies a prized position within this group. It’s advantageous for him, and makes him more likely to become an opinion leader. His centrality as well as the relatively high number of social ties he has means that he has more opportunities to receive and share information among the group members. In social network analysis terms, he also acts as a bridge between the rest of the group and Earnst, connecting an otherwise distant member of the rest of the network. 

Over the past several decades research into social networks has increasingly concerned itself with social media networks. Stunningly fast changes in the production and consumption of media in the last twenty-five years has meant the social role of an opinion leader is less valuable, and less central than it previously was. Does this indicate that the two-step flow model is now more of a one-step, in which consumers are the central node of their own system, with each post, video, picture, and meme whether from a best friend, a trusted news source, or a conspiracy-minded relative receiving equal weight and priority in the newsfeed?  Well, no. Social media algorithms seek to maximize engagement and help to ensure that the news in your feed is the most morally enraging, emotionally charged, and inflammatory to you specifically. And what would your party say about that?