“We Offer Nuffle a Sausage Sacrifice on Game Day”. Blood Bowl Players’ World-building Rituals through the Lens of Theory of Sociocultual Viability

Abstract

This article explores the world-building activities of players of the tabletop game Blood Bowl—a game that parodies American Football within a fantasy setting. It utilizes a ritual framework to focus on players’ activities relating to the considerable amount of luck inherent to the game. Based on fieldwork and survey data, it interprets players’ rituals and other actions as an effort to enact a particular social space, a “magic circle,” where enjoyable risk-taking and “edgework” take place. This social space is then analyzed within the Mary Douglas-derived theory of sociocultural viability (cultural theory). Using the theory’s typology, Blood Bowl tournaments can be characterized as individualist–hierarchy hybrid institutions. The article contributes by offering cultural theory as a tool for analyzing and comparing risk-taking behavior in diverse social contexts. The worlds built through Blood Bowl play are both analyzable and comparable with those integral to other social institutions, with cultural theory’s social solidarities ubiquitous. The article thus innovates by linking literatures on leisure and gaming with broader social theory.