TABLE 1.

Glossary of key terms and acronyms.

Term	Meaning
Player	The humans who are engaging in creation and maintenance of the pretensive shared reality.
Player-character	The players’ representative in the pretensive world, constructed according to a set of rules and operated by the player. In principle, while the player knows the mind of the player-character, but player-character must act as if it has without awareness of the mind of the player.
Game master (GM)	A unique player within the genre of table-top role-playing games who primarily regulates what is legal within the pretensive shared reality. The GM serves two roles – storyteller and referee. The first is in determining and describing relevant features of the pretensive world that the player-characters inhabit. The second is in determining what actions are consistent with the rules of the table-top role-playing game system. The GM does not operate a player-character, and is not responsible for regulating the actions of [players’] player-characters. A GM may ‘set the scene’, but it is the players who – via their player-characters – “direct the action.”
Non-player character (NPC)	A pseudo-player-character operated by the GM. NPC’s are independent from players and characters, but exist to populate the world and enrich it. For example, if player-characters are working for some kind of leader – who is not one of the players’ player-characters – then the GM must create the leader, providing description, dialog and a set of ascribed motives, beliefs, and actions.
Table-top role-playing/table-top role-playing games	Table-top role playing/Table-top role playing games. At its core, a table-top role-playing game is a set of rules and mechanisms that allow for coherency within the pretensive shared reality for a small group of players “around a table.” The most famous example is Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), though countless variations and alternatives exist.
Pretensive shared reality	Pretensive shared reality describes how a group of individuals employ a range of higher-order cognitive functions to explicitly and implicitly share representations of a bounded fictional reality in predictable and coherent ways, such that this reality may be explored and invented/embellished in an ad hoc manner to the semantic and narrative benefit of the group, and in so doing, facilitate social utility.
Social utility	Social utility is the purpose for engaging in pretensive shared reality. While the specifics may vary from player to player it may include generating personal and group-level enjoyment or mirth, the creation or maintenance of social groups, or the safe exploration of individual self-concepts (such as alternative expression of a players sexual identity). This term is deliberately broad and should not be regarded as a prescriptive definition, but simply a place-holder term to describe the variety of motives present for engaging with TTRPGs in a social context. Our definition can be abstracted and reduced to the following: Social Utility, under the umbrella of pretensive shared reality and table-top role-playing is normatively co-operative, co-creative, and not interpersonally competitive, and contains a heterogenous set of behaviors that can be dis-aggregated in meaningful ways.
Imaginative cultures	The present manuscript is part of a special issue focusing on “imaginative cultures.” We accept the provided definition of the term: Imaginative culture consists in shared and transmissible mental experiences that are aesthetically and emotionally modulated.
Physical embodiment, axis of	We define “embodiment” as the degree to which the pretensive shared reality (or imaginative culture) requires the participant to perform actions which are externally visible and behaviorally representative of, and consistent with, the pretensive shared reality with their physical body
Cognitive engagement, axis of	We define “cognition” as the degree to which the experience requires cognitive engagement that is consistent with the object of shared intentionality (i.e., the pretensive reality of the group)