Two Martha’s Vineyard librarians with an enthusiasm for Dungeons & Dragons have taken their expertise in role-playing games to the New England Library Association, which hosted their presentation at the group’s annual conference in Newport, R.I. over the weekend.

Edgartown library assistant Chris Look and Oak Bluffs head of circulation Shivonne Schofield teamed up for the interactive lecture and demonstration Sunday, which included an on-the-spot game with cues and characters suggested by attendees.

The aim of the presentation, Mr. Look and Ms. Schofield told the Gazette last week, was to encourage libraries to add role-playing games to their offerings.

“It correlates so well to libraries,” Ms. Schofield said, noting that the games essentially are a collaborative form of storytelling.

A fantasy war game first introduced in the early 1970s, Dungeons and Dragons is the most widely-recognized title in what’s become a crowded genre. While D&D — as it’s popularly called — is best suited for middle-school to adult players, younger children can explore role-playing in games such as Wanderhome, in which they play traveling animal friends in a world of anthropomorphic creatures.

Along with the creativity of role-playing and storytelling, these games also encourage social and emotional learning, Mr. Look said.

“Being able to pretend to be someone else is really, really essential to exploring new ways to be,” he said.

One of the Island librarians’ top messages for their mainland peers was to keep from getting too hung up on the rules of play.

“If there’s a rule that’s not serving you, get rid of it,” said Mr. Look, who leads a weekly game of Dungeons and Dragons at the Edgartown library for players aged 12 to 17. Characters and action come first in any role-playing game, he said, and sometimes the strict application of rules can get in the way of the story that players and their leader are collaborating to tell.

The most important thing, Mr. Look said, is to create an environment where all of the players feel comfortable expressing themselves.

“Allowing people to grow through their play and exploration is one of the main reasons why we want people to have games,” Mr. Look said.

When conflicts arise in a role-playing game, they can be settled in a number of ways: by throwing dice, drawing cards or even pulling Jenga blocks from a stack, he said.

“You just need an agreement between everybody involved,” Mr. Look said.

In addition to the ongoing Edgartown game, which takes place on Fridays from 3 to 6 p.m., a Dungeons and Dragons club for middle-school players is starting at the Oak Bluffs library on Halloween. Ms. Schofield said the library also is working on a game for grownups this winter.

Mr. Look said he would like to host an adult game of D&D in Edgartown as well, but that his time is limited and his first responsibility is to child players who don’t have their elders’ resources.

“Most [adults] have access to digital resources that kids can’t use,” he told the Gazette, citing Discord and other online platforms. “[Children] need somewhere where they can have an actual, physical safe space.”