… there was, as Nachtwey puts it, an aspect of ludicrousness in the fantasy role-playing game that the fantasy novel, if it could not eliminate it, had tried to discourage. Tolkien, in his 1947 essay “On Fairy-stories,” had written that fantasy was the province of literature, where the natural glamour of the written word could make anything plausible. Dungeons & Dragons was more akin to the Gothic plays put on by the March sisters, whose magical proceedings are undercut by amateur stage effects, collapsing scenery, and unintended farce.
I’m not sure this essay on D&D by Andrea Long Chu exactly hangs together, but it sure says a lot of things I like.
Later on, Chu observes, “… it is difficult to develop a proper aesthetic account of D&D. It is less like reviewing a book and more like reviewing a book club.” This is right; but I wonder if the “aspect of ludicrousness” is what makes some book clubs better than others.
I’m a fan of Dimension 20 but I keep bouncing off Critical Role—even Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, run by Dimension 20’s Brennan Lee Mulligan. And it’s hard not to come back to the fact that EXU: Calamity is principally epic, while Dimension 20 is principally funny. There’s a lot of Dimension 20 I haven’t seen, but Fantasy High and Burrow’s End deliberately deflate the epic impulse of high fantasy in their premise alone (high school kids; small forest animals) to say nothing of their realization (“Hoot! Growl!”; “It’s mammalian grooming time!”). But I just watched A Court of Fey & Flowers, whose courtly intrigue premise could easily be played in great seriousness… and even though the fragile romance between Hob and Rue is a genuinely heartwrenching romantic throughline, it’s the humor that keeps the whole thing going: the filth and absurdity of the Goblin Court (and the incongruity of Hob as its straitlaced foil), the social bumbling of Andhera, the chatter-drenched surreality of the Lords of the Wing, the running bit about The Green Hunter (Lord Airavis’ pseudonymously published thriller, which grows from an offhand joke into a full stage play starring a kidnapped Jeremy Renner).
Or… maybe. This framing places the humor in competition with the more serious aspects of the game—and, yeah, there’s a no-gods-no-masters subplot going that the players seem to have agreed on as the Big Theme, the dragon of social injustice that they’re here to slay, and it’s easily the weakest part of the campaign. Even the end battle to slay it is weirdly quick and easy.
But of course Andhera’s stammering and missteps only heighten the moments when he comes into his own. There’s something really deft in the way Omar Najam handles Andhera’s first victory over his sister, leaning into his established haplessness to lure her into a vulnerable position and then springing a trap that shocks the entire table because no one thought Andhera had it in him. And the Lords of the Wing reveal their own hidden reasons and passions behind the bird puns; and of course Hob’s ill fit for goblinhood is ultimately what makes him understand Rue, another fey who’s risen above the ridicule of their peers by substituting usefulness for belonging.
The idea that humor can elevate seriousness, or that in general the presence of contrast can elevate one or both of the contrasted things, is commonplace enough that maybe all this rehearsal was a little much. The thing I think I’m getting at is that maybe an art form as emergent as a role-playing game can’t be played for pure seriousness, or at least can’t achieve its highest satisfactions that way. The dice will have their say, and sometimes what they say is dumb as fuck. But the first rule of improv is “yes, and”; and the only way you can say yes to dumb as fuck is with a laugh.
“… this is precisely what Dungeons & Dragons offered that the fantasy novel never could,” writes Chu (among many other great lines, you really should read the essay): “the chance to enter an imaginary world with one’s disbelief miraculously intact — to be Quixote and Sancho at once.” The chance, and arguably the obligation.
Currently listening: A NATURAL HISTORY OF EMPTY LOTS, written and read by Christopher Brown.