Dungeons and Dionysus
Around a snack-laden table in a dimly lit room sit six. There is a din of chatter between four of them while the fifth is scribbling something on a scrap of paper. The sixth sits at the head of the table in a clear position of authority. This dungeon master begins to speak and the rest quiet.
“When last we met our heroes, they had received a letter from a mysterious stranger. Inside the letter, Mort read,” he says in his best theater announcer voice, before continuing in the worst eastern-European accent “'Please help. My daughter has been bitten by a vampire, and I'm afraid it will come again soon. We are simple folk and we beg for brave adventurers to come and save our land from this monster.'”
Another jumps in with a sly quip: “How much the vampire paying though?”
“The letter continues,” continues the narrator amidst dying laughter, “'A healthy sum of gold has been gathered by the community and will be your reward, along with our eternal gratitude.' Signed Master Benos.”
There's a lull at the table. The others are still in the process of entering that trance-like state to participate in the performance.
“So Mort just finished reading this letter and the mysterious stranger is standing there in front of you. The door to the tavern is slightly ajar. A light pitter-patter of rain is heard bouncing off the cobblestones outside. The glint of the stranger's eyes flash towards the group from beneath the shadows of his hood.”
They begin responding with what their characters do, how their characters react. This is but a brief phase in the early stages of the night, before the mood shifts.
The players, leaving behind their own humanity like a drunk, become closer to an innate, intuitive being in the unfolding story. A change of context. Once the drug metabolizes, each performer enters the mutual mindspace; becomes their character, thinks and acts in the context of the shared story, attains that group-induced mental state that is possible only under some unknowable yet readily achievable parameters. In the same fleeting and fragile way some music induces tears yet some bring dance.
We now find the narrator is not authority but rather another participant in the act, and the performers are at once both spectator and performer. Each waits, observing, until his or her moment to act or react, to add on to the story. The dungeon master becomes the Apollonian referee and rules lawyer when not joining as an equal with the spectator performers as Dionysian.
The dance of the game arises from the differentiation between players' Dionysian state and the dungeon master's Apollonian. This is especially evident when the established rules are challenged in interesting and fun ways. For with no rules, they could not be challenged. Contrast begets enjoyment. An agreed upon canvas upon which to perform, and boundaries to perform within, counter-intuitively allows for more creativity.
Games
Dungeons and Dragons is not unique in this. There's a spectrum, and some games fall to one side or the other. D&D and other table-top RPGs like Pathfinder fall closer to the middle. A game like Paranoia leans further towards Dionysian and a game like Checkers would be more Apollonian. Board games in general tend to be more on the logical/rational side of things. Going too far in either direction leads to a less fun game. Complete make-believe with no rules or always-changing rules like Calvinball or Mao may be fun for kids, but is hard for adults to enjoy after a short while. Similarly, a game with very strict rules that allows no creativity like Tic-Tac-Toe or Sudoku are games by rule only.
In Tic-Tac-Toe or Sudoku, there is a correct answer. In Dungeons and Dragons, there are only wrong answers. Want to cast Fireball? You can't, you don't know that spell. Want to swing on that vine over the gorge? Well, give it a try: roll an ability check. You can succeed on your check or you can fail. Then what happens? Did you character die? That is an interesting part of the story. Did you kill the big bad evil guy? Turns out that was only a pawn in some larger scheme.
Death and tragedy are necessary for any campaign. Failing is part of life and it should be part of play as well. When you fail, you can learn to react and overcome. Perhaps you failed because you made a suboptimal decision, or you were inexperienced. Failing is fun. Watching others fail in spectacular ways is delightful. When a character dies, the story changes. A new chapter begins. It sets up a cathartic revenge plot or the tragic downfall of the heroes.
Death was not a stranger to the players in my Curse of Strahd campaign. This set up great animosity towards the evil vampire. Most of the characters were so bent on revenge they themselves turned to evil and twisted means for more power. Once the party eventually confronted Strahd in his castle, a fight broke out. One after another, Strahd killed the heroes. He turned some into his thralls, just to twist the knife. The campaign ended. The villain won, but the story is told back by the players with a tone of emotional purification. A fitting, even just end to those characters. Perhaps a new campaign starts with new heroes seeking justice against their slain and turned relations.
The inherent essence of D&D being both rational and rules based, chaotic and improvisational, Apollonian and Dionysian, allows the players to explore the human condition. Within the messy overlap of this constitution, in the harmony between sobriety and drunkenness, we find the inseparable amusement and torment of existence. We cheer and laugh when a character falls. We groan when a player makes the obvious joke. We spend hours crafting a compelling backstory for Ralic Helmsgore, the Dwarf Paladin, along with his family members and loved ones. Create his bonds, secrets, and flaws. We devote hundreds of hours, playing every week for four hours (or more). Then we relish in the moment when he goes against his oath to torture the lieutenant of the lich who killed his comrade. All that he lived for, forsaken. One unplanned moment in the game now defines that character. There may be a similar event in your own life; one day, one hour, one minute that from that time forward you were a new person. You had to be. Perhaps of no choice of your own. Hard moments in real life to analogues of suffering in a game. Few other games have the capacity to represent the human condition so fully.
Meaning
Dungeons and Dragons brings people together, often for different reasons. Some enjoy the game for its own sake: rolling dice, slaying monsters, and leveling up. Others come together to hang out with friends, and some because they enjoy role playing or improv storytelling. What meaning each gets from the game is as legitimate as the next, just as when one takes in a painting and finds a meaning different from the artist's intent. If you were to write a transcript for a session or record it on video, it would be simply representational, a fraction of the total dimensions of the experience. To get the full extent of meaning from the game you have to live it. Rejoice when your friend makes that death save. Fear when the lich separates the party. Embarrassment when you botch the accent. Pass the cheetos. Crack a beer.
There is meaning inside the shared fabrication of the game as well. Explicit meaning from quests and tasks that need to be performed. Challenges to overcome. Sharing in the storytelling and witnessing your friends' performances has a way of affirming and validating your own lived experiences. Contrasting one's own life with the one-dimensional characters portrayed in the game is a good way to remove the pessimism often found in people's nihilistic beliefs of the world. Even the player's own character is playing a role, and has no real agency. Often players will have their characters do unnecessarily cruel and torturous things because they are cruel. It's fun. It's make-believe. A stark contrast from reality where we value life and avoid causing unnecessary suffering. There is meaning to our human existence. Meaning that is granted by our own will and agency, experienced uniquely, shared only in fragments. Meaning that is revealed by contrast.