Critical Relaxation Studies

This semester, having been given a blank check to write about anything I wanted to in the context of the humanities, I’ve taken on the peculiar task of writing critically about the game Dungeons and Dragons. To begin with, I did this because (a) I thought it would be fun, and (b) I knew I’d most likely never get the chance to geek out about Dnd for credit again and if you’ve been in academia as long as I have, you know that any chance to write about something fresh is rare. For my entire adult life I’ve been a playwright and historian, so most of my life has been putting words to paper, and yet writing about Dungeons and Dragons I found…alarmingly personal. This game has been my refuge, where I withdraw to my comfort zone, spend time with my friends, and generally suspend any urge to be productive or beholden to anything outside of that room. To write about Dnd I always assume would be unprofessional to the outside world, or worse, dull. Dnd was a hobby, a frivolity, requiring an intimacy and investment it would be wrong to look for in the adult world.

What I found instead, writing this semester, was how important that space was to me, and how integral it has been to understand who I’ve become. My leisure wasn’t just “me time,” it was where I shaped who I was, and what I believed. I tested values, grappled with trauma, and shared ideas about people and the world with my friends that I never would have otherwise. We are encouraged by capitalism to separate ourselves into productivity and rest, with all that is laudable resting in the former and the latter existing as guilty pleasure, or perhaps a necessary evil. Even those that have never heard of Dungeons and Dragons will recognize, in my telling of it, their own space, be it a hobby, a show or a place, which serves a similar function; but despite how important these refuges are to our lives, we are all too ready to dismiss them from serious study. They are integral to being human, and by smashing together my separate spheres, I’ve produced some of the work I’m most proud of to date, and I even had some fun doing it.