The Dialectics of Dice

    Dungeons and Dragons is a game of tensions on a number of levels. First, internally, I have to make decisions about my character regarding how much she wants to disclose and how much she does disclose. I get to decide how much of a team player she is, and then roleplay accordingly. Interpersonally, there may also be tensions between players and the dungeonmaster. These interpersonal pushes and pulls exist both within the game and out. Leslie Baxter’s theory of relational dialectics focuses on our talk (discourse) as the fundamental building block of interpersonal relationships. For me, though, I can see the theory’s fundamental tenets operating intrapersonally, as well. 

In every relationship, there are struggles. These struggles are primarily expressed through dialectics (conversations). Our joint communication activities make and remake our relationship. As I portray my character, my DM learns what she wants, what she fears, how to motivate her, what she’s comfortable talking about and what she’s most happy doing (e.g. raising a few undead). Wherever two players are interacting, a third thing magically forms: the relationship between those two characters. In D&D, those relationships are made up of the words said (“I step onto the bridge.”), the words yet to come (“Make a Dexterity save.”), and the words we may never dare to say (“You die.”). 

Through a combination of the source of the message and timing of the message, we come to understand the conversations around us (and those we participate in). The intimacy level, as well as the past, present, and potential future of the relationship all combine to help us understand what we hear.  Over the course of our relationships, we experience conflicts over how much to draw together and how much to pull apart. For example, sometimes every member of the party wants to go shopping at a different store or serve a different patron.  Sometimes, DM, they won’t care about your carefully and creatively-named stores at all...or the fully-realized NPCs you’ve populated them with. Relational dialectics primarily focuses on three types of conflict: integration-separation, stability-change, and expression-nonexpression.

Baxter thinks that the first dialectic (sometimes also called autonomy and connection) to be fundamental. Think about how often you would ideally want to play Dungeons & Dragons. Now imagine six players and one DM naming the exact same frequency. Neigh-impossible. While being together in any good relationship is pleasurable, pleasant, and necessary, a scant few of us want to be with the one same person (or adventuring party) all the time forever and ever. Neither extreme is pleasant. So, when we’re in a relationship with another person, our integration with them comes at the cost of our separation from others. This is no less true for couples, thruples, and the like: the more you integrate together, the greater the exclusion (and potential cost) to other relationships.

There is a great comfort that comes from a regular, predictably scheduled game of D&D (or dinner out). There is also something positive to be said for that one awesome night when you played way too late (or ate at that special restaurant). The second relational dialect speaks to the joys of both stable, predictable times as well as changing, novel ones.  In D&D, the dice never let us down when it comes to experiencing the thrills of novelty (You roll a Critical Success or Failure roughly 10% of the time). When this dialectic is thought about at the inter-group level, it becomes the dialectic of conventionality and uniqueness. Again D&D serves us an apt metaphor here, as the arc of a Level 1-20 adventuring party is exactly that transition, from fairly conventional “apprentice adventurers” to unique heroic (or villainous) archetypes” (Wizards of the Coast, 2014, 15). The other way I see this dialectic operating at the more meta-level of the party is the overall conventionality as a whole. A party of all elves or all bards has a very different level of uniqueness than does an archetypal party consisting of a fighter, healer, wizard, and rogue.

Third is the openness-closedness dialectic. Secrets and disclosures: no two are alike in magnitude, weight, or centrality. And no two people are likely to initially agree as to the exact importance of a given piece of information. To a jaded charlatan, the number of people you’ve killed may not blow his skirt up; to the noble paladin of Heironeous, it’s horrifying.

One of the additional mechanics of D&D that adds a layer to thinking about this third dialectic, is Insight checks. As a Widsom-based skill, it’s intended to represent ‘how attuned you are to the world around you...perceptiveness and intuition'' (Wizards of the Coast, 2014, 178). Consider this: my character decides to try and hide her true hometown from the other PCs. Assume my DM knows my backstory and allows a fellow PCs Insight check to suss this information out. As such, as read it would provide “intentions” and “clues”, but not information. 

    For dungeonmasters, this theory should make you feel very important. Adherents to relational dialectics theory should raise you a fiery toast to your work using communication to create and sustain relationships. Indeed, it’s the struggles, conflicts, disagreements, and collaborations we have at the table that makes the game. Moreover, any of us who have been in important relationships recognizes that struggles are what make relationships have any meaning at all. (It’s usually what gets you XP, too). As our characters change, so do our interactions. And as long as the game (and the relationship) is being played, it’s unpredictable, unfinalized, and undetermined.