Copied from The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber - Heavily edited down to summarize.
These books are not just appealing because they create endless daydream material for the
inhabitants of bureaucratic societies. Above all, they appeal because they continue to
provide a systematic negation of everything bureaucracy stands for. Just as Medieval clerics
and magicians liked to fantasize about a radiant celestial administrative system, so do we,
now, fantasize about the adventures of Medieval clerics and mages, existing in a world in
which every aspect of bureaucratic existence has been carefully stripped away.
- Fantasy worlds tend to be marked by an absolute division of good and evil - this negates the bureaucratic principal of neutrality
- The existence in fantasy universes of demi-human species—gnomes, drow, trolls, and so on—which are fundamentally human, but absolutely impossible to integrate under the same larger social, legal, or political order, creates a world where racism is actually true. - this negates the bureaucratic principal of indifference
- Legitimate power in fantasy worlds tends to be based on pure charisma, only the villians will use systems of administration - this negates the bureaucratic principals of regularity and predictability
- In fantasy, political life centers around the creation of stories - this negates the mechanical nature of bureaucratic operations
- Protagonists are endlessly engaging with riddles in ancient languages, obscure myths and prophecies, maps with runic puzzles and the like. - Bureaucratic procedures in contrast are based on a principle of transparency.
However, in another sense, D&D represents
the ultimate bureaucratization of antibureaucratic fantasy. There are catalogs for
everything: types of monsters (stone giants, ice giants, fire giants …), each with carefully
tabulated powers and average number of hit points (how hard it is to kill them); human
abilities (strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution …); lists of spells available
at different levels of capacity (magic missile, fireball, passwall …); types of gods or
demons; effectiveness of different sorts of armor and weapons; even moral character (one
can be lawful, neutral, or chaotic; good, neutral, or evil; combining these produces nine
possible basic moral types …). The books are distantly evocative of Medieval bestiaries and
grimoires. But they are largely composed of statistics. All important qualities can be reduced
to number. It’s also true that in actual play, there are no rules; the books are just guidelines;
the Dungeon Master can (indeed really ought to) play around with them, inventing new
spells, monsters, and a thousand variations on existing ones.