I had one of my gaming friends over last night to talk about the upcoming game on Friday. We were discussing creating high level characters as potential replacements for the characters we're currently playing, and the subject of starting gold (money) to purchase equipment came up. As we're playing under a new system that doesn't cover much of anything about characters above level 20, and our characters are beyond that plateau, I commented that I could extrapolate how much gold high level characters should gain based on the amount that lower level beginning characters start with.
Ed looked me in the eye and said, "You're such a geek. How do you just sit and crunch numbers like that?"
I ended my last blog commenting that certain sayings can identify a person as a geek or a nerd. Whether quoting science fiction movies or television shows, or barking out a healthy "By the gods!" at just the right moment, one can easily earn the label geek or nerd. But the surest sign that you're a nerd is when another nerd, in my case a fellow gamer (as in one who plays games, specifically role-playing games like D&D, but now a generally accepted term for video game players as well), calls you out for being too nerdy.
I think I've done an admirable job of presenting my case that gamers are largely thought of as smart, geeky, or nerdy (or even all three!). There are even movies and one episode of a sitcom that deal with gamers as they are, making fun of us with an understanding that is a sure tell that gamers were involved in the writing of those gems. But then there are other movies, like Mazes and Monsters staring a very young Tom Hanks as a gamer gone wrong.
This film, and numerous stories in the 80's led many people to believe that playing D&D was a bad thing; that the people playing were mentally unstable, or worshipped the devil, or made sacrifices "to the gods." This may be a lesser known stigma attached to the gaming populace, but it is by far the worst stigma I've ever had to deal with.
I remember when I was a member of a gaming group at Wright State University, I had the opportunity to talk with a group of parents who were concerned by the bad press and weren't sure that their kids should be playing D&D. I was on a panel of fellow gamers, and we took questions from an audience of about ten parents. We had to field several questions about the worship of Satan and the occult, which put most of us ill at ease as we knew less about the occult than the questioning parent.
Before things managed to get completely out of hand, one parent interrupted the discussion with a raised hand. I'll never forget his question, nor that it was me who answered him, and the entire room.
"Look, I just came here to learn what role-playing is, exactly," he said. "All these wild accusations seem like just that. What exactly is role-playing?"
After a few moments of silence, as the parents settled down and those of us on the panel looked at each other in puzzlement, the answer occurred to me. I cleared my throat and said, "Role-playing is no different than being in a play. Imagine an adlibbed play without a script, with your imagination as the stage. Yes, sometimes there are demons or devils to fight, but in legends of all types, heroes face off with these things and worse. Players get into their characters for a few hours and take on a role."
I can't remember more details than that, other than what I said had a settling effect on our audience and that my "Role-playing is a play without a script, with your imagination as the stage" quote took on a life of its own with the gaming group at the University. To fall into game-speak for a moment, "I made my diplomacy check and won over my audience."
No comments:
Post a Comment