BOOK: "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks"

[Remus Lupin]

Browsing around in the cultural studies section of Barnes & Noble last night, I stumbled across this book and wound up buying it.

I'm wondering if anyone else has read it or knows about it. It's a pretty good autobiography/cultural analysis of the generation of gamers that came into the hobby in the late-1970s and early 1980s (my era). The author writes about what attracted him to gaming, how it intersected with his other interests, how he drifted away from gaming, and what drew him back.

Here's the amazon.com link: [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Freaks-Gaming-Geeks-Imaginary/dp/1599214806/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258659805&sr=8-1]Amazon.com: Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms (9781599214801): Ethan Gilsdorf: Books[/ame]


Also, here's a little video the author did about the book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m3I2MDS9EI9K7Y

 

[RodneyThompson]

The author was out here visiting the WotC offices last week, and I had a chance to meet him and then go grab a beer with him at a local tavern. Very nice guy! Haven't read the book yet, but it's on my Christmas List.

 

[CharlesRyan]

Haven't read it yet, but the book has been very widely (and I think positively) reviewed in the mainstream media.

 

[Mercurius]

I read it a couple months ago when it came out--he's actually the former classmate and a friend of one of my colleagues.

Basically Gilsdorf travels around the world--all over the US and to Britain and New Zealand--on a kind of travelogue of geekery, meeting up with everyone from Tolkien aficionados to LARPers to "wizard rock" musicians to "Warcrack" addicts to Old School Lake Geneva D&D players. He interweaves his own biography, in particular his relationship with his mother who suffered a stroke when he was in middle school (if I remember correctly) and became a very different person; Gilsdorf feels that this was a major impetus in leading him to D&D.

The one, albeit major, criticism I have of the book is the underlying and continual implication that interest in gaming in any of its forms is at least somewhat pathological and, in his experience at least (which he might project onto all gamers), a movement of escapism from childhood trauma. He does briefly mention it as a viable creative outlet, but it almost seems like an afterthought. Gilsdorf admits to feelings of shame and embarrassment about gaming, which he basically "closeted" for decades; by the end of the book I got the sense that he was waving his "freak flag" more proudly, but that he still saw gaming in all of its forms as more of fringe escapism than a legitimate artistic modality, rather than a strange and wonderful mixture of both.

But overall I enjoyed the book and recommend it.

 

[Remus Lupin]

I noticed that theme as well, but his biography resonated so strongly with my own experience (though I didn't have any childhood trauma even approaching his), that I was willing to go with it.

And, honestly, I love gaming, but as a hobby it's pretty socially marginal. Less so now that it's been mainstreamed, but back in the 1980s, it really was a fringy sort of thing to do. I also "closeted" my gaming past for a long time, before (as the result of genuinely significant trauma), I rediscovered it.

So, maybe I'm just more like the author than a lot of folks, but I really resonated with his story.

 

[Mercurius]

Yes, I resonated with his story and agree with you about the social marginality of gaming, both then and now. I still get surprise and mocking jokes when people find out I'm into RPGs, especially my students (high school). But what I took issue was his emphasis on this and his only passing mention of RPGs as a creative outlet. To me this marginalizes gaming even further and places all forms of it as "only" a fringe hobby, when for some it is much more, an art even (especially for designers and homebrew GMs).

In some ways it comes down to intentionality, or what one "gets" out of gaming. For me it is creativity and imagination. There is nothing pathological about that--and I would even say that it somewhat relates to the pathology of our culture with its lack of creativity, imagination, and a sense of wonder and magic (this relates to Tolkien's assertion that true escapism isn't escape from reality but from imprisonment, and thus a healthy response to an unhealthy context).

Completely off topic, but Remus Lupin, did you realize that your user name spelled backwards is "nipul sumer", which could be pronounced as "nipple summer"? ;-)

 

[apoptosis]

He is the ex-nephew of one of my colleagues. She just went to have coffee with him a couple weeks ago during his book tour when he was in Chicago.

She was not terribly surprised that I was a gaming geek

 

[Henry]

I was pretty shy as a kid, but I can't say I suffered much "childhood trauma"; I was very blessed with some great parents who gave me a "normal", happy childhood. Gaming was my outlet to find friends, be far more heroic than I was, and just live out some of the stories I used to read. Now, I'm a lot more socially adjusted, but it's part of who I am as much as what order I put my socks and shoes on in the morning.

 

[Henry]

HEY! PODCAST!

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Author Ethan Gilsdorf)

 

[Zander]

I'm wondering if anyone else has read it or knows about it.

I strongly suspect that this EN World member EN World D&D / RPG News - View Profile: egilsdorf knows about it. What makes me think so? Because he wrote it!

I'm reading it myself at the moment. It's fun to read in a book about places you've been to such as the Eagle & Child pub in Oxford, UK and Pandemonium Books in Cambridge, MA. But the parts on LARPing, SCA and computer games, I find hard to relate to as I've never been into those things.

Z