D&D Social Stigma

[pogre]

In a word? No.

My word was already taken - so quoted for truth.

 

[Aeson]

Where do you poeple live?!?!? I liv ein Atlanta and I've the balls to only tell one person, my best freind, that I game. Actulay, i don't game! Because everyone outside of the social wrecks and outright creepy people here think that D&D is somthing that only, well, social wrecks and creepy people play. My freind is intriguied but too aprehensive about the stigma to even game 1 on 1 at my house, in secret! He's (and, admittly, i am too, to an extent) too worried abotu what would happen if someone were to find out, by perhaps comign over and coming upon a misplaced rulebook. It's terrible. D&D is often the butt of jokes and dispariging remakrs are made of those who do openly game.

If your for real. I'm sorry this how you or friend view things. I'm near Atlanta and I have games with people from all walks of life. Black, white, gays, straights, men ,women, adults, children, scolars and dropouts. I even play with a Pastor. He is one of the funniest players I've played with. I'd love to invite you and your friend to join us.

 

[pogre]

Lots of hobbies and activities have stereotypes - use your mind and come up with the stereotypes for these different parts of my life:

I'm a high school football coach.

I'm a licensed attorney.

I play contract bridge.

I'm a bass fisherman.

I'm a gamer.

Each of these has a stereotype - I don't see those stereotypes going away anytime soon - even if I don't fit most of them

 

[Chairman7w]

Teflon Billy said it best.

Unfortunately, you go to the biggest FLGS here (in Sacramento) and there'll be any given mix of "stereotypical" gamers. Let's see, there's "Black-leather trenchcoat even in Summer Guy"; "Fat, unclean, foodstain on Dragon t-shirt Guy"; "Bizarre, buzzcut with sharply filed vampire teeth guy" (no joke); and fortunately, plenty of regular guys and girls, too.

But there's no doubt that there's a higher percentage of mal-adjusted, socially-inept people there. Sorry if that offends any of you. It is what it is.

 

[Aeson]

It's an ad for a Whirlpool washing machine ("the perfect marriage of beauty and brains")...and in the ad, it's the supermodel giving her nerd boyfriend / fiance a PHB as a gift.

I'd like to see this ad.

 

[Cherub]

I sure wish they would. I lose a lot of shirts to bloodstains. Plus, half the Catholic population of my town thinks I have the gift of prophecy.

HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHAHAA....you saved me a reply to that PP...

 

[buzz]

I have to wonder if many of the "questionable" gamers we've seen have seemed so becasue we meet them in a gaming context. I.e., does the stigma color our own perceptions? I mean, what if the nerdy guy was met in the context of "Joe, the guy from Marketing" instead of "Joe, the guy playing the elf wizard"? Would he seem to come off less geeky, even to other gamers?

And do some of us feel a "stigma" simply becuase we know we're gamers, and we assume that revealing this fact to people will cause said stigma?

 

[Wayside]

openly talking about your hobbies is NOT a crusade.
its normal.

Not everyody is devoted to gaming in this sense though. I play RPG's occasionally, when I'm not doing any number of other things. I can't say I'm really committed to them to the extent that the thought of talking about my games specifically or RPG's in general to random people excites me. Even here on ENWorld I skip threads that consist of people gushing about their characters, homebrews and so on. RPG's are fun, and some people obviously get really into them and would like nothing more than to tell you all about their characters and nothing about themselves, but I personally find this a little weird. It's nothing to do with being ashamed of gaming or fear of persecution--I've still had plenty of conversations about gaming with all kinds of people, when it actually came up as relevant to what we were talking about--it's purely a matter of priorities. I game, but gaming is not a big deal and it certainly isn't a disproportionately large part of my life.

But I don't consider the fact that I'm a fat, pony-tailed, glasses-wearing, black tshirt, wearing, game playing, comic book reading, internet surfing, card-carrying GEEK a bad thing.

I don't consider it a bad thing either. But do I want to hang out with you, or even be associated with you? If RPG's, your character in Tuesday's game, your homebrew or whatever are hot topics of conversation, probably not.

Unfortunately, you go to the biggest FLGS here (in Sacramento) and there'll be any given mix of "stereotypical" gamers. Let's see, there's "Black-leather trenchcoat even in Summer Guy"; "Fat, unclean, foodstain on Dragon t-shirt Guy"; "Bizarre, buzzcut with sharply filed vampire teeth guy" (no joke); and fortunately, plenty of regular guys and girls, too.

What's the biggest FLGS in Sacramento? I went to I think it was Great Escape Games a few times back toward the end of highschool (c. 1998), but gave it up because those just weren't my kind of people. I skipped the first NorCal gameday back in 2001 or so when they decided to hold it there, actually.

 

[kenobi65]

I'd like to see this ad {the Whirlpool ad with the nerd and the supermodel}.

Actually, I erred...it's a GE ad. (I misremembered.)

It's still being run; your best bet for seeing it is on one of the Sunday morning news shows (Face the Nation, Meet the Press, etc.); that's where I've seen it. There's a 30-second and a 60-second version of the ad; only the :60 has the PHB scene in it, though both versions are pretty cute.

- Mike, your friendly neighborhood advertising guy, who's also a game geek (and is pretty open about it. )

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

It seems to be expressively forbidden by the author. From a thread regarding this topic on rpg.net:

"WotC has the rights to do a Potter RPG, but Rowling has stated she feels RPG "rot kids brains." That's a direct quote from the woman at WotC in charge of flying to England and trying to covince Rowling otherwise."

Umm, then who the heck authorized Harry Potter EVERYTHING when the last book came out. Everywhere I looked was something with the HP logo (I ain't talking bout Computers. No wait, I think I did see a Harry Special Computer deal).

And there was a Harry Potter computer game. It was a typcial 'put trash out, label it with a property name so it will sell' title. If playing THAT didn't rot your brain, I don't know what would.

I think this is a much more reasonalbe scenerio:

Rowling: "I want $X,XXX,XXX.XX and executive control to veto anything I don't want."

Wizards: "PFFBFTER?!?!?! Can we lop off a few X's Here?"

Rowling: "Sorry, talk to me later."