D&D 5E Dungeons and Dragons and the RPG Stigma

[Stefano_Rinaldelli]

Make a google search: death penalty granduchy of tuscany. This not means that no execution has been done since 1400. It means that the first official abolition is in 1400.

 

[Stefano_Rinaldelli]

Capital punishment in Italy with wikipedia. I was wrong. Not 1400, 1700. Excuse me.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I see a source that says Tuscany abolished the death penalty in 1786 under Pietro Leopoldo. No indications that anything happened in 1400. Edit: I see your post now. Yeah, I knew 1400 sounded too early. Thanks for the discussion--I learned something.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

Even 1786 it's not a bad result!

(Excuse my proud-to-be-tuscan attitude)

 

[Dr Simon]

Sounds to me like the person in question needed one of these.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Actually, the OP is interesting to me because the last time I received such a huge reaction to my D&D playing was from a girl I was dating. She was in Medical school studying to be a doctor. She was rather into me and we had gone on 3 dates and made out a bunch. But then she messaged me online and said that she had to break up with me because of D&D. She said I took it too seriously. She played Catan all the time and was super excited about it. But she felt that Catan was her guilty pleasure that she rewarded herself every 2 or 3 weeks when she had been good about studying.

When she found out that I had a yearly trip to go camping with some friends where we played D&D the entire time we were there, she said that was just way too obsessed with games and she could never be with someone who wasted so much time on frivolous stuff. She never said it outright, but she implied that studying to be a doctor was about saving lives and was making the world a better place and since she spent 95% of her time studying that she was spending almost all her time making the world better and therefore was a better person than I was since playing D&D didn't help anyone or make me smarter.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Her loss.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

... since playing D&D didn't help anyone or make me smarter.

Which is likely false. D&D has very much helped many become better people, and definitely increases knowledge and exercises the mind (amongst other things).

Not that you didn't already know that; I just felt it needed to be said.

 

[Nawara]

I honestly think it's becoming more mainstream. Not long after the PHB came out, I was in bar in downtown Ottawa, and overheard at least three separate conversations mentioning "5th edition" and "D&D". Granted, this was a trendy dive with a youthful clientele, but I'm not sure how much that would affect it; people of that age are usually more guarded about their personalities, more desperate to appear "cool".

I think, as a general rule, anything that smart, nerdy kids do is going to become more acceptable thirty years later, because people in positions of power are more likely than not to have been smart, nerdy kids or to have had friends who were.

When I was in high school, I think I was one of about six kids who played roleplaying games. Then I went to a good college, and it was like 10%. Then I went to grad school, and it was like 20%. Now I live in a community swirling with elite-educated lawyers, investment bankers, consultants, government officials, and military officers, and in that world D&D experience (if not regular gaming) is present in at least 30% of the people I know.

Expand the group to include either RPGs, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Star Wars, or Overly Complicated Board Games, and you're probably looking at 70-80% of the elite professional population. Hell, the President of the United States is a nerd.

I've been out of the basement for a while now, and it's not been a problem at all. OP's doctor sounds as out of touch as the Old Economy Steves who don't understand why millennials hop from job to job rather than grind out their lives at a single corporation that will show precisely zero reciprocal loyalty toward them.

(I would also note that every other profession is cracking up right now at the idea that med students are too cool to play D&D.)

 

[Nawara]

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