Encountering anti-D&D sentiment

[takyris]

People who are closeminded and intolerant are inhuman monsters who ought to be drug out into the street and beaten with axe handles.

Wait, hang on, I just ran into irony...

 

[Bloodstone Press]

I responded in the simple way I usually do, "I write for the Dungeons & Dragons game," adding, "My first book is coming out in December."

Rule #1: Don'y tell people you write for dungeons and Dragons.

Why?

Because unless you are employed by WotC, you don't write for Dungeon's and Dragons. Secondly, DnD has a real stigma associated with it, as you just found out. It is much better to tell people that you publish "role playing games." or that you publish d20 RPG material, or something to that effect. If they ask for more information then you can tell them about DnD and Star Wars etc.

 

[Sado]

She proceeded to then tell me in the most high handed manner imaginable that she'd seen a documentary on Dungeons and Dragons and how it brainwashed people. The name of this documentary? Mazes and Monsters. Yes...she thought it was based on real events.

The novel Mazes and Monsters by Rona Jaffe, on which the movie of the same name was based, was itself based (very, very, very loosely) on actual events in the life of James Dallas Egbert III, a student at Michigan State University who went missing and ended up killing himself. The private investigator who went looking for him learned he was into D&D and concocted a hare-brained theory that it was what led him to commit suicide.

The book The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III by William Dear (the private investigator) tells his version of the story.

Here is a good synopsis of the story.

 

[Napftor]

Rule #1: Don'y tell people you write for dungeons and Dragons.

Why?

Because unless you are employed by WotC, you don't write for Dungeon's and Dragons...

Oh please. Of course I do. D&D is a game, not a company. I can't say "I write for Wizards of the Coast" but since I write material with which people use to play D&D then I think my statement is justified. Let it go people and stick to the matter at hand.

 

[Mark]

Don't all d20 products say right on the cover that they're useless without D&D rulebooks?

No. They don't.

Sounds like writing for Dungeons & Dragons to me.

Who are you?

 

[Patman21967]

I'd personally tell her, " look lady, if you are going to inquire as to peoples personal lives, then deride them for it, stay in your glass house and send your illegitimate son out to get your clap medicine "

Just my opinion

I used to have friends who thought gaming was weird, and that must make me a geek ( which I am ) or gay ( until they met my girlfriend ). yet these same people did coke, cheated on thier women and flunked out of school.....Hooray for the wading part of the gene pool...don't forget to wear your water-wings....it's deep in some places

 

[Mark]

I've found that for a lot of people, "take on the part of a character" equates with dressing up and running around. Many I meet think D&D is the same as LARPing. Getting over that hump is the first challenge.

I've seen that sometimes, too. It's usually the next part of the conversation, if it continues.

I usually compare it to games most people know and understand. "It's no different than pretending to be a detective or real estate developer in games like Clue and Monopoly, only a lot more detailed. You play it sitting at a table; you decide what you want to do; and the rules tell you what happens."

That's a good way to explain it further.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

Oh please. Of course I do. D&D is a game, not a company.....

Do your books have the Dungeons and Dragons logo on the cover? Will your advertising say "Dungeon's and Dragons?"

No. In fact you are prohibited from doing both of those things.

why?

Because you don't write Dungeons and Dragons.

Furthermore, boiling d20 publishing down to "Dungeons and Dragons" is inaccurate and sells the whole industry short. Not to mention the stigma, which, I believe is your point.

 

[Mark]

Oh please. Of course I do. D&D is a game, not a company. I can't say "I write for Wizards of the Coast" but since I write material with which people use to play D&D then I think my statement is justified. Let it go people and stick to the matter at hand.

I honestly thought you might have, at some point, and maybe I didn't know you did. Technically (legally), I suppose, you probably shouldn't say you write for D&D unless you write for a company that can put the D&D logo on the cover. Aside from WotC, I guess that would extend to Kenzer and Paizo publications, at this point.

My point, at this point, really, is just that if something isn't accurate, and it starts off with a stigma anyway, why not be accurate and speak in more general terms to which folks could more easily, socially acclimate? I think sometimes things become conflicts that could be avoided if people wewre more specific.

 

[fusangite]

Teflon Billy was recruited to our ranks thanks to this kind of small town prejudice. He grew up in a Bible Belt town where the newspapers and local religious leaders routinely declared that D&D cause you to worship Satan and kill people. So, with no other information to go on, he immediately became a gamer.

Well, just feel glad that we gamers are part of an invisible minority, for the most part. Think of all the irrational prejudice that is directed at people in visible minorities all the time.