Well, this had to come up again, had it not?
There's some observations I want to throw into the discussion randomly.
First, as to the "D&D Player killed coworker", the D&D Player being made a big deal of: There's a saying I cannot repeat here because of Eric's Granny, so I'll use a tamer version:
"A man who builds a thousand bridges and kisses one single goat once is not called a Bridge Builder. He's called a Goat Kisser." (Actually, the original didn't involve goats as much as... "chickens". And it was not exactly kissing, either, but that's beside the point).
Secondly, this guy had a
selfmade samurai sword??? How do you go about just making one in your own home? If I recall correctly, those katanas, the weapon of noble warriors (noble in the sense of mobility) were carefully crafted by very competent smithes. They were more than just a weapon. It doesn't sound like you could just cobble together one of these in your spare time. It was rather something that was supposed to be a katana, and probably a sorry attempt to boot. I'd wager a proper katana wouldn't let you survive one hit at the neck.
But that's not really relevant, either.
I do think that this guy (the dead one) is the one who should have bought into that "Gamers are Homicidal Maniacs" bullmanure. Of course, in this case you still would have to say "This Homicidal Maniac is a Gamer" (the game hardly being the cause of his obsession and mental illness, but rather a focus), but it seemed that being scared of that guy would have saved his life. I know I wouldn't mock someone if I thought that someone to be a homicidal maniac.
This should be made more public - the D&D obsession being played down, of course (or rather, not being played up) - to show people where bullying can lead. So there's someone with an odd behaviour and you think it would be fun to mock and harass him to see if he breaks down? You do that, but just remember that you're being an
, you're breaking the law, and there's the chance that the guy is stark raving mad and will one day kill you in a wacky way, like stabbing you to death with a home-made samurai sword or just gunning you down.
That reminds me: We had a case of someone running amok with a katana here in Germany, a couple of years ago. This time, women were involved (and another obviously disturbed individual). Apparently, he had a girlfriend (or rather had had one, she didn't want to see him any more) who worked for the Baur Catalogue. He flipped out, took a katana (they apparently sold those in said Baur Catalogue, though I doubt that this one had an actual edge, at least not when they sold it) and went on a rampage in their office buildings, killing several.
