Judgment and Rudeness About D&D Alive and Well

[Rune]

On a related note, I should really dig out my copy of Mazes & Monsters again and rewatch it. Love that movie! Great source of gaming inspiration. Ever-returning coin, I'm looking at you!

 

[Li Shenron]

Wife had minor surgery this morning. While in recovery, nurse saw I had the PHB with me and said, "Gosh, that led to suicides some years ago. Very sad." Her judgy pants were pulled in tight.

"Money is one of the most common causes of suicides, you should get rid of them!"

 

[ehenning]

Grew up gaming with no one judging me or the games I played. Guess I was lucky.

With all the computer RPG games that are much more violent on the market, it amazes me that people still want to point to tabletop RPG and say it is bad/evil/wrong/etc.

 

[joshinminn]

I think there are far more people who think we're dorks than devil worshipers!

 

[Legatus Legionis]

.

 

[diaglo]

I've never ran into anyone who was actually serious about such absurd notions, though. It must be a surreal experience for those who have.

not surreal at all. most of the time back in my youth (late 70s and early 80s) it was down right scary as hell.
now a days i own the hell out of being a gamer.
like i said up thread you learn. you grow a thick skin.
doesn't change the fact some people are just rude.

 

[DM Howard]

I have honestly never met anyone who looked at me sideways for carrying around an RPG book, but I do think that when I told my father in law that I was going to Gen Con where "there are board games and RPGs" that he thought I was going to LARP.

 

[Greenfield]

As a counterpoint, and in the interest of fairness, I knew people when I was in college who were seriously into their gaming fantasies, to the point of being scary. People who seemed to have a hard time separating their gaming reality from actual reality. They scared me, kept me from getting into the game scene for a couple of years.

I finally realized that these few people were the fringe, the ones off balance enough to stand out. They were unwilling or unable to accept how mundane their life was, and were bound and determined to invent a new one. If it hadn't been games it would have been UFOs or James Bond, or maybe they would have become conspiracy nuts, like the ones who claimed that D&D books were enchanted so they couldn't be burned, or that the miniatures couldn't melt or be broken. (Yes, I've heard from that camp as well.)

But D&D didn't mae these people crazy. D&D was just the focus of their crazy, at least for the moment.

 

[Starfox]

...even pretending to be a character who casts spells or portraying fictional demons gave real power to and drew attention from The Devil.

I find it amazing that role-players are considered an occult danger, when we have people running around with this kind of magical world-view. Who is the believer in magic here?

 

[Starfox]

As a counterpoint, and in the interest of fairness, I knew people when I was in college who were seriously into their gaming fantasies, to the point of being scary. ..

I was the gamemaster of a Vampire live which involved a lot of teenagers. This game involved maybe 75 people of both genders and ran for two years, of which I gamemastered one year. I kept an eye out for this kind of thing, but it never happened around here. Yes, people were using the game to experiment, and many of those experiments involved close bodily proximity, but there was not a single complaint of harassment or off-limits behavior. Some people were acting as jerks, but mainly in-game jerks.

This game also engendered this infamous play:

Prince: This man should have a stake (wishing to empower an agent, as stakes were generally restricted items)
Sheriff: * Stakes said vampire