Mac saves teen from D&D

[brehobit]

As an odd note, my gaming group, while all male, has 2 Christian missionaries and myself (I teach Sunday school at a conservative Christian church). The rest are, I belive, athiests (though I really don't know.)

Mark

 

[ecliptic]

10 and 11. Duh.

There's nothing wrong with giving up nerdery for a while to build a social life. What's wrong is trusting an MTV show to help. The best they can manage to do is change a quiet, geeky misanthrope into a loud, obnoxious misanthrope with a bad taste in music.

I would never change who I am for a girl, same way I would never expect a girl to change who she is for me.

 

[Henry]

I want to thank all the fellow posters for so far walking the thin line that this turn of conversation seems to demand.

I also know from personal experience that, whether dating or just looking for friends, unlike other hobbies it's more awkward for a U.S. gamer to go to a Church social and strike up a conversation with your peers, "so, you play D&D?"

Back to D&D: because of its stigma socially as a "not cool" hobby, like stamp collecting or model car building, it is not considered something you bring up on the first date. Someone who wants to be more socially fluid is better off if they have additional interests and social skills in order to make a good first impression. There aren't that many women actively looking for somebody who goes half-naked and body-painted to cheer a sporting event, either.

 

[Funeris]

There aren't that many women actively looking for somebody who goes half-naked and body-painted...

But when you manage to find one that is....ohhh does life get fun

~Fune

 

[maddman75]

Is this not fairly common? I stopped gaming for 3-4 years in my late teens to, well, act like an animal and chase girls around. Gaming is something I do for fun, not a path I live my life by. If you can't imagine not gaming in order to go out and socialzie with others, maybe you need to take a break. Whether a girls plays roleplaying games or not is almost an irrelevency. Its way, way down on the list of things I look for. Way higher is "respects my interests and hobbies", so even if she's not a gamer she won't have a problem with me doing so - but that's a larger issue not related to gaming directly.

There's more to life than hit points and funny dice.

 

[Kanegrundar]

Heap has got it right. Gaming is a hobby, and it's not really healthy to put everything that you think you are into any one hobby. If I was given a choice on having a date or gaming, I would have taken the date more times than not. Why? Gaming is just a game, but dating gets me out there with the rest of society. If more gamers would go and hang out with people that don't game and at least try to get along with the rest of society or at least expand their horizons into other venues than simply the "geeky" there likely wouldn't be nearly the stigma attached to hobby. So, go out, date, play a sport, whatever as long as it's not always just gaming. Remember it's just a game, not a cult...that behavior is one of the things that gets some people all in a tizzy over the game in the first place.

Kan

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Well... I *AM* a girl, so there. The only girl in my gaming group, but ehhhh... also the only Christian, which sorta puts me out of any of their sights in terms of dateability. (This is where I get screwed over because there aren't too many Christian gamer guys around here... blehhhh. No wonder I'm 19 and have never had a boyfriend. )

I've always been kind of a nerd/geek, so nerd/geeks are what I feel comfortable with. In high school all the loud, giggly preppie chicks just annoyed the heck out of me, and even in middle school I got progressively more bummed out as all my friends grew out of playing pretend (and became preppies, lol) and I didn't. Even the ones who were younger than me, which most were.

So it's really no wonder I ended up getting into RPGs and D&D and such. And I suspect it's at least part of the reason I've been in absolutely no hurry to get a boyfriend or get into the sorts of trouble that other teens were. Much safer to be inside at all hours of the night playing D&D than going out and getting in trouble with the police.

Well...I'm about to re-discover what dating is like at some point, I suppose. My wife of 15 years told me she wants to go ahead and divorce. I'm a Christian...or at least trying to be...and a gamer...with fairly conservative politics... and I'll be 42 this month. I think the odds of finding a compatible companion are mighty slim, given my location. Good thing I'm not the kind of guy who absolutely feels he must be in a relationship to be complete or whatever and that I actually LIKE to be by myself most of the time!

 

[glass]

There aren't that many women actively looking for somebody who goes half-naked and body-painted to cheer a sporting event, either.

You've never been to Newcastle, have you?


glass.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

Is this not fairly common? I stopped gaming for 3-4 years in my late teens to, well, act like an animal and chase girls around. Gaming is something I do for fun, not a path I live my life by. If you can't imagine not gaming in order to go out and socialzie with others, maybe you need to take a break. Whether a girls plays roleplaying games or not is almost an irrelevency. Its way, way down on the list of things I look for. Way higher is "respects my interests and hobbies", so even if she's not a gamer she won't have a problem with me doing so - but that's a larger issue not related to gaming directly.

There's more to life than hit points and funny dice.

Abso-freaking-loutely. Pure truth.

 

[Quasqueton]

I stopped gaming for 3-4 years in my late teens to, well, act like an animal and chase girls around.

Why do people think you can't play D&D *and* chase girls? Why would someone need to stop gaming to do something else?

I consider D&D/RPGs a dedicated hobby, that I play once a week (~4 hours), and "work on" a couple hours a week between sessions. In all my years of playing, through highschool teenhood, college/career twenties, and familyman thirties, I've never found D&D to interfere with any other aspect of my life.

I've never thought I had to quit gaming to pursue any other activity. If a "geek" can't get a girl, it's not D&D's fault. There are plenty of non-gaming "geeks" who can't get girls, too.

Hmmm. New thread coming up.

Quasqueton