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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tervin" data-source="post: 4331108" data-attributes="member: 66491">Way back in the early 80s here in Sweden my experience is that roleplaying was mainly popular among middle class intellectual guys. Some were considered geeks, but far from all. Hey, half of my first gaming group were really popular jocks that at times had quite popular girls coming to visit during the sessions just to see what we were doing.Later at university the geek percentage was slightly higher among the gamers, but still not a clear case. And I still had not roleplayed with anybody from a poor background. I got involved in a few gaming clubs, and started to see that there were basically some geeky RP clubs and some non geeky. Myself I enjoyed being able to play in both.Working as a high school teacher I have run into a lot of teenagers interested in games. My impression is that playing computer games is something almost all of them do, but playing too much can get you considered a geek. Among the more geeky MMORPG-ers you run into some of the PnP-players and among the LARP-fans you find the others. As for social patterns I would say that poorer kids don't even know what PnP-roleplaying is. The typical pattern is that teen roleplayers come from an academic middle class background, much like what it was when I was their age. The difference is basically that there is a higher percentage of girls.Things are of course different in different countries. Especially what people would consider a "poor" background. I won't go into any thoughts on differences there because it would quickly turn into politics. I will just throw in some doubt on the "poor kids play RPGs" based on that tabletop roleplaying is a pastime that mostly appeals to people who like to read and want to be able to express themselves in a creative way. If you look at studies from just about any country in the world, you will see that this is not a typical description of people from a poor background. That is a typical description of a middle class intellectual.</blockquote>

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