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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 5285226" data-attributes="member: 59082">With regards to the OP, I do feel your pain on this and had a similar experience when I read Ethan Gilsdorf's [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Freaks-Gaming-Geeks-Imaginary/dp/1599214806/"]Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks [/ame]which didn't necessarily take a negative tone but it did seem to imply that the only or main reason that one is into gaming is as a kind of escapism from childhood trauma and/or not making it in the Real World. I think only once in the entire book did Gilsdorf mention the creative pleasure that comes from playing.But the thing is, Gilsdorf is at least partially right--and maybe those documentaries you mention (which I haven't seen) have some degree of truth. RPGs do attract a certain crowd with all sorts of social, emotional, and physical neuroses. It is a fringe sub-culture. The fringe, however, includes both the wackos and the geniuses; think of academia, for example, which tends to shut its doors to those that don't stand up to snuff but also those that break new ground and actually have original thoughts. Sometimes the two are intermixed and impossible to tease out the genius from the wackiness: genius wackos, if you will.It is also worth investigating the pejorative terms that you yourself use to paint these supposedly rare gamers, such as "fatbeard." Now I know the stereotype and pretty much every time I go into a gaming store I see one or more very overweight, possibly bearded, gamers with awkward social skills, possibly poor hygiene, lack of a significant other (unless it is another "fatbeard"), and other signs of not really being able to meet the status quo. Have you stopped for a moment to think, though, that in an online forum such as this--that is dedicated to RPGs and only inhabited by serious to hardcore RPGers--that at least some of the regulars could be categorized in this hurtful stereotype? Many, even most, rpg players are not just "normal people playing D&D in their spare time." Sure, some of them are, but many (most?) aren't. Some are fatbeards, drow-costume-wearing ladies, larpers, chaos magicians, wannabe-vampires, socially awkward, overweight, underweight, extremely imaginative, brilliant, ridiculous, and pretty much anything you can imagine. But by and large the people you know that are into RPGs into their adult years, as a "career hobby" if you will, are a bit different in some way. Maybe the folks that come to the game session to play and leave it in the game session can be pretty "normal," but any 30+ year old that runs a regular game is, by virtue only of the time that they spend literally in an imaginary world, not "normal." And hallelujah to that! Look around at popular, mainstream American culture and what do you see? It ain't pretty. Actually, I would say it is pretty pathological, by and large.(This is not to say that some of these qualities in gamers are not pathological--many of them are. But we should at least own them. Obesity, especially when it gets to morbidity, is quite seriously. Obviously not only gamers are obese, but it seems that a fair share of them are and this should be taken seriously; how about a free three months of Weight Watchers included in GenCon tickets?).The trick, I think, in really accurately portraying the table-top gaming community would be to convey this "genius wacko" combination. We should not deny our fringehood, and we should own our neuroses and pathologies, but we should also recognize our creativity, imagination, and genius.</blockquote>

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