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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5711735" data-attributes="member: 54707">I'm probably gonna tick off some people by saying  what I'm gonna say. Maybe some won't even understand what I'm saying. To me  though both gaming and gamers can be very, very odd. And totally unrelated to my  experiences in real life. But not because of anything to do with venue. I'll  explain.   To cite but two examples: Once I was in a with my  family at a movie store getting films. They had comics there and I started  reading a comic. I collect comics, and wanted to see if they had anything worth  buying and they didn't. But a guy there saw what I was doing and struck up a  conversation with me. He looked like a stereotypical gamer, including the  particular tee-shirt he was sporting. I do not, I look like a Cop. Unless I'm  working undercover, then I don't. But I guess he equated comic book with both  comic books and gaming.   Anyways it went from, "Yeah, I like to read  justice League," on my part to an almost explosive conversation on his part on  how his Superhero Character was far better and more god-like (and a vast  improvement upon) Superman and how he thought that if they were statted  correctly then his superhero character would kill Superman in hand to hand  combat. I had to disengage fast because the farther he went along the closer I  thought he would come to stroking out, or slipping into erotic ecstasy, or both,  and I hate to say this but it's absolutely true, I thought to myself, "this guy  has never had a girlfriend." But the louder he got about how his character had a  special kind of mega-ultra vision that could kill Superman instantly the more I  realized this is not for me pal. This is something for your gaming  table.   Another time, after getting back to my hometown,  (and the crime rate was bad there at that time) I thought about starting up a  group of local Vigilantes. Granted I have a very different idea of vigilante  than is the pop-culture one, and I wanted us to help out the cops with basic  neighborhood patrols, reporting, etc. I thought to myself, after going to  another comic book store/gaming store, and hearing so many of the patrons go on  and on about superheroes and Batman and so forth, decided, well maybe some of  these guys will be very useful. (And by listening to them, the thought stuck me,  well many of these young fells are quite smart they just have no direction of  how to channel their "heroic energies" and cleverness at anything other than  wishes and games.)   So I spent about month developing a training  manual and prepared it and put up a flyer on the gaming store saying that I was  looking for people who would consider helping out reduce crime in the  surrounding beat areas. (I wanted to keep the actual area of operations small  and manageable.) The manual was basic, it wasn't anything elaborate, and it  stressed observation and neighborhood security and personal security and crime  prevention rather than the typical idea of Vigilantism. I stressed avoiding  direct contact with criminals or dangerous situations. And receiving good, solid  training from local authorities and organizations. Several people called me up,  eager to get involved, it seemed, and I interviewed many of them by phone and a  couple by initial personal interviews. Let them review the manual. From my  conversations I asked them what they would do to reduce crime, to help out local  law enforcement, and to make the surrounding neighborhoods safer. Many had what  I thought were clever ideas (at least in theory) and a couple seemed brilliant.  Universally however, when I explained to them that the efforts would be real,  and not imaginary game efforts (that I was talking about real life and not  games), they all dropped it immediately. A couple of guys asked me if I was  crazy and said something to the effect of, "that's dangerous!"    They could develop all kinds of clever ideas to  solve imaginary game problems, could develop 30 something level this or that to  kill Cosmic Dragons and fight minor gods on the plane of Tartarus, but couldn't  spare any energy, effort, or cleverness to face even miniscule danger in the  real world, or to fix the dangers of the real world. They could not at all make  the leap between Great Imaginary Hero to even the most simple real life  vigilant, and they couldn't get past the idea that I had a great idea for a game  (which really excited them), or so they thought, that was in actuality not a  game. Many were very excited about "playing a game as if it were real life," but  could not imagine playing their "imaginary interests in real life." The thought  to me that one would want to be an Heroic character in a game, but not want to  do anything even remotely similar in real life, well, it kind of mazes me. And  to be honest, disturbs me. I always saw that aspect of gaming as an ambition,  not as an emage.   I never understood it, and it always gave me the  creeps personally, and it's why I don't hang around what I consider hardcore  gamers, or have their gaming or other interests. (That is, of the idea that  someone imaginary worlds are better and more exciting and more challenging  places to live in than the real world. Or that one should be mentally or  imaginarily a hero, but in real life shun or avoid the same general principles.  I've seen this in on-line games too, which to be honest, often give me that same  kind of creepy feeling, and I avoid them for that reason. I told a guy once,  "You know if you can spend 40 hours a week playing this MMOG, then you could  train to be a cop, medic, soldier, or anything you want to be. And help out  others and even make far more money at it than this." He seemed  totally stupefied by my statement.)    If I'm around a group of buddies I can enjoy a  game, talk about it, and so forth. Once it's over though, I can't think of it as  real and it doesn't interest me in the same way the real world does, nor do I  think of imaginary adventures and experiences as anywhere near as dangerous,  thrilling, exciting, or important as real life ones.   Now me and my buddies all grew up playing D&D,  and other games, and although it was fun it was also like imaginary training for  real life to us. For practicing, or at least learning about, really useful  skills, like map-reading, logistics, military tactics, manhunting, stuff like  that. It was a game useful for training our minds and imaginations in real  skills. It was not an artificial, escapist world, but a sort of imaginary  overlay we placed over the real world to test out and mentally prepare for  problem-solving in the real world.   So on the one hand I think gaming is a very  valuable tool, and generally beneficial for a person's development. On the other  hand I've seen some gamers I will outright avoid.   I am not of course saying all gamers are to me are  like the ones described above. They are not (a goodly number of gamers I know  are cops and soldiers and so forth), but the real divisions to me are not  between on-line and real world gamers, but between gamers who are escapists, and  those who employ games as a problem solving tool. Though that might not be  the only function of course, games can and should be enjoyable entertainment,  but once they become a secondary, escapist, or artificial world and are  discussed as if they have a separate reality all of their own, that's a line  I will not cross, and such people make me uneasy, even wary. I have no interest,  aside from the appropriate venues (EN World is such a venue), of discussing a  Level 30 character or of discussing gaming at all, other than in general terms.  So again it is to me not on-line versus real world gaming, but what I might call  Real World Gamers versus Gamers who think Games are Real  Worlds. (Or are just as important or are more important than the real  world.)   That's the line for me and the one I have no  interest at all in crossing.   Now to be absolutely fair I know a lot of people  who consider me weird because I can sit up all night with my buddies talking  about a mission, a case, counter-terrorism, vigilantism, and Intel work. I can  also stay up all night drinking beer and talking philosophy, religion, history,  art, and science. That's weird to a lot of people I know, including my teenage  daughters. Everyone has a departure point I guess, and that's fine by me.     But I grew up with gamers, and maybe this is my  age showing, who would play OD&D or AD&D, then after the game stay up  all night talking everything from Occam to the latest Pink Floyd album, to  breaking the Siegfried Line, to shark fishing, to William Blake, to how we were  gonna have a big bottle rocket fight at the new bridge on New Years  Eve.   But I never once struck up a conversation, and  never will, with a stranger about how my god-like Superhero character could kill  Superman in an eye-beam match. Or how I had a 30th level Eldritch War-Forged  Atomic Powered Arcane Golden Battle Dwarf in Half-plate Golem Touched Ruby Red  Djinni Slippers. I wouldn't have that conversation with anyone probably. I don't  even like Eldritch War-Forged Atomic Powered Arcane Golden Battle Dwarves in  Half-plate Golem Touched Ruby Red Djinni Slippers. Dwarf Paladin is about as far as I feel the need  to take it.   That's my view of it. I've got nothing against  games, or gamers. But there is a auricular sub-group of hardcore gamers I steer  clear of. To me though it's far less about where they congregate,  than how and why.</blockquote>

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