The Stigma of D&D OR Help! I'm Stuck in the D&D Closet?

[diaglo]

I realize that not all of them are that way, and in fact had a good friend who was one of my high school's football players.

i was one of those football players. starting offensive and defensive tackle. plus the kicker/punter.

i was also the trainer for the girl's soccer team

i was in the band

i was on the math team.

etc.... i had a very active social life in and out of gaming...

 

[Xath]

Hmm...I think the last time I seriously got made fun of for being a geek was in middle school, and I didn't even RP then.

I've never hidden my gaming from anyone and it has turned out very well for me. Of course, the majority of my friends are gamers and former gamers.

The only time I felt any angst about being a gamer was when I first moved into my college dorm as a freshmen. I was in a triple with two other girls and I unloaded my bookshelf's worth of D&D books. But there was no need to worry. They asked a few questions about the game, and came to accept me as the lovable dork I am.

Sure, I get mocked (jokingly) for being a gamer. However, the mocking is being done by CompSci and Engineering majors who have boxes of comics in their dorm rooms and can beat the snot out of anyone in any particular system game. So I mock them as well. It's a fun circle. Then when we get tired of mocking, we pull out Starcraft and kill aliens until 4am.

What I'm trying to say is, don't be embarassed. Chances are that the people around you are dorks as well, or will be completely understanding.

 

[edge3343]

Great original post!

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I used to be kind of shy about admitting I played in social settings but once I joined the Air Force and found out how many of our soldiers a hard-core RPG players that went out the window. I now see myself as an ambassador of the game. I'm a network engineer and I keep D&D wallpapers on my screen. People will sometimes walk by, see it, and ask about it and I tell them. I explain that it is really no different than me playing on a softball team. Both are about meeting people in a social setting and both have a competitive spirit... you just can't shatter your ankle rolling dice. Coworkers who are parents seem to have shown the most interest when I tell them that D&D kept me out of drugs, underage drinking, and general mischief during the 80's when all of the above became rampant among my generation. My parents always knew where I was and knew I was being supervised by other adults. It also contributed to a higher than average reading level for my age. Once people see how it is a positive experience they generally warm up to it or at least don't view it negatively.

 

[fredramsey]

Next time someone makes fun of D&D, just ask, "Do you like sports?" (99% are going to say yes) Then say, "What do you think of those people who go to games with their whole body painted in the team colors?"

RPGs are made fun of mostly because they are unknown. It makes them easy targets. It's gotten a bit better (I'm 42, this is my 25th year of D&D), or maybe I just don't hang around the "mundanes" as much as I used to.

I have a group where the women players outnumber the men, I have 2 conservative Christians in the group, I have a great gaming store I can go to, I have a good-paying job as a programmer (so I can buy all sorts of cool gaming stuff), am married to a wonderful woman who started gaming once I introduced her to it, and I'm old enough to come to the realization that most of the humans walking around on this ball are insensitive, ignorant dolts.

No, I'm not Cynical, I'm Experienced.

I've been where you are, kid. It's a tough road, but don't let anyone mold you into something you don't want to be. And believe me, it's more important to be true to yourself, and enjoy this fleeting thing called your life, than it is to be "Cool". Peace, out.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

For the sake of pure knowledge, could someone tell me, please, what a GEEK exactly is?!

This is a hard one. It seems to mean different things to different people, and its meaning seems to have expanded more and more.

In its original meaning, it seems to tie a bunch of things together and just refer to people who do any of them together as "geeks". These things are:

Computer Science, Computer Repair, Computer Games
Science Fiction, Fantasy (books, movies, other things)
Games (Board Games, Role Playing Games, Collectable Card Games)

Since, in general, there were a lot of crossover, people who liked at one of those things LIKELY were into the rest of them(or at least SOME of the rest of them). Since, a large portion of the people into these things were also anti-social, they got picked on for being shy, quiet, and interested in (as the majority of people would say) "stupid, immature things".

These are the people who liked programming computers back when you could sit around in your basement for a week programming a computer to do some math, and they thought it was SOO cool.

Now, as computers became more useful and more mainstream, "geeks" started gaining positions of power. They were needed to make the computers work. So, now, it depends on who you ask what a geek is.

Some people believe that "geek" means anyone who puts too much effort into one thing. For instance, "band geeks", "baseball geeks", "car geeks", "art geeks". Pretty much, the word seems to mean NOW anyone who puts enough interest in one thing that people view them as weird or they don't get along with people as well.

As for nerd. It seems that as geeks came to be more and more either mainstream or a larger community, a lot of the geeky activities that used to be common amongst 90% of the geeks, now started splitting. People who were good at computers didn't necessarily like role playing games. People who liked role playing games might not like science fiction. From what I've been able to discover, it sounds like the less intense geeks found a name for the more intense geeks, "nerds". Their way of thinking was "I may know how to fix a computer, but THAT guy knows all the DOS commands, 5 programming languages and has spent the last 6 months attempting to build his own robot, what a NERD!".

Of course, as I discovered recent discovered that apparently, depending on who you are talking to, nerd and geek are reversed. I suggested to a role playing friend of mine that he was a geek and he got all angry. He said that he was NO geek, he might be a nerd for playing nerdy games, but he wasn't a loser like geeks were.

I guess, this being English, we'll never know if there is a RIGHT answer. All I know is that I like computers, work in the IT industry, like science fiction, fantasy, role playing games, board games, card games, comptuer games, and I consider myself a geek. All of my friends are too. I think there is nothing wrong with that.

Majoru Oakheart

 

[Umbran]

ANYONE, whos into ANYTHING that makes them embarassed and hide in the "closet" needs to seriously re-think their lives. There is NO GOOD REASON to be in the closet about ANYTHING. This is you. Stop acting like a timid child.

This is the real world. Stop acting like what other people think doesn't matter at all. Humans are social creatures. They need to be able to live and work in a society. If that society doesn't like something you do, you wind up in a bit of a pickle. Unless you're a hermit, the opinions of your friends and co-workers make a difference in how your life progresses, for good or ill.

That being said, there are a great many things for which it isn't anyone else's business. Humans have a nasty habit fo placing a negative stigma on things that don't matter. They shouldn't look down on you for playing D&D any more than they should look down on you for playing tennis rather than golf. But they do.

 

[Mark Chance]

In its original meaning, it seems to tie a bunch of things together and just refer to people who do any of them together as "geeks".

Actually, its original meaning is, "a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake." Such geeks were often chronic alcoholics who would do any number of self-destructive or self-debasing acts in order to get their hands on enough booze to stop the DTs.

Geek also means, "a person often of an intellectual bent who is disapproved of." This includes all of those people running around who think they are of an intellectual bent when in fact they're just bent.

As for the original post, I can only say this: Thank God I no longer care what very nearly every single person in the world thinks.

 

[Corinth]

This is the real world. Stop acting like what other people think doesn't matter at all. Humans are social creatures. They need to be able to live and work in a society. If that society doesn't like something you do, you wind up in a bit of a pickle. Unless you're a hermit, the opinions of your friends and co-workers make a difference in how your life progresses, for good or ill.

Anyone that dares to punish another for reasons that have nothing to do with a provable threat to the general welfare of the community or to its posterity are wrong and ought to be regarded appropriately.

That being said, there are a great many things for which it isn't anyone else's business. Humans have a nasty habit fo placing a negative stigma on things that don't matter. They shouldn't look down on you for playing D&D any more than they should look down on you for playing tennis rather than golf. But they do.

And when they do, they ought to be corrected for their wrong-doing.

 

[Stockdale]

This is the real world. Stop acting like what other people think doesn't matter at all. Humans are social creatures. They need to be able to live and work in a society. If that society doesn't like something you do, you wind up in a bit of a pickle. Unless you're a hermit, the opinions of your friends and co-workers make a difference in how your life progresses, for good or ill.

Reading this I'm reminded of a sign on the tattoo palor wall where I got my first tattoo. It read:

The only difference between tattooed people and non-tattooed people is that tattooed people don't care if your not tattooed.

Apply this principle to RPG or anything else for that matter. If it's not harmful, who cares what someone else thinks. (well - care about what your family thinks, but beyond them - so what.)