Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="nute" data-source="post: 1655864" data-attributes="member: 10607">Exactly. You associate the hobby with the people you've met who share it. But without that personal experience, people tend to fall back on the stereotype.   My personal view is that, to eliminate a stereotype, you not only have to have people act in different ways against type (as in, not fit the mold of the classic "geek gamer" and show that all sorts of folks play D&D) - but you have to also work to eliminate the recognized stereotype. Not that the guy with the Doritos stains on his GENCON '97 t-shirt and the bag of D20s on his belt is a bad guy, or a loser, or anything like that - but he's what the public sees as the ambassador of the genre, because he's the most easily reduced to a unique cipher for the game.  It's all PR. A style of clothing might be unfashionable until people see lots of folks wearing it, then it becomes acceptable. Take men wearing earrings and long hair in the workplace. Used to be only acceptable if you were a dockworker or musician - now it's not unusual to see it in a business office from time to time. D&D is like that. Most people consider it "unfashionable", until it starts becoming widespread enough to change their minds. In the 80's and early 90's, TSR ended up dropping the ball on that score by encouraging the stereotype - even I'm still almost embarassed now when I look back at the ads for old D&D products. Nowadays, you look at the ads in a magazine or a comic book, and even if you're not a gamer - they look pretty cool. Gets more people interested, expands the fanbase, and by slow osmosis the game becomes more publicly understood and accepted.</blockquote>

Verification