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<blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 5164484" data-attributes="member: 20741">This is nonsense.&nbsp; The stigma to D&amp;D attached when it was described in the popular press a &quot;game for geniuses&quot; in the wake of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dallas_Egbert_III" target="_blank">the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III.</a>When D&amp;D was a &quot;game for genuises&quot; and got TONS of free press in the JDE III case, that was the time that the game never sold more copies and became a cultural phenomenon. I imagine a significant number of players from the late 70s and early 80s first heard of D&amp;D because of the covereage of the JDE III case in the mainstream media.It's a fine line between &quot;game for dorks&quot; and &quot;game for geniuses&quot;, but that's as good as it gets.You are never going to de-stigmatize pretendng to be an elf by rolling odd looking dice is something that isn't nerdy. It simply IS nerdy. Accept it; embrace your inner geek. The best you can do is to spin the nerdiness and pitch it as&nbsp; a &quot;game for geniuses&quot;, where at the least, the player can take solace in his obvious superior intellect. Despite the early success of selling D&amp;D as a &quot;game for geniuses&quot;, the game's subsequent owners seem to have felt that the pitch might persuade people to think that the game &quot;is not for them&quot; because they aren't &quot;smart enough for it&quot; -- even though they are. My guess is that this is retcon marketing spin from somebody who was never the intended audience for RPGs in the first place.I always thought that D&amp;D as a &quot;game for geniuses&quot; was a master-stroke, as it played upon all adolescent's desire to be somebody &quot;special&quot;. They might not be geniuses - but that does not mean that they don't prefer to think of themselves in that way.Don't turn down the nerdiness - turn it up!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Steel_Wind, post: 5164484, member: 20741"] This is nonsense. The stigma to D&D attached when it was described in the popular press a "game for geniuses" in the wake of [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dallas_Egbert_III"]the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III.[/URL] When D&D was a "game for genuises" and got TONS of free press in the JDE III case, that was the time that the game never sold more copies and became a cultural phenomenon. I imagine a significant number of players from the late 70s and early 80s first heard of D&D because of the covereage of the JDE III case in the mainstream media. It's a fine line between "game for dorks" and "game for geniuses", but that's as good as it gets. You are never going to de-stigmatize pretendng to be an elf by rolling odd looking dice is something that isn't nerdy. It simply IS nerdy. Accept it; embrace your inner geek. The best you can do is to spin the nerdiness and pitch it as a "game for geniuses", where at the least, the player can take solace in his obvious superior intellect. Despite the early success of selling D&D as a "game for geniuses", the game's subsequent owners seem to have felt that the pitch might persuade people to think that the game "is not for them" because they aren't "smart enough for it" -- even though they are. My guess is that this is retcon marketing spin from somebody who was never the intended audience for RPGs in the first place. I always thought that D&D as a "game for geniuses" was a master-stroke, as it played upon all adolescent's desire to be somebody "special". They might not be geniuses - but that does not mean that they don't prefer to [B][I]think[/I][/B] of themselves in that way. Don't turn down the nerdiness - turn it up! [/QUOTE]

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