EUOLogy #7

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

reference: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=883

On a similar AND related note: CM has written a column about how gamers need a secret sign. Something they can leave out in the open on their desk at work so other gamers will recognize them and they can form a group, but innocuous so other co-workers don't learn about it. We're gettin all Masonic up in here.

Because, y'know, my action figures don't target me for enough mockery.

[Spriggan]

Hah, even the title of the article is an inside joke with the gameing group.

[JP Dogberry]

Yes, we need a secret sign, but more for the fact that Roleplaying doesn't tend to come up in general conversation. And because it's cool.

All my coworkers know I roleplay - I read D&D manuals between doing work at work. Never made an attempt to hide it. That said, my other coworker is notorious cosplayer.

Brisbane has a solution to not knowing gamers: anyone who plays RPGs will be at the BIG weekend. Just meet people there. Network people, NETWORK!

As for the article itself, let me see if I understood it correctly: If I stop gaming I will be able to get a girlfriend?  

[42]

There is a certain mystique to hiding ones gaming activities. You get to kind of pretend that your a spy or something, having to cover your activities. Course your activities aren't really threatening anyone, which makes it all the more entertaining on a inside level.

Course I work with a really cool guy who's a secret agent for US government. Really he's just schtizophrenic, but I should ask him if secret agents really just get together to play D&D. I think I'd be relieved if he said yes.

[stacer]

However, as long as The Man is more likely to get a girlfriend than your average "outed" gamer, I suspect we all will continue live our dual lives.

Ah, the real fear comes out: worried that girls will think he's weird. Perhaps I'm just the odd girl, but I don't find gaming guys weird. At least, not all of them.   I have a feeling that if they're weird, it's not the gaming, it's just plain weirdness.

And this is coming from someone who doesn't play and hasn't ever played. I might good-naturedly roll my eyes at it. But each of us is quirky in our own ways, so you just take it as it comes.

[Nicadymus]

Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt

[Fellfrosch]

When I was dating my wife, and things began to get serious, I came to the conclusion that if we were to develop any kind of long-term commitment it would have to include at least tolerance, if not acceptance, of my gaming. As it happened we were on Christmas Break at the time, and I was getting together with some old friends from High School for an evening of WEG Star Wars. I bit the bullet and just invited her to come, and rolled up a character for her and everything (she was a bounty hunter). After four hours of rolling dice and shooting Gamorreans she emerged as one of only two players who hadn't been killed, and I knew that I had found a woman I could spend the rest of my life with.

Which is not to say that she's ever roleplayed since, or even played a 4-hour game, but at least she doesn't think I'm a freak (well, not much of one).

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

or maybe she just likes freaks.

[EUOL]

Heh.  I know this column wasn't the most original around, but after gaming on Thursday, I just had to tell some of the stories about our group's methods.  Honestly, I crack up every time I listen to one of us trying to explain what we're doing on the phone.  (Micah got the call last night.)

I exaggerated a bit, probably.  We do have fun with our pretending to be scared that people will find out what we're doing.  (Earl, the eternal joker, often quips to people when they come downstairs "Hey!  Who left all this nerd junk all over our room?  Some geeks must have broken into our house and scattered it about.)

Still, it's funny how uncomfortable our gaming makes us.  And it's even more funny of fast Gunda picked up on that sentiment.  I do think a lot of women, however, have a tough time understanding what we're doing.


(I will note, however, that they don't seem QUITE as disapproving as they do of video games.  This is an older rant, of course, but why in the world are so many women anti-video games?  My poor married friends get pale at the mere mention of VGs.  "Oh, my wife doesn't let me play those.")

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I don't get it either. However, I took my wife to this class last night and I sat in the lobby and waited for her while my in-laws babysat the kids. I got in 3 hours of gaming (y'know, when I COULD have been writing).

[42]

I think that playing rpgs and other games being disapproved of by some is kind of wierd. The one thing I often point out is that for many gamers, it's the most social thing they do. You actually have to have quite a few social skills if you are to manage a gaming obsession for any reasonalbe amount of time. There are quite a few people with whom I don't game with anymore because they just lack the prerequisite ability to socialize and play with others.

Course, I think a lot people think of socializing for guys as either playing sports or dating. I think that is a fairly narrow view and creates more sociapaths than any amount of geek gaming will ever create.

Now video games. It was when my fmaily got together for the last of my older brothers to get married. Being the current oldest unmmarried child in my family, the family started chastizing me about the evils of video games. I blew them off as being superstitious. But there is definitely a stigma against video games, though it's amuch larger industry than rpgs or tcgs. And a lot of video game players are women.

What I find to be geeky, is women who scrapbook. It just screams, "I don't want to live in the present, so I spend all my time reliving the past."

And the ultimate worst in my book, is any man or women who has absolutely no hobbies at all. That is just a complete set up for severe elderly mental illness and dimensia. I've met just scores of elderly who've ended up unable to function in life because they didn't develope any hobbies. They all felt it was more socialbly acceptable to just work all the time. So when they can't work anymore, guess what?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I... I agree.
Can I say that to 42?

[MsFish]

So I am a closet geek who lives with three painfully normal roommates.  (Sadly, my fishing roommates have moved out.)

On Wednesday, my roommate Stephanie says to me, "What are you doing Saturday night?"

And I tell her, "I'm roleplaying."

She looks at me.  "You're what?"

"I'm roleplaying.  You know, like, you've heard of Dungeons and Dragons?"

She nods.  

"Sort of like that, only it's a different game."

Stephanie stares at me.  "And you're excited about this?"

I tell her that yes, I am in fact excited about it, though at that particular moment what I'm excited about is the fact that Stephanie thinks I'm weird.

Another friend asked me a similar question, and when I told her she raised her eyebrows at me and said, "uh, you have fun with that."

Maybe it's different for me because I'm a girl, or maybe I just like to shatter sterotypes, but it makes me so happy when people ask me questions like that.  I don't know though, being evasive about it sounds like fun too.  

[Entsuropi]

I think you break the maximum wierdness threshhold for Utah

[42]

There can never be too much wierdness in Utah. Just when you think things are getting "normal" in Utah, something happens.