To be fair, D&D has given me friends, more confidence in public speaking, ability to work with others in a team, creative writing and problem solving, and a bunch of other skills that I think are applicable to the rest of my life. Increased vocabulary, probability solving, graphics skills… Oh, and I started learning Dutch to talk to one of my player/friend’s friends, so that counts too.
Also it has fueled my unhealthy obsession with spreadsheets and munchkinning, which I think are helpful.
I almost got to get into D&D, would still like to one day-a pity the place where I got to join in on a session closed down soon after…I actually enjoyed what little I got to do. Ah, embarrassment when you find you can apply the grease spell to enemy weapons,and one gets such a crit fail at holding it that he manages to skewer your character’s foot.
The guys who created D&D were tabletop war gamers who originally designed a fantasy tabletop miniatures variant that evolved from straight combat with fantasy elements into the character interaction based games we have today.
Those guys plagiarized … er .. were inspired … ah, who am I kidding …. they plagiarized anything and everything they came across that they thought would be neat in a fantasy setting. They got in a bit of trouble with some [so halflings, not hobbits and RING was a BAD word] and and others just gave em a stern warning not to do so again [Cthulhu/Elric], which they took to heart .
I liked some of the original spell setups that were just fun to read up on because they were just so geeky based on either pop culture or hard science
Magic missile [a noisy spell that never missed] Fist outstretched, thumb vertical, forefinger pointed at target and speak a power word like Smith&Wesson, Luger, Colt, Beretta, etc
Lightning bolt was a pointing a glass rod towards the target and rubbing it with a patch of fur or silk
Though to be fair, Gary Gygax thought Tolkien was boring and dismissive of “The Lord of the Rings”. He much preferred the swashbuckling fantasies of Conan the Barbarian. (ref: Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons).
So when D&D got a huge boost by that scene in ET, I lived on a farm out in the middle of nowhere. So no nearby friends, just livestock who aren’t very good at rolling dice. But my mom tried. She bought me an expansion pack. Not the base game, no dice or anything else, just an expansion rulebook. And then got mad because “you never play that new game I bought you!”
Wait, you’re telling me that you grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons but still managed to get both a wife and a kid. But Nerd culture tells me that’s impossible to do. No woman would ever come near a man who play D and D. Obviously the picture of the baby is a lie.
Naw Matt, the secret is just keeping your eyes open for a girl with geek creed and then pouncing on them like a velociraptor on an Australian saying “Clever girl.” I asked out an attractive Air Canada flight attendant and carefully hid my inner geek. A couple of dates in and I did the usual “Let’s see how awful her taste in books and movies is.” Peek at the bookshelf and movie collection. Oh my gawd! SF books, a copy of “Aliens” and several Star Wars films. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary the other day and our kids are all huge geeks, just like dad. They’re out there, just don’t miss them!
I showed this to the wife and she said “At the time you said you were also impressed that I had the first two Terminator movies.” She’s still not a Blade Runner fan, but I’ve learned to live with the disappointment. :-). All I can do is quote Steve Martin in “LA Story”: “I learned two things I will never forget: There is someone for everyone, even if you need a shovel and night goggles to find them. And second, romance is alive, deep in the heart of LA.”
So keep looking, I’m proof that an unrepentant nerd with an army of action figures and a collection of several thousand SF books can find a beautiful intelligent woman who enjoys watching SF shows with me on TV and puts up with me when I play “Rick and Morty” trivia with the kids in the car. :-))
The problem is that there needs to be some sort of universal (but subtle) “I’m a geek” pin or something you can wear that shows that you’re not a muggle. I’ll admit, I’m a 6’2” police officer, so not usually fitting the ‘pasty guy in his mom’s basement’ stereotype (although I certainly was in high school). I’ve seen people wearing tiny STTNG communicator pins as jewelry. Something like that can signal “I’m one of you.” I’ve found a number of fellow geeks in my job just by my habit of dropping obscure SF quotes and seeing one of them look up with a Spock eyebrow raised.
Any thoughts? The communicator pin is a good symbol, although then you have the SF / fantasy divide. I like hard SF with physics that’s not made up (although, yes, I love Red Dwarf) and swords and sorcery bores me, so you might want to have a standardized 3 or 4 pins to show what you like.
Someone should pounce aggressively on this and make it a thing that the nerd/geek community can buy into, especially those of us with jobs that don’t let you fly your geek flag. I can’t show up in uniform with my Tom Baker Dr.Who scarf, David Lister hat, and Serenity t-shirt added as accoutrements. 😉
Nerd Nurse – if I was single (and younger) I’d be trying to e-mail you. Keep looking – they’re out there!
From the other side of the equation, you’d think a colossal lifelong nerd girl would be drowning in potential dates, but alas, I remain single. Where are all these nerds/geeks waiting to pounce? If I could find one I’d force-drag him to the nearest Red Dwarf marathon.
Accolon: Force *and/or* drag? If you have a nerd card, now is the time to hand it over.
Nerd Nurse: I think it isn’t lack of interest as much as it is befuddlement. Most nerds I know are mostly concerned with period-accuracy and the concept of dating just doesn’t evolve from there.
There are such things as nerds who are NOT interested in Star Wars. I happen to be one of them, I only know what you’re accusing because the rest of my family is. And even then, it’s entirely reasonable for a nerd who sees the uncapitalized F to assume that it’s was a typo of “force/drag” rather than “Force-drag”.
Also, nerds tend to be introverts, so trapping them in the wild is problematic. One requires a safe socializing lair in which to initiate meaningful personal discourse.
Harry Otto Fischer and Fritz Leiber played what we would today recognize as a role-playing game — individual characters moving about and acting on a map of Lankhmar — before any of Tolkien’s tales of Middle Earth were published in 1937. The Swords and Sorcery writing of Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, and Michael Moorcock were a stronger influence on the development of role-playing games than the Heroic/Epic Fantasy genre because the protagonists of Swords and Sorcery tales tend to be self-motivated, rather than driven by other actors. Saruman and Sauron drive much of the action and events of The Lord of the Rings; the Fellowship of the Ring mostly react. Swords and Sorcery protagonist drive their own stories, wresting what they want from the world by trickery, force of arms, and foul sorcery. I’m not disputing that Tolkien’s work had an impact on the development of fantasy RPGs, but the impact of his work is, in general, vastly over-stated.
Blast from the recent past – the copyright says 2017.
On a side note, anyone else here who didn’t like Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (talking about the books here, I haven’t seen the movies)? I found them both rather tedious and anticlimactic.
Here! I started in both, never finished either and watched the movies instead. I found those easily as boring, but they do take less time. Also, you can watch the movies with friends who do like Tolkien and upset them.
I did play AD&D for a few years and I do enjoy the swords and sorcery genre, but Tolkien has nothing on folks like Leiber, Duncan and Moorcock, to name but a few.
Oh, NEWT testicles. At first I read “new testicles”, assuming the player felt emasculated and was looking for supplemental manhood perhaps as a way of escaping from eternal nerd-hood.
To be fair, D&D has given me friends, more confidence in public speaking, ability to work with others in a team, creative writing and problem solving, and a bunch of other skills that I think are applicable to the rest of my life. Increased vocabulary, probability solving, graphics skills… Oh, and I started learning Dutch to talk to one of my player/friend’s friends, so that counts too.
Also it has fueled my unhealthy obsession with spreadsheets and munchkinning, which I think are helpful.
I almost got to get into D&D, would still like to one day-a pity the place where I got to join in on a session closed down soon after…I actually enjoyed what little I got to do. Ah, embarrassment when you find you can apply the grease spell to enemy weapons,and one gets such a crit fail at holding it that he manages to skewer your character’s foot.
“A right kick up the baggins” Need to remember that one whenever Tolkien talk is tolked.
Interestingly, in Danish one would say “en spark bagi”.
Blaming the guy whose work INSPIRED the work you’ve wasted your life with seems really unfair.
This is like the opposite of the usual problem. That wasn’t supposed to be a reply.
Blaming the guy whose work INSPIRED the work you’ve wasted your life with seems really unfair.
Well, if you’re going to complain, you should never waste time with underlings… always go to the top!
The guys who created D&D were tabletop war gamers who originally designed a fantasy tabletop miniatures variant that evolved from straight combat with fantasy elements into the character interaction based games we have today.
Those guys plagiarized … er .. were inspired … ah, who am I kidding …. they plagiarized anything and everything they came across that they thought would be neat in a fantasy setting. They got in a bit of trouble with some [so halflings, not hobbits and RING was a BAD word] and and others just gave em a stern warning not to do so again [Cthulhu/Elric], which they took to heart .
I liked some of the original spell setups that were just fun to read up on because they were just so geeky based on either pop culture or hard science
Magic missile [a noisy spell that never missed] Fist outstretched, thumb vertical, forefinger pointed at target and speak a power word like Smith&Wesson, Luger, Colt, Beretta, etc
Lightning bolt was a pointing a glass rod towards the target and rubbing it with a patch of fur or silk
You are anot alone. This chap blamed it all on D&D as well
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1607816.The_Elfish_Gene
But lets be honest–personality is destiny. If it hadnt been D&D it would have been something else
Five seconds on Wikipedia say that nobody has any idea who invented bitcoin.
As to D&D, I was lucky enough to suck at it so much that I stopped playing before it could ruin my life. 😛
Though to be fair, Gary Gygax thought Tolkien was boring and dismissive of “The Lord of the Rings”. He much preferred the swashbuckling fantasies of Conan the Barbarian. (ref: Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons).
So when D&D got a huge boost by that scene in ET, I lived on a farm out in the middle of nowhere. So no nearby friends, just livestock who aren’t very good at rolling dice. But my mom tried. She bought me an expansion pack. Not the base game, no dice or anything else, just an expansion rulebook. And then got mad because “you never play that new game I bought you!”
Happy July 27 To you too Adam.
Wait, you’re telling me that you grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons but still managed to get both a wife and a kid. But Nerd culture tells me that’s impossible to do. No woman would ever come near a man who play D and D. Obviously the picture of the baby is a lie.
The man who refuses to believe that a nerd can get a date deserves to be staked, and then publicly humiliated.
You do realize I was being sarcastic right?
The idea of an undateable nerd is a very popular trope I assumed.
Naw Matt, the secret is just keeping your eyes open for a girl with geek creed and then pouncing on them like a velociraptor on an Australian saying “Clever girl.” I asked out an attractive Air Canada flight attendant and carefully hid my inner geek. A couple of dates in and I did the usual “Let’s see how awful her taste in books and movies is.” Peek at the bookshelf and movie collection. Oh my gawd! SF books, a copy of “Aliens” and several Star Wars films. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary the other day and our kids are all huge geeks, just like dad. They’re out there, just don’t miss them!
I showed this to the wife and she said “At the time you said you were also impressed that I had the first two Terminator movies.” She’s still not a Blade Runner fan, but I’ve learned to live with the disappointment. :-). All I can do is quote Steve Martin in “LA Story”: “I learned two things I will never forget: There is someone for everyone, even if you need a shovel and night goggles to find them. And second, romance is alive, deep in the heart of LA.”
So keep looking, I’m proof that an unrepentant nerd with an army of action figures and a collection of several thousand SF books can find a beautiful intelligent woman who enjoys watching SF shows with me on TV and puts up with me when I play “Rick and Morty” trivia with the kids in the car. :-))
The problem is that there needs to be some sort of universal (but subtle) “I’m a geek” pin or something you can wear that shows that you’re not a muggle. I’ll admit, I’m a 6’2” police officer, so not usually fitting the ‘pasty guy in his mom’s basement’ stereotype (although I certainly was in high school). I’ve seen people wearing tiny STTNG communicator pins as jewelry. Something like that can signal “I’m one of you.” I’ve found a number of fellow geeks in my job just by my habit of dropping obscure SF quotes and seeing one of them look up with a Spock eyebrow raised.
Any thoughts? The communicator pin is a good symbol, although then you have the SF / fantasy divide. I like hard SF with physics that’s not made up (although, yes, I love Red Dwarf) and swords and sorcery bores me, so you might want to have a standardized 3 or 4 pins to show what you like.
Someone should pounce aggressively on this and make it a thing that the nerd/geek community can buy into, especially those of us with jobs that don’t let you fly your geek flag. I can’t show up in uniform with my Tom Baker Dr.Who scarf, David Lister hat, and Serenity t-shirt added as accoutrements. 😉
Nerd Nurse – if I was single (and younger) I’d be trying to e-mail you. Keep looking – they’re out there!
From the other side of the equation, you’d think a colossal lifelong nerd girl would be drowning in potential dates, but alas, I remain single. Where are all these nerds/geeks waiting to pounce? If I could find one I’d force-drag him to the nearest Red Dwarf marathon.
If you need to force and/or drag him, he isn’t a nerd :-p
Accolon: Force *and/or* drag? If you have a nerd card, now is the time to hand it over.
Nerd Nurse: I think it isn’t lack of interest as much as it is befuddlement. Most nerds I know are mostly concerned with period-accuracy and the concept of dating just doesn’t evolve from there.
There are such things as nerds who are NOT interested in Star Wars. I happen to be one of them, I only know what you’re accusing because the rest of my family is. And even then, it’s entirely reasonable for a nerd who sees the uncapitalized F to assume that it’s was a typo of “force/drag” rather than “Force-drag”.
Also, nerds tend to be introverts, so trapping them in the wild is problematic. One requires a safe socializing lair in which to initiate meaningful personal discourse.
Harry Otto Fischer and Fritz Leiber played what we would today recognize as a role-playing game — individual characters moving about and acting on a map of Lankhmar — before any of Tolkien’s tales of Middle Earth were published in 1937. The Swords and Sorcery writing of Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, and Michael Moorcock were a stronger influence on the development of role-playing games than the Heroic/Epic Fantasy genre because the protagonists of Swords and Sorcery tales tend to be self-motivated, rather than driven by other actors. Saruman and Sauron drive much of the action and events of The Lord of the Rings; the Fellowship of the Ring mostly react. Swords and Sorcery protagonist drive their own stories, wresting what they want from the world by trickery, force of arms, and foul sorcery. I’m not disputing that Tolkien’s work had an impact on the development of fantasy RPGs, but the impact of his work is, in general, vastly over-stated.
Six words a new campaign should never be started with – “Hey, let’s all play chaotic evil.”
Six words a new player should never start a campaign with: “…Yes. I am definitely lawful good.”
Blast from the recent past – the copyright says 2017.
On a side note, anyone else here who didn’t like Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (talking about the books here, I haven’t seen the movies)? I found them both rather tedious and anticlimactic.
Here! I started in both, never finished either and watched the movies instead. I found those easily as boring, but they do take less time. Also, you can watch the movies with friends who do like Tolkien and upset them.
I did play AD&D for a few years and I do enjoy the swords and sorcery genre, but Tolkien has nothing on folks like Leiber, Duncan and Moorcock, to name but a few.
Oh, NEWT testicles. At first I read “new testicles”, assuming the player felt emasculated and was looking for supplemental manhood perhaps as a way of escaping from eternal nerd-hood.