It's not really a big surprise to most people that I'm a bit of a geek. I do my best to hide it sometimes, but when it comes to my internet persona and the things I tend to write about, my closet geekiness is betrayed by my familiarity with l33t speak and comfortableness with dissecting various table top game rule sets. As I'm writing this I can literally see my readers clicking away from this story in hopes of not catching "Teh Geek" but bare with me for a moment!It Ain't Easy Being Geeky
Being a geek ain't easy. Honestly it's not. Being a gay geek is a special type of problem. Being a gay geek that knows how to interact with a group of human beings in a social setting and a geek that enjoys life away from the 20-sided die on occasion is even harder. You see, I like games. Board games, video games, table-top role playing games, collectible card games: you name it, I probably like it. But what I don't like are the people that sometimes come with those games.
I'm not one to often stereotype, but sometimes stereotypes exist because they are more often true than not. When you think about "gamer" in the sense I described above, you often think: anti-social, poor hygiene, a severe lack of style, an obsession with Mountain Dew and Cheetos, an inability to discuss topic non-game related. I'm sure you can name a few more, but in an effort to not be a total ass I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Given these stereotypes, you can understand how it might be difficult for someone who is socially well-adjusted, if a bit shy, and who does value showering, and who does enjoy clothing that was purchased within the past 2 years, and who does pay attention to the world outside of the gaming microcosm, to fit in with the stereotype crowd. And that's where I'm at right now.
Hate The Player, Not The Game
Earlier this week a friend invited me to a Dungeons and Dragons night at a local games shop. Being that I really enjoy D&D (as us geeks are prone to call it) and that I haven't found a group to play with in quite a while, I took my friend up on the offer. I did not have time to get a character together or even make it to the store by the start of the game, but I wanted to go and at least be in the environment to see if I would want to play with the group at all. I'm pretty glad that I did not get as involved as making a character though because I was met with a unmovable wall of stereotype that just turned me and my friend completely off of the scene.The table was packed full of the usual suspects: dirty clothes, unnaturally bad BO, an inability to introduce oneself to others, an strong aversion to making eye contact, a sick perverse desire to tell others how and what to do, blank stares and questioning looks when common pop culture references are made. It was not pleasant experience. But we decided to stick it through and see where the evening went. After all, the entire table wasn't occupied by weirdos. Myself, my friend and one of his other friends were there, so that accounted for something…. Ok, well, there were a couple others too, but they were hard to see through the haze of peculiar BO.
The evening continued with all the cast of players doing precisely what you would expect. The shyest of the players never spoke, the anti-social tried to commandeer everything, the smellies lifted their damned arms every 3 seconds, and the outright creeps just kept staring at everyone with a look that only a Dohmer would understand. That's not even to mention that the game did not start until almost 2 hours after the designated start time, and when my friend announced to the group we were heading home after an encounter we were scolded with "these games will go till at least 11 pm when we play, you should probably plan on that next time." That caused me to turn my head like a dog who doesn't understand what is being said to him and blink uncontrollably while I tried to understand this person's concept of congeniality.
The Solution, It Has Eluded Me
The big problem is every time I want to play D&D or another style game, I run into variations on this crowd. I can't seem to get other people who are more attuned with my sensibilities to even consider the game, and I can't really bring myself to deal with the normal crowd of players. I want to play, but I don't want to play on the terms that I'm presented with.
Normally at this point, I'd say that means I either have to "buck up or shut up." Either accept the terms presented (with all the "special" people involved) or move on and forget about it. D&D should be about fun and adventure, about stepping into a novel that you and your friends create as you go. It shouldn't be about persevering the literal unwashed masses. It should involve willpower checks for my character, not tests of my personal willpower to deal with anti-social people.
So what do I do? If I continue down the path I'm currently on of finding random games to get involved in, I'm likely to run up against the same results. After thinking about it for far too long, I came to the obvious conclusion: start my own game with just my friends! Yeah, I know, took me long enough to reach that conclusion, right? It is a foreign concept though because I've only ever been a player, never the other side of the table, but it look like that's the leap I'll have to make if I want to keep up gaming.
Plus then I can change the campaigns to involve far more LGBT characters than any other setting I've played before. Maybe then I can work in my tranny dwarf assassin into the story too...
4 comments:
You're a step ahead of me: at least you have a few local friends who seem to share your desire to play. I'm both saddened and confused by your experience, though: you'd think in this day and age the stereotype that was created maybe 20 years ago is still perpetuated by living examples, despite my belief that gamers as a whole have actually moved more towards the mainstream, and that these bozos haven't caught on to that trend.
When I was younger, I would play RPGs with one other friend. Just one! We had many great games, and didn't need a whole retinue to enjoy it. If you and 2 others commit, then you'll have no problem getting things running smoothly, I'm sure.
Another option is the virtual table top. Suites like FantasyGrounds.com, RPTools.net, d20Pro.com and others allow you to run almost any kind of game over the internet, complete with maps, virtual handouts and more. In fact, these apps can do things that live games can't, like simulate line of sight and handle initiative and stats tracking.
Have not played pen & paper D&D for ages, aka over 10 years or so, and use substitute fantasy literature and computer games.
The situation is as you described, and by now I fear the players are younger than me at somewhat over 30 by now.
It was hard to get D&D going outside of your own group. It is interesting how mini-teams or whole circles form, and now try to make a mix of these groups play together.
I had positive experiences as well, but often I could not stay in touch with the players involved and only once met a nice player again.
let me know ill come up one weekend and get geeky with ya
Have you considered that the problem isn’t with ‘them’ but with you?
Reading your post I think you should take a look at your own anti-social behaviour. Turning up late and not wanting get involved you became an intrusion . Many gamers are geeks and might not have great social skills, but instead of working around that you seem to have placed yourself in a position of smug superiority – no wonder they were reluctant to interact with you. If your own social skills are so exemplary it should have been easy to make the shy players comfortable in your presence and curb the ‘controllers’, right?
And how much of the late start was due to waiting for you to make a character? From what I see of your actions you turn up late, delay the game by being unprepared, intimidate others with an attitude that the geeks recognise belonging to a bully, disrupt the flow of the game getting your character into the story and leave almost immediately, disrupting the story even further. I’m sure they’ll be so disappointed that your, frankly, disruptive presence wont be there. If you had any concept of congeniality you would understand this. Perhaps you’re better suited to logging onto WoW.
Oh and it’s ‘Dahmer’ not ‘Dohmer’.
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