Wednesday, September 23, 2009

My Life In Gaming

Originally this post was going to be about gamer pride, but I think it has become something else, its still about pride but I think I'm trying to work something out here. Bear with me. On the issue of pride I do want to say something though. I'm not going to lie and say I never hid the fact that I was a DnD nerd, I have, because I was young and insecure. Now I'm an adult and I'm not. I am a fucking nerd. I will not lie about it anymore, because I have a game (or type rather) that I love and it is no more bizarre than rooting for some football team from another state that you've never been on or some boxer you've never met, or having some goofy fantasy football league with your friends. It has weird rules and systems for achieving goals just like every sport or game out there. You're either proud to be a gamer, or you're a coward who won't freely admit who and what you are. It doesn't mean you have to scream it from a mountaintop and wear shirts and logos and bumper stickers, it just means you have to say, "No I can't hang out, I'll be playing DnD with some buddies." If people would judge you for rolling dice and not be your friend or make fun of you, they're cunts with small dicks and smelly vaginas that never grew up and still think they're in junior high. Go throw your pigskin around and drink your Bud Light, dude. Go enjoy your sick kegger at Troy's house, man. Go play Halo and hump the head of every person you frag. I'll be building a world in my brain.

Despite the apparent vehemence of that stuff, I've never felt persecuted for my pen and paper RPG love as a youth, at least not by "bullies" or schoolmates. I mean, the only people I knew were guys like me that played magic and DnD and did goofy shit like that. It was my family that persecuted me. Not in the "haha hehe you're a loser" way, but in the "you're a degenerate and this needs to stop" way. In fact, before my grandma died suddenly, one of the last conversations we ever had about anything was that she wanted me to stop playing Dungeons and Dragons because it was wrong and evil. I don't recall her mentioning anything about God or anything, but she did say it was bad.

I love my grandma and I respect and value all she did for me in life and I cherish every memory of her, including that one. She was a nice lady and was made of rainbows and pure win and she made awesome food. But she was a bigoted uninformed fool. If you want to read about all the ridiculous controversy regarding DnD, which I attribute to be the cause of my family's assumptions about its nature, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_controversies

It all started in church. I had a friend. His name was Aaron. He had some books. He showed them to me and I fell in love with the 90s artwork and the idea of being a knight or an elf or whatever my mind desired. Aaron, Tiki (another friend aslo into this sort of thing), and I made some characters and built some Lego guys to represent them. That's about as far as we ever got because no one knew how to DM. Anyway, at the time I was on Ritalin which has a side effect of making you not hungry (in addition to causing paranoia and liver damage) so at the time I was skipping lunch and hanging out in the library. I used the lunch money I saved to buy Magic cards. Somewhat unethical since my parents provided it, but they made me sell my Atari, so fuck them. Anyway, I was on Ritalin all the time so Aaron brought his books with him to church and with Ritalin fueled concentration I copied roughly 2/3s of the three main books onto scrap paper in illegible scrawls. While hanging out in the library during lunch I grew to be friends with Jeremy and Eric and a few other guys. We all ended up playing DnD during lunch eventually. Jeremy also gave me a bunch of Magic cards, which supposedly upset his parents. I still have them, and the box they came in stores DnD minis.

I don't remember how she found out, but eventually my mom knew I was playing DnD and it was a whole big thing. I don't recall her arguments about why it was bad, only that she did not approve. I don't recall if she ever tried to understand why I liked it, or if I even understood why at the time.

Eventually my grades in school dropped, maybe because of DnD, maybe not, I don't recall. She took all my painstakingly hand copied notes and character sheets from me, she told me I could have them back if my grades picked up. Or at least I thought that was the agreement. I stole some of my notes back (enough to make characters and monsters) and replaced them with new notes that were freshly scribble gibberish. Sarah wasn't the only thief in the family back then. I worked like a motherfucker to get my grades up, and they did go up, except my notes were not given back and my mom would not admit to any sort of agreement or deal of any kind. My eyes blazed with the rage of a thousand orcs that would not meet their death upon the plain of double-sided college ruled note paper.

Eventually I got a job and did whatever the fuck I wanted with my money and bought actual books and played DnD. My mom seemed to relax once I hit 18 and took me off Aderall and stopped stealing my shit. If she didn't relax, she at least kept her disapproval limited to sighs and throat noises and weird limitations on the length of time I could have friends over and on what days such things could happen and how many were allowed at a time. I threw her off the scent by wielding Shawn and Nate as weapons of distraction.

I'll be honest. I spent way too much time playing DnD and writing DnD related stuff on my computer and in classes. I should have been getting another job and doing this or that or the other or something. I was a fucking immature kid that didn't know shit. I didn't even really get mature until my twenties. Why you ask? Because I was fucked up on Ritalin and Aderall all my youth. Call me a whiner or a bitch, I don't give a shit, but those drugs mess you up, I recall feeling messed up all the time. My brain was surrounded by metaphysical goop that slowed everything down for me, stopped me from doing things and saying things that I wanted to say and do. Made me feel like I was missing out on something. Is that an excuse for not growing up until my mid-twenties? No. It was a factor though, at least I think so.

Anyway, that's a brief and probably only partially accurate history of me and DnD. People wonder why I'm so intense and angry about DnD and get so easily frustrated by people not caring. Why I had to DM drunk to amuse myself. This is why. I have worked hard and fought hard to have the right to play my beloved game every step of the way and when it turns sour on me I take it especially hard.

You know, I don't shout it from the mountaintops that I play DnD or GURPS or whatever you want to call it. But I am in no way ashamed of that fact. I don't whisper at work or around my family when I'm talking about throwing polyhedrons (at least not anymore). Its who I am. It probably bugs Eric that I won't hang out with his work friends, and I'm sorry for that. I am who I am and I'm not going to lie about it to his friends because he is ashamed of who he is. If they ask me what I do and what I'm about, GURPS and DnD are going to be the first few things on my lips after Heather and writing and if that happens, I'll probably bring Eric down with me.

I'm not some militant gaming geek, but if some dumb frat boy reject little bitch makes fun of my hobby, I'm sure as fuck going to give as good as I get.

I think I did work something out here. I've never really vented about all that too much. I think it is a pretty clear picture of me and how I feel. I really don't feel that I've ever been persecuted by people for being a DnD geek, just my family like I said, so I don't have some deep seated nerd rage buried away. I dunno, maybe this is about me judging Eric or being pissed off at my mom. Who knows. It is what it is and I feel better after writing it.

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