So when I heard that Mr. Gygax passed away, it took me back to the days when I would pore through all the handbooks, monster manuals, and guides, trying to figure out how many experience points it would take till I got to the cool spells for my elf/ranger, what beast I might encounter, and how in the world could I incorporate a some cool weapon into my repertoire. I also just read this article by Adam Rogers who is an editor for Wired magazine (You'll have to read it to get the full effect, and there is a wicked-awesome flow-chart they put together to accompany the story). He posits that for many people D&D was the "gateway drug" for people's fascination with fantasy, science fiction and even computers. The doorway to geekdom, if you will.
I think Mr. Rogers is of a slightly older generation than I am, but it's an interesting idea. I don't know that to me it was the beginning point - I was already into Star Wars, fantasy novels (EarthSea trilogy anybody?) and Lord of the Rings type stuff. But D&D was cool in that you could take control of the characters and have more of a choose-your-own-adventure type of experience. The problem is that we never really got too far beyond the setting up. I think that part of the reason was that we had this sense that our new Nintendos would be doing all of the prep work and Dungeon Mastering for us which was the hard part anyway. Zelda may have started it off for us, but games now are way beyond what I ever hoped for in D&D. I do like a good RPG. Still, there was something simple and fun about rolling dice to see about an outcome.
I may not have been a big gamer, but I will always be glad that Jeremy Wilkins set up our first real game during recess in 6th grade. My fantasy world view definitely expanded, and I realized there was more to life than outdoor sports activities. I started to read beyond the usual young fiction into the more geeky stuff like Dragonlance. You should check out the article - it goes a long way to explain the significance of D&D to many. Plus it gave us that awesome D&D cartoon that would run on Saturday mornings. How can you beat that? Long live the geek.
4 comments:
You are a geek. But then, I think that most of us have some geekiness in us, but for different things.
Dude, I love your sweet ass-blog. Should we go to recess or stay inside and play D&D? I seem to remember we were told, by the teachers,to go outside.
Oh we were. Mrs. Allen was having nothing to do with our D&D adventures. So we had to move underground. Which meant not really doing much. But we sure wanted to!
yeah G, I love your ass-blog too. I mean, your sweet-ass blog. (sorry marz that was too funny to pass up)
I remember rolling up characters a few times but never getting very far into a campaign. In fact one time I seem to remember rolling up characters, and then setting up and equipping legos minifigs as our avatars (as though D&D alone wasn't bad enough)
Recently I listened to some very funny fellows who were getting introduced to the newest set of D&D rules. It's 3 different webcomic artists, 2 of whom are long time D&D players and 1 who had managed to avoid it until this introduction. Just a warning, these guys swear... a lot... like as much as teen aged boys... but I thought it was pretty funny.
Penny Arcade D&D round 1
Penny Arcade D&D round 2
Penny Arcade D&D round 3
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