Role-playing games

I wrote this in 2004 as an assignment for school.

In April of 2002, I rushed to the bookstore to see my name in print; I was now a professional writer. Having just been paid and published for the first time, I was excited. I wanted to show someone, but I was embarrassed because I had written for a genre so taboo in certain circles that I had to come up with clever names for it in order to add it to my resume. I had written a game supplement for a role-playing game. Role-playing games and those who participate in them are often negatively stereotyped. However, the truth about gamers has yet to be discovered by the general public. Gamers, like any other group of people, have merits and flaws. But their accurate faults are not the ones by which they are known. These false stereotypes are the reason that most gamers go to lengths to hide their hobby.

Role-players, or gamers as they call themselves, are often seen through a skewed eye. The popular belief outside of gaming is varied, based on the many erroneous examples that have been shown to the world. For example, the 1980 Tom Hanks film “Monsters and Mazes” depicts a young man who has lost touch with reality after playing a game like “Dungeon & Dragons.” Additionally, news stories in the mid-90s reported about a game called “Vampire: the Masquerade,” noting that the children who played it were deviant and believed they were vampires.

The false image of gamers has extended to religious groups and government agencies, as well. Several churches have declared that it leads to Satan worship and other dark rituals. Organizations like Patricia Paling’s BADD (Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons) claim that the hobby is addictive and evil. During background investigations for security clearances, people I know were asked if the role-playing groups to which they belonged were subversive. In addition, some military commands have banned role-playing games from recreational centers.

Finally, gamers are sometimes seen as mentally inferior to people with more traditional hobbies, like athletics or model-making. Many people still have the image of gamers as a group of 12-year-old boys with poor social skills and bad hygiene, sitting alone in their parent’s basement on a Friday night, rolling dice and acting immaturely.

With so many misperceptions in society, the gaming community feels the need to obfuscate its hobby. It is no small wonder that when I wrote my resume, I listed my writing credit as “Freelance author: Researched and wrote a chapter of instruction manual for a strategy game.” When reserving space for a game, my Thursday night gaming group tells the venue we are a theater troupe. And when telling work friends where I go on Thursday night, I say a writers’ group. All these statements, while accurate, are carefully veiled to avoid giving people the wrong impression.

However, I believe the media purposely skews the facts for sensationalism. Although some teenagers who play role-playing games may lose touch with reality, in my twenty-three years associated with the hobby, I have never met one. In fact, I believe that the number of gamer teenagers who lose touch with reality is the same as that of any other group of teenagers. As for fetish-like behavior, again, I believe this is a false number used in order to scare parents or sell newspapers. Although I have met one person who believed he was a vampire, he thought this before the game was ever published, and our gaming group was initially unaware of his desire to drink blood for power. We found out about his behavior after he had a run-in with local law enforcement, at which point we banned him from our game.

In general, gamers do not follow any particular social norm religiously. My experience has been that gamers come from all faiths and levels of devotion. In my last game, we had three seminary students, one of whom went on to be a Methodist minister. We also had several non-practicing Catholics and a few New Age Pagans. As a whole, role-players form a group that is tolerant of other beliefs. The subversive angle is off the mark as well. Many gamers have a heroic nature and a strong sense of personal honor or patriotism. Gaming is one of the most popular things a soldier can do in a mud field in Eastern Europe. All you need is your imagination, so it has a strong presence in military free time.

The image of gamers as somehow lacking social skills has some basis in reality, as most gamers are avid readers or bookworms. This affinity for reading is often viewed by the general public, especially NASCAR fans and football fanatics, as socially unacceptable. Despite the fact that many gamers have a penchant for drama, which is only outdone by actors and drag queens, most adult gamers do not lack social or intellectual skills. For instance, I played with a Stamford Law student in the summer, and I challenged any non-gamer to enter into a political debate with him.

Socially, gamers are more open to diversity than most groups I know. Last week, I sat in a room and watched two gamers hatch a detailed political maneuver, sighting recent current events and market trends above my comprehension. They did this within the framework of a game set in modern times. But what I find really interesting about these two gamers is their friendship. One man is a self-acclaimed conservative Catholic Republican, and his friend is a young, hip, gay Pagan. The truth is, I game with men and women from ages 18 to 55. Some are doctors and lawyers; some are teachers and students. Most have college degrees.

So, are gamers Satanic trolls or modern wizards? What is the truth behind these false stereotypes? The fact of the matter is that gamers fall somewhere in between. They have their faults and strengths, but when you add the positives and subtract the negatives, they are just average people with unique hobbies.