This is a rather long (and slightly modified) reply to a great piece on another blog, The Coxcomb. You can find the original article here for context: http://www.thecoxcomb.com/2012/07/12/in-praise-of-fallen-titans/
I took a job a the local GW store a number of years ago when i was in my mid-20s and New England still had Games Workshop stores — all are now shut down, and Holyoke 131 was one of the first to go. blah blah independent retailers, but the fact is that GW-US got cheap and abruptly screwed their fanbase. While I worked there, though, it was a huge turning point in my life.
See, i had been in a bad rut for awhile — easy to do living in a college town and one of the few people i know with a real job. it was easy, clinging to the friends of mine who never moved on after college, spending a lot of time with my alcoholic roommate who did everything he could to sabotage me (including trying, successfully in the worst possible instance for both of us, to date all my exes, but that's a story for later).
It was then when i started playing 40K, giving me an outlet that took me to new groups of people and better quality of interactions — alcoholic roommate spouted some BS about how any game with randomization was not fun, because you could lose by luck instead of by skill, so while an ardent RPG player, he would never stoop to minis gaming. GW effectively gave me an outlet for my geekdom that he refused to be a part of, and that made it even more appealing.
Then, i went through a terrible portion of time — the end of which saw significant turmoil in my life, and a lot of bad decisions. the following summer came to me unemployed until school started again, with a new roommate-couple who never paid bills on time or left their room, and another one who blamed his belated lapse into depression on everyone else, especially me -- because ordering pizza and playing video games all day is apparently a secret code for "let's hang out," and my suggestions for hanging out being shot down were cries for help. What's worse, hitting that level of depression is not only damaging to everyone surrounding, but if the person in question has no health insurance, also without real help or end in sight, so it was just easier to blame everyone else.
Meanwhile, i had just started dating this great woman, who bought me food over the summer since all my savings went into the bills my roommates screwed me out of. I spent more and more time with her, because it was easier than dealing with the baggage of every other situation, and because with her was the only situation where I got back anywhere near what I had to put in. I made it through the summer by way of cooking for her when she bought the groceries, and I waited for September and regular paychecks to begin again.
I had an interview at the GW store, and while it didn't kick in until the fall, the new job was again GW saving me. This time, though, it came with a difference.
The lovely lady from before, now my wife of four years, moved in to help with rent and the hermits moved out. We worked in the same mall, and i had a day-job as an English teacher, so the only time we got to spend together was minis-related. she'd stop by on break, or come in with me on a day that she didn't work, or we'd paint together on a night off. Depressed roommate nearly got us evicted because he spent all his money on pizza and video games, but he was out of the picture and I had plenty of time together with the woman who mattered.
The only problem with this scenario was that, no matter how much i tried, this game took so much of my life with it and yet it was inaccessible to my significant other. I had been charmed and entranced by the greek-myth-esque story of the Primarchs and the war for Terra, the brief hints of Commoragh, the bravery of the first Deathwing, and the tragedy of some of the failures of great figures, such as Magnus and Ahriman. my painting was nothing special. V — my wife — was an artist, and loved the painting aspect of the game, but cared little for the fluff and nothing for the actual game. As time has gone on, and the 40k universe teeters between being an interesting, compelling world and a 15-year-old boy's wet dream, it has lost most of what would bring many female gamers to the table in the same way that the comic book industry has.
40k saved my sanity and marked the growing-up i did in my life. But while V is quite willing to paint daemonettes, and vaguely assemble a collection of Sisters of Battle minis (to be equipped with chaos backpacks and greenstuffed out of their nun-bobs), she becomes less willing to engage with the fluff the more she reads. War is a heroic topic and setting, but the greatest war movies have complicated plots that involve people being human despite their responsibilities. 40k has genetic supersoldiers and xenophobia. Women are virtually uninvolved — besides the joke that is the current incarnation of the Sisters, the bondage-themed deathcult assassins, and the uglified birdlike new daemonettes, there's nothing explicitly feminine in the entire world. Eldar are blended together, but in a way that loses distinction instead of accentuating it.
As immature and 80s as it sounded, building-sex on a daemon planet is better than the unnecessary and inexplicable butchering of Sisters to anoint the armor of the Grey Knights. Over-the-top ridiculous, true, but that's the appeal — better that than needlessly misogynist in the name of gritty grimdark. Every example of the latter makes it that much more impossible to share my hobby with a majority of my friends and loved ones, especially the female ones. Despite having saved me the better part of a decade ago, the modern GW has done wonders to complicate my life rather than make it better, by sinking into a different kind of immaturity than its relatively innocent predecessors.
There is something missing from the current embodiment, perhaps an effect of the wrong writers or the wrong understanding of audience, but it’s only gotten worse lately. Much like in the 6th ed book, the game itself stand on the edge of a great leap forward, but is threatened to be dragged down the wrong path...
Friday, August 3, 2012
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Gamer divisions
Gamers are not all awkward.
I remember in college, like everything in college, your choice of where to eat defined something about you as a person. Many of my cohabitators in Orchard Hill at Umass would walk down toward Central dining common, because it was closer to their classes and the center of campus. Often, I would go the other way, to the Worcester DC, because I had friends I could reliably meet there.
WDC had three options back then, with different nicknames. I've forgotten their real ones. Barracks was the regular cheap-food fare. Basics was the no-red-meat-organic-veggie-option location. And Pastabilities offered some sort of mock-italian done for too many people to be really good. The first was where my floormates would eat, were they in the area. The second was where my brother and his friends, and the campus pagans that were friends with his friends would eat. The final option was where the hardcore gamers would hang out and the fencing team would carboload. At virtually any meal-time of the day, there were people I knew in one location.
Notice that I said the “hardcore gamers” ate in Pastabilities, which I think was technically (and far too classily) named The Oak Room. Because of these places, I forever have made distinctions between Pastabilities gamers and Basics gamers, or perhaps a better phrasing is “hardcore gamers” versus “gamers and....”
The group I played AD&D with was almost exclusively made up of current and prior Basics people. The two co-DMs the people running things, writing plots, playing characters, etc) were both involved in theater. The players were people I knew socially. One of them, junior year, threw house parties regularly bringing in over a hundred people from the various subcultures in the area. Another compelled us to reroute game one night to see him die as Rosencrantz... or Guildenstern... I'm not sure he knew which. Another was a survival camping enthusiast and knife collector (there's a great story about when his roommate sat on a spiked shield in their room). Another was a consummate musician that played electric violin for a 2nd tier band's tours. We'd order boneless wings from The Hangar, grab a few sixes of Woodchuck, and settle in for a 5-7 hour D&D session each week, gaming bringing us together and our various interests making us play these characters in drastic or unique ways.
What did this get us? Well, one can argue the practicality of any hobby. In the end, camaraderie and fun. But it was also a broadening experience. Tabletop RPGs had a bad name then – it wasn't the parental stigma of idiots like Pat Pulling or religious crusaders trying to net audiences with moral panic, but the social stigma of being involved in something that wasn't sports related. Being the tail end of Gen-X, it was uncool to “do” things, unless you were a jock. I was, of course, not – my hometown was one of the few places in the US that cared about soccer, so having no real interest in the game made me an instant outsider. I was an Eagle Scout, a Vigil Honor OA member, a trumpet in the band, and I had an older brother who was so smart he intimidated his teachers. I was bound to actually care about things, to belong to some sort of informal or formal group, because I didn't care if it was cool.
One of my wife's favorite gamer quotes was a joke (supposedly) from one of my GW coworkers. Any time someone says something phenomenally awkward with no real direction, she'll repeat it. “Everybody look at the clipboard!” no, there's not any more to it, nor any backstory. Just a pause in conversation and an awkward moment waiting for more. The hardcore gamers might understand that as familiar – a moment of social awkwardness when someone tried (and failed) to do something clever, maybe because they didn't understand what clever would in fact be in that moment. This is the Hardcore gamer – surrounded by people who are also gamers, but with few interests outside of geekdom. Half the gaming culture on campus was Hardcore – people whose weekends were larps and whose nights were spent cloistered with computer games at night, whose humor was repetition of events from an rpg or references to a computer game or sci-fi tv show. These people were fun, if you liked sci-fi and gaming, but had precious few other things to talk about. Often, they were quiet at parties, clustered together instead of mingling, in their own world.
But they too were having fun.
See, in the end, both groups did what they loved. They found like-minded people with whom they shared interests, even if their interests were more narrow. The ones I'm still in contact with are mostly successful, finding a niche where they belong and enjoy their lives, even if they are not excelling in competitive fields. Since my field (education) is noncompetitive at my level, I certainly am in that same boat. And while the former were more fun to play a TRPG with due to diverse personalities, the latter were among those who taught me 40k, which is now a bigger influence on my life.
In other words, if it doesn't hurt anyone, then do what you love. It will lead you to more love.
I remember in college, like everything in college, your choice of where to eat defined something about you as a person. Many of my cohabitators in Orchard Hill at Umass would walk down toward Central dining common, because it was closer to their classes and the center of campus. Often, I would go the other way, to the Worcester DC, because I had friends I could reliably meet there.
WDC had three options back then, with different nicknames. I've forgotten their real ones. Barracks was the regular cheap-food fare. Basics was the no-red-meat-organic-veggie-option location. And Pastabilities offered some sort of mock-italian done for too many people to be really good. The first was where my floormates would eat, were they in the area. The second was where my brother and his friends, and the campus pagans that were friends with his friends would eat. The final option was where the hardcore gamers would hang out and the fencing team would carboload. At virtually any meal-time of the day, there were people I knew in one location.
Notice that I said the “hardcore gamers” ate in Pastabilities, which I think was technically (and far too classily) named The Oak Room. Because of these places, I forever have made distinctions between Pastabilities gamers and Basics gamers, or perhaps a better phrasing is “hardcore gamers” versus “gamers and....”
The group I played AD&D with was almost exclusively made up of current and prior Basics people. The two co-DMs the people running things, writing plots, playing characters, etc) were both involved in theater. The players were people I knew socially. One of them, junior year, threw house parties regularly bringing in over a hundred people from the various subcultures in the area. Another compelled us to reroute game one night to see him die as Rosencrantz... or Guildenstern... I'm not sure he knew which. Another was a survival camping enthusiast and knife collector (there's a great story about when his roommate sat on a spiked shield in their room). Another was a consummate musician that played electric violin for a 2nd tier band's tours. We'd order boneless wings from The Hangar, grab a few sixes of Woodchuck, and settle in for a 5-7 hour D&D session each week, gaming bringing us together and our various interests making us play these characters in drastic or unique ways.
What did this get us? Well, one can argue the practicality of any hobby. In the end, camaraderie and fun. But it was also a broadening experience. Tabletop RPGs had a bad name then – it wasn't the parental stigma of idiots like Pat Pulling or religious crusaders trying to net audiences with moral panic, but the social stigma of being involved in something that wasn't sports related. Being the tail end of Gen-X, it was uncool to “do” things, unless you were a jock. I was, of course, not – my hometown was one of the few places in the US that cared about soccer, so having no real interest in the game made me an instant outsider. I was an Eagle Scout, a Vigil Honor OA member, a trumpet in the band, and I had an older brother who was so smart he intimidated his teachers. I was bound to actually care about things, to belong to some sort of informal or formal group, because I didn't care if it was cool.
One of my wife's favorite gamer quotes was a joke (supposedly) from one of my GW coworkers. Any time someone says something phenomenally awkward with no real direction, she'll repeat it. “Everybody look at the clipboard!” no, there's not any more to it, nor any backstory. Just a pause in conversation and an awkward moment waiting for more. The hardcore gamers might understand that as familiar – a moment of social awkwardness when someone tried (and failed) to do something clever, maybe because they didn't understand what clever would in fact be in that moment. This is the Hardcore gamer – surrounded by people who are also gamers, but with few interests outside of geekdom. Half the gaming culture on campus was Hardcore – people whose weekends were larps and whose nights were spent cloistered with computer games at night, whose humor was repetition of events from an rpg or references to a computer game or sci-fi tv show. These people were fun, if you liked sci-fi and gaming, but had precious few other things to talk about. Often, they were quiet at parties, clustered together instead of mingling, in their own world.
But they too were having fun.
See, in the end, both groups did what they loved. They found like-minded people with whom they shared interests, even if their interests were more narrow. The ones I'm still in contact with are mostly successful, finding a niche where they belong and enjoy their lives, even if they are not excelling in competitive fields. Since my field (education) is noncompetitive at my level, I certainly am in that same boat. And while the former were more fun to play a TRPG with due to diverse personalities, the latter were among those who taught me 40k, which is now a bigger influence on my life.
In other words, if it doesn't hurt anyone, then do what you love. It will lead you to more love.
Friday, July 27, 2012
an intro
My first roleplaying game was purchased when I was six. Andrew, my older brother, wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons. I liked the cartoon, though I confess that I cannot remember which I knew of first. We pooled our money, and we bought the old red box. He alter bought the blue one, but he refused to let me read it.
We played a few games, later getting some of the neighborhood kids into it – I remember it being hot in the camper we had that summer.
Later, I used those same books to run a game in middle school during lunch. Later, it turned into a job – summer camp councilor/teacher for a Fantasy Adventures class.
In college, I played a long 2nd ed AD&D game that changed my views on gaming. And not only did I expand, I loved new systems and new places to create. Now, I've run many games, including many systems. And while I'm not a systems-person, focusing more on story and idea, I love gaming.
My current focus is miniatures wargaming, mostly Warhammer 40k, which I will be devoting some time to in this blog. Truly, though, I'm up for anything with the right people.
Later, I used those same books to run a game in middle school during lunch. Later, it turned into a job – summer camp councilor/teacher for a Fantasy Adventures class.
In college, I played a long 2nd ed AD&D game that changed my views on gaming. And not only did I expand, I loved new systems and new places to create. Now, I've run many games, including many systems. And while I'm not a systems-person, focusing more on story and idea, I love gaming.
My current focus is miniatures wargaming, mostly Warhammer 40k, which I will be devoting some time to in this blog. Truly, though, I'm up for anything with the right people.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)