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.