A Person's Perception of a D&D Player

[Gangrell]

I really would like to state that D&D or any game related products have no influence on a person, what the person does is their decision. D&D does not warp people's minds, they are crazy to begin with.

Originally posted by True_Moose: People who stereotype D&D have never played it...trust me, the last thing you'd think of one of me and my friend's campaigns is nerdy. Dirty, disgusting, wrong, yes, but not nerdy.

Amen [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

[IAmThumper]

There are some similarities that you could make with a D&D game and a poker game. Both are scheduled meetings with a group of friends.
The similarity with poker night ends at a group of guys(people) sitting around a table playing a game. PnP D&D is a group of guys(people) sitting around a table pretending to be wizards and warriors killing make believe monsters. Which would you consider more grown up playing cards or emulating seven year olds slaying dragons. And really practising math skills?!? At what grade level do you learn to add and subtract? better update my resume with has amazing math skills due to hours of playing the game AD&D!
COME ON! I used to play the game but HELLLOOOOOO! You have to be suffering serious denile if you can't see this!
(I'm going to get some serious flak from this aren't I? but before I do I'd like to say you asked!)

[Faceman]

So D&D is not very grown-up? Who cares?
It was Erich Kaestner who said that we should all stay children inside or else lose the joy of life.
How grown up is it to go to Disneyworld?
How grown up is it to eat chocolate bars?
How grown up is it to get drunk with friends?
And how grown up is it to laugh at people because you think they are not grown up enough?

[True_Moose]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but adding dice rolls and stuff (addition and substraction) is a fair bit more complex than poker (patterns.) Not that I have any problem with poker, it's a great quick income source. But seriously, who cares. There's something wrong with the world when you have to abandon something that gives you joy just because you've lived a bit longer.

[SpiritWarrior]

Hey if we're talking about movies that didn't help any, try the D&D movie.

[Cataephract]

I remember when I was 12 I went to visit my stepdad's family in Oklahoma for a couple of months. They were these sort of odd born-again christians, and they wouldn't let me play PnP D&D because it would inspire me to acts of satanism, neverminding that you spend a lot time fighting demons and such in your average game. They gave me this pamphlet produced by their church, which explained why d&d was satan's work, why it promotes human sacrifice, etc., etc. The best part where these staged photos of people "playing" d&d; eating cats (though it looked like the guy was just kissing his cat), stabbing each other in the classic "sword-through-the-armpit" pose, guys dressed as warriors killing their parents at Thanksgiving dinner (the caption for that one was "But the Dungeon Master ordered it so!"), and a voluptuos, scantily-clad woman joining a "coven" by kissing another woman. There isn't even a witch class, though that picture did get me through the unbearable summer I spent there. They later forced me to join the Boy Scouts as an alternative, which I hated, so I took started putting dog crap in their air conditioning ducts

[wellard]

Originally posted by IAmThumper: There are some similarities that you could make with a D&D game and a poker game. Both are scheduled meetings with a group of friends. The similarity with poker night ends at a group of guys(people) sitting around a table playing a game. PnP D&D is a group of guys(people) sitting around a table pretending to be wizards and warriors killing make believe monsters. Which would you consider more grown up playing cards or emulating seven year olds slaying dragons. And really practising math skills?!? At what grade level do you learn to add and subtract? better update my resume with has amazing math skills due to hours of playing the game AD&D! COME ON! I used to play the game but HELLLOOOOOO! You have to be suffering serious denile if you can't see this! (I'm going to get some serious flak from this aren't I? but before I do I'd like to say you asked!)

*cough* allow me

The best multipliers and dividers I have ever known where adults who play games (darts) and judging by the low standard of maths skills displayed by many sales people working without a wizzbang till, they should make D&D compulsory. [img]graemlins/heee.gif[/img]

Quote " Which would you consider more grown up playing cards or emulating seven year olds slaying dragons."

Who cares if you think I’m being a seven year old. I wish my old group of mates could gather around to loose ourselves in our imaginations again. One look at the evening news is surely enough reason to treat yourself to a few hours away from reality. One day you will be old enough and less *cool* enough to understand

[Cerek the Barbaric]

Many of you are - fortunately - too young to remember the very bad reputation AD&D suffered in it's early years. Gary Gygax (primarily) invented the game in the early 1970's. Because of the imagination and creativity necessary to play, it was originally embraced by several schools as a great learning tool for their "gifted students". However, it didn't take long before the praise turned to harsh criticism and unrealistic stereotyping.

There was an incident in which a group of kids apparantly began robbing houses in their neighborhood and eventually attacked (or killed) the residents in one house (I believe the people killed were parents of one of the boys - which led to the Made-For-TV movie that was mentioned earlier). Suddenly, AD&D was dangerous and satanic (because it had demons in the Monster Manual and certain player classes could "summons" these demons to do their bidding). :rollseyes:

Then, the movie mentioned by Attalus came out. It is noteworthy for only two reasons:

1) It promoted the growing image of AD&D as a "dangerous" game in which the players begin to blur the lines between fantasy and reality and eventually begin to believe they ARE the characters they pretend to be. That was happened to the main character, he basically ended up believing he was living in the AD&D world and was the character he had been playing.

2) The main character was played by an unkown actor named Tom Hanks. It was his first ever starring role.

There really is no comparison between Mazes and Monsters and the more recent Dungeons and Dragons. The first perpetuated the myth of how "evil and dangerous" AD&D is while the second was just a really lame attempt to make a movie adaptation promoting the game. Personally, I thought the AD&D movie was OK, but nowhere near as great as it could have been. It had good points and bad points. I don't dislike the movie as strongly as some people, but I was very disappointed with how they wasted such a good opportunity.

The bottom line is that PnP players ARE stereotyped, and that the stereotype isn't completely false (for example, how many members here were at the local Wal-Mart or movie store last night at midnight to get their copy of The Two Towers? If you weren't, I would be willing to bet you'll be going by the store later today. . I don't completely fit the stereotype, since I'm a born-again Christian that actually enjoys PnP, but I have to admit that some of the stereotype does fit me.

The best thing to do (as was mentioned earlier) is just to simply ignore it. People will always stereotype things they don't enjoy, understand, or participate in. Everyone does it (to a certain degree). So you change the things you can and accept those you can't.

[IAmThumper]

Originally posted by wellard: The best multipliers and dividers I have ever known where adults who play games (darts) and judging by the low standard of maths skills displayed by many sales people working without a wizzbang till, they should make D&D compulsory. [img]graemlins/heee.gif[/img] Quote " Which would you consider more grown up playing cards or emulating seven year olds slaying dragons." Who cares if you think I’m being a seven year old. I wish my old group of mates could gather around to loose ourselves in our imaginations again. One look at the evening news is surely enough reason to treat yourself to a few hours away from reality. One day you will be old enough and less *cool* enough to understand

Oh man I can't stop laughing. I am sooooo NOT *cool*. Ah man my sides hurt. I am so not impressed with people that can multiply and divide either. I mean anyone can do it and half of them are using a calculator to do it.
Okay okay calm down and take a deep breath. I'm not saying you can't play the game I'm just explaining why its obvious how it gets a bad rap.
I've actually thought about taking it up again. I would but I have never been able to find a good group.
Thanks for the history Cerek the Barbaric. I thought it was awful when Gary Gygax left AD&D. I liked his books. I can't remember was he forced out or did he get fed up and quit? It was something like that wasn't it? (Eek I'm showing my age!)

[Gangrell]

Originally posted by IAmThumper: Oh man I can't stop laughing. I am sooooo NOT *cool*. Ah man my sides hurt. I am so not impressed with people that can multiply and divide either. I mean anyone can do it and half of them are using a calculator to do it.

Well, first you can drop the sarcasm if you're trying to prove a point. Second, not every person can do mathematics.

There's nothing wrong with PnP, it just opens your mind and allows your imagination to grow, it's one of the reasons why I've taken up to being a writer. As for poker and the like, I would rather be around some of my friends taking down a big dragon instead

Originally posted by IAmThumper: And really practising math skills?!? At what grade level do you learn to add and subtract? better update my resume with has amazing math skills due to hours of playing the game AD&D! COME ON! I used to play the game but HELLLOOOOOO! You have to be suffering serious denile if you can't see this!

I think you're being a wee bit picky. Would you rather have to do trigonometry to have a good time with a game? [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Originally posted by IAmThumper: I'm just explaining why its obvious how it gets a bad rap. I've actually thought about taking it up again. I would but I have never been able to find a good group.

Such hypocrisy we are subjected to [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I'm not flaming or ranting, just trying to see why people think PnP is such a bad thing. Other products like the D&D movies don't help much either, there were only a total of four monsters in the D&D movie, four, bah. It was too moderately based I think.

I believe the main stereotype lies around that the only people that could play it are people who have no life. Nerds that sit at home, jam on their calculators, and play a game based outside of reality, what a load of crap [img]graemlins/laugh2.gif[/img] Most people who believe as such are usually narrowminded because they are quick to judge a game they never played, and since it has that label slapped on it, they probably never will. It is one of the best games on earth for a few reasons for me.

It never ends. I've been playing with my uncle for six years, over 35+ modules and the ability to broaden your characters is limitless, it's great. Remember, it's no different from playing Icewind Dale or Baldur's Gate, only you have to figure out the math for yourself. Until you broaden your minds, you can't really learn to have fun in this game, until then young grasshoppers...

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