I have no doubt that certain people are drawn to roleplaying games and there has always been an association between roleplaying games and geekdom. Scott and I were driving the other day and we started to talk about how odd we are when compared to other 31 year olds and I started to wonder whether 2 decades of roleplaying has somehow made us different or if playing RPGs is mearly a side effect of us being different to begin with.

Then I started thinking about different aspects of gaming and how they effect my everyday life. At what point did watching a man's arm get cut off move from being horrific to filling me with the desire to yell, "It's just a flesh wound"? Think about it, when was the last time you heard a plumber or your mechanic quote Montey Python as part of a normal conversation? Or announce that he failed his dex check when he dropped a spark plug into your engine block?

Since I started working on Kayfabe a year or so ago I can't watch pro wrestling without thinking to myself, "he must have made his Clout roll," or assigning Assets and Flaws to wrestlers then enthusiastically announcing it to my girlfriend.

I'm curious. How has playing roleplaying games effected the way you live your life and interact with other people? Can you recall a specific moment in time when you did or said something that only another gamer would understand even though there wasn't one around? How did people respond to that?

,Matt G.

Heh, when I was back east and surrounded by gamers we'd routinely comment on someone failing their perception check, or suffering a critical fumble on the seduction test, or one of my favorites "When God rolled up his character He obviously went for the full 50-point 'dumbass' flaw"

Now that I'm not around those guys any more, I find myself not making such comments. But in my experience every specialization has lingo that spreads over into everyday speach. For example I've heard people refer to someone who just got a blank look on their face as having suffered a "general protection fault". or "their brain just got the blue screen of death". Or people who have trouble juggling many projects at once saying "My brain runs on DOS, I don't multitask well".

So the phenomenon isn't just gamers. Although gamers can be pretty obscure. Not to many people would know what a cry of "Leadership Casualties on the Quarter Deck" would mean after witnessing someone slink away after getting shot down picking up a girl at a bar.

Just think about all the sayings we have just from poker and sports.

"Flag on the play. 15 yards. Illegal use of Hands"

Sorry, but I have to stop you, Valamir --- that's game and rubber. :)

Game, set, and match.

I suppose my problem in answering this is that I'm not usually anywhere where there aren't any gamers. It's a big family, and it's full of gamers.

And I think all of us do it.

My kids can hardly watch a movie without a comment like, "That's got to be a 30 GE roll" (a Multiverser reference, meaning that the situation was a "one in a thousand chance disaster"); they also note the good GE rolls, as well. "That was a lucky save" in their mouths means dice, not ballplay.

One of the things I've had to recognize as an author is that there is a lot of "gamespeak" (it's what the editor of my first novel, Places to Go, People to Be's Steve Darlington, called it, at least) that has to be avoided when trying to tell a story. A lot of our modern fantasy is infected by this; you sometimes feel as if the way the story is told reveals some underlying game mechanic. Creating a story that is true to the nature of a game world but doesn't have those mechanics cues in it is tricky for someone who's been playing near a quarter century, even though I was writing before I was gaming. I suspect it's the more difficult for those who grew up on games and started writing after they learned to play.

But, as has been said, metaphor is a key part of expression, and we get it from everywhere and everything. Some people backpaddle or backpeddle when they realize they've overstated something. I've heard courtroom metaphors. Star Trek and Star Wars have contributed here and there. With some people, you can work out their interests from their metaphors. And sometimes don't we all quote song lyrics, which if recognized would tell something about our age, our generation, and our musical tastes? It's just part of being human. Although our lives are compartmentalized, we tend to pull bits out of those compartments and mix and match them with others.

--M. J. Young

Playing games has helped keep me young in spirit. At least, I think it has. Hard to be sure when I don’t know what I’d be like if I had never played a game in my life. When I play games I laugh and have fun, tension oozes away and all there is left for a while is the game and friends.

One of my favorite game speak moments has to be when a friend and I went to Taco Bell after a game of Top Secret. While we’re standing in line we start discussing some things that happened in the game and further strategy options. You know, things like “Maybe if I had killed that dog we could have taken that guard out before he hit the alarm.” and “Putting poison in the wine should be easy enough, but do you think hiding those bear traps in the snow will work?” The looks from the other people in line were priceless. I’m just glad that we weren’t playing, say, Kill Puppies For Satan.

Sometimes I'll make completely obscure comments that only a gamer would understand. This doesn't happen much, mind you. I do it for the wierd looks, more than anything.

Of course we have the added bonus of truly understanding Martin's (of sompson's fame) proclamation "i have a thousand hit points and maximum Charisma!"

Most of my current references are in wargaming terms (i.e.: my fingertips are Toughness 4).

Arxhon has hinted at another aspect of this. There's a degree to which gamespeak has invaded culture. For example, how many of you saw The Onion article that reported Bill Gates raising his Charisma to 20, giving him three godlike scores? It was complete with a picture of a hand-written character paper including sketch for Bilbo of the Gatekeepers, and included comments from other industry leaders about a candystore DM.

To some degree, our language has infiltrated mainstream.

--M. J. Young

Um, MJ, I used to play RPGs occasionally with some of the Onion staff back when they were a campus paper in Madison.

I just think that there are a lot of people who have had some exposure to RPGs, and they are now expanding in their roles in society. The mainstream is not becoming hip to us, we are becoming the mainstream.

Mike

I usually don't make comments, but I laugh my head off at them. So, yeah ... I've been sitting here in the middle of a conservative college's cyber cafe, snorting periodically, and not haivng anyone to share it with. It makes me feel freakish.

But in a good way. :-)

I think M.J. hit it pretty close to the mark -- I think it's just our nature as Americans -- we like to be identified with what we're interested in. Bumper stickers, logolized coffee mugs, t-shirts, and language all bespeak our quirks. And the way I like to look at it, the more obscure the quirk, the better to show it off!

Yeah, we like to be associated with our groups. Consider business buzzwords. I've got a friend that uses them all the time in normal conversation. What he's doing is saying, "I'm a member of the business cognocenti. Buisnesspeople would know me when they heard me."

The problem with this behavior is that it's usually done to exclude the listener. The subtext reads, "What, you don't know what a Thac0 is? You don't get my little in-joke? Why you're not a cool gamer like I am. I belong to an exclusive group to which you do not belong. I am better than you."

When done in a group of people from the same culture, it reads, "Aren't we cool, we know things that other people don't. If we are overheard, they'd be confused at best, and maybe even a little freaked out. How cool is that?"

Rarely is there a good reason to use gamespeak in regular conversation. Sure, there's the occasional joke that's really funny. But I've seen people really reaching on occasion, and that's when it becomes obvious and ugly.

Sorry, just my take.

The fact that I do it only points out my own insecurities, IMO.

Mike

I think we've covered gaming lingo quite a bit here, but I'm also curious about other aspects of our hobby that might influence our everyday lives.

When I was a kid, my parent's drunken friends would always come up to me while I was working on gaming stuff and ask if I was doing homework (even during the summer). I would then have to explain what I was working on, which of course went way over their heads and usually resulted in weird looks.

The same thing happens at work from time to time if someone sees a character sheet on my desk or a copy of Kayfabe, but I have become better at concealing that stuff.

Another way that gaming has had an impact comes around every year when I request time off for Gencon. If I tell people I'm going to Vegas or Niagra Falls for vacation it's no big deal, but I tell them I need a week off to go to a gaming convention and I get weird looks (at least the first time). I suspect a lot of employers do not consider Gencon to be important enough to warrant time off. Have any of you had trouble getting time off for a CON? Do you think you would have had less trouble had you requested time off for a family event?

Have any of you ever lied about your gaming hobby to get a job? a date? respect? anything?

,Matt G.

I know Ron will frown a little at this because he's a proponent of being more open about gaming, but thats because he's in the academic world where people are supposed to be tolerant of diversity, and a bit eccentric. I work in banking where people are supposed to be identical interchangeable suits. I NEVER and would never tell anyone in my office my vacation is to a gaming con let alone the boss. Fortuneatly the middle of the year is not a particularly busy time for us so its not something I've ever had to work to hard to get. But yes. If I said I was going to see show girls and lose thousands of dollars in vegas...that would meet with approval (unless I was going every week, of course). If I said I was going to a gaming con...its hard to say whether my reputation would decline before or after I had to describe to them what it was...but the chance of uncovering a new gamer isn't worth it. Acceptable hobbies: golf, fishing, golf, philanthropy, golf, opera, golf, working late, golf, networking for more clients, golf...you get the idea. Unacceptable hobbies: anything remotely related in anyway to something that has a hint of fringe culture to it.

So yes. Gaming has impacted my life in that I tend to have much less casual conversation to discuss with clients and coworkers. I am generally decidedly vague with "what did you do this weekend", or "how was your trip".

So yes. Gaming has impacted my life in that I tend to have much less casual conversation to discuss with clients and coworkers. I am generally decidedly vague with "what did you do this weekend", or "how was your trip".

Matt Gwinn wrote: Have any of you ever lied about your gaming hobby to get a job? a date? respect? anything?

,Matt G.

Wait, wait, wait, Matt. Gaming didn't make Ralph less able to discuss his hobbies. The society around Ralph makes him less able to discuss his hobbies. But this is no different from the guy who works two cubes down from Ralph who's hobby is bonsai trees. He has exactly the same problem. If he wants to go to a bonsai convention (and I checked such do exist, see here), he's going to have to make up a story as well.

Why do I make the distinction? Well, you're making it sound like we should be ashamed of what we do. That we're bad because we're gamers, and people are right to be bigots. I'm sure you don't mean it that way, but that's how this whole thread is coming off.

Mike

Matt Gwinn wrote: Have any of you ever lied about your gaming hobby to get a job?

I'm also interested in how gaming has effected your life in a good way....

Mike is absolutely right of course, its a society thing, or rather a segment of society thing. Although it is, I believe, a little more gaming specific than he implies. I feel quite confident that if my hobby were bonsai trees it would not be a problem at all. After all that's close enough to gardening to not seem too bizarre to our clientelle and likely having the patience and care to do it would be seen positively.

No gaming has very specific negative connotations to it that most other obscure hobbies don't. It doesn't help that just this week on a Discovery channel special on demonic possession throughout history that one of the talking heads pointed to Roleplaying Games as opening a doorway for possessions...as evidence he presented demonic artwork found on such classic roleplaying items as Magic the Gathering Cards (I hate clueless people). I know many of my clients watch the Discovery Channel with relish. My boss would frown on us losing a client because they suddenly discovered I was a "devil worshipper" and they know that I am because they saw it on TV. Doesn't matter whether that's fair or not when its a hit to the company's revenue larger than my salary. Even blood spewing, rat head biting Ozzie is now a mainstream pop icon. Tech geeks at least have a bit of silicon cool to them. Not role playing.

That said, on the whole its been a fantastic choice of hobby. Matt I agree completely with the benefit I gained with math skills that came from mastering game probabilities. I've often been praised at my job for having superior oral and written communication skills which I know for certain came more from communicating ideas across a gaming table and writing notebook after notebook full of game text than any English class I had in high school. I also know a TON of (to me) really fascinating trivia on a wide variety of topics, primarily motivated by my search for cool and realistic background material for my gaming.

On an anecdotal level I once had a client who was a Lt Colonel who was impressed in our opening chit chat that I knew who Clausewicz was, and that I had met the author of one of the DoD papers he had with him (because I hung out with him regularly at the Origins War College). Knowledge in both cases that was driven initially by gaming motivations.

But as long as my primary source of income is a career which prizes tradition and conformity over individual self expression, I'll play my hobby quite close to the vest.

Matt Gwinn wrote: Have any of you ever lied about your gaming hobby to get a job? a date? respect? anything?

Gaming is life...

Hey all,

But seriously, I have been designing games since I was a very young child. Since I discovered roleplaying in secondary, I have spent more time gaming, studying roleplaying, designing, etc, than just about anything else. That definitely includes class, but might not include tinkering with computers. I have one degree so far and (in better times) marketable skills in several fields, but gaming is the hobby that keeps on giving.

I rarely bother to explain roleplaying to people, unless they ask. Folks my age know what D&D is; everyone else at least understands mystery theatre/improv. I call my hobby game design, which most people interpret as electronic game design, especially considering I my proficiency with computers. I would not say that I am in the closet, but that I prefer not to waste time explaining things over and over. My mother still refers to it as 'that fantasy thing,' in spite of having boys over every week to play huge games of D&D, etc.

Later,
Grant

P.S. On the other hand, I almost never use gaming terminology in normal conversations, but I generally avoid jargon, even among roleplayers, unless I need to convey a technical matter. Too much time spent teching normal people's computers, I guess.

Valamir wrote:

I know Ron will frown a little at this because he's a proponent of being more open about gaming, but thats because he's in the academic world where people are supposed to be tolerant of diversity, and a bit eccentric.

My favourite RPG-habit to observe is "instant character adoption"; making a remark in a characters voice. This was my favouriote entry in as list of things that identify roleplayers - well two really:
- we switych between referring to yourself in the first and third persons
- ... and your friends don't find it confusing.

I can offer very little beyond general hobby stuff: I've had a lot of fun and met a lot of great people through it, including the forming of friendships that have totally transended the gaming part of things (which amounts to a high-falluting way of saying I've met people through gaming who I'm still friends about a decade since we last gamed).

Also, a counter-example to the 'don't mention gaming on a first date' tendency. A while back a woman I wasn't interested in had a painfully apparant crush on me. At one point I tried to put her off by geeking out. Didn't do a damn thing to affect the way she felt about me, and I was kind of over the top about it.

My own favorite / common use of gamespeach is "I failed my DomTech roll; can you open this jar for me?" Of course there are others too; naturally it's part of my lingo after 25 years.

Part of this is about circles we move in as well. In certain circles, my speech becomes buried in quilting/fabric/textile stuff, in others it's an alphabet soup of UU/UUA acronyms, in another it's all about fringe and sequins and drum rythms. I disagee with the take that it's only a way to say "Oh look how insider I am"; I think it's also a logical outgrowth of any interest or activity that has things and events particular to that interest or activity. The only thing I can think of that we might possibly be able to universally discuss or understand if overheard would be breathing and sleeping, and I *know* I'm actually wrong, because there are whole methods of meditative breath practice, asthma sufferers, insomniacs and lupus sufferers.

In answer to the other part of this thread, how has role-playing impacted my life, my anwesr would have to be "Profoundly".

As a kid, it gave me out-let for imagination in a TV-dominated social sphere (grammar school); it gave me an activity and a group of friends (four of us, all home-schooled) that I was able to deeply enjoy and feel connected with in a small town of generally unfriendly kids; and it gave me a direction to explore the mythos and archetypes (J.R.R. Tolkein, Greek / Roman / Norse / Eygptian myth, C.S.Lewis, Madelene L'Engle) fascinated me.

As a high school student, it was a haven of non-drug & alcohol related activity. Identifiying with the Drama club scene (about 50 kids), and within that crowd, being part of the talks-about-real-issues-including-politics-religion-and-sex section (about 20), and in *that*, being in a tight knit role-playing game group of six or eight, game me the same benefits as when I was younger, but with more intelectual aspects. We had something better to do than get stoned/drunk on weekends - we had a whole 'nother rich world where we didn't have to deal with incompetent teachers and arrogant classmates. Instead, we could work on world building, do game-related art, discuss meta-game issues, or even play!

In college, everyone was more open about it, although clubs did exist in high school. The campus Sci-Fi club posted who was running what, and if there were openings in the game, and ran mini-cons too. Some of my all-time best gaming was in the CyberPunk game Vincent ran (still a cause for gaming stories) and in the Ares Magica game I ran (my first time as GM) for two years.

As an adult, gaming has provided an escape, a reason for social gathering, a place of artistic colaberation, and a source of inspiration in playing with our kids. Our experience as gamers has allowed us to more fully enter into our children's 'pretend' and to nurture it and their imagination more fully. There are several on-going 'pretends' in our house, some of which have distinct rules and character creation and task resolution devices. Currently, our 6 yr old's very exacting about "What does your spaceship do(spy, settler, defend, etc), how many people on your crew, what does it look like, and what is it's special power" I really look forward to them growing up in a gaming house.

I'm sure I don't out myself about gaming right away to everyone- that's no more appropriate than outing myself as a Middle Eastern dancer, a Pagan, a quilter with a degree in textiles, a member of the PTO, a Unitarian Universalist or any other part that anyone who becomes my friend will know in time. (All of you reading this are obviously excepted :) )
I've certainly never thought "OH, better not tell them I play RPG's" if it's seemed the natural thing to do and I otherwise would. Especially as a female gamer, I feel some obligation to speak out whenever it comes up. There are times I'd love more t-shirts and such with stuff only other gamers would get, but part of that is just that I like things off center, like me beloved Farm Raised Catfish t-shirt. Don't know where it came from, but I love it. MY current favorite belly dancer, btw, is one who has a dance tape out and at the end she totally outs herself as a Trekkie, shimmying in front of a Capt. Picard cut-out with 'live-long & prosper' hands.

And besides, it's fun.
~Meguey

Valamir wrote: I work in banking where people are supposed to be identical interchangeable suits. I NEVER and would never tell anyone in my office my vacation is to a gaming con let alone the boss.

I almost forgot. It completely changed how we handle our money.

Here's what we call 'em now:

• $1 coin coin = Gold Piece (Obviously the Sacagawea dollar.)
• 10¢ coin = Silver Piece (At one point these really were silver¹, weren't they?)
• 5¢ coin = Nickel Piece (Likewise, I'm sure.)
• 1¢ coin = Copper Piece (Also.)

And the exchange rate is only off by a factor of two. (Who's seen any electrum anyway?)

Fang Langford

¹ From just looking at it, the original dime, quarter, half, and whole dollar coins have the same ratio of volume (10 dimes takes up the same space as 4 quarters as 2 halves as a whole dollar coin), suggesting a singular composition.

Hi there,

This thread has drifted a bit into a Profiling-type thing, and I'd been planning on calling people on that, and maybe closing the thread ... but then decided not. Plus I can't help but relate the following anecdote.

Over the years, I've been face-front about my hobbies and life-style in general. It's an admit-nothing deny-nothing approach - when and if I do X, it reveals that I like and do X; I don't worry myself about moderating X for others.

Gaming works great this way; it's how I end up with way more potential players swarming around me than I could ever hope to game with. It's why I regard the near-universal cry of "I can't find anyone to play with!" with puzzlement.

But ... (1) there are other things I do that require a lot of attention and specific social interactions. Hence I don't bring up "Hey, how about that chariot-race in Fvlminata last night!" conversation during faculty meetings, because none of my colleagues game with me and because we're talking about funding or curriculum or some damn thing. Still, if we're hangin' out at lunch, and we're talking about hobbies or side interests, I'll talk about gaming or Adept Press, and everyone's cool with that. Hell, one of my colleagues runs a website for ... well, never mind that.

How does that relate to the classroom? Role-playing references, on occasion, do a very good job of establishing connections for classroom points. For instance, recently, the proportion 1/6 turned out to be an important issue for an experimental procedure, and I referenced that anyone who played D&D knew that it was 16.667% ... and a bunch of people smiled, laughed, and said "Yeah!" ... hence the point was driven more effectively for everyone, including those who hadn't played and merely witnessed the interactions. A good teacher, I think, has lots and lots of these little connection-points in his or her arsenal, ranging from pop culture to literary references to topical issues, and more.

Now for the anecote, which concerns the vestiges of self-moderation that do show up, oddly enough, in the most anonymous situations, rather than in the less-so, acquaintance-based ones. I was on the train just last week, with a stack of tests to grade and several old-school dungeon modules (I'm building a Tunnels & Trolls dungeon and seeking architecture). I'd graded a few, felt virtuous, and was inclined to pull out Blood-Soaked Levels of Iron-Death Fury or whatever it was called for some casual reading for the rest of the train ride ... and then noticed an attractive woman seated precisely opposite/diagonal of me, you know, in that orientation which permits two strangers to occupy one another's full field of vision that sometimes happens on trains. She was not looking at me or paying any attention to me at all, nor did I imagine that any interaction would ever occur.

But I kept the dungeon modules tucked away and returned to the test grading. I don't think I would have done the same if I'd been reading, say, Trollbabe, Universalis, Dust Devils, or similar. There ya go - internalized prejudices and needless self-moderation in action. Who cares what some bint thinks, eh? ... is the proper response.

But I'll be first to cop that if anyone but an attractive woman had been sitting there, I wouldn't have minded at all.

Best,
Ron

Whenever my mind wanders, its the first thing I daydream about. Its possibly the only topic, other than cricket :), were you can be guaranteed my full attention.

And among me and my friends, roleplaying is the source for more in-jokes than most everything else combined (except maybe the Close Combat games).