The Blackest Stigma

In the world of video games, the term ‘casual gamer’ has developed to describe someone who plays games in their spare time, or someone who does not get very emotionally invested in the activity. We all know people like this, the athlete who happens to have a PS2 in their room, the masters student who has a gameboy advance hidden in his closet, they come in stunning variety. Yet when it comes to the world of tabletop games, who are the casual gamers?

There are many people who I grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons with that reflect the sympathies presented here, with the preference of death to being publicly ousted as someone who would partake in such activities. Then of course there is the ancient and universal opinion that D&D reflects some kind of basement dwelling, snack consuming cult in worship of the devil in all of his incarnations. Certainly this all came about as a result of the standard norm’s fear of magic and all of the unholy insinuations that come with it, yet I struggle to remember a single Wiccan who has managed to turn me into a sheep for a standard duration, much less summoned some guy named Bigby’s enlarged hand from the sky to smite me into a delicious blueberry pancake upon the pavement. Still the hobby has retained its reddest of letters upon the chests of many, forever ostracizing them from the masses of popped collars and baseball caps that provide the consistency which is our cultural stew.

If you boil down the activity that is *gasp* roleplaying you are left with a spongy liquid, which when distilled and properly purified can become a primary ingredient in the cocktail named ‘Social Interaction’. It is storytelling, it is make-believe, and it is spending time with people using a structured system of conduct which typically constitutes the format of a “game”. In the end you are simply playing a game with friends, a game which has taken the second most popular franchise in the world (Tolkien’s) and turned it into a rigid world in which we may live. (The first most popular franchise being the bible) Many people ‘play pretend’, especially at younger ages, yet is Dungeons & Dragons something that should be grown out of? Its true purpose is to provide adults with a more mature foundation on which to continue their childhood fancies. Much like an airplane, it allows us to fly when as children we could only but imagine what it would be like.

Culture still looks down upon it though, even with the advent of high profile people coming out of the proverbial closet such as Vin Diesel did, many look beyond this and assume he has since put an end to such nonsensical behavior. The stigma burns even deeper when the culture in question happens to be female, the veritable men in black of the great inquisition. The total population of people who play D&D being roughly 80% male, it comes as no surprise that an overarching fear has blossomed. As the natives cower in fear and reverence of the giant ape Kong, except upon investigation Kong simply laughs and decides to tell all of his friends and therefore ruin the native’s chances of ever getting a date again. Perhaps in the sequel this aspect of the relationship will be explored, King Kong II: He’s a Dork-Gamer.

Tabletop gaming also appears to have been overlooked in recent years in favor of more digital based interaction, as sales steadily decline and people throw blame at the OGL (Open Game License) for reducing originality and variation in the available games, while supporters of the License post blame squarely on the lack of good content in general. Perhaps it has simply become the pen-and-paper mail to today’s rampant e-mail, as people become more and more impatient the time and place for tabletops becomes increasingly less available. Still there are a large number of people who argue that the massive worlds of World of Warcraft and similar games can not even begin to replace the experiences provided by Dungeons & Dragons. Indeed a world free of Chinese gold-farming and incoherent internet speak does seem like the brighter side of the valley.

The real issue may be that we do not have limitless supplies and bookshelf space with which to purchase add-on upon expansion, each costing upwards of thirty to forty dollars. The internet has certainly brought about a nice way of distributing character sheets, errata, and other useful tools to aid our tabletop experiences, but the continued playing of a game does not necessarily denote continued purchase of the supplements. The world is really created by the players, and the rules are often bent or changed by the DM, so in a world of player created content how does a company perpetuate itself? They need to provide us with new experiences, more tools with which to sculpt our worlds, not simply redone systems of the same old rules. I’m not just talking about swarming bestiaries and over-stuffed tomes of rehashed spells, but provide content on which new ideas can be generated and grown from. Separate worlds like Eberron and books like Oriental Adventures do this very well, providing players with a pre-made world that they do not have to worry about creating every single little detail but they can provide further customization on top of it. Instead there are things like Monster Manual III, and Dungeon Master’s Guide II, which may contain a fair amount of good content but they will most likely not be purchased by most players. These mimic a lot of the problems that Games Workshop has with its products, they continue to revise and put out repetitive content year after year and any player will no doubt get frustrated with that eventually. There are only so many times you can buy the same damn thing.

In the end I do not think there should be TV shows about D&D, though they would no doubt be entertaining for a short time, it would be much like G4TV’s pitiful attempts at creating a show about watching other people play a LAN. These meager attempts at recreating the bizarre and unique spectacle of watching people play Poker unfortunately came to no avail. Dungeons & Dragons has found itself on a very rare shelf, placed along side comic books and bands to the tune of They Might Be Giants, which have un-ending creative merit yet have been relegated to the lower echelon of the public, the realm just below mass-hysteria and over-exposure so that they begin to age like a sweet wine. Perhaps they would be ruined were they taken from the shelf and placed upon the counter with their brothers and sisters for everyone to consume, or maybe they are still just as sweet because they are just for us.