It’s been a pretty quiet twelve months for my gaming life. Heck, it’s been a pretty quiet… <counting on fingers>… four years? Between going back to school and life as a parent of a couple kids, it’s been difficult to find the free time to coordinate the very social event of RPGs. But the hunger to start a campaign has been gnawing at me the past several months, and I think I’m going to try to act on that soon. The kids are old enough to (mostly) sleep through the night, and I think I have my studies (mostly) under control now that I’m in the middle of my second year, so perhaps the time has come to return to the game table on a more regular basis. I’ve even been working on a draft “recruitment” poster to solicit players for a casual dungeon crawl.
If I’m honest with myself, though, I’m struggling a little bit to “go public,” and I have to admit I’m feeling a little shy about it. I shouldn’t feel that way; I’ve gamed with strangers before, both in person and online, so it’s not a shyness or reluctance per se. I think it’s because I want to start a game with my fellow students, in part because we’re all in the same metaphorical boat with homework and the academic calendar. But I’d also like to have an excuse to get to know some of my classmates better. Being entirely online kind of tamped down on social opportunities during our first year, and as an almost 40 year-old married parent who commutes to campus, I’m rather out-of-step with the usual in-person socialization methods since my night life is family time, instead of (I imagine) grabbing drinks after the last class of the day.
I think my shyness is coming from exposing a bit of vulnerability, though. I guess it’s the old “protection” impulse of my generation of nerd; “don’t broadcast your ‘weird’ interests to everyone or you’ll be a pariah.” The lingering effects of the Satanic Panic meant I didn’t get to play D&D until college (it got banned at my elementary school in the late 80s), so there was an institutionally-instilled sense that it was a deviant activity for weirdos. Even after I graduated and was working on-staff at a university, I had the unsettling experience of having the otherwise liberal and open-minded faculty of the art program where I worked start ragging on the hobby during a department meeting. “What kind of sick weirdo would want to do that?” I remember one colleague saying, seconds before I was about to mention that I was playing in one campaign and running another at that time. To my shame, I clammed up, and didn’t say anything. But my coworker hadn’t just made a clumsy statement that came out more harshly than intended; this person spat the words out with the venom most folks typically reserve for child predators and mass murderers. To this person, an interest in RPGs was a sign of deep, profound mental illness; in fact I think they even went so far as to assert a direct connect connection between playing D&D and having a proclivity for crimes of sex and violence. It was like being punched in the gut, and I had the distinct feeling that my job might actually be on the line if I dared to reveal my pastime. Keep in mind this was only ten years ago; it was the era of Obama and Harry Potter, and thanks to the Lord of the Rings movies Gandalf was a household name, not just a nerd shibboleth, so it was quite distant from the heyday of Pat Pulling being Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons.
Over the past ten years, though, since leaving that job and moving to the Big City, I’ve been trying to me more open about being a “Friend of Gary.” One of the first things I did when my wife and I came to town was to get involved at the D&D Encounters night at the neighborhood game store, and I met people there I’m still in touch with today (and, of course, I’m overdue to give them a call!). I’m still a bit of a stealth nerd, though, despite myself. I don’t roll through town with a big ol’ d20 T-shirt, or a Cthulhu patch on my bag or anything; it’s just not a part of my “projected” style, I suppose. And perhaps that’s what’s giving me pause about reaching out to my fellow students.
“Reputation” is what I’m worried about. My peers and I are studying to become part of a somewhat conservative and staid profession, where there are tacit (and sometimes overt) expectation that one should be Serious and Reasonable. In many ways, we’re supposed to be very Vulcan as we go about our work. Chess is perhaps an acceptable diversion: an Ancient and Venerable game of Tactics and Logic. But something like Warmachine or 40K? It might seem childish at best to some outside observers. A far worse interpretation would be an unhealthy fascination with violent fascist power fantasies; a conclusion someone like my former colleague would perhaps arrive at. But, more likely is that it would just seem “silly:” the old cliché of “sitting around a table pretending to be an elf” and all that.
But, as I write about it now, my advice to myself seems clear: I should be a little braver, and be open to being myself the way I was when I moved here ten years ago. I resolved then to not hide my interests anymore, and be more true to myself. What do I have to lose, after all? It’s 2022—anecdotally speaking, more people are playing D&D than ever, and it’s not the fringe hobby it used to be. And the fact is I’m probably risking very little by putting up a few goofy “let’s start a D&D game” flyers; I’m not exactly a cool-kid with anything at stake, and I’m pretty isolated right now anyway. So, either I make a few new friends… or keep eating lunch alone, right? I’ll take the chance after Spring Break and see if there’s any interest.