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Ah, remember the good old days when this column actually was about world development? Unfortunately, I don't think those days will be returning anytime soon. I have a ridiculous amount of things I should be working on, and worlds just aren't one of them. I am happy to announce, however, that our D&D group finally made it to the world we'd all made, and we started on MY continent. Now, whether that's because my continent is kewl, or because I'm the only one who did a substantial write-up is a matter of opinion. But at least my hard work is counting for something.
Somewhere near the beginning of March, I had a great idea for a column. I was going to write it then, but I was busy and I told myself "Oh, surely I'll still remember it closer to the deadline." Yeah right. I have no idea what my wonderful idea was. So now I'm going to instead write a Top 10 list that I just now came up with. Enjoy!
Top 10 Annoying Misconceptions About Gamers
That's right. We've all been subjected to them, whether from the mainstream media or family who just doesn't understand.
- Gamers still live at home in their parents' basement. Simply not true. I am pretty sure that I know more gamers than there are basements in Tucson. They continue to live in their bedrooms.
- Gamers are all either overweight, or pencil-necked geeks, and they tend to have acne and glasses. Right. Gamers, like everyone else, come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and styles.
- Gamers sit around talking about nothing but whose character could beat up whose. That's far less interesting than talking about this one time my Tiefling Rogue seduced a lawful good cleric and made him lose his connection to his god. Of course, I never get to tell that story, because everyone else is too busy talking about World of Warcraft.
- Gamers don't have social lives. Of course we have social lives! We like to get together so we can talk about how awesome our characters are.
- Gamers can't get dates. This is my biggest pet peeve, truth be told. Gamers are no more socially inept than the rest of the world. Believe it or not, we are capable of getting laid. Of course, usually it's with other gamers, which brings me up to . . .
- Girls don't game. Like hell we don't! I can out role-play any man I know, and when my turn at the initiative comes around, I don't have to spend 10 minutes figuring out what my character can do. Girls do game, and we game at least as well as the boys.
- On-line gaming is just an excuse for easy cyber. Not hardly. You have to work hard to get that cyber. You have to seduce the other character. Of course, there are some easy shortcuts. Just challenge the object of your affection to a sparring match. Then turn it into a tickling war. It'll carry on from there. But seriously. I started roleplaying on-line, and it's not ALL about the cyber. Just 90%.
- Gamers who actually roleplay are melodramatic. D&D is not a soap opera. Roleplaying does occasionally entail some drama, but it also entails a helluva a lot of comedy. At least in my group.
- Gamers eat a lot of pizza. It's too hard to divide up the pizza bill. Besides, who has room for pizza after you've polished off a bag of Doritos and drank an entire 2-liter of soda?
And the #1 annoying misconception about gamers is . . .
- That we actually game when we get together on Saturdays! Yeah right. Everyone knows we're there to talk about past games, movies we saw that week, and "The funniest thing happened on WoW the other day . . ."
That's it for now. See you all next month!
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