Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks

It all started innocently enough. Representatives from the Decatur Public Library came and spoke to the 8th graders at Oak Park Middle School. Among the other opportunities for knowledge gatheirng that one can only get at the library, they also talked about a particularly special opportunity for those who were interested. It seems that the library was sponsoring groups of people who were playing and being introduced to a game called Dungeons & Dragons.

They saw it as an opportunity to fire the imaginations of children and it involved interactive play and strategic thought. I thought, “Why not?” So I asked my mom to drop me off at the library at the appointed time and I was introduced to the world of multi-sided dice, dungeons, monsters, dungeon masters, dwarves, and elves. I suppose I was primed for this opporutnity seeing that my favorite author at the time was Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, and I had read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings triology at least twice by this point. I was (and am) a huge sucker for science fiction and fantasy.

It wasn’t too long after that brief introduction that my friends and I began playing D&D on a regular basis. We would gather in the upper room of Jason’s backyard storage building late on a Friday and play through to Sunday. Some would go home to sleep. Some would sleep there. We thrived on sodas, Chicken McNuggets and whatever else Jason’s incredibly patient mother would provide. The walls were covered with maps. We all came with our character sheets, graph paper, and dice. In my mind’s eye, I can still look around the room and see Jason, Eric, Bruce, Roger, Patrick, Chris, Don, and others. It was an incredible time and I had a ton of fun. Early on I had started out with a number of characters but I had one character that came through all the adventures stronger, grumpier and more crass than ever. For the life of me, I can’t remember his official D&D name but his nickname is as clear to me today as it was then – Stumpy the Dwarf. I received a note a few years ago that Stumpy, along with some of the other original characters, had been officially retired.

At some point around my junior year of high school, I began to find other things to do on the weekend. And, eventually, I walked away from D&D. But there has always been and always will be a soft place in my heart for that RPG and those days. If I were to be honest, I could easily be drawn back into that world easily given the time.

During all of the time I played D&D and the time since then, it had never occurred to me once to ask “Why?” Why did I play and become obsessed with D&D? It’s an interesting question and it’s a question explored by Ethan Gilsdorf in his book, Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks.

Using his own experience as a gamer in New Hampshire (interestingly enough around the same time I was playing), Gilsdorf sets off on a quest to discover why people (himself included) immerse themselves in fantasy gaming. He starts with D&D. He visits LARPs. He delves into the digital space (think: World of Warcraft). He visits Cons (conventions). He seeks out the creators of D&D. He becomes a part of SCA (Society of Creative Anachronism). And he also visits Middle Earth (New Zealand).

For me, the two most compelling chapters of the entire book are the Prologue and Chapter 1. It is in these chapters that Gilsdorf introduces us to his mother (The Momster) and his own exeperiences as a young man playing D&D. The later chapters are solid but not as compelling. Gilsdorf introduces us to a number of other “fantasy freaks and gaming geeks” but only on a superficial level. About the time we begin to get interested in someone we’ve met, it’s time for Gilsdorf to move on. Given that this book is essentially about Gilsdorf’s quest to discover some part of himself, it could be that these superficial relationships reflect his own inability to connect with his girlfriend (an important theme that colors his adventures).

All in all I enjoyed the book but, frankly, as he mentions in the afterword, I look forward to another book that explores in more depth his early childhood. But it is also tempting to over-analysze essentially an opportunity for people to simpy have fun. I’ve always resisted the label of D&D or any other role playing fantasy game as escapist. To me, it’s no more “escapist” than any other hobby such as hunting, where many men disappear into the woods for entire weekends; golfing, where people disappear to manicured courses for hours at a time with incredibly expensive equipment; or, for that matter, the Saturday fall ritual of attending a college football game dressed in all manner of “costumes” and, in many cases, painted from head to waist.

I agree with what Gilsdorf writes toward the end of the book: “It seems as a culture, we have two options: We can be terrified of fantasy games, books and movies and continue to marginalize them and their players. Or we can understand them, and see that fantasy in all its strips has its proper place alongside other amusements.”