50 years of role playing and slaying dragons, but can the hobby survive?
Welcome to the inaugural “Nexus of Geek” column on the Record Bee where on an every other week basis there will be coverage of issues surrounding pop culture, genre film and literature, comic books, hobbies and general coverage of “geek interests.”
People who may know me well by this point will be familiar with my interest in various forms of entertainment and hobbies, because as the hackneyed saying goes, “All work and no play…” Right then. As a precursor to this discussion, I should probably state right off the bat that it has only been a recent phenomenon whereby the mainstream audience and population has espoused a more tolerant attitude towards more niche hobbies and activities such as gaming, video games, table-top role playing games like D&D and Pathfinder, or even board gaming.
As I spend more time in on this Earth and start to get more gray hairs on my head and beard, I have come to the realization that life is too short and we should spend time enjoying the things that make us happy. For this reason, I have made it a goal these past few years to engage in some of the activities that I truly loved when I was younger, like playing board games and chess with friends, or playing the latest big title in the video game community, these days that's probably something like Baldur's Gate 3, but I am partial to the classics like Blizzard's “World of Warcraft”
or even an oldie but a goodie like Sony's “Everquest” or “Vampire Bloodlines.”
I should also say that I think people who can't reconcile gaming or other activities with the more “serious” aspects of life tend to be a bit silly in my eyes. I remember a discussion I had in social media once where a reader who keenly observed my Transformer collectible action figures in the background of a photo I posted just dismissed my take on a “serious” topic outright and asked me to go back to “playing with my toy robots.” I suppose such a judgmental attitude is better than being shoved into a locker like some of us “nerdy” or “geeky” people experienced during our younger days, where the jocks or the less tolerant members in an educational setting thought they were somehow superior by virtue of their participation in sports, or other activities that were then considered (in their eyes) cooler than war gaming or pretending to slay some pretend monsters on a quest with fellow friends.
I think the “adults” into the more serious ideology are wrong and so were the intolerant jerks who discriminated against the gamers, geeks and nerds back in the day. I don't miss those days, and I am sure glad that pop culture tentpoles and the changing “zeitgeist” aided by such things as “Stranger Things” or “Critical Role” have enabled people to be themselves and enjoy the hobbies and activities they enjoy.
But I digress. Because broadband and internet coverage can be challenging in some of the more rural areas of Lake County, I don't always have the luxury of really good broadband and internet hookups which make streaming of my favorite games, or even the leisure activity of streaming the latest Disney+ or Netflix shows challenging or nearly impossible, so in the latter part of 2023 and so far this year, I have been participating in more and more analog type of diversions such as reading novels (I am partial to fantasy stories but also enjoy the occasional biography or political best seller.) and playing table top role playing games. When life gives you lemons, sometimes you have to make the proverbial lemonade or fling a dagger at that meddlesome goblin hiding in the rpg bushes.
When I was a wee lad, my mom took me to Toys `R Us and I begged her to buy me TSR's game manuals for D&D and “Call of Cthulhu” I still have them and 50 years after the game launched, it seemed as RPGs would fade away in favor of other media and with some questionable business practices by parent company Hasbro, it seemed as though D&D might also fail to survive in a technological world with a nascent artificial intelligence revolution in the horizon. Then along came a little thing COVID to change people's habits.
Ariel Carmona is the editor of the Lake County Record-Bee and an RPG enthusiast, writing and blogging about these topics in his ever diminishing free time. For more geek culture coverage tune into KPFZ radio at 88.1 FM or on the web at kpfz.org Friday afternoons at 4 PM PST for the “Nexus of Geek” show.