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[Arachno-capitalist]

http://achewood.com/index.php?date=03062008

I realized tonight that Rugby, and most sports for that matter, have just as many ridiculous rules as these RPG geek games.

"Your foot wasn't in front of the ball when you picked it up so the opponent gains 10 meters and a kick."
"You lost the dexterity roll so you lose 10 skill points and the coffin remains locked"

[CortJstr]

I prefer the Penny Arcade and OotS comics on the subject.

[Doc]

oooh I hadn't read OotS yet.

It sounds like a backhanded compliment but out of all the terrible puns people have been kicking around for this PA does it the best, as usual.

I always feel a little odd when Onstad does comics like this, when PA (for example) makes a similar joke the humour comes from love of a particular past-time and that adds an extra layer of humour but Onstad sometimes makes jokes that amount to 'RPGs (or whatever) are dorky... funny huh?' which is sub-par compared to his usual quirky awesomeness.

Then again I still laugh my arse off at the idea that idiots are obsessed with car stereos so I guess I'll make my int roll against hypocrisy eh?

Edit: Websnark did a good (if lengthy) obit too.

[Bobby Isosceles]

I always feel a little odd when Onstad does comics like this, when PA (for example) makes a similar joke the humour comes from love of a particular past-time and that adds an extra layer of humour but Onstad sometimes makes jokes that amount to 'RPGs (or whatever) are dorky... funny huh?' which is sub-par compared to his usual quirky awesomeness.

Well, fair's fair. He also did a "Interactive text adventures are dorky ... funny huh?" just before that. People seemed to like that one. What's the difference?

[wombat]

The previous one was more character-driven, though. Like it had funny things about Philippe, not just about text adventures.

I can't really compare, though, because I have some small experience of text adventures but none of D&D.

[colmore]

I think this is the first time I have ever seen D&D (correctly) mocked for being rednecky as hell.  I think this is a great example of what sets apart Onstad from other humorists.  Where most will just lean heavy on the received knowledge of D&D players being total dweebs, Onstad pulls out goddamned observation.  It's an important distinction -- it's also the distinction between Dave Chapelle and every other "black people / white people" hack.

I played a LOT of D&D in middle school, but sometime around the time that kids get lerner's permits, start working out how to talk to the opposite sex, and begin to care too deeply about pop music, the D&D and Magic herd thins out quite a bit, and some of the remainder well... let's say serious questions about evolution are posed.  The Imagination Game for adults is a fine and wonderful invention.  It sort of attracts broken people like moths to a flame.  Kind of like porn and libertarianism.

[smick]

At my parents house, there is a picture of me circa 1993, with that hairstyle dyed black.

I am painting a miniature.

[littlefallsmets]

Some to think of it, nearly every hardcore D&Der I've ever known... shaved their sidewalls, yeah.

Is there something in gaming that is anti-sideburns? Is Elvis the anti-D&D? One of the few kinds of dork cred that I have zero points in is D&D. I watched about five minutes of a game once in high school and I was like:

"Yeah... I'm gonna... go. I'm gonna go home and watch CRUMB in black-and-white, burn incense and get all weepy about a crush I have... and maybe when CRUMB is done, I'll listen to some Smashing Pumpkins on headphones."

Because this is what I did for the bulk of high school.

So I can't really JUDGE D&Ders at all, at least they were with other humans, I'm just sayin'.

Clearly not my thing.

[CortJstr]

I really wanted to play around middle school, but had nobody to play with. But I did have the super-basic D&D set with only like 5 classes.

[theinevitable]

Yeah, I really wanted to play in middle school, and the beginning of high school. Now I do not want to play, but am technically engaged in an "old west" campaign with these guys I know. They are really rad, but sometimes they grate a little. I said a thing to them once that... was probably the funniest (at the time) and meanest thing I have ever said to someone who did nothing to me, and so I felt bad enough that I agreed to play in their D&D game. I find that... it's vaguely entertaining, but as a life-long imagination-game player, all the rules bother me. I just want to pretend, goddamnit!

I think I am repelled by nerds in the same way I am repelled by the guy downstairs who is a hardcore atheist. "Oh, man, seriously? I thought (people who believed in God were stupid)(fantasies were awesome) when I was 15. You're still doing that?" I realize this is not great (well, OK, I am perfectly OK with thinking that guy is an asshole, because he is), but I am pretty sure that that is what my brain is doing.

I guess what I'm saying is, I fear and loathe mega-nerds in the same way the closet homosexual is homophobic. I am a lot lot lot less geeky than I was 4 years ago, but when I look in the mirror I still see myself with unbrushed/huge hair, braces, acne, crooked glasses, t-shirt with a dragon on it, etc, and I'm logging on to Neverwinter Nights right when I get home from school.
Um, those people were who I was talking about when I said that my New Year's resolution was to be more generous in my thoughts about people who are enthusiastic about things I don't care about. I think I have been better about it than I was last year, where I was a total dick to them, or at least I was in my own mind.

This is my 4999th post. I think I might take a week off for spring break? I want to spend more time reading and less time on the internet. Especially considering I can make 1 long post at the end of the day in a thread, rather than 20 1-sentence ones because I'm logging on to TOUAMB every 30 minutes.

[jaydub]

You could also just keep editing your last post for a few sessions.  Sometimes I do that if I'm enjoying a rollover or a cool prime number or something.

(Huge, huge dork)

I can safely say, with extensive and broad based authority, that the female RPGer is not a theoretical construct.  Someday I may go into depth on the topic - but they break down into a few categories.  Some, like their male counterparts, are just kids who like collaboratively constructing an adventure where all the mechanics have been worked out.  Some are closet drama dorks with stage fright who like acting a part before an audience who is incredibly unlikely to reject them in any way because, god, its a D&D girl ferchrissakes.  Some are sort of RPG camp followers whose boyfriends play.  Some are Renfair types who play RPGs when the weather's bad.  There are combinations of these, and variations, and I'm probably overlooking a couple categories at the moment - and I don't mean to belittle the women I played with by pigeonholing them in this way.  I just think its equally bad to dismiss them as imaginary and set up the RPG world as some sort of boys-only club.  I'll grant that the sex ratio was something like 4.5:1, but some of the most skilled players were definitely female in my experience.

[jay-ell]

I never played D&D (although I would have loved it during my Middle School years) because my Mom thought it was of the devil. 

Witchcraft! 

[Carlos del Vaca]

When I was in middle school or so and heavily into D&D, someone wrote to our local paper ranting about the evils of D&D, which was of course met by a wave of replies from the local nerd community.  My favorite thing about her letter was that she was worried about something called "hex paper," which, we pointed out, is like graph paper except with hexagons instead of squares.

[Undertoad]

I like this one a lot, but it did sadden me that the guy who constructed an awesome blistering attack on Comic Sans has now employed Papyrus.

"Due to its unique presentation and widespread circulation, many graphic designers, including Papyrus' originator, feel the font to be overused." -- Wikipedia entry for Papyrus (typeface)

[wombat]

I like this one a lot, but it did sadden me that the guy who constructed an awesome blistering attack on Comic Sans has now employed Papyrus.

"Due to its unique presentation and widespread circulation, many graphic designers, including Papyrus' originator, feel the font to be overused." -- Wikipedia entry for Papyrus (typeface)

But isn't the font a joke? I assumed he used it because it was used on something related... um, do you buy Dungeons and Dragons in a box?

Also: It's very sad that hex paper is just paper with hexagons.