A Game of the Same Name
This weekend was KublaCon. Non-geeks may want to skip this part. Actually, non-geeks may want to skip this site, but if you insist on staying the best I can offer is fair warning.
I only have two anecdotes of a non-game-geek variety which I will share now, at the top of the post, so those who don’t care about the specifics of Type-P Magic: The Gathering tournaments or comparisons between Settlers of Catan and Catan The Card Game can get to the stuff they might be able to stomach and leave the rest to those who care about such things. Or at least those who don’t need help sleeping.
Nik and I had been at the con for less than ten minutes, checking in and parking and so forth. The electric buzz that only the hardest core geek will ever get from merely being in the vicinity of dozens of games had started to sizzle my bones and I was getting eager to wander the Dealer’s room and start some kind of game. As we stepped into the elevator from the atrium level a thin brunette wheeling an oversized suitcase pinned the doors from closing completely and bustled in, a flurry of nervous energy and caffienated exhuberance.
“Oh my gosh!” she gushed. “Are you two here for the thing?” I was perfectly clear as to what she was referring to: It isn’t exactly as if KublaCon’s presence in the hotel is particularly subtle. Even if they didn’t plaster posters and flyers and advertisements all over the lobby and atrium levels, there is something decidedly unusual about a cluser of over one hundred readily identifiable geeks hunched over tables, scowling in intense concentration at a plastic soldier and a vinyl wipe-off mat covered in hexagonal lines. It’s something you can’t readily dismiss, at any rate.
But Nikki misunderstood the woman. We hadn’t checked into the con yet so we were lacking the lanyard name badges and bright pink wristbands that would mark us as one of “them” for the duration of the con, that made Nikki’s reply completely believable. “Uh, no,” she said.
Immediately I knew what was about to happen. I suppose the right thing to do would have been to stop the whole conversation there and correct Nik’s mistake and prevent the inevitable. But instead I let the woman’s bullish conversation style have its way and sat silently with a half bemused, half agitated smile on my face while she ploughed on.
“I saw all these guys with ponytails, and I didn’t know what was going on! So I asked the hotel desk and they said it was some kind of—” her voice lowered to a conspiratorial stage whisper “—Dungeons and Dragons? A convention! I guess they all get around and just… play these games! Oh my goodness, can you imagine? All these old guys acting out sword fights all weekend long?” She laughed then, a breezy and genuinely amused laughter. I stood against the cool elevator glass and regarded her as one might a gnat that you’ve intercepted trying to make a beeline for your ear canal. I wondered briefly if I should spare her embarrassment and try to get off the elevator with a minimum of fuss. What harm could it be? She had her laugh—she would have anyway, with or without our presence.
I wasn’t personally offended. You can’t engage in a hobby or activity the likes of role-playing or video gaming or computer programming or even rock climbing, motorcycle riding or scrapbooking without enduring a certain set of preconceptions which may or may not directly apply. It comes with the territory, and you can either let it get to you and ruin your enjoyment or you can learn to let it roll off of you and ignore what may in fact be an outright negative perception. Since to me, gaming is all about having fun, I do so in spite of the perhaps strange looks or naive questions. People can even be downright insulting but you know, that’s fine. I don’t play role-playing games or Warhammer to fit in with the cool kids, I do it because it’s a hoot and a holler. You spend your life trying to impress everyone and you end up hating yourself so my attitude is whatever, man.
But at the same time I don’t want to push my opinions on how awesome the newest GURPS sourcebook is or try to drum up a conversation with a random person on the bus about whether the new dual lands that hit you for a point of damage in Magic are a fair trade-off for the imbalance of the old-school Beta-era dual lands. I can enjoy my pastimes in relative peace so long as I’m not acting like some kind of geek recruiter. My philosophy, such that it is, basically dictates that people who are interested in games of this nature will drift to them naturally and trying to evangelize on their behalf is good for nothing more than some awkwardness at best or downright hostility in the worst case.
I had just made up my mind to stay quiet and let her get off the elevator when Nik piped up, “Oh, yeah! We are here for that!”
Page 1 of 7 | Next page