7.05.2009

On the Dork Scale: Vampires Versus Dragons


Is this not dorkier than...


THIS?!?!

As just about everyone knows, I'm a shameless player of pencil + paper role-playing games. I've been rolling the twenty-sided die since I was in fifth grade. I have spells memorized. I can calculate skill checks on the fly. I've slayed some serious dragon.

For the last two years or so, I've been running a D+D game with some of my homies here in SC. I finally got tired of running it and turned over the scepter of control to J. In the process, we all democratically decided to switch from D+D to Vampire for a while.

Now: I heard from B that my homie K, wife of player L, thinks that it's waaaaaaaaay dorkier that we're playing Vampire instead of D+D. And the thing is, I understand. D+D is kind of the vintage, old-school dork-style, all pocket protectors and calculator watches. All things vampire have that veneer of pseudo-cool that is so not really cool (and which the brilliant HBO series about vampires, True Blood, does an outstanding job of making fun of.)

But this just makes me wonder more about nerdiness in the present conjuncture - at some point, my generation embraced their inner (or in my case, outer) nerd, with all of the nostalgia for 8-bit Nintendo and all of the movies about toys we grew up with and so on. Perhaps we're not ready to move forward. Perhaps we're not ready to get on board with current nerdiness. Perhaps the next generation will have to be the ones to be nostalgic about vampires, while in the meantime, a group of us gathers at K + L's and surreptitiously plays a game in which we pretend to BE them.

6 comments:

Colin said...

Dude (inflected with some serious concern). I am worried.

kungfuramone said...

Not at all! It's good, clean fun. In which we are members of "covenants" and "clans" and we "embrace" mortals.

Kelly said...

And as the forces gather in my living room I will continue to flee to the sanctuary of Chez Brooks and the X-files. (yes I'm liking my glass house thank you very much :) ).

Is that pic of the vampire a still shot from a porno? It totally looks like something from "Ejacula".

Cody Austin Rich said...

I'm sorry, but until you start playing paper and pen re-enactments of WWII battles, complete with models and maps, your relative table-top dorkiness is not an issue.

Unless you start LARPing, in which case: yeah, that's pretty lame.

kungfuramone said...

Yeah, it hasn't come to LARPing. YET.

And K, no, that's Eric the vampire "sheriff" from True Blood. Not a porno. That I know of.

Placeholder said...

I think you're okay as long as you can resist the pull of vinyl clothing and/or trenchcoats while playing.