January 30th, 2009

Officer Friendly

Submitted for amusement

"Whenever a hack writer wants to demonstrate that a person is a conspiracy nut (or just a nut), he has them mention Elvis being alive. This is an immediate tip-off that the write has no idea what he’s talking about, because those nuts don’t care about Elvis. These same types of writers will similarly try to shorthand “geek” by having the character mention or play Dungeons and Dragons (usually with large plastic models on a gameboard). Again, this reveals the writer’s poor hand, since geeks don’t play Dungeons and Dragons. They pride themselves on not playing it.

Obviously this is an exaggeration and some geeks play Dungeons and Dragons, because if they didn’t, then who is loudly declaiming the adventures of his warrior-thief in the game store right now? But they don’t play without some caveats. For example, no matter how long they’ve been playing or how much of it they’ve seen, they always hate the newest edition, which has always “dumbed down” the game and made it more “roll-play” instead of “role-play”. (Because mere dice are not enough to convey that their dark, haunted character is the most badass half-elf to ever wield dual scimitars.) Whatever the current version of the game is, it’s always a worthless disgrace when compared to either the previous edition (despite the geek initially declaring that edition a travesty) or, more frequently, whatever edition was current when the geek first started playing."