Me, the New York Times and D&D

I wrote this feature story for the New York Times Books section "In a Chaotic World, Dungeons & Dragons Is Resurgent: The role-playing game has made a surprising return to mainstream culture." (published online Nov. 13, 2019; on print Nov. 15). 

Why D&D is good for you: the podcast

The folks at Wizards of the Coast, aka D&D headquarters, kindly invited me to be on their Dragon Talk podcats to pax poetic about D&D and why it's so good for you. Hope you enjoy. You can also grab it on iTunes here.

Geek poetry contest winners!

The results are in!

We sponsored a geek poetry contest with GeekMom.com  and here are the winning poems.

Readers of Geek Mom were asked to submit a poem in any form of their choosing (haiku, rap, free verse, Klingon sonnet) on any geeky topic: Tolkien, Star Wars, Star Trek, gelatinous cubes, World of Warcraft war chants, hobbit drinking songs, odes to Harry Potter, ballads to honor Gary Gygax. 

Sample winning haiku:

Samwise and Frodo:

You think they’re about to kiss,

But they never do.

      --Natalie Jones

Poems that somehow managed to work in the name "Ethan Gilsdorf" (which, according to legend, is either Elvish or Elvis) were hard to resist. Winners got autographed copies of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.

Hope you enjoy! The rest of the bards' fabulous winning works can be read here. 

You can also read the other non-winning but nonetheless worthy entries here

See Second Skin

To say that video games, particularly massively multiplayeronline games, are popular is like saying Oprah has decent Nielsen ratings. According to Strategy Analytics, in 2008 they generated $1.5 billion in wolrdwide subscription revenues, a figure that’s expected to balloon to at least $2.5 billion by 2012. Variously abbreviated as MMOs, MMOGs, and MMPOGs (or, if of the roleplaying kind, MMORPGs), these games have become an integral part of our social revolution and evolution, altering how we actand interact. But for good or evil?

This is the question I ask in my book "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks." And it's one asked by Juan Carlos and Victor Piñeiro Escoriaza, creators of the award-winning documentary Second Skin.

Every now and again, a film comes around that helps you understand your world a little better. Such is the case with Second Skin, a documentary that focuses on various groups computer gamers "whose lives have been transformed by online virtual worlds" -- be they addicted players, couples who meet and fall in love online; disabled players; or those toiling overseas as "gold farmers" to make digital goodies for richer (and western) players.

For the documentary "Second Skin," filmmakers took six months searching for subjects obsessed with online role-playing games. Eventually, they settled on four subjects, intercutting between them to explore the appeal of the massively popular "World of Warcraft" and "EverQuest" games.

Many potential subjects refused to participate, fearful of the geek label, said writer-producer Victor Piñeiro Escoriaza (in an article I wrote about them for the Boston Globe). He had to reassure them that he and his co-filmmakers were sympathetic gamers themselves. "We're emphasizing the human aspect of the people behind the game."

This month, Second Skin hits the theaters in Somerville (Boston); Austin, LA, and Colorado Springs. Check here for dates and showtimes in your town. In theaters August 7th. On DVD (with Liberation Entertainment) everywhere August 25th.

Roll for damage (extra bases)!

In an interesting piece in the NY Times about APBA, a board and dice baseball game is, if not going strong, at least holding its own against video and fantasy league versions of sports games. Like all great subcultures, it's got a devoted following; a recent tournament attracted 76 players. According to the article, "Video games have become increasingly sophisticated, and fantasy sports leagues have surged in popularity, but APBA, like its rival Strat-O-Matic, has stuck to the basic format that made it successful."

APBA, which once stood for "American Professional Baseball Association," is about as old-school as it gets: dice, cards, and dice shakers. And what's most interesting is this geeky twist on who plays--- yes, folks who self-identify as "nerds" and "geeks," lovers of statistics "in statistics-related careers like accounting, teaching math, tax law and financial advising." Nerdy sports nuts --- and as we know, sports is celebrated in our culture. Conjuring magic spells, not so much.Of course, with APBA, no dungeons or dragons are required --- just the fantasy of imagining a winning team (or playing center field for one). An acceptable fantasy for most boys, men (and girls and women, too).

The article points to an interesting turn, too. Brian Wells, the 16 year old kid who has won the tournament a couple times, has been "begrudgingly" accepted by the men. A kid's game is co-opted by adults who then let the kid back in as a member of their tribe.

But also this point -- can an old-school board game (or for that matter, a miniature soldier wargame) capture the imagination of kids when most are used to the spoon-fed action and eye-candy of XBox and Playstation? It's an issue I discuss in Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, specifically whether a wargame like Chainmail can entrance a 12 year old boy, or whether he's start craving Warcraft after the first hour of snail's pace action.

In the Times article, the kid says that his friends stay home with video games. “They don’t make fun of me,” Wells said. “But they don’t want to get into it. Because some of my friends just don’t have the attention span for all of this.”

Proposed Gygax monument

As reported in the Janesville Gazette (WI) today, the family of E. Gary Gygax has announced plans for a memorial to Gygax in his hometown of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, the town where Dungeons & Dragons was founded. (In Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, I head off to Lake Geneva in search of Gygax and his legacy.)

Apparently, Gygax was into the idea. And who wouldn't be? (and who wouldn't want to be memorialized in this way?). What would the monument look like? Perhaps a statue, perhaps something else. A maze? An animatronic wizards or dragon spewing fireballs? An endlessly rotating d20?

Upon hearing the news, in a spare moment at my local cafe (where much of my book was written), I scribbled down a possible design idea. Thoughts?

 

Mommy, I want this for my birthday

My buddy JP (one of the key characters in my book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks) turned me onto this at Geekologie. And I've decided for my next birthday party, I want a huge cake in the shape of a Robotron coin-operated video game kiosk and, sitting on it, big red dragon guarding a d20, a light saber, my old DM's guide, and a bottle of Henricks gin, with a big One Ring wreathed in fire suspended above, through which Gollum, Ian McKellen and Barack Obama are playing leapfrog. Mommy, can you make that for me? Pleeeezzzee???

--- Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks