Sunday, December 5, 2010

Hip-deep in the Mainstream

Although it's easy to disparage such MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft or Everquest, one can't deny that they have introduced the formerly enigmatic terms and concepts of roleplaying into mainstream culture. Even at the height of the D&D Boom of the 1980s, to see the following in a mass market syndicated comic strip would have been unimaginable. Behold Friday's The Wizard of Id:

The only thing about the above which saddens me is that, while there is a larger percentage of the population than ever who now gets that joke, only a fraction of it understands where those terms originated. And of that percentage, many of them would never consider playing a pen-and-paper roleplaying game and would be insulted if it was suggested that they share the same heritage of those so-called "nerds" who were indulging in this form of recreation more than three decades ago.

It's hard to be a trend-setter.

5 comments:

scottsz said...

I totally understand.

More and more, I think gaming and game culture was better before geeks were cool.

Joe Bardales said...

In addition to WoW, I would implicate the Battlestar Galactica reboot and The Walking Dead television shows. The "normals" are jumping on the geek/nerd bandwagon in record numbers! :)

Joe G Kushner said...

At a wedding one of the groom's friends, who was a friend of mine, was busting on me for playing D&D. He'd already told me how much he loved warcraft and about his characters. He didn't like it when I explained to him, that at least I had the balls to sit around a table with other people and play and didnt' have to use the internet to play an elf.

Clovis Cithog said...

Wizard of ID

May 20, 2009

was similar in tone,
but funnier.

Dyson Logos said...

Interesting... Not a soul that I've met who plays WoW isn't aware of the D&D roots of the game and its terminology. The vast majority of them have never played D&D nor want to play D&D, but they are quite aware of it.