Nerdier than thou?

I’ve always gotten the odd looks. Big guy, head buried in a book, hovering over my sketchbook laboriously working on a drawing of some bizarre nightmare, or planning out some devious plot for a D&D game. I can admit my social skills are limited, and I generally keep my circle of friends to a fairly small group who can somewhat "get" me. Add in my loves of comics, gaming, anime, and movies (even the really bad cheesy flicks) and I’m just a conglomerate of all things dorky. I can live with the odd looks, and have for 20+ years.

I’m an artist and gamer, I think that best describes me. Video games have always been part of my life, from Pong to WarCrack, and I realize 2old2play is a video gamers site, but tabletop is my true gaming love. Dungeons & Dragons is the most common of these, the one that the average non-gamer would recognize, but Gamma World in the early ‘80s was where I was introduced to RPGs. Since then, I was hooked. D&D, Marvel Super Heros, Dark Sun, CyberPunk/CyberGeneration, Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Apocalypse, Fading Suns, the list goes on. This sort of gaming feeds my art. They’re inspiration for stories and characters that evolve in my mind and need to get out. I create scenarios for intrepid adventurers to explore and challenges to face. This is the sort of thing that, so far, I can’t get from video games. Don’t get me wrong, there’s sheer joy in getting a kill from a random ‘nade toss on Halo2 or rolling into Undercity with a mess of guild mates and the trash talk from the awesome people and total douches I’ve met here at my home on the web. But I miss rolling dice, the shuffling of papers, flipping through game books looking for that special ability to round out the character concept, and sitting around a table with a group of buddies with pizza, chips, booze, and sodas gearing up for an adventure. There was a time in my life where Friday and Saturday night was for gaming with the gang. We hung out, talked trash, and gamed. It was something we’d look forward to all week. If someone had a tough day at work, it was "Man, I can’t wait till this weekend, I need to kill something!". It was a special thing, like a summer barbeque of meat and potatoes with a tasty dessert. Video games, for me at least, are like a drive through burger and fries. It’s convenience. I can log on anytime I want and quest in WoW or get my ass handed to me in Matchmaking, and yes, I do enjoy doing that actually,(well getting reamed in Matchmaking not so much :p ). But part of my gamer soul is just unsatisfied.

The people I used to tabletop game with have gone their own ways, due to responsibilities, distance, or WoW, and yet I keep making adventures, buying books or pieces for games I’ll likely not be able to play. Yet I still do these things because the artist in me needs to create. It’s easy for me to post up my latest drawing and get the "oohs and ahhs" because it’s instant. You look at it and react to it, easy peasy. But I also create stories, characters with histories, and whole worlds, but to get someone to be able to read the whole mess of something like that basically goes against all our ingrained gamer ADD. The fact of my tons of half finished ideas and some 48 WoW toons are a testament of my very own suffering of short attention span, and honestly, I’m shocked you’ve read this far in my rambling, heh. But at long last, let me make my point...

I have to say I’m proud to be part of 2old2play. I’ve never seen or been part of such an "online community" that truly extends into peoples lives the way 2o2p does. So, even though I tend to be quiet on Vent or Live, or that I don’t post much, or if I’ve my head buried in a book, hovering over my sketchbook laboriously working on a drawing of some bizarre nightmare, or planning out some devious plot for a D&D game, keep in mind that this is the place I want to be, with kindred spirits, and we’re all just different sides of a d20.