Addendum to "Nazis"

Just a quick addendum to yesterday's post:

I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons for a long while now. Since (roughly) 1982...about 43 years. To put that in perspective, Gary Gygax played D&D for 36 years (from 1972-2008) while Dave Arneson played roughly 37 years (from 1972-2009). While I'd imagine they did quite a bit more gaming than myself (as my "hobby" was their lives and livelihoods) I've been around...I'm not "new" to this game.

D&D is for everyone. Over the years, I have played "old edition" D&D (B/X and AD&D) with people of all sorts: Boys and girls as young as age eight. Straight men. Gay men. Straight women. Gay women. Whites. Blacks. Asians. East Indians. Pacific Islander. Mixed race. Mexicans. Canadians. All sorts of Europeans (hello Cauldron!). Proud "Rednecks" from Eastern Washington. Lefty radicals who'd take any opportunity to protest "the Man." Catholics. Christians. Jews. Agnostics. Atheists. People from "old (East Coast) money." People on disability who were unable to work. Ex-military (marine scout-sniper). Alcoholic hoboes. Ex-drug dealers/gang members. Guys who would go on to become Dominican monks. Longshoremen. Computer programmers. Cooks. Bankers. Musicians. Entrepreneurs. Married, family guys. Dating couples. Singles. Suave, charismatic professionals that worked out (a lot) and fat nerds that were the epitome of the "gamer sterotype." Democrats and Republicans and people who've opted out of the political system entirely.

I've played with a LOT of different types of people, from many different walks of life. PLUS a handful of people who I've never seen or met but only played with on-line...who knows what diversity those folks might have been representing?

Have I ever played with a Nazi (Neo- or otherwise)? Not that I know of. But it's certainly possible. Everyone has things about themselves that they keep to themselves. If they were a secret Nazi, it didn't affect my game at all...nor did it mar what appeared (to me) to be their enjoyment from the experience.

I've only had one person tell me that D&D just "wasn't for them" (although they seemed to be having a good time in the moment, while playing); that was my wife.  All the others I've encountered and run games for would have happily come back for more if circumstances (time constraints, priorities, responsibilities, etc.) had not intervened.  Truth be told, most often those "circumstances" were simply ME flaking out...being unwilling or unable to continue running the game, for a variety of reasons. Many of those people I abandoned continue to play today...just with other Dungeon Masters.

The POINT is that this "D&D thing"...having adventures, fighting monsters, discovering treasure. dying in filthy, subterranean environments....generally holds appeal for ALL types of people. It's not just a "straight white male thing." You'll hear that nonsense from some corners of the internet, but that's not my experience.

[hmm, now that I think of it, there was another guy who told me D&D "wasn't for him;" he had been brought to a session by his (enthusiastic) girlfriend of the time...a guy I'd known for a while through my brother. He was really outside his comfort zone with the whole experience (his interests lay in fast cars, making money, and drugs). However, since Justin is a white straight male, his exclusion from the hobby doesn't really impact the "diversity" of people with whom I've gamed]

And it IS a game for everyone...one that is playable simultaneously by people of varying skill levels, backgrounds, mental and physical capabilities (assuming you have a means of rolling dice or generating random numbers), giving a wide swath of humanity a chance to experience pulse-pounding action together...something that team sports can't even do, unless played at a very low level of competition.

And why does that matter? Because it is the experience of competition...of being "tested under fire"...that brings people together and cements bonds of lasting respect, camaraderie, and friendship.

You see this happen in other pressure experiences: military folks talk about this a lot. Having never been in the military myself, I've only had the opportunity to play with ex-military folks, but I've known quite a few men and women (many of them gamers) who've shared the bonds they've created with their "brothers" in facing true life-and-death situations.  I have no reason to doubt it.

On a smaller scale, I see it all the time in youth sports. My son has friends all over this town because of all the various teams he's been a part of with different kids from different schools with different backgrounds. Or here's a better anecdote: my daughter took a year off from playing club soccer, but decided to get back into it for the coming year. She tried out, made a team, and got put with a bunch of girls whom she'd never met before, but who (mostly) already knew each other. After her first week of practice she was having a lot of negative feelings...she was feeling left out and excluded and sad, despite enjoying the sport and having a good coach. 

Then came last weekend in which she played two games with the girls against real opponents. Now, her entire demeanor has changed...having gone through the games, playing with the others, suffering the ups and downs, being tested, and contributing she now has a whole different relationship to her teammates. She has a team of "friends," now...they laugh and talk together and have mutual respect for each other and she feels a part of the team. And I suspect (based on what I've observed in the past) that those bonds will only strengthen over the course of the season. Regardless, I've seen the shift in my own child.

It's what I try to produce and promote in the teams that I coach, too. Camaraderie. It makes for a better team and a better quality of play on the field/court/pitch.

Back to D&D: you can achieve this same thing through D&D play. I've seen it happen...it's why I make no bones about being an "adversarial DM" (ah, crap...that's a whole 'nother post I've been meaning to write...). Through running D&D, I can apply pressure that causes folks to come together and form (or strengthen) bonds that can only come from working cooperatively "under fire." Over the years, I've seen it happen many, many times.

And unlike my daughter's soccer team (which requires you to be an 11 year old girl of a certain quality of skill), D&D has practically no limits to the diversity of people that can experience it. Assuming everyone understands how to play, the people around the table can be any gender, any color, any age, any cultural/economic background, any political persuasion, any religion, any anything.  And the GAME can still forge bonds between these disparate groups of people. Again, I've seen it happen, many times. Sometimes to extremes: that hippy radical and redneck from Wenatchee I mentioned earlier? Those two ended up getting married (I was the Best Man at their wedding). Sadly, their marriage didn't last, but they were together for years and gaming was a shared passion that (along with love) helped them grow and change together.

On a smaller scale, I can point to my son's best friend who he hasn't gone to school with for 4+ years and who he never played on a sports team with. They are so different in so many ways: Diego is an ultra-competitive athlete, academic achiever, very religious, and tends to take himself very seriously. Maceo is NOT an athlete, not religious, not a great student, and totally at ease with and accepting of who he is (and who he isn't). But they've played D&D together (in my home campaign) several times, and those shared experiences are still things they talk about (sometimes) and allowed them to disregard all the ways they are different and simply focus on their shared friendship as two young, fairly wholesome adolescents. The two went on their first double date last Tuesday...Diego with his carefully coiffed hair, Mace with his blonde buzz cut...and, from what I heard, pretty much ditched the girls after lunch to simply hang out at the mall together. 

D&D can bring disparate people together in a shared experience in a way that few...if any...things can do. Yeah, there's something of that in attending a sporting event (you end up 'high-fiving' a lot of strange bedfellows at a Seahawks home game), but the interaction is not nearly as deep, nor as intimate, as gaming around a table. D&D can be a tool for forming connections with our fellow humans in a way that is sorely needed in our present society. Why not use it?

Ghettoizing, ostracizing, and partitioning off people we dislike and/or disagree with is NOT the path to a better world...it just ain't. As I wrote yesterday, we are different for a reason; part of living this life is (I believe) learning to harmonize with others. There is beauty in harmony; in music, a harmony is a unified whole, despite a composition of different notes. That's what we're striving for. Well, it's what I'm striving for.

Not that it's easy or simple. Not that it's a fast/speedy process. Not that it's convenient...but, man O man, don't we already have a lot of conveniences in our lives? Does everything have to be as simple and easy as ordering something off Amazon with the push of a button?

Learning to love your Nazi neighbor isn't an easy task. Neither is learning to be a Dungeon Master. For some people (including, perhaps, myself) the latter is far more easy than the former. And to folks for whom this is the case (like, perhaps, myself) I'd suggest focusing on THAT (i.e. learning to DM) and then simply worry about running an inclusive game devoid of interest in anything other than the action at the table and ability of the players participating. Focus on the game you're running, and let the game do the harder work of bringing people together.

Try it out. See what happens. If that doesn't work then, sure, go ahead and go back to the thing you KNOW doesn't work (kicking the unwanted untouchables to the curb)...that's always in your back pocket. 

I don't have any Nazi friends (that I know of). But even if I did, that wouldn't make me a Nazi.

[hmm...I guess that wasn't a "quick" addendum. Apologies]