McCain Fails His Charisma Check

John McCain's campaign considers "Dungeons and Dragons Player" to be an insult needing no further explanation.

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.

I totally get this. McCain is polling way ahead of Obama with older voters, and older voters are more likely to actually vote than younger voters. And most older voters may agree that D&D players are generally shiftless, lazy, basement-dwelling sociopaths. Of course, statistics don't bear this out. A 2004 survey at GenCon found that 70% of roleplayers had college degrees, and less than 10% had no higher education at all. 62% reported an annual income of more than $50,000. (The median per capita income in 2005 was $25,857.) But the McCain campaign is apparently banking on the assumption that people who were raising teenagers in the 80's still think of roleplaying gamers as godless, lazy slackers. The kind of people who don't take as gospel anything that comes out of the mouth of a one-time prisoner of war. Even if it's obviously plagiarized.

RIP Gary Gygax

The death of the legendary Gary Gygax leaves the door open to all sorts of cracks about failed saving throws and low constitution scores. Fuck all that. Gygax was a genius who contributed something new to the world, something very special and never since duplicated. His passing is incredibly sad. Let the jokes come later. This guy had been in failing health for years, but was running weekly dungeon romps up until this past January. I whine and moan about my inability to find time or energy to run a game these days, and I'm put to shame.

Tycho at Penny Arcade has written the best tribute I've seen so far, so I'll simply quote it and, in spirit if not particulars, agree wholeheartedly.

The first time I ever played Dungeons & Dragons, I was six years old - books with great red demons on the cover that dared us to claim their riches, subtitled by this alien name Gygax. My mother was furious when she found my uncles had exposed me to those subterranean burrows, spilling over with rubies, and tourmalines, and the wealth of old kings even songs no longer remember. As a young man, I began hiding the books I bought inside my bed, which had a vast hollow space I had hidden in as a child. These books were soon discovered, and blamed for everything from recent colds to the dissolution of my parents' marriage. I took the wrong lesson, I'm afraid: I didn't learn to fear them. What I learned was that books, some books, were swollen with power - and this power projected into the physical realm. Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes.