face it guys, when we admit to ourselves who we are we will cease to wonder why girls don't play these games and why are dorky actions are the true culprit. What really defines us as nerds and geeks. open your eyes! see for yourselves! accept your destiny! join me! and we will rule the galaxy as the geeky nerd brigade! then and only then will we get the hot babes that we dream of, and that the guys on the football team always get after they pants us and throw us in our locker.

I'm not white. Well, not mostly white anyway.

i'm not white . . i'm pale *g*

I think maybe you have the lower end of the spectrum, at least in my circle, we have those things you are dreaming of. and I never dished out wedgies I was secure enough to not pick on you guys.

Uh, I don't have a locker, I'm an "adult."

But seriously, why would you remind us of the fact that most of us will live and die alone? Just because it's true doesn't mean I like to think about it. "Open my eyes?" That's a horrible plan. When my eyes are closed, at least there's hot naked chicks in my head. When my eyes are open, I have to think about reality. If I liked doing that, I wouldn't play Shadowrun.

I'm not white either, but geeky nerdness transcends racial boundaries. We must all unite to form a unified front! for the honor of all dorkiness!





You used to be a jock?! infiltrator! code red! all are base are belong to us! hitch up your pants, beware the wet willie and the rear admiral!





only when we see the truth will we aspire to gain what we don't have.

hmmm
maybe you guys just live in crappy places. My fiance' I live with is cute as all get out. So were my ex's. Most of my old gaming group I was in for years all have hot wives. The girls we larped with were all sexy as can be. We have plenty of women in my gmaing group. At one point we had more women then men.

Hmm..

My wife is making a Shadowrun character tonight for a game I'm running either this weekend or next....
That kinda blows your theory out of the water... but hey, I still like Weird Al....

yeah I'm a huge Weird Al fan
and I am a geek, not a nerd. I have social skills.

Le sigh.
Y'all just ain't spent enough karma on charisma and con (seduce) yet. Give yourselves time.

Oh, and never underestimate the effect a case of beer can have on female judgment College will teach you many things padawan.

Well, a *lot* of babes love geeks and nerds... We are generally more tender, more gentle, make better salaries and some nerds are even good looking.

Personnally, I'm maried, father of two childrens, my wife is also quite nerd... and I survived the big 1987 hacker crackdown... ^_^

I mostly run SR for girls at the mo (I is a boy). I'm a geek and proud though. I have a hot Gf (who roleplays and will hit me if she reads this). I have a degree and work in a bookshop.

Gaming is a refuge for the introverted. Extroverts do well anywhere, gaming included, but gaming seems to be unusually accepting of people lacking force of personality. Or proper socialization.

I have been in two university gaming clubs and several different gaming groups, and so many of them just seem stagnant. The same people wading in the same mediocrity year after year.

It's depressing, really. Kids who's only real skill is building a powerful RPG character.

One one hand, it's good they don't have to be alone. On the other, giving them a community tells them (us?) "you don't have to change. You can be just like us! We can all be mediocre together!"

I offer sincere congratulations to those of you with healthy social lives. In my experience, you are in a distinct minority.

As for myself, I am so introverted, I am nearly autistic. It should surprise no one that I am much more comfortable surrounded by facts than people. And I am _certain_ it has held me back in life.

You're a person who eats unusual objects instead of an animal in a Dr. Seuss book?

I mean, I can understand how not being human might make it difficult to have standard human social skills, but biting the heads off of live chickens usually is a pretty big strike against that as well.

~J

Good points. I am an introvert, and I can manage socializing, but it does take a great deal of effort at times. I think the autism link is intriguing.

I am an introvert myself. The trick I learned in Highschool was to pretend I was an extrovert. Eventually I got so used to it that it kinda stuck. Unfortunately Ive developed something of a schism from it. heh

I have a friend with more than one autistic child. I did some research and found they are thinking part of it may be a vitamin A deficiency (or was it D? it's been awhile since I read it)

To quote the Al, "got my skills I'm a champion of D&D", uh-huh. The song is stunningly correct about all the core aspects of geekery. Lots of people here undoubtedly posess most of them, me included.

yes yes geeks bite head off chickens and dorks are the penises of whales
*shakes head*

while biting heads off of live bats makes one famous somehow . . and i LIKE ozzy *g*

my GF is also quite the nerdy little geekette, but still cute as hell and sexy not only to me and my fellow dorks *g*
I also know more than one of those types of specimen O.o
As for Weird Al:"It's all about the pentiums baby!" says the BOFH

My wife won't play Shadowrun because there's no actual Druid class. Well, that and it would require her logging off of WoW. So... maybe things are a bit different for me. I wouldn't say I have a healthy social life outside of my family, but then, that's enough for me. More than enough, sometimes -- but that's to be expected with a two-year old. That's not from lack of skills so much as moving to the middle of nowhere and then having no real free time. (Though I lack all sense of etiquette, that's out of choice moreso than incompetence. I don't care which fork is which, they're all forks and they all work just fine and asking me to use one in particular is just silly.)

My old D&D group was all couples.

You could always just make a skeletal Shaman with the Shapechange spell, then lie to her and claim that they added a Druid class to the game.

~J

Most of the stuff I've read recently compares children with autism to opium addicts and that treatments are very much similar. I can't remember all the details but the body is producing something that is essentially making them high. They have all sorts of diet regimens that are supposed to help, such as cutting out gluten (and lactose if they can't handle it). All in all it was very interesting.

Six gamers, of that two women (not girls, plus one is my live-in GF), one male nerd (even got divorced due to WoW). I actually find it easy to defend RP as a hobby - women like creativity and intellect. About the only thing nerds need to learn in my experience is talking about something else than their speciality. For those romantically challenged, talking about THEIR hobby tends to work fine. Especially if they are nerds, too.

And Feshy, I get the part about voluntary lack of etiquette. In some moods I´m on the warpath against rethorical questions. As in teaching people not to ask questions they don´t want answered.

As this thread is going to end up in general gaming anyway, do you know many people with social problems due to online gaming? In addition to the aforementioned group member, one of us has a GF that took him on after leaving her BF of nine years because of WoW being more important than anything else (for the Ex). Or do you think it is just one of many hobbies occasionally leading to divorce?

I would submit that this has nothing to do specifically with Shadowrun and doesn't even belong in this forum.

I've done that as well. Sometimes it can be hard to tread the line between A-social (I'll use whichever fork I like) and Anti-social (Which fork is the eye-stabbing fork? Oh - right. Two eyes, two forks.) At least, it used to be. I'm probably more mellow now. Mostly.

You are correct!! And thus the thread will be moved to "General Gaming" where it should be.

eh, well, just so you know, it's the smaller one, with one stronger tine (found on the far left apparently) =D

Reality hardly ever matches up to stigmas and stereotypes. A healthy fantasy life is not necessarily a bad thing for anyone, some people simply prefer to express it in different ways. I ride both sides of the fence here; I feel a balanced healthy uplifting life can include many of the aspects of what the ignorant might want to divide into in crowd/out crowd activities. There are human qualities that transcend your hobbies, like personality, and its those qualities that have unfortunately come to define gamers, rather than the truth about how diverse we really are.


Many people who game are perfectly within the range of normal, and most people who you might think are in crowd normal types are as diverse as anyone else and have as many crazy idiosyncracies as anyone else. Think of the hot chick who likes to watch horror, occult films. They revel in this type of fantasy. Some of us just take it one step further and say "what would we do differently if we were in that situation?" and have fun acting it out. Life is too short and the world is too large for all of us to be pidgeon holed into so few categories. Hollywood is a major producer of the sort of fantasies where we draw from and nobody knocks an action star for pretending to be what we pretend to be when we want a bit of rec time. What makes the stigma is when you are using it as a crutch. Realize that the life you build around gaming is what defines you, not the gaming itself.

I think that in a world where the police and the laws they enforce have largely replaced the ultra-masculine protective role that was once expected of us. Now, I prove my worth to my girlfriend with my min-maxing skills and catching and evolving her pokemon for her.

Although, if you play any sort of role-playing game enough, it tends to infiltrate your life in a way that is just socially unnaceptable. My girlfriend is in Hong Kong, partying and shopping on victoria island and going to gay clubs, and I almost contributed some Hong Kong knowledge of my own. Unfortunately that knowledge came from HK 2070 in Runner Havens, and I had to shut myself up before I looked like an even bigger tool. She just thought I didn't know anything.

I could never imagine offering to play Shadowrun with her, or any of my friends. A few of my male and female friends are gamers themselves, but I don't think they'd go for the pen-and-paper thing, let alone invest the time in reading the history and figuring it out. So I largely keep it to myself.

I don't qualify for nerd, geek or whatever you call it. I have social skills (even work in a social profession). None of my GFs had been gamers girls.

Lucky me?

So is Hocus!

Oh man, is this another thread where I get to brag about how much sex I get?

As an aside, anyone have a good clue for making my hot gamer wife LESS hot so we stop getting babies? Those things are expensive and I crit way too often.

Now the question is...

Making babies=Critical Glitch or Critical Success?

And what is theyrelevant stat and skill?

And yes I think this is the sort of thread where we can all brag about how much sex with get. yay us.

But seriously man, it's a fun song but I actually think that RPG's attract a broader range of people united by the common thread that they like to imagine a world other than the one they currently live in.

They also typically like to read and have a lot of time on their hands. But I digress. If you want to see some people who lack social skills, go to an anime convention. I'm aware normal people attend these but holy crap, neko neko cat girls make Gen Con look like a bastion of social graces.

Ugh. Sorry that's my bias.

Well, you could try cosmetic surgery to make her less attractive, but I'd just go with anal. If you do it right, she'll never want to you to come in through the front door ever again and you have to be very lucky to get her pregnant that way.

Or you could get a vasectomy it is 99.85% effective. And then there are the less effective methods such as condoms and rings and sponges and implants.



You could always arrange for a bunch of thugs to attempt to gang rape her and them come to the rescue guns blazing. It probably isn't a good idea, but hey, its slightly safer than volunteering for relief work in Darfur in the hope that you'll have a chance to Rambo it.

This thread has just crossed outside the lines of the Terms of Service. Please be sensitive to the varied audience that utilize this board.

Contemplate this...on the tree of woe!

Geek checking in, but I can honestly say that normality is all about moderation. I'm 32 years old, married with one kid...I GM'd DnD and SR in high school, off and on through college and have recently been GMing SR4 for about 18 months. Also played football in high school and college...

I also play WoW...I also attend local LAN parties and love linux...

All in moderation though...I have a couple friends that all this stuff occupies their entire life...so I know where I don't want to go:)

Geek 4 Life, but Geek is not my life...

A bit OT, but I had chatted with a friend about it yesterday: is there a possiblity for people from the US to play football (or baseball or basketball) in organized form after college if they don't make it as a professional?

Like an amateur league, I wanted to say.

Hi, my name is Michael, and I'm a geek! Been one my whole life, and I can't imagine changing after 37 years. And I so miss having a regular gaming group. When I was in the Navy, I used to run the ship's games, but out here in the real world there isn't even a game store within a 25 mile radius of my house. Gaming was my socialization, now most of my socializing is here, on DS. Of course I still talk to people at work, but most actual adults don't sling the lingo (or have the interest) to talk games. So I keep up on current events to be able to talk at all.

Agh! Creepy shipboard geeks! God tell me you weren't an MM or a boiler guy... They make all those Jack Chick tracts about people going into the sewers (shaft alley, fuel pump rooms, etc) and killing each other true!

Well not really, but we never did get a game together aboard ship, a pity too.

Yes, there are. And often "amateur league" is exactly what they're called.

Married 6 years to a beautiful gamer chick. No kids (thank God for birth control). I'm a pretty big nerd. Many of friends are big nerds and fit the stereotype of no girlfriend, playing WoW 22 hours a day and drinking Mountain Dew with every meal, so I must be the odd one.

URLs? Sounds awesome.

www.chick.com D&D. Prepare your mind for... the end.

We're all already aware of Jack Chick, but we'd love to see something about gaming aboard ships with MMs and boiler guys.

Actually, I think a more interesting question is whether or not its possible to be a gamer and someone.. err.. socially successful. I really enjoy role playing, acting and telling stories and I live a good, decent life and am far from the stereotype of the typical gamer. In fact, outside the game I find myself with friends from far different circles. So if I want a decent game I have to swallow my pride and hang out with the "geeks" so to speak,though i don't like to think of them as that (I just wish they would shower/work out/not be whiny passive aggressive etc) so I have a receptive audience for my role playing/storytelling session. I think what gaming needs is just better PR.

That's a great point. There really aren't any RPGs about playing football and the like. Maybe you should get to work designing one!

Oops, no I was just correlating between the two concepts. Sorry.