Matthew Yglesias (August 01, 2008) - Getting Our Stereotypes Straight (Media)

The highest concentration of people who were gamers as kids and have continued to love RPG's into adulthood are now working in...wait for it...

Military intelligence.

No lie. Ask an MI officer what he liked to do in high school, and I guarantee you that D&D was in there somewhere. That's why they're so good at wargaming real life scenarios now.

Posted by 8th Level Barbarian | August 1, 2008 3:19 PM

Um, Michael Goldfarb better check his web demograpics because the average Kos poster is someone in their 40s with a professional degree.

Lots of lawyers and professors over there. I suspect many gave up the twenty sided die way before 3rd Edition AD@D.

Posted by calipygian | August 1, 2008 3:22 PM

Matt is on a fucking roll today! Keep beating on those motherfuckers.

Posted by Big Pimpin | August 1, 2008 3:25 PM

Not to mention the fact that "mother's basement" is moving to supplant "you go, girl" and "whazzzzzzzup" as the most annoying of modern clichés. Sports bloggers, too, are sick of it.

Posted by Andrew Dupont | August 1, 2008 3:26 PM

"To speculate irresponsibly a bit, a lot of McCain's fans seem to me to be nerds who, instead of growing up and embracing their inner dungeon master, have instead decided that hanging out with the jock will make people think they're cool too."

Yep. This echoes David Foster Wallace's point in his insightful essay about McCain's 2000 primary campaign (reprinted in _Consider the Lobster_): "One reason a lot of the media on the Trail like John McCain is simply that he's a cool guy." "He's witty, and smart, and he'll make fun of himself and his wife and staff and other pols and the Trail, and he'll tease the press and give them shit in a way they don't ever mind because it's the sort of shit that makes you feel that there's this very cool, important guy who's noticing you and liking you enough to give you shit. Sometimes he'll wink at you for no reason."

Posted by Jeff M. | August 1, 2008 3:30 PM

At some point in high school, our all night D&D parties somehow evolved into all night beer & pot parties.

Posted by blah | August 1, 2008 3:31 PM

"To speculate irresponsibly a bit, a lot of McCain's fans seem to me to be nerds who, instead of growing up and embracing their inner dungeon master, have instead decided that hanging out with the jock will make people think they're cool too."

Yep. This echoes David Foster Wallace's point in his insightful essay about McCain's 2000 primary campaign (reprinted in _Consider the Lobster_): "One reason a lot of the media on the Trail like John McCain is simply that he's a cool guy." "He's witty, and smart, and he'll make fun of himself and his wife and staff and other pols and the Trail, and he'll tease the press and give them shit in a way they don't ever mind because it's the sort of shit that makes you feel that there's this very cool, important guy who's noticing you and liking you enough to give you shit. Sometimes he'll wink at you for no reason."

Posted by Jeff M. | August 1, 2008 3:31 PM

yeah, goldfarb looks like a really cool dude:

http://bp0.blogger.com/_MnYI3_FRbbQ/R_PkQ8YQ6oI/AAAAAAAAApU/YBdrvw1mDfY/s1600-h/goldfarb.bmp

I also like this quote:

"I haven't really been following this issue, mostly because I'm pretty sure that whatever the government is doing to these terrorists wouldn't "shock my conscience." Like my man Scalia says, sometimes you're going to have to take these terrorists and "smack them in the face." But, some folks are more easily shocked than I am, and they are in full moral outrage mode this morning with the release of a 2003 memo by John Yoo (now a professor at Berkeley!) approving "harsh interrogation techniques." Oh, the humanity!"

It is taken from a blog post called "Torture Yoo Can Believe In":

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2008/04/torture_yoo_can_believe_in.asp

It's a good thing John McCain is anti-torture.

Straight talk!

Posted by owenz | August 1, 2008 3:33 PM

Goldfarb sounds too gung-ho torture to be true. I bet he's a mole that the right kind of interrogator could get to talk.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | August 1, 2008 3:40 PM

Not to derail the point of your post, but I have a couple (three, actually) of questions about Diplomacy:

1) It always struck me that it was impossible to actually play Diplomacy in an afternoon -- turns took too much time, what with the side discussions necessary to coordinate attacks, plan betrayals, etc. Has anyone actually played a full game of Diplomacy, and how long did it actually take?

2) Germany, despite the historical reality of its military dominance on the Continent, was the worst power to have to play. Has anyone actually had any luck playing Germany in Diplomacy?

There's now a Diplomacy online game. Anyone up for forming a game?

Posted by anonymous 37 | August 1, 2008 3:45 PM

Germany, despite the historical reality of its military dominance on the Continent, was the worst power to have to play.

Italy was the worst. (Unless they've changed the rules in 40 years.)

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | August 1, 2008 3:48 PM

Well, maybe in terms of the chance of ultimately winning, but Italy didn't have to immediately take on as many enemies as Germany did.

Although I wonder if some of this wasn't psychology: we all remembered WWII, and decided that Germany needed to be taken down before it destroyed us all.

Posted by anonymous 37 | August 1, 2008 3:52 PM

And Turkey was unrealistically too strong. Turkey could too easily capture a lot of centers, depending on how occupied Russia was, and just hunker down and be a pain in the ass the rest of the game. And Italy was the worst since there really weren't too many easy centers to grab right away.

Posted by calipygian | August 1, 2008 3:55 PM

In my high school, the D&D kids were really poorly adjusted nerds who wore t-shirts 6 sizes too big, didn't shave their necks or cheeks, didn't was their hair, and were smarter than average but certainly not smart enough to be in the top of their class or to take AP Physics or Calculus. Most of the students smart enough to take these courses also weren't so poorly adjusted socially.

Posted by Nope | August 1, 2008 4:19 PM

If I were a conservative blogger, I'd be really pissed at Goldfarb right now, for the same reasons that the Hiltons are pissed at McCain: he's smearing subjects that are not in the least related to the election, seemingly just for the purpose of getting in some practice as a smearer.

Posted by tom veil | August 1, 2008 4:36 PM

At some point in high school, our all night D&D parties somehow evolved into all night beer & pot parties.

I think your choice of the word "evolved" in this sentence was a mistake.

Posted by Tom | August 1, 2008 4:50 PM

"In my high school, the D&D kids were really poorly adjusted nerds who wore t-shirts 6 sizes too big, didn't shave their necks or cheeks, didn't was their hair, and were smarter than average but certainly not smart enough to be in the top of their class or to take AP Physics or Calculus."

That's odd. Are you sure you're not just remembering things according to popular belief? In my old high school group - 30 years ago - we had 4 of us who took AP physics and/or calc. Two of the group were on our state championship "Mathlete" team. We were all well adjusted. Even the guy coming to grips with his homosexuality and the guy who's father went to prison for tax evasion did pretty well.

In high school D&D players are assumed to be maladjusted because they don't seek the approval of others with the paranoid intensity of most teens. That's disturbing to their classmates.

Posted by Njorl | August 1, 2008 5:15 PM

On the subject of Diplomacy, I'll note that since 2003 I've had one of the best track records of anyone online in terms of analyzing (and often predicting) developments in post-invasion Iraq, even though I have zero knowledge of Arabic and not much more in military or Middle East history, simply because I played Diplomacy for a year or two long ago & understood how to apply the dynamics of a multi-faction struggle for power.

That Maliki could be put into power by Sadr, then dump Sadr and become a seeming U.S. puppet, and then put a squeeze on the American presence in SOFA negotiations (after extensive U.S. support in whittling down Sadr's strength) -- while Sunni insurgents and the American military go from killing each other for 3-4 years to being allies trying to gain leverage vs. the Shiite-led government that accumulated power while they fought -- is probably mystifying to anyone who takes ideological/political rhetoric seriously. To anyone familiar with Diplomacy, however, it's simply how the game is played.

Posted by Swopa | August 1, 2008 5:15 PM

"In my high school, the D&D kids were really poorly adjusted nerds who wore t-shirts 6 sizes too big, didn't shave their necks or cheeks, didn't was their hair, and were smarter than average but certainly not smart enough to be in the top of their class or to take AP Physics or Calculus. Most of the students smart enough to take these courses also weren't so poorly adjusted socially."

yes, history teaches us that the smartest people are also invariably well adjusted socially!

(you fuckwit)

Posted by nick | August 1, 2008 5:17 PM

Italy's definitely the worst power in terms of wins; in each of the (several) collections of Diplomacy statistics I've seen, Italy has had the poorest win record. (As anonymous 37 points out, its lack of immediate enemies means that it's likely to survive for a while, though. Austria's the country most likely to be eliminated early.) Germany doesn't do too badly; I think it's above average.

To answer anonymous 37's question, I've never seen a bunch of friends sit down one afternoon and play a complete game of diplomacy. The only completed face-to-face games I know of are at diplomacy tournaments, all-nighters, or when people complete a game previously started. There's a thriving online diplomacy community (phpDiplomacy.net is among the best of the sites I've used), and it's much easier to finish a game online, where it's typically played over several days. Interestingly, the quality of the diplomacy is often higher online or in the slightly older play-by-email systems, because people get a few hours to think about their moves and strategize, as opposed to 15 minutes in face-to-face games.

Posted by Nitish | August 1, 2008 6:13 PM

Only tangentially on topic:

1) As a 30 year veteran of Dungeons and Dragons, played in various basements, garages, apartments, convention halls and now my own home, thank you for posting the 2nd Edition cover photo. What's sold now is no longer "D&D" but "pencil and paper MMORPG."

2) My group of 30 year veteran D&D Nerds - while resembling any and all of the stereotypes described in earlier comments - spans the political spectrum, from dittohead to aging hippie freak with quite the variety of moderates in between. But NONE OF US are apathetic.

3) Every one of us is maladjusted because we were unable to adapt fast enough to being 5 to 7 Intelligence points smarter than the average high schooler. Four years was not long enough.

4) In my AV Club in High School, Advanced Civilization was the marathon game of choice, with ardent approval from the AP History teacher who was the faculty advisor. AC was followed closely by SJ Games' Car Wars, though this game was frowned upon by the faculty once they learned guns were part of the game.

Posted by bughunter | August 1, 2008 6:35 PM

The man playing France felt quite dandy;
His German alliance was handy.
It would have been wiser
To not trust the Kaiser,
who wrote A MUN > BUR.

Posted by Gabriel Rocklin | August 1, 2008 6:38 PM

Speaking to Jeff M.'s point, the ultimate asslicker of power, Sean Hannity, might have been a D&D nerd? I always thought he was like the guy who went out for the JV football team and got a swirlie in the locker room before tryouts. He figured if he couldn't beat them, he could be their sycophant.

Posted by Mike Jones | August 1, 2008 6:48 PM

What's sold now is no longer "D&D" but "pencil and paper MMORPG."

Right, except that it's neither Massively Multiplayer, nor Online.

Honestly I don't understand what this is supposed to mean. I don't have your 30-year history with D&D, but I've played all four systems (well, four and a half, if you want), and despite the complainers saying that the new system is an "MMORPG", 4th edition has more rules and guidelines about non-combat situations than any edition before it.

People play D&D to play a game, and one of the things a game has is rules. If you want a totally free-form exploration of the minutia of your character and his life, I have something that's going to blow you away. You don't even need books or dice, or even other players.

It's called "writing short fiction."

At any rate it's hard to argue that "D&D is an MMO game now" when it was first edition that considered "elf" a class.

Posted by Chet | August 1, 2008 6:51 PM

I would like to note that when we did the 30th anniversary book, one of my fellow essayists was ... Stephen Colbert.

Given my choice of brother geek, I'll take Colbert over Goldfarb.

And I still play. Between running multi-million dollar television and movie projects, and my co-players are other humans who work hard to create more jobs and tax revenue to support our fellow citizens than Goldfarb will ever contribute as a toadying lickspittle.

It's the 21st Century, sparky. The Geeks won. Get used to it.

Posted by jonrog1 | August 1, 2008 6:59 PM

John fuckin' Rogers, in the house!

Posted by Hank Scorpio | August 1, 2008 7:17 PM

leave barack ALONE!!!

he's a HUMAN!

he's making america the coolest place.

but all you people care about is votes!

http://londonamerican01.blogspot.com/2008/07/leave-barack-alone.html

Posted by londonamerican | August 1, 2008 7:30 PM

Only time I played D&D was in the joint. Quite a few D&D players there - unless the joint bans it because somebody got shanked when their character died.

I gave up the game because inmate Dungeon Masters are brutal and your character always gets beat down and screwed over.

It's a dangerous game to play when you're playing with criminals.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 1, 2008 7:31 PM

That Maliki could be put into power by Sadr, then dump Sadr and become a seeming U.S. puppet, and then put a squeeze on the American presence in SOFA negotiations (after extensive U.S. support in whittling down Sadr's strength) -- while Sunni insurgents and the American military go from killing each other for 3-4 years to being allies trying to gain leverage vs. the Shiite-led government that accumulated power while they fought -- is probably mystifying to anyone who takes ideological/political rhetoric seriously. To anyone familiar with Diplomacy, however, it's simply how the game is played.

That's Dip, alright.

Swopa wins the thread.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | August 1, 2008 7:31 PM

"Italy's definitely the worst power in terms of wins; in each of the (several) collections of Diplomacy statistics I've seen, Italy has had the poorest win record. (As anonymous 37 points out, its lack of immediate enemies means that it's likely to survive for a while, though.

This sort of fits with Napoleon's famous dictum: "Italy never finishes a war on the same side as it started---except in the rare instances when it switches sides twice.

I was an FSO who served overseas as a political officer & found RISK a great game, but diplomacy in real life is simply a day-to-day slog.

Posted by daveinboca | August 1, 2008 7:31 PM

leave barack ALONE!!!

he's a HUMAN!

he's making america the coolest place.

but all you people care about is votes!

http://londonamerican01.blogspot.com/2008/07/leave-barack-alone.html

Posted by londonamerican | August 1, 2008 7:36 PM

Um, actually, 4th ed. just came out, if you wanna be up to date about it.

And while Diplomacy is a fine game, Civilization - the computer version - is still the cream of the crop.

Posted by Shawn | August 1, 2008 9:49 PM

To anonymous37--Actually, my friends and I back in high school (early- to mid-1980s) played full games of Diplomacy all the time. (But then, we also had multi-year D&D campaigns where the sessions didn't usually degenerate into squabbling--and from what I've heard, this is pretty unusual.)

The major social drawback to Dip, as noted elsewhere on this thread, was that in most games, two powers are wiped out in the first few turns. Austria-Hungary and/or Italy generally spent most of the afternoon in the other room playing Intellivision while the other players finished the Diplomacy game.

Posted by James Gary | August 1, 2008 10:18 PM

I think that all subcultures have members who make the self-serving claim that they're generally smarter, better informed, etc, than average. D&D players have it, sure, and I bet you'd find knitting enthusiasts, Diplomacy players, bike enthusiasts, libertarians, vegetarians, amateur painters, BDSM fetishists, and bloggers all have members of their subcultures who claim that the subculture is uniquely gifted. They might even all be, to some extent, correct -- people who have interest in something -- anything -- are likely to be more interesting and intelligent than those who have no such interests, and it's likely tha smarter, more curious people also have a broader range of interests than duller people. So if you have four people, one smart one and three dullards, and you found that the smart guy was into D&D, environmental activism, and BDSM, whereas the three relatively dumb people are only into one thing each, then each of these activities would have above average participants, even though none of them actually had a bias in terms of intelligence.

Personally, I don't think D&D players (or their counterparts who prefer the offerings of White Wolf, Steve Jackson Games, etc) are generally anything special intellectually. That's not because I think there's anything wrong with D&D or other RPGs, and I certainly don't deny that some RPers are very smart. I just don't think that they're above average -- at least, no more above average than every other subculture in the world that also claims to be above average.

Posted by Julian Elson | August 2, 2008 5:08 AM

The major social drawback to Dip, as noted elsewhere on this thread, was that in most games, two powers are wiped out in the first few turns. Austria-Hungary and/or Italy generally spent most of the afternoon in the other room playing Intellivision while the other players finished the Diplomacy game.

Gotta admit, email games are a lot more enjoyable. You can conduct diplomacy with everybody at once, you don't have to kill a whole afternoon and evening with it, and if you get wiped out early, you just join another game. Or go do whatever else you wanted to do.

I wish they'd make a nice magnetic wall map, though - that would be perfect for PBEM; I could put it on the wall next to the desktop 'puter. I've got a handmade version, but it's a B&W paper map glued to one of those whiteboards that magnets will stick to. (With magnetized army and fleet markers, obviously.) But it's far from ideal.

Posted by low-tech cyclist | August 2, 2008 7:28 AM

Dungeons and Dragons is a proper noun and should therefore be written with capitalized.

The New York Times editorial board should hang its head in shame.

Posted by CB James | August 2, 2008 11:25 AM

McCain a jock? What sports did he play? I wouldn't be surprised if he throws a ball like a sissy and runs like a dweeb. The only quality that drew burping, scratching, neurotic little nerd media types to him is that he's a conceited little prick. In that respect - he's a lot like George W. in that he was a child of privilege. In fact, he's a yellow coward shitass with a little man complex. Precisely why Obama '08 needs to start shooting reedy little darts at him.

Posted by Trevor | August 2, 2008 1:50 PM

"leave barack ALONE!!! he's a HUMAN!"

That's a perjorative term in my book.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 2, 2008 6:20 PM

But then again, "perjorative" is a pejorative term in my other book, the dictionary.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 2, 2008 6:23 PM

Self-absorbed to admit, but this reminds me of my early characterisation of G.W.B. as the king of the schoolyard, one who never has to act like a bully because the bullies are drawn to him. And now I would add that there always those of the bullied who end up identifying with the bullies....

More generally, I've often thought that "nerd" is basically a social sanction against believing that certain things other people think are important aren't, and the opposite of that. Generally, no-one calls Warren Buffett an "investment nerd", or a dedicated priest or rabbi a "god nerd"---and millions of football nerds are "fans" or "fanatics" or "supporters". Parents who dedicate their lives to being good parents aren't "child nerds".

Nerds are threatening; their existence, and to an even greater extent their happiness when such is evident, is a threat to the notionally proper priorities of a citizen and consumer.

(That being said, when I got to the Very Prestigious Institute, I found a bunch of people who had mostly been nerds split into people who, at least locally, the jocks, cool kids, stoners, u.s.w.---the "nerds" there tended to be the hard-core computer people, but that might have changed since they got rich.)

Posted by Gerald Fnord | August 2, 2008 6:33 PM

Judging by the art from 3rd edition, the game has become 'Dungeons and Godsmack', because every character depicted looks like a Goth/Nu-metal wanker with bad facial hair.

Posted by Jon H | August 2, 2008 9:08 PM

Purely anecdotal, but out of my high school D+D five-some circa late '80s, three ended up with Ph.D's in the hard sciences. (I wasn't one of them.) So yeah, my experience leads me to associate basement D+D with high (13+) Int IRL.

Posted by BruceR | August 3, 2008 1:36 AM

Well, going by 3.5 rules, humans get common (let's say that's English in the USA) plus bonus languages equal to their intelligence modifier when they start out -- and they can start out as young as 16 (15 + 1d4 (barbarian, rogue, and sorcerer starting age) --> 16). So someone with 12 or 13 int (+1 int mod) would surely be fluent in at least two languages by age 16 (one for free, one based on int mod, and possibly more if they actually bought ranks in Speak Language). Someone with 14-15 would know at least three languages. Did all these high school D&Ders whom you claim had 13+ int speak at least two languages fluently by 16?

Posted by Julian Elson | August 3, 2008 6:34 PM

Response to Julian...

Actually.. I bet most of them did speak two languages fluently... but

1. Adventurers, while they can start out as young as 16, rarely did... Thus, the cut off line for knowing extra languages would be the more average age of around 19-21.

2. If we're gonna talk languages--then the modern equivalent would include computer languages, and I'm willing to bet that by age 20, that most d&d nerds did know at least Enlgish and one computer language fluently, if they didn't also know a modern foreign language..

In any case.. in response to an earlier post about subcultures--while I see your point about each subculture thinking it is superior.. I think you miss out on the fact that many people fit into multiple subcultures--in fact, if you were into being in a "subculture" itself--you probably didn't fit the "norm" in many different ways... Now.. I don't remember bike enthusiasts really being a big subculture back in high school.. nor do I remember any amateur painters in my AP Calc, Physics, Chem, English, and US History classes.. but I do know that at least 30% of the people in those classes were gamers... thus, there was a higher correlation of overlap between those who were very much into advanced schoolwork (a rather intellectual pursuit) and those who were into gaming (an also rather intellectual pursuit..).

Does this make all gamers smart.. obviously not.. and most gamers I knew would, so to speak, have had rather low wisdom and charisma scores back at that age, because they hadn't figured out that one of the most intriguing topics to study was the complexity of social interactions.. but I'd say a majority of them figured it out later on...

Posted by tricstmr | August 4, 2008 8:08 AM

I was a D&D nerd in high school, and I can only learn 1d4 simple tricks. :(

Posted by Jason | August 4, 2008 11:29 AM

I love how this post got hijacked and by whom.

NSA has it's fair share of gamers too, I hear.

Posted by datadave | August 6, 2008 8:31 AM

"... all the intelligence and reason of the average Daily Kos diarist ..."

oh man, that's a low blow.

Posted by x | August 10, 2008 7:27 PM

http://deai-ch.jp/?c=home

Posted by 出会いサイト | August 13, 2008 9:35 PM

http://www.fudousanget.com