It’s Friday night, but since I’m in the Mountain time zone it’s not midnight yet. Thus, I’m not too late to Speak Out With My Geek Out! #speakgeek
The basic idea is for bloggers to celebrate their “geeky” hobbies without shame, celebrating that which others may consider uncool.
I’ve written about this topic before. Originally, I was in the RPG closet, especially among co-workers. Now I’m out of the closet, and even farther out than I was at my last post. Today, even the people I work most closely with know that I play role-playing games and that I spent the first weekend of August at GenCon and Labor Day weekend at TactiCon.
I’ve only been playing D&D for less than two years, but it’s become my number one hobby by far. I still enjoy board games, too, but I spend the vast majority of my hobby time on Dungeons and Dragons. I mainly run games as the dungeon master, whether at a home game for friends, an online game for strangers who have now become friends, an online game for family members, or public games at the local store or at conventions.
I run published adventures, and I also write my own adventures. I’ve even published adventures on my blog and am planning to submit my next adventure to Dungeon Magazine! If that adventure ends up being published (a long shot, but you never know), my actual full name will be linked online to this geeky hobby. When co-workers or clients Google my name, they will see not just my work profile and articles I’ve written professionally, but also a Dungeons and Dragons adventure by this otherwise serious finance guy.
And I’m okay with that. I’m having fun with D&D, and I’m proud of it!
Only two years? Right on, then, welcome to the club. 🙂
I had a similar “no more hiding” moment at my last job, and although I didn’t find any other gamers, my co-workers were a lot less judgmental than I expected. Even had one girl who was into Twilight and planned to go to Comic-Con start chatting me up more.
Mandatory question time: How’d you get into D&D?
Ah yes. I basically told this story in my first ever blog post. My wife had played as a kid, so we bought the books in the early 2000s for version 3.0 of D&D. We played a little bit with one another using the starter kit, then tried a game with some of her co-workers. These people actually cheated at D&D, which ruined the fun for us, so we put the game down until early 2010 when a friend of mine asked if we would be interested in joining a game he was starting with his wife. And the rest is history!
Wow, cheating at D&D? That’s almost as bad as cheating at Granny’s House (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7917/grannys-house)