Do not piss off the gamers, for we have creative uses for a d4

[gridlore]

Politics’ new third rail: Dungeons & Dragons

Michael Goldfarb, John McCain’s campaign blogger-in-residence, “has discovered an unknown third rail of politics: Dungeons & Dragons,” said Jackson West in the blog Valleywag. In two separate posts, he ridiculed the “pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd” that stooped to “disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement.” Goldfarb apologized, apparently after he realized that many “Republican-leaning libertarians have a velvet bag of polyhedral dice tucked away somewhere safe.”

The apology might have come too late, said Steve Benen in The Carpetbagger Report. Judging from the reaction in the blogosphere, “the McCain campaign has inadvertently woken an angry nerd army.”

And some members of the U.S. army, too, said Robert Mackey in The Huffington Post. “I’m a card carrying geek” who’s played D&D for years, several of those years as a soldier. And I wasn’t the only one. There are D&D players “all over the U.S. military,” and it seems a little rich for a blogger to criticize them. When their country called, “gaming geeks rallied around the flag.”

At one point during my time in service I was in three different games (2 AD&D, 1 Traveller) at once. Combat arms especially seemed to be filled with RPG freaks.

Comments

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

There does seem to be a differential in the RPG industry political leaning between consumers and producers, with some extremely prominent exceptions of course.

[ciarhwyfar.livejournal.com]

Besides, we don't HAVE basements in the West.

And many, many people I have known to have served in the military have spent many an hour on RPGs. It certainly beats those who spend theirs torturing civilians/captives.

[kengr]

Besides, we don't HAVE basements in the West.

Could have fooled me.

Only places I ever saw without basements in Washington and Oregon were places where the bedrock was too close to the surface to dig one.

California ≠ "the West"

[arib.livejournal.com]

Right. On.