Even as teens, we learned something that day about “unexpressed aspects”. And yea, awkward social situations, too.

I used the Blue Planet game system to teach a group of 9 to 12 year old kids about ocean science, ecology, and how to do paperwork, the last a valuable skill if you want to hold down a white collar job.

Beyond my own personal experience, psychologists have known for decades that roleplaying a situation, in a safe environment where your personal risk is lessened by the distancing effect of taking on a role, results in positive learning and skill transference. So yeah, some of us have known about this aspect of RPGs for a long time. It’s still good to get the word out regularly, and push back against the stereotypes and false images of gamers and gaming.

And for what it’s worth, if you’re in western Virginia, we’ve got openings in our group.

I never played D&D and the like because I never had the kind of friends who would do that. All the friends I’ve ever had were geeks/nerds/losers but if any of them were playing D&D I didn’t know about it. I do think that if I had played D&D when I was younger instead of playing endless computer games I would be different today and more sociable; my difficulties being sociable now are of course making it difficult for me to, say, find a group of people to play these sorts of games with.

Blaine Faulkner: “Well, hey, I didn’t spend all those years playing Dungeons and Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.”

I was born in 1963. Everyone born between, say, ’61 and ’65 knows that we don’t belong to any generation. We’re not boomers, and we’re not Xers. I call us “Baby Busters,” because those years represent the lowest average birth rate in US history — the Greatest Generation had stopped having kids, and the Boomers had the Pill and could delay having children.

So, anyway, somewhere along ’78-’79, I was alternating between two kinds of nerd: I was the kind of SFF geek who nearly got expelled after a slapfight over Christian themes in The Narnia Chronicles, but I was a serious Band Geek, spending every available free period and study hall in the Band Room listening to jazz LPs , organizing sessions, and practicing trumpet. And all this in the cornfields of Indiana — in pre-Internet days, it took  a while for new information to reach us.

And then, two different realities conflicted for me for the first time: Dungeons and Dragons vs. Dizzy and Bird. I still remember when my SFF geek friends invited me to play D&D, but I’d already agreed to hang out with my band-geek friends listening to Diz & Bird & Miles & Coltrane, and mangling said tunes on our own.

I made my choice, and I’m still basically comfortable with it. I don’t know how much fun it is to play D&D, but I know how much fun it is to play mid-century jazz and standards in a saloon, and it’s pretty freaking fun.

If you’re a geek or a nerd, next time you find yourself in a nice venue with live jazz, and you hear someone under 60 using words like “hip” and “swing” unironically, realize that you’re just talking to another species of nerd. It’s all OK.

In fact, it only became more mainstream when computer RPGs made it possible to play it alone in your mom’s basement…