Continuing to fly your roleplaying flag...

Amid the hail of boxes and packing paper, I found a few minutes tonight to catch up on reading the comments to last Wednesday's post on your right to be unique. Comments on that post are certainly a fascinating read and spawned off enough material to warrant another post on the matter, since many of you seem to have some valid points.

Humility replaced with shame/bravado

One of our commenters, Marty Lund, pointed out quite correctly that humility isn't something that comes commonly in our culture. This is cutting very close to exactly the point I was trying to articulate... you can take ownership of your nerdly leanings in a humble way and not defaulty replace it with shame as many of us do.

When I am approached by someone at work that notices the d20 on my desk or my "Chewie is my co-pilot" sticker in my cube, I usually just tell them plainly that I enjoy roleplaying games (yes, like D&D) and I let the conversation unfold. Usually they don't throw holy water on me and cast my demons out, nor do they laugh and tease me... in fact, most folks that I work with have at least tried roleplaying or know someone that is into it well enough to have some context, and it turns out to be a good conversation.

I will admit to being a little pumped up from watching a certain president-elect speak when I wrote the last post, but I really am not advocating you jump up on your chair at work, cite page 32 of the OD&D sourcebook, put on a towel as a cape and run around your cube to show how much you're into the roleplaying nerd genre. In the end, I'd just be happy if we fought a little bit against that common (but not universal) reaction to self-deprecate.

That being said: I really wouldn't MIND if you did the things I mentioned above. :)

For the record: yes, Anonymous, I am married. To Stupid Ranger (the person, not the site) and luckily she's as much of a nerd as I am!

Thanks to everyone who commented on the last post, the intelligent discourse was certainly refreshing!