Ethan Gilsdorf - Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms

Table of Contents

MORE ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks

This bookpart memoir and part insiders guideis both poignant and hilarious, baffling and informative, disturbing and entertaining. It is a must read for anyone whose idea of a good night involves dragons, spaceships, or one-eyed monsters dripping with slime.

Jake Halpern, NPR Commentator
and author of Fame Junkies

Ethan Gilsdorfs Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks is alternately hilarious, surprising, poignant, and odd, but always utterly compelling. Beginning with his own teenage geekdom and addiction to Dungeons & Dragons, Gilsdorf transports us to the fantastical worlds of live-action role playing, Harry Potter tribute bands, creative anachronism, and Lord of the Rings tourism, reminding us that these substitute realities are not just amusements, but at times, life-savers. A must-read book for trolls, orcs, hobbits, or anyone interested in the quirky corners of popular culture.

Dinty W. Moore, author of
The Accidental Buddhist and
Between Panic and Desire

If you think fantasy culture is just a bunch of pimply-faced kids shouting about dragons in a finished basement, you havent been paying attention. From wizard rock to chic French geeks, Gilsdorf catches you up on everything you need to know about the modern state of make-believe. And he does it with such humor, honesty, and, yes, cool, youll almost wish you had an orc-slaying, princess-saving past of your own to suppress.

Yael Goldstein Love,
author of Overture:
A Novel and The Passion of Tasha Darsky

Intensely personal yet universally appealing, Gilsdorfs work speaks to the geek in all of us. Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, with its exploration of an emerging marginalized culture, rolls a natural 20.

Larry D. Curtis, TheOneRing.net

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks is a lively exploration of the fantasy realms into which boys and grown men retreat. Moms of teenage boys will find new insights about what makes these worlds so compelling as well as some encouraging stories about the friendships and communities they foster.

Michelle Seaton, co-author of
The Ways of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in
a Challenging and Complex World

Unfortunately for the establishment, the geekslike Frodo and Sam slipping into Mordor quietly and unobserved by the Dark Towerhave come out of the quiet and peace of the Shire, or the gaming dungeon, and merrily taken over a large portion of the world, as illustrated by this book.... Ethan Gilsdorf looks critically at gaming and fantasy and finds out how wonderful they can be for bringing people together across wage, ability, and ethnic divides, or from disparate places around the world, for developing imagination and creativity, and all in the name of fun! Cogito Ergo Geek .

Ian Collier, The Tolkien Society

Vivid, moving, evocative, intriguing, engaging.

-Chris Castellani, author of
A Kiss from Maddalena and The Saint of Lost Things

To buy books in quantity for corporate use
or incentives, call (800) 962-0973
or e-mail premiums@GlobePequot.com.

Copyright 2009 by Ethan Gilsdorf

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to The Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, P.O. Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

The Lyons Press is an imprint of The Globe Pequot Press.

Text designed by Sheryl P. Kober

Pages 310-311 are a continuation of the copyright page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gilsdorf, Ethan.

Fantasy freaks and gaming geeks : epic quest for reality among role players, online gamers, and other dwellers of imaginary realms / Ethan Gilsdorf.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-59921-480-1

1. Internet gamesSocial aspects. 2. Fantasy gamesSocial aspects. 3. Virtual realitySocial aspects. 4. Online social networks. 5. InternetSocial aspects. I. Title. GV1469.15.G55 2008

794.81dc22

2009014047

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Note: This book describes the authors participation in various events and reflects his opinions relating to those experiences. The people, activities, characters, avatars, and neuroses in this book are real. In some cases, names of people (and their characters or avatars) and other identifying details have been changed at the request of the individualor because it seemed like the right thing to do.

For Sara Lynn Gilsdorf (1940-1997)
who could not escape

I am not now at all sure that the tendency to treat the whole thing as a kind of vast game is really good, cert. not for me, who find that kind of thing only too fatally attractive.
J. R. R. Tolkien, writing to his publisher regarding his readers
requests for more background information on The Lord of the Rings
(March 6, 1955)
[Dungeons & Dragons] is a game in which the continuing epic is the most meaningful portion. It becomes an entity in which at least some of the characters seem to be able to survive for an indefinite time, and the characters who have shorter spans of existence are linked one to the other by blood or purpose. These personae put up with the frustrations, the setbacks, and the tragedies because they aim for and can reasonably expect to achieve adventure, challenge, wealth, glory and more. If player characters are not of the same stamp as Conan, they also appreciate that they are in effect writing their own adventures and creating their own legends, not merely reliving those of someone elses creation. Yet because the player character is all-important, he or she must alwaysor nearly alwayshave a chance, no matter how small, a chance of somehow escaping what otherwise would be inevitable destruction. Many will not be able to do so, but the escapes of those who do are what the fabric of the game is created upon.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeon Masters Guide (1979)

PROLOGUE

The Momster

Ethan! Eeeeeethan!

I hear its screeching call. Its cry. Its need, booming off the peeled wallpaper, the woodstove, the sagging floorboards of the kitchen. What does it want this time?

Eeeethan???

Then, a door slam. Its escaped. It slides and scrapes from its lair. Shhhh-thunk. Shhhh-thunk. Shhhh-thunk. Right leg, then the left. Always that thunk of the left. I know its coming, and Im not ready. Ill never be ready.

Its the summer of 1979, Im twelve, and my world is inhabited by monsters. A monster. My brother Adam, my sister Jess, and I, we call itI mean, herthe Kitchen Dragon.

Whenever we enter the house, we must run the gauntlet. My secret trick is to find a way to get upstairs without her seeing me. Sensing me. I know it has tasks, requests, and questions. Its going to send me on an impossible quest: to do the dishes (Dont break one or Ill dock your allowance!) or to the store, to buy more fire and smoke, more cigarettes. Its going to ask me about school, or Playboy, or blow jobs. Worse: its going to wait till a friend gets here, and then its going to quiz us, both of us, about all three.

Smoke trickles from her nose, seeking me out. She hobbles around like an extra in a horror movie: old hag, hunchback, trickster. Oblivious. Something there and not there. She lolls her head to the side. Her left arm is bent at the elbow, stuck fast at a right angle. Her hand is twisted, curled onto itself like a hook.

Next page