Mark Barrowcliffe - The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange: A Memoir

The names of wargamers in this book have been changed to protect their identities. If there ever was a real Andy Porter or Sean Gardener, for instance, in Coventry at that time then they are not the ones portrayed here. Similarly, all teachers, parents and other adults featured here have had their names changed. Only on occasions where I specifically say so, or when I identify the author of a work, are the names real.

An Unhealthy
Interest

An elf cloak is designed to render its user invisible.

Worn in the Coventry shopping precinct when the City soccer team is playing at home, however, it has rather the opposite effect.

What follows explains why, on 24 October 1981, I was thrown into a fountain by soccer hooligans and how I eventually came to wish theyd done it years earlier.

Y ou may consider that you wasted your youth. Perhaps you spent it shooting pool in some smoky hall, locked in your bedroom playing the guitar or just partying hard when you should have been studying.

That is not a waste. That is not even the beginning of a waste. Ill show you a waste. When others were developing the ability to win a few bucks hustling in a local bar, to lead a singalong at a barbecue or just to speak to the opposite sex, what I got for my endeavours was a wizard with a frost wand.

Yes, I spent my youth playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Even though the game was at its height played by millions of boys and two girls around the world, most people today have a hazy idea of what it is. They might know it involves shaking a lot of funny-shaped dice, they might know that players act out the roles of warriors, wizards and priests seeking treasure and adventure in a fantasy kingdom, they may have some recollection of scares involving Satanism and the occult. One fact, however, will be clear in their mindsthat everyone who ever played the game more than once was a nerd.

Thats all you really need to know to read this book. By the time youve finished you might still have no idea of how to calculate whether an elf kills an orc or whether rolling dice propels you into the arms of Lucifer, but you will, I promise, know your nerds.

Id like to say the nerd thing is a misconception, but I cant. I should know; I was a total nerd. I probably still am a total nerd, and so was everyone I ever played withvicious nerds, shy nerds, egotistical nerds, semi-psychotic nerds, but all nerds to a boy. There were no girls, not even nerdy ones.

From what I know of womenwhich, given the fact I went to a single-sex school, had only brothers and spent my entire youth locked in fart-filled rooms with boys, isnt muchthey can also be obsessed. They tend to focus on people, thoughpop stars or film stars, boyfriends or even horses, which they treat like people. The image of a schoolgirl obsession is that of a febrile focus on a relationshipa crush.

Mens obsessions are about relationships too, but everything about their culture and upbringing stops them recognizing it, so they focus on thingscars, records, sport. I cant imagine a woman picking up a 1977 copy of The Monster Manual as I did the other day and actually stroking it, hugging it. I only just stopped myself muttering the precious under my breath. This represents a significant cooling of ardour.

For five years of my life between eleven and sixteen, I never stopped playing D&D, not even to eat. To this day, I eat one-handed. The other was always for a rule book, a fanzine or a fantasy novel. After that I played less frequentlymaybe twice a weekuntil I was twenty. Today, other than for research for this book, I dont play at all. The legacy of the game, however, is still etched on my personality.

During the time I was playing, the nerds were my whole world. They were the people I learned to relate to while others were out talking to girls, getting sun tans, having various kinds of fun and even being boredin short, growing up.

I knew far more about the wants and needs of a golden dragon than I ever did a girl. I was never bored, either. I was always waiting for the next game with a sense of intense anticipation, like most boys do when approaching a first date.

When I was at the gaming table I felt like I was plugged into the power grid, at an absolute peak of excitement and attention. I thought that anything that didnt give you that level of stimulation wasnt worth doing, which was a bit of a problem a few years later when it came to going to work. From what Ive heard of other obsessions and addictions, theyre similar, and people experience similar levels of difficulty getting over them. The details may differ, but at the root its the same thing; an obsession is a way for damaged people to damage themselves more.

Ive tried to overcome the influence my D&D years had on me and I hope Ive made some progress. I have a wife I love and friends I try to treat as equals and not as competitors. Getting theres been a struggle, though. Even now I sometimes dont really feel like an adult, more a recovering adolescent.

Its likely I may have spent years as a social liability without the game; I think Im probably a natural at it. However, its one thing to have the talent to be a dope; its another to put in the practice. Thats exactly what I was doing when I was playing D&D.

Though the forces that acted on me while I was a boy were particular to me, they were products of a wider male culture which helps, if thats the right word, men form their identities. D&D was more than a craze; it was a phenomenon, spawning films, cartoon series, toys, novels and, finallyits own undoing computer games. An estimated 20 million boys worldwide have played the game and spent over 1 billion on its products. Anything that popular with young males clearly speaks to them on a deep level and says something about them. What it says is the subject of this book.

I hope to provide an answer for anyone who has ever looked at a man and thought, Why is he such a wanker?

For many boys who grew up in the seventies and eighties, our peer group and education constituted a sort of wanker factory. This is the story of the operation of its most efficient department.