As some of you might now, I have recently started dabbling in Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D for short. D&D is an old board game in which the players take control of various "characters" in a dungeon or world controlled by a person called the Dungeon Master (DM for short). In this world, players can embark on various adventures for fun, to save the world, or to enslave it.

D&D has sort of built a reputation around it of being a "nerd game". All of its players are, or are doomed to be, old virgins barely making ends meet, and living in their mother's basements. Like this:

source

I'm not going to contradict the stereotype, and you can evaluate it yourself (you discerning reader, you). However, let me present you with the following situation.

When you were little, there was surely some fairy tale that you particularly liked, and maybe even wanted to re-live with yourself making the choices, maybe even leading to a different outcome. I know that I had fairy tales like this, and I even tried to sort of "rewrite" the story with me as the main character.

However, that doesn't work out too well. When the main character is also the author, and hence the omnipotent power in the story, things tend to be unbalanced - either by coincidences just happening to benefit the main character, or conversely, overcompensating and having the main character go through unrealistic difficulties.

In a way, this "pretend world" ends there. Some may have the idea, ,what if someone else actually controls the universe, while I only make my own decisions? Maybe in conjunction with a set of "rules" for consistency? But no, most people, even if they have this idea, dismiss it as weird. Nobody wants to play pretend with another person.

They prefer solitude, being shut-in imagination-wise.

In D&D, the DM and the game rules and rulebooks serve as the basis for which the party of players can share their imaginations to create great adventures... even if they are based on a flat paper grid. A D&D session leaves the players with a sense of enlightenment and connection to the others, since they have shared what most people keep to themselves: their imaginations, alter-egos, dreams, and fantasies.

That's what I find funny about it. It's apparently an anti-social activity that has its very core based around a social activity. Maybe it's so nerdy because there's no (or very little) potential for vessels of biological replication to be passed around, as at frat parties? Or maybe it's because of all the dice, and the addition, multiplication, etc. involved in figuring out what happens in some instances.

But as I said, I'll leave that conclusion to be drawn by the discerning reader.

Now, a message from my D&D character: