I was gonna stay silent on this, but I think Maggies general (and accurate)
comments were taken personally unnecessarily. There is a REAL PROBLEM here
with public perception of the gaming community, and trashing people who
offer observations as to the potential reason serves no purpose.
>Ahhh yes, it's all about beauty isn't it? That's the reason I play games,
>so people can percieve me as being cool and fashionable.
Duh! That is EXACTLY WHY the VAST MAJORITY of people choose to join ANY
subcuture. Sheesh! maybe we will market to people who dig being perceived
as ugly, awkward, and stupid.
>I bathe daily and after excercise, and brush my teeth more than once a day.
You are not the "exception" in the gamer-geek crowd, but you are DEFINITELY
not the rule, either. An informal poll of the three female gamers I am
currenty close to revealed THIS answer to the question "Why don't more women
play D&D.":
The Unanimous Answer: Gamer-geek Hygeine.
Their answers can best be summed up with a paraphrasis from one of the girls
I talked to:
"These guys are disgusting. I don't go INTO [gaming store]
or go to CON's anymore because of the body odor. It always the
same - 8 or 9 fat, geeky, middle-aged dorks sitting
around the table in filty jeans and t-shirts in a cloud of
their own rancid B.O. Ick!"
This pretty adequately describes about half of the crowd where I used to
game. I personally never go to CONS except once, and she had it tagged
there, too. I tell you by Sunday at the one CON I have gone to you couldn't
go INTO the main gaming room without being knocked over by the stench. Some
of those game-rooms are SMALL. More than once while running a game at a
store I reached into my gym bag and tossed a can of deodorant at some
stinking fiend.
You want to enhance perceptions of the gaming community - introduce some of
our less-hygenic members to the concept of SOAP!
Faust
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