So, favourite appearance of RPG’s in the media for day 8. This one is a wide open topic but it is also limited depending on how you approach it. I mean, come on – media! My blog is media so do I just pick my favourite blog? Of course I don’t.
Day 8: Favourite appearance of RPG’s in the media
Mark:
This actually has been on my mind for a few days and in reality I was going to choose the Dungeons and Dragons episode from The Big Bang Theory because I found that their depiction of it was not thoroughly stereotypical and it made me laugh. I do not normally watch the show, and it was an accident to find myself in front of this episode but it made me smile. But after that I thought it was a little bit of a cop out too. I wanted to highlight something valuable in the media also.
So I started thinking of all of the media over the past thirty years that I have read about role playing games and work out if I could find it and link it here. By media I was now talking about news and factual accounts that I could use. Unfortunately I could only think of the negative publicity about satan worship that role playing games received in the earlier years of me playing it. There were also ideas of links to Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden fame saying how RPG’s are great for people but I could only find links to his song that was included in the last D&D movie.
I also had an unexpected and unwanted trip down memory lane as I found an article about a friend of mine who, on one fateful night, shot his girlfriend with a .22 caliber rifle many times (she is now wheelchair bound) and then took a shotgun and killed himself. This was maybe 25 years ago and I found links to a current affairs program that tried to use that as evidence of satanic links between RPG’s and players. It was apparently nothing to do with his suicidal thoughts and major depression that he suffered from but his family refused to face.
So to turn away from the darkness that this took me I suddenly remembered that I was ignoring a source of media that had so brilliantly engaged me recently that I went and bought the product that it was talking about. It was an article from the Boing Boing Offworld blog that was all over Google+ and Facebook in recent months. It also links back to Day 3 or 4 of RPGaDay where I showed you the beauty of the game that is Ehdrigohr! So here is the article that I am putting up as my favourite appearance of an RPG in the media.
I really thought this was going to be a dull topic for this exercise but in reality it is probably the one that I have had the hardest time facing. Surprises arise everywhere it seems. Keep rolling.