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Dear Nerds: You're Welcome

By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Trailers | Comments (31)

o-felicia-day-dragon-age-redemption.jpg

As the superhero and comic-book movies become assimilated into the mainstream, nerd culture itself continues to lose more and more it can call its own. It’s a double-edged sword, like watching your favorite underground band find a massive following. You’re happy for their success, and you appreciate that the world finally understands what you’ve been saying for years, but on the other hand, the band doesn’t belong to you anymore. It belongs to the world.

My guess is that role-playing games, once reserved to parents basements and seedy comic-book shops in Davis Square with strange, irregular hours and a clientele of Mountain Dew swilling misfits — may be the next bit of nerd culture absorbed into the masses. It’s already starting to happen: Dungeons and Dragons played central to a recent episode of “Community” and now Felicia Day will star in a web series based on the role-playing game “Dragon Age.”

It’s big enough now that even I am attempting to cover it. Don’t ask me to try and understand it. My only knowledge of role-playing games comes from Felicia Day’s first web series, “The Guild,” which was about a collection of LARPers and their attempts to socialize in the real world . Her next web series, due out this summer, is based on the Dragon Age franchise. I don’t know what that is or how it works, but it’s apparently set “In the Tolkienesque sword-and-sorcery,” where “several races join forces to combat a scourge called the Darkspawn.” Day not only wrote the series, but she stars in it. And though I don’t get the LARP, I get Felicia Day enough to want to take her behind the middle school and read her some R A Salvatore (hey! Is that an appropriate reference?).

Anyway, there’s now a short teaser trailer for the web series, and damn, Felicia Day in thigh-highs and elf ears while wielding a sword must have hit a nerd nerve buried somewhere deep within me. It looks fun. Unfortunately, if it succeeds and helps to popularize role-playing games in mainstream culture, the nerds might lose something else to dumbass, fantasy-football plebes like myself.

If it’s any consolation, I’ll at least give the nerds credit for appreciating it first.










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Comments

The Guild isn't about LARPers; it's about MMORPG gamers. Duh-doy.

Posted by: TL at February 17, 2011 5:38 PM

I've never really understood that whole, "They were better before they got famous" mentality that nerds of all stripes have. (Face it, DR, fantasy football is just as nerdy as roleplaying games -- hell, it's the same thing.)

I mean, if you love something, and it gets popular, you're assured more of that thing you love. Now, there's always the chance that thing will begin to suffer in quality, but it doesn't have to. That said, The Flaming Lips have the perfect amount of fame:street cred ratio.

Oh, and... Mmm... Felicia Day as an elf assassin...

Posted by: RobP at February 17, 2011 5:42 PM

Haha, my bf sent me this link and the first thing I thought as I was reading the article was "This isn't about LARPers"... THEN I noticed he left the comment :)

Posted by: IR at February 17, 2011 5:42 PM

Perfect response.

Posted by: Jay at February 17, 2011 5:45 PM

Hawt! Be still my beating heart.

Where is my bunk?

Posted by: trib at February 17, 2011 5:46 PM

Whoa - got all tingly-parts there for a sec. Gee, I love it when cute girls look all focused and angry and such... contented sigh.

Posted by: Elmo Tee at February 17, 2011 5:53 PM

The Guild isn't about LARPers; it's about MMORPG gamers. Duh-doy.


He tries, folks. He really does.

Boss, what'd I tell you about doing this kind of stuff without checking with me first?

Posted by: TK at February 17, 2011 5:57 PM

Don't let them get to you, Dustin. I think it's adorable.

Posted by: Craig at February 17, 2011 6:04 PM

Roleplaying games and fantasy football are nothing alike. Hell, even the role-playing games that one plays on-line (like World of Warcraft, the game depicted in The Guild) are hardly games in which one plays a role. Players don't walk up to each other in the game and shout, "Hail, friend. I hear there is a troll that is terrorizing yonder village. Shall we gather a party of heroes to end it's abusive reign?" They say, "Duuude, where the fuck is Steve? I wanna run the dungeon."

Role-playing games are immersive and interactive, and require the players to adopt affectations and false personality traits to collectively tell a story.

Posted by: superasente at February 17, 2011 6:15 PM

I was going to give you shit for incorrectly using the term LARP, but instead I'll just pat you on the head and give you a cookie.

Posted by: The_wakeful at February 17, 2011 6:28 PM

All hail Felecia Day the High Exalted Empress of the Interwebs! May she be a benevolent ruler.

Posted by: John W at February 17, 2011 6:30 PM

i don't know superasente, there are degrees of role playing, like there are degrees in anything. it's true, when i play WoW with my guild, i'm not speaking in Tolkienesque english (or, to be perfectly precise, in Troll jargon, which is the race i play), but i'm still playing a role. several, in fact: i play a troll, i play a female, i play a hunter, i play a damage dealer, and so on. degrees of role playing.

which is why my comment was going to be that my husband had this (paraphrased) conversation with a friend, who looks down on fantasy related games:
husband: "so, you have a fantasy baseball team? what do you do?"
friend: "well you know, i draft different players to be on my team"
husband: "and would you say there are statistics associated with each player that are important for you to stack or be aware of?"
friend: "yeah..."
husband: "and what do you do in the team?"
friend: "i'm the manager..."
husband: "huh...so would you say you are playing a role...in a game...in which maybe a players RBI is comparable to +2 ability to hit the ball?"

see what i'm saying?

fantasy sports don't fall that far from MMO's. if you're playing a fantasy sports game, you're already one of us...

Posted by: Sinnh at February 17, 2011 6:35 PM

should mention that fantasy sports thing was in response to the article in general, not superasante.

Posted by: Sinnh at February 17, 2011 6:40 PM

Also a reply to superasente, but from the other direction...if any of the gamers in my tabletop campaign in highschool had talked like that I'd have kicked them out of the club. That "hail" shit is...well, I don't know where folks get the idea that gamers talk like that. None of the ones I've played with did, and I've probably played with 30+ different people over the years.

My core group was a bit off-beat in that we were an all-female gaming group. Occasionally guy friends were allowed parts for a few episodes, but it was usually closely coordinated with the DM so that they were more like really developed NPCs. I made clear to them that this was the epic story of three heroic women.

Being females, our game was three years of not only saving the world and kicking dragon ass, but heartache and betrayal and adopted dark elf babies and sacrifice and surprise twists and...oiy, it was glorious campy joy. :D Half soap-opera, half LotR. And sometimes we'd just game them going on a shopping trip.

*wistful sigh*

Posted by: Foxeye at February 17, 2011 7:32 PM

Eh, before the things I'm a nerd about become popular here in the smallest European banana republic ... oh I don't even ... (nuclear bomb zombies plague climate meteor something something catastrophe).

Posted by: capitainejanvier at February 17, 2011 7:45 PM

Foxeye, for a second I thought you had adopted a drow baby and then sacrificed it. I was equal parts disturbed and impressed.

Posted by: superasente at February 17, 2011 8:26 PM

RobP, let me try to explain it to you: things usually are better before they get famous because whatever that thing is, is becoming more generic and accessible to the masses. It's called "selling out." It's really not that hard to figure out.

Posted by: Matt at February 17, 2011 8:34 PM

Foxeye, for a second I thought you had adopted a drow baby and then sacrificed it. I was equal parts disturbed and impressed.

I'm pretty sure someone tried at some point. Those baby drow were a definite jump-the-shark moment, and I kept thinking of ways to rub their nose into the craziness of adopting pure evil spawnlings.

Posted by: Foxeye at February 17, 2011 8:40 PM

Oh, Foxeye, thou doth remindeth me to pity the fools that don't get it. (Seriously, "The A Team" was totally a raiding party.) An RPG, well-played, becomes a kind of improv. It's about the game around the table, not on it.

Posted by: BierceAmbrose at February 17, 2011 9:02 PM

Um...I was gonna correct the whole "LARPing" vs "MMORPG" debacle, but I can see TL beat me to it.

("City of Heroes" forever, beeshes!)

Posted by: Green Lantern at February 17, 2011 10:09 PM

All hail Felecia Day the High Exalted Empress of the Interwebs! May she be a benevolent ruler.

SHIAEGAZUNT!

Posted by: Green Lantern at February 17, 2011 10:12 PM

Being females, our game was three years of not only saving the world and kicking dragon ass, but heartache and betrayal and adopted dark elf babies and sacrifice and surprise twists and...oiy, it was glorious campy joy. :D Half soap-opera, half LotR. And sometimes we'd just game them going on a shopping trip.

*wistful sigh*

I am totally platonically in love with you right now, Foxeye.

Strewth.

Posted by: Green Lantern at February 17, 2011 10:13 PM

I may not be platonically in love, I may just be in love. Keep the ring out of it you hooker. Seriously, a freaking pencil was able to take you down.

Side note: I don't actually follow the comic, so I don't know if that is still a weakness. If it is, I've got your #2 right here.

Posted by: vryce98 at February 17, 2011 11:26 PM

@vryce98, are you talking about Felicia day there, or me? I have this annoying feeling that I'm supposed to be remembering an insider joke involving pencils, and I'm drawing a blank.

@BierceAmbrose
An RPG, well-played, becomes a kind of improv. It's about the game around the table, not on it.

Exactly. :D It's improv theatre, but without a script. The good games, anyways. The bad ones are just dice rolls and too much carbonation and annoyance that someone just HAD to create a chaotic evil wizard when they knew you were playing a paladin, so you spend the whole game trying to kill other people in your party. Occasionally you get a hilarious story out of it, but usually it was just a wasted evening.

Ugh, I've been way too talkative today. It's all this fantasy-nerd stuff that lures me out of lurking.

Posted by: Foxeye at February 18, 2011 12:10 AM

RPwhatnow?

Posted by: Lucas at February 18, 2011 12:22 AM

Wow is such a large game that there are multiple facets to the player base. When you create a character you get to choose the server you play on, and these can be "themed" servers. On some you can PvP- fight against people in world combat wherever whenever (if you ever hear someone say they "got ganked" they're doing PvP), on some you PvE- You fight monsters and aren't required to kill other real people, and on some you can RP- i.e. you create a character bio and act "in character" in the game, carrying out storylines in one giant soap opera. There's a server in WoW called Moon Guard where you can see a lot of that RP stuff. I happen to be on that server, but I'm not one of the RPers. Only about a quarter of the server actively does it. They actually annoy the hell out of me. BUT that's not saying it's not a valid way to play the game!

Posted by: RyanH at February 18, 2011 1:24 AM

The original Dragon Age was the straight up shit. I'm a nerd and I'm ok with it.

I feel like I'm in the nerd version of AA.

Posted by: aroorda at February 18, 2011 1:46 AM

I'd hit it with a +2 broadsword.

Posted by: AmbroseKalifornia at February 18, 2011 1:53 AM

As all indeed have degree's of roleplaying, the terms are very clear what's what(Among the Nerds):

RPG - Table game with dice

LARP - Life game with costumes and who has the biggest mouth.

MMthingy - On computers, ussualy no real life interaction unless it's a LAN.


That isn't so hard, is it?

(This comes from 20y of RPG, and 10y of LARP in Holland and I did it all, including Orga)
And ow yeah, computergames bore me to death after 10 minutes.

Posted by: Magiel at February 18, 2011 7:59 AM

As the superhero and comic-book movies become assimilated into the mainstream
---
I think you mean "overwhelm the mainstream to the point there not a fucking thing else at the octoplex," don't you?

Ah well, that's more eating-out money in my pocket this summer.

You pervs take that any way you want.

Posted by: , at February 18, 2011 10:58 AM

WoW has role-playing servers, where they actually get into the characters quite a bit. There's a running joke where one inn was overcrowded, so many characters inside, and someone comes and asks why they're all there and not out doing quests and whatnot, and they answer "Cause it's raining outside, can't you see?"
Not funny? Guess you had to be there.

Posted by: Me at February 18, 2011 11:17 AM