“The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Weird” by Mark Barrowcliffe
“The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Weird” is a memoir of the years that the author spent playing Dungeons & Dragons. It’s mostly a look back in anger: the thoughts of a frustrated adult looking back on an adolescence squandered around a table with funny little dice.
Although it’s a well-written book, and is pretty funny at times, I can’t help but to feel that the author shifts the blame for what sounded to me like common adolescent woes – social maladjustment, difficulties with girls, problems in school – on his years spent playing Dungeons & Dragons. The game gets little credit for having added anything positive to his life.
Frankly, his is a pretty negative assessment of the game and the people who play it. Barrowcliffe takes great pains to describe adults who still play roleplaying games as “geeks” and exhorts young people to avoid gaming altogether. In his defense, he describes himself as a young man as being “obsessed” with gaming, but how is that different from any other adolescent obsession? Would an obsession with football, angling or cars have been any better? How is the guy who slathers himself in facepaint and his team’s colors any better adjusted than your typical gamer?
I regret that his experiences with gamers – particularly adult gamers – was so negative. The closing chapter of the book finds Barrowcliffe attempting to play a game again for the sake of research. These guys don’t get off any better than Barrowcliffe’s teenage friends. He describes all of the other players as “geeks” and actually pretends to be sick in order to excuse himself from the table.
I happen to know a lot of adult gamers myself. I’m one of them. Sure, there are maladjusted nincompoops in gaming circles, just like in every other hobby. But I hardly feel that everyone deserves the broad brush treatment that Barrowcliffe applies. I’ve gamed with lots of different people: bankers, law enforcement agents, librarians, computer programmers, nurses, poor people, wealthy people, black people, white people, men, women, teenagers and babyboomers, and few of them deserve that.
I’m not sure to what extent Wizards of the Coast – the current owners of the D&D brand – are working with Barrowcliffe and his publisher to promote this book. The “Elfish Gene” website is rigged to allow visitors to make their own D&D character, which is high irony for a book whose dedication reads “Avoid this.”
Very nice review, Matt.
I’m not a huge player myself, hack I played only for 2 or 3 times. But that is because I haven’t had the access to the game and the gamebooks in my country. But I have other games that I enjoy and I have PC games that I play now (a little less actually because of the time).
What I believe Barrowcliffe did is like all of us tend to do, generalize. If we had a bad experience we tend to pass the individual for general. But it must not be this way. Every one is unique.
Dark Wolf
August 27, 2008 at 10:24 am
Matt,
Thanks for taking the bullet on that one.
What I can’t figure is what was the point of writing this book in the first place? To tell us that gamers are geeks? well duh.. and some of them are maladjusted assholes just like in every other subset of all societies?
Sounds like the book was an excuse to rant about some bad and not all the interesting experiences. Barrowcliffe should get back to us when he actually has something profound, insightful, and hopefully original to say.
Rick Klaw
August 27, 2008 at 10:36 am
“Gaming kept me from having a life. I guess I failed my saving throw.” Or, you know, playing the game may have been a result of not having all those other things to distract you in the first place (said as a hardened gamer myself, at least back in HS days).
I tried one adult gaming group with a AD&D game. After 2 hours of sneaking around and virtual navel gazing, we had a scenario where a guard (to the dungeon) stuck his head out of the door. Next followed 15 minutes of “does he see us,” “can I shoot him with my crossbow,” “should I shoot him” till I had enough.
“How far away is this door?”
“Three feet,” says the DM.
“I chop his head off with my long sword” ::rolls dice to hit::
Dogs in a room that has an gate on the front door? I’ve got me a whole quiver of arrows. They’ll all be dead in a moment. And I may get some of my arrows back.
Big, mean, nasty looking wizard arrives on the scene of us just having pillaged as much as we could from his house? “What shall we do,” group starts quibbering.
“I don’t know about you fellas, but I run like hell toward the tree-line.”
I didn’t last long with that group.
Steve Buchheit
August 27, 2008 at 11:44 am
@ Steve Buchheit: Man, you would have fit right in with my players. Their motto was “XP! Stuff!”. I would spend weeks crafting epic storylines, only to have my vision hacked to bloody ruin, looted, then burned to fuming ash beneath a hail of fireballs.
And God damn if those weren’t some of the best times of my life.
*sigh*
Ennis Drake
August 27, 2008 at 12:52 pm
A game’s purpose – above all – is to be fun, and it’s up to every person to decide what fun means to them. The last time I played D&D was a smash and grab dungeon crawl, and it was great. The other kinds are fun too, depending.
Matt Staggs
August 27, 2008 at 12:57 pm
I’m disappointed. I thought the book was really going to about Elfish genetics… If gaming is ’sad’ (and I’m not saying it is), then what could be sadder than writing a whole book whining about it? The ultimate time-waster.
nautiloid
August 28, 2008 at 8:43 am
I’m going to write a book whining about the choice of “Elfish” versus “Elvish”.
Enns Drake
August 28, 2008 at 8:50 am
How is the guy who slathers himself in facepaint and his team’s colors any better adjusted than your typical gamer?
I agree 100%
Andrew
August 28, 2008 at 11:09 am
Well, that’s very disappointing. I saw the picture of the cover and thought what a fun book that would be to read, until …
But it begs the question, has there been a book like this written about gaming that isn’t awash with shame and regret? I’d like to read it, if so. If not … hmmm …
Nathan Ballingrud
August 29, 2008 at 7:59 am
It is amazing that these books can get published at all. Maybe I’m just naive though…
Moo!
The Topiary Cow
August 29, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Hey, Matt
A quick response from the author.
Sorry you felt the book was so negative.
I actually really enjoyed my time D&D ing and hope I brought that over in the book – as many of the reviews in the UK and on Amazon (UK) have said. (It was published in Britain two years ago)
I explicitly say that I don’t blame D&D at all for the madness of my youth, only in that it gave me a reason to sit in a room with 10 other fermenting boys for my entire adolesence. It wasn’t the game that was wrong, I conclude, but each other. They’re virtually my exact words. (On holiday in France at moment so can’t quote exact page reference).
Also, I hope I give an indication of just how much fun the game can be. It’s a comic autobiography and the target isn’t gamers but me myself. It’s not awash with shame and regret – I couldn’t have done anything else in the 70s and 80s and I wouldn’t change a second of it, other than taking my 3rd level Berserker into Tegel Manor. And some of the bullying.
It’s more about self-deprecation for a few laughs than it is about shame. I do wish I hadn’t knocked myself out trying to get into a wicker basket in emulation of a Ninja but not so much that I can’t laugh about it.
That said, it’s a book about obsession, and how obsessions arise. It’s obsessive behaviour that’s harmful, not – in itself – the object you’re obsessing about. I’d agree that sports, books, music even, can prove harmful if you allow nothing else into your life, as I did with D&D. That’s what the ‘avoid this’ dedication is about – obsession, not D&D.
I don’t paint all gamers as geeks. My portrayal of Billy, for instance, shows that he was a truly inspirational character who I would never have come into contact with if it hadn’t been for the game. I also talk about the magic of D&D (and my favourite Empire of the Petal Throne) when it’s working properly and the difficulty, with as many egos as we had in our circle, of ever getting it to do so.
I think many gamers will recognise the arguments we had, from who was where in the marching order to ‘does giant ant acid burn metal?’, so much so that you manage to do two rooms of a dungeon in seven hours of playing.
I admit the last chapter is a bit down but I had to write it as I found it. If the game I attended had been full of latter day Cary Grants sipping Martinis and quoting Dorothy Parker, I would have recorded that. As it was, it contained a lot of IT guys with martial arts obsessions and an aversion to soap.
Perhaps I should have looked further afield and, if the book enters a second edition, I will take your criticisms on board and try to play several games with a diverse number of people. I had a lot of difficulty finding groups near to me that were willing to take on new players.
Anyway, I hope gamers will at least give it a read – in a bookshop or from a library, if they don’t want to commit their cash. If you look on the amazon uk site, you’ll see that a lot of gamers and ex gamers have enjoyed it and recongise themselves.
I can post up some links to extracts if anyone is intersted and you will allow them on your site.
I do love D&D and I really thought I’d brought that over in the book. Perhaps it’s the British sense of humour that gets a bit lost in the translation. You have to remember that we’re a nation of terminal understaters and self mockers.
It’s odd that my obsession hasn’t finished, either. I’ve just finished my first fantasy novel (everything else I’ve ever written has been comedy) – inspired by writing the book. I’m also toying with the idea of whipping out the EPT again.
Anyway, thanks for the review and your comments, positive and negative.
Mark Barrowcliffe
August 30, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Good response! I guess I should reserve comments to what I have read myself.
Will Humphreys
August 30, 2008 at 8:47 pm
I don’t paint all gamers as geeks
“One fact, however, will be clear in their minds – that everyone who played the game more than once was a nerd.
That’s all you really need to know to read this book. By the time you’ve 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.
I’d like to say that the nerd thing is a misconception, but I can’t. I should know; I was a total nerd. I probably still am a total nerd, and so was everyone I ever played with – vicious nerds, shy nerds, egotistical nerds, semi-psychotic nerds, but all nerds to a boy. There were no girls, not even nerdy ones.”
Page 2.
“The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange”
By Mark Barrocliffe
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Matt Staggs
August 31, 2008 at 4:38 pm
[...] no, that’s not true! Mark came by to address some concerns he had regarding my review of his book and the subsequent comm…and as I admire both his gentlemanly demeanor and obvious writing talent (the book is actually [...]
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