(subtitled: Dungeons, Dragons, and Growing Up Strange, a memoir) by Mark Barrowcliffe
The book is well written with a very consistent tone– but my attitude toward it varied dramatically over the course of the book. As it began, I empathized with his younger self, and remembered how D&D (and roleplaying) felt to me. I was annoyed, though, at his constant running down of himself and his friends– as a roleplayer, I felt like he was bagging on all of us. In the end, he really is, though there’s a lot of wistfulness as he talks about his early days.
In many ways he was a lot like me, squared. My love of gaming and friends squares into a horribly dysfunctional obsession; his sense of superiority is unbounded and turns him into a jerk around friends and family. His focus on cool reminds me of mine… but even more of Dan’s, with his desire to be the only one in on the obscure, his distaste for anything that turns popular.
In the end, it’s a great look at someone very like a more extreme version of me and my friends in junior high and high school. The same jealousies, dominance issues, and friendship choices loomed in his life. In the end, he sets up fantasy and reality as the dichotomy and chooses reality. For him, that’s victory, and I’m happy to let him mark it so. (Of course, I also note that my own identity is quite wound up in roleplaying– despite all the differences between us, I mostly ignored them and read along as if I was almost him. The differences in nation, schooling, social circles, and the like weren’t a huge consideration… which shows what an issue it is for me.)
I liked it, both for the familiarity and the differences. It’s a little amusing the ends he has go to in order to remain apart from the world of fantasy… but only because I’ve made little effort to separate myself from it. Something tells me that it’d be as painful a scab to pick… if I chose to. For now, I still look forward to gaming in the old folks home with my wife.