More Elfish Gene

Even though Barrowcliffe is seven years older than I am and started playing D&D years before I did, is British, and was much more obsessed with D&D than I ever was, it's remarkable how similar some of his experiences were to mine. First something trivial and mundane:

Through D&D I had met fantastic beings, older boys who seemed creatures of impossible glamour, who appeared to know everything and who seemed proud of knowing everything. There was no dancing on the desks in French for them, more listening to Emerson Lake and Palmer's Pictures at an Exhibition, saying, "It's based on a piece of classical music, you know," and luxuriating in the implied superb discernment that came with renting such a record from the library. They'd discuss the concepts of Einstein and know about things like black holes and supernovas.

Hey, my older D&D friends introduced me to ELP's Pictures at an Exhibition, too (although I was always partial to Pirates). And I've never had the exact argument he's describing next, but, yeah, that's exactly us. Absolutely:

I spent a lot of time wondering what the gleam on +3 armour looked like or the edge on a flaming sword. When I was having these thoughts, though, I wasn't aware I was purely exercising my imagination. To me, I was involved in a deductive process--like when historians say, "From what we can piece together, we believe the songs of the Vikings would have sounded something like this . . . " I was referring to a world that, in my mind, actually existed and, like my journey home that day or my release from school on a Friday lunchtime, its lack was felt more keenly for it's proximity than its distance.

We had plenty of arguments on this basis in the wargames room--whether the acid from a giant ant would be strong enough to corrode through metal bars, for instance, as one enterprising character attempted to remove himself from a cage by this method.

The conversation would become incredibly detailed, with recourse to periodic tables and encyclopaedias. Of course, the only real answer is that the acid of a giant ant can burn through metal if the referee--the dungeonmaster--says it can. It's his world; he designed it, and, if he wants, the ant's sting can contain specific metal-melting compounds or pure water. We didn't see this at the time, though. We thought we could uncover the reality of the situation through argument.

It is sad to note that, even at this distance of years and without having to look it up, I know formic acid (the stuff in your everyday ant) does not combine with metals and is used in tanning and, crucially, wire stripping. It takes off the insulation but leaves the wire untouched. In high concentrations this would make it burn flesh but not the bars of a cage. This is the sort of stuff I was learning while others were concentrating on how to be nice to a girl.

And I had better role models than Barrowcliffe and a wider range of interests to define myself by, but I had some reverse snobbery going on. I rationalized my sense of alienation from my peers by thinking I wasn't as superficial as them, but was more mature instead:

"Football is for morons and thugs," said Porter. "Superior people play Dungeons and Dragons."

So there you had it. Not making the first team, or any team for that matter, wasn't something to be ashamed of; it was a cause for pride. Also, I liked the phrase "superior people." That hadn't exactly been the feeling I'd had among my classmates, but it helped explain why I felt no connection with them--it wasn't my fault, it was theirs. . . .

Looking back at it now, I can see that D&D involved a whole-sale rejection of cool and a celebration of things that were, to the average schoolboy, utterly naff. In this way it was a genuine subculture and more radically separate from the mainstream than punk could ever hope to be.