Culling The Nerd Herd

 Well, I've been busy since 6AM this morning listing a massive slew of pre-slotta stuff on eBay having finally sorted out all my units for the Big Fantasy Project.

Some 160 lots of photos and listing later and I am finally able to get to sit down.

PHEW!

Now the whole 'endgame' is starting to take shape. At 56 I'm looking down the barrel of eternal darkness, so I don't really want to be too long in getting my figures all painted and played with as much as possible.

As I write I am back in 1981 with some Human League and I'm remembering all sorts of things, many of them game related, others not so.

I've had a week of war with the neighbours as they object to now being unable to use my property as a parking lot, thanks to a fence to the side of my garden, which they have used as a turning circle since we moved in, in 2006, whilst simultaneously walling off their own property. Needless to say it's getting heated,  and as anyone who knows me will attest, I go so far before I hit the nuclear warning alarm and deal with things apporopriately and with an amount of overkill.

Tomorrow sees the excellent Joy Of Six show here in Sheffield which I have to attend, despite being really worn out from a 60 hour week. I think we'll stay for 2 hours and then mooch off home. I'm not the most sociable of animals at present and prefer the quiet of my own living room and the Memsahib wants to get the bottom garden of the two at the rear, sorted before the builders go in and lay waste to them both

I spent a smashing couple of hours yesterday after the day's toil, chatting with Mick Rothenburg, who gifted the memsahib and I a wonderful sugar 'cruet' to go with the tea and coffee pots we bought last week. It's a lovely piece and will be getting much use at my 'salons':

But what of gaming? I hear you cry... What of the 80s?...

Well, you see, I've known Mick for many more years than he and I may like to admit and we've had some fun times along the way, so that's why I mention the sugar set.

I've been thinking a lot about the youth tribes of 80s gaming. Essentially, many of us met through gaming and I assume shared a collective wish to not be part of the 'norm' or to avoid the sometimes truly brutal bullying this led to.

But, I also realised that within these groups of nerd sand misfits, there was a bullying culture which was probably worse, because we were all seemingly united in our goals and sensibilities, but were so insecure that little sniping cliques existed. In Sheffield, there was a fluid pattern of one or two people being judged as 'outcasts from the tribe' with a snickering, back biting pack making their live's a low level hell for however long it took them to get bored.

If someone resisted then they were totally shunned, probably because that would mean that one of the oppressors would find themselves the new target, before the appointed time.

A couple of the local mob became very adept at avoiding this fate and stirred the pot somewhat masterfully (in their eyes) but let's face it, if you were a a geek and you picked on other geeks, you had some real issues to address down the line.

For my part, I should have blacked a couple of eyes and bloodied a nose or two, as I did to a school bully at 15, only to get arrested - go figure - for blooding the ear of that bully's Mummy's Little Soldier - I was let off with a caution and told I could have done a lot more with the same end result by the bored desk sergeant who sat me down one bright Sunday morning in 1984.... Bugger!

To be honest, I am not a violent person, but you do look back to those days and realise that you could have helped quite a lot of teenagers in the local gaming scene via a few choice violent assaults. There was a good number of us who were into reenactment as teenagers, during a time when you could actually have a decent fracas in front of 2000 spectators and not get arrested, so why we never employed the same skills to make our gaming environment safer, escapes me. But wait, no, we didn't do that because the fisticuffs belonged on the reenactment field and not in the snug of whatever pub we were gaming in, and we were sirrounded by older gamers, who were by now, well balanced and salaried nerds with young families - it rubbed off.

But away from the clubs it was a hex paper jungle, and the distance from those role models directly affected the bravery of the bullies of the nerd herd. The odd thing is that when I had my own run in with the school bully and the final 'victorious' outcome, the nerds avoided me like the plague for several months - after all, they could be next to be violently assaulted by someone they had bullied,couldn't they? 

Of course not, but once you spook a herd it scatters, and this herd with it it's pretentionts of superiority over 'normal' people, artistic sensibilities (does preferring Playboy over Razzle count as 'artistic sensibility? Or is wanking over a Chris Achilleos poster grant you that accolade?) scattered like Ibex, then stood in the metaphorical tree line, braying and bleating, and thereby keeping the focus on the sacrificial goat and not themselves.

Over the years, several of us have discussed the internal bullying culture of the Sheffield roleplaying scene (Oddly, the wargamers were less inclined to this kind of thing - I think they have less of a god complex, strangely enough, and this may explain why I became more of a wargamer than a roleplayer down the decades.) and we have pretty much worked out the hierachy of the whole thing. 

The Apex Predator Nerds ar all dead - literally - well ahead of their time, the Herd Nerds with few exceptions, are pretty miserable doing way less than they originally bragged they'd do, and those who copped more than their share of the twattery,  whilst maybe not doing what their parents had hoped they would, have lived probably the most interesting and varied lives and - and this is the interesting part - have done more gaming.

Now, I don't know what the correlation is, but this is an honest appraisal, built up over a decade. I think perhaps those of the group who got more than the appointed quota, simply shrugged, ignored the whole group status thing and went about just living life how they wanted, and it panned out nicely. Another interesting thing is that these are the people who are now as middle aged types, less likely to take any bullshit or accept second best and who've gone on to do interesting if not highly paid jobs.

But this could just be imagined. I think it's more than that, and the more I chat with others from that era, the more I see patterns emerge. I'm certain it's not confirmation bias either.

Maybe it's the Universe stepping up for the oppressed, but it does not excuse the Nerds Of Yore for the bullying and spitefulness they seemed to revel in, 4 decades ago. 

It certainly makes you think...

TTFN