How do you feel about the portrayal of tabletop games in other media?

How do you feel about the portrayal of tabletop games in other media?

Other urls found in this thread:

vimeo.com/39114507
youtu.be/bVg8o8BxNQM?t=1074
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D&D_Championship_Series
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

big bang theory - no
IT crowd - yes
Golbergs - not sse that one, but I love the show

Freaks & Geeks - yes

We're sort of entering an era when the acknowledgement of the inherent "nerdiness" associated with tabletop is there but it is becoming more and more casual and less stigmatized. I guess that's a good thing but I still think it's something people look at as quaint or quirky, like unicycling or something, rather than as a legitimately acceptable hobby for well adjusted people.

I for one dislike casual plebs who aren't interested in detail and just want to either lolsorandum or play a tabletop action move.

How about this episode?

I have the same feelings towards its portrayal just like video games and most other "nerd" hobbies, burning rage at how lazily they research the subject and put it on the air, fuck a good example is NCIS, and their "hacking scenes, or the MMO episode.

It's like the writers havnt been exposed to anything past the 50's.

I still cringe when I hear aging comedians doing a vidya gag that involves something like "I got to level 12". Especially if the vidya is Tekken.

Best portrayal of tabletop was when Key & Peele did a sketch about it.

Well, I'm not a little bitch who cries about nerd blackface if that's what you're asking.

I loved Reno 911's handful of RPG skits.

That episode actually convinced my friends in high school to actually ask me if I would run a game for them. Years later, I've moved away and they're in college or just graduating and they're still going strong playing every week.

Where da bitches at?

the average media depiction of anything is going to be highly inaccurate

no sense getting worked up about it

>just like everything unfamiliar to the in-group "TV scriptwriters"

Fix'd. See also: guns, police procedure, medicine, forensic science, SCIENCE science, the dynamics of urban poor, the dynamics of rural ANYTHING, organized crime, disorganized crime, working real jobs.

Who cares?

Board gaming is seeing a strong resurgence. It only really had a turbo-nerdy stigma in the last generation or two, as that was the advent of 24/7 instant entertainment. Seeing normies playing light Eurogames at the local brewpub has become the new normal across swathes of the country.

link?

It was an odd playstyle and I reject the notion that Abed's a great DM for being impartial when Pierce's metagaming was so obvious. I love Community though and the joke about dying of exposure in 13 rounds was pretty incredible.

Was pretty good.

My man of good taste.

It's an inside joke among programmers that they make hacking as silly as possible because people are dumb. It's only been recently that they've actually shown a few more accurate depictions of it in media.

The same goes for many a nerdy thing. South Park does it because they like trolling nerds, Big Bang does it because it's nerdom that's accessible to non-nerds, and others do it because they want to accurately replicate the feel of nerdy bullshit but don't have the licensing to actually feature a real game.

My only real beefs are
1) More often than not the writers put very little research into how the games are played and thus give the completely wrong impression on how they're played.

2) When they're used to take a jab at nerds ('neeeeeerds, eeeeeeeeew') or

3) When they're used as a scapegoat ("we found satanic paraphernalia in the killer's apartment, like sacrificial daggers and dungeons and dragons books!")

To me any time someone praises Abed's "great DMing" is a dead giveaway that they don't actually play RPGs.

Exactly. The saving grace of the sessions the Study Group has played is that they've had some great players, not a great DM.

To be honest I don't really care. My friends and I have fun playing games and that's all that matters to us.

I've heard the phrase "blackface for nerds" thrown around a few times and I've got to say that criticism bothers me more than the actual depictions of 'nerds'.

vimeo.com/39114507

You need to let go of the historical connotations and realize the description is based solely on the idea of the exploitation of one groups stereotypes of the other for the sake of entertainment.

Personally I'm more a fan of "nerdsploitation."

I couldn't possibly care less. I haven't watched TV in 17 years.

Nerdsploitation works better because of the dehumanizing element critical to blackface.

You could argue there's a lot of dehumanizing of geeks/nerds in media.

Pretty good

Not without sounding like an idiot.

I need to make webm versions of this episode

In your opinion.

I work in law enforcement and game regularly. Most media portrays both completely inaccurately. Cop/court/jail/prison stuff I can't watch because I'll get annoyed. Tabletop stuff I'll watch and laugh how off it is. Once in a while with tabletop things you get something genuinely funny though, like that one episode of Dexter's Lab.

Go ahead and argue it, moron

can your character beat gygax, the lv 27 warrior mage who wields a soul sucking sword and a world breaker mace?

Waste of time, you've clearly already made up your mind.

Off to a great start.

a far out game

all this makes me think of...
>DM:"Roll a spot check, McRoguerson."
>Party Rogue:"Ok.....3."
>DM:"You spot nothing out of the ordinary."
>Rest of the group:"....why don't you take point Sir Meatshield, we will follow paces behind..."

fucking metagamers, man.

A GORVIL!
youtu.be/bVg8o8BxNQM?t=1074

18, 21, 49
>on a d12

Can't be a D12 because the pentagrams surround a hexagon, it's like a D14 or something

also some of the numbers change when it rolls, so it's also a trick dice of some kind

Pentagons* lol

Or, you know, it's just animated to look funny as a joke.

It's about as accurate as anything depicted in pop culture media.

NO! WE MUST GO DEEPER

Godspeed, user.

Now what could fill the other side of this...

This episode and reading the hobbit as a kid is what got me into play D&D in middle school, can't believe that was almost 20 years ago now

I barely feel at all.

keep going...

I've made a thread

>NCIS, and their "hacking scenes, or the MMO episode.
I'm pretty sure those were goofy on purpose as stone-faced satire of those genre conventions.

There's simply no other explanation for how ridiculous those are.

Same here, user.
Well, that plus a hand-me-down copy of DragonStrike from a cousin. Between the game itself and that 'HyperReality' VHS tape it was actually a pretty fair primer for playing an RPG.

>How do you feel about the portrayal of tabletop games in other media?
When I see it, I at first think of everything they are getting wrong:
>”I’m a level 50 Dungeon Master!”
Then I remember a story I saw once on the info-tainment boxicle:
A young boy who had recently joined “the scouts” was watching tv with his sister on the floor while his dad sat on the couch. They were watching an animation of a violent altercation between a cat and mouse.
The boy angrily responded by pointing out that the mouse tied a knot incorrectly.
The girl wisely responded that it was a cartoon, and you can’t expect it to be completely realistic.
Then the father walked past the window outside.
And then I laugh and feel joy.

I occasionally watch, and usually enjoy, TBBT. But nothing on the show has ever made me laugh harder than the idiots on Veeky Forums that rage about it while describing the same things every average sitcom does, never owning the fact that they only hate it because it hurts their widdle feewings.

>Then I remember a story I saw once on the info-tainment boxicle:
>A young boy who had recently joined “the scouts” was watching tv with his sister on the floor while his dad sat on the couch. They were watching an animation of a violent altercation between a cat and mouse.
>The boy angrily responded by pointing out that the mouse tied a knot incorrectly.
>The girl wisely responded that it was a cartoon, and you can’t expect it to be completely realistic.
>Then the father walked past the window outside.
>And then I laugh and feel joy.
... wut?

What does this have to do with anything?

...

>be me
>be seeing portrayal of tabletop games in other media
>at first, start to sperg over how they be wrong
>then remember that one Simpsons episode where they pointed out how silly it is to be upset over inaccuracies on tv in a funny way
>be not sperging, be happy

Also this.

That "resurgence" has been a twenty year climb, since Settlers first arrived in the US.

Which made last week's story in the LA TImes just a little awkward.

The second one was better, but I loved the first.

David Cross and Johnathan Banks were more interesting players than Chevy Chase and the guy who plays Fabulous Neil.

Though Chang in Drowface was pretty great.

Those LARPing scenes were great.

I don't watch tv so I wouldn't know.

Don't know, the only portray I ever got was Gamers series and the 2nd movie was pretty much my group, just change their names.
So let's say I feel great about it.

I don't get how they are always portrayed as a thing being played by specific group of people, call them nerds, geeks or whatever else.
It just doesn't translate to who is playing tabletops in my country, so even if they manage to convey the gameplay without any "offs", the people playing are just ridiculous. I mean how that translates to my group, where I've got a body-builder, archeologist chick, a cop and the drummer from local band in the group? It's not even about insulting, but how prevailing this portray is and how little it has to do with reality outside Burgerland.

It's not accurate enough. The players are usually short by a hundred pounds. In big bang theory, short by 250

This. It is rare that anybody with actual experience in a field will be satisfied when that field turns up in media of any kind.

There's always gotta be that one faggot.

I can still remember the Recess episode about D&D. You know, the one where TJ broke his collarbone and had to spend recess inside with the Pale Kids until it healed. While its portrayal of D&D was a little off, it was surprisingly respectful in how it showed "nerd culture" as being just something people liked, especially for a show in the tail end of the Satanic Panic days. Once TJ got over his prejudice against kids who don't like playing outside and realized that they still had some interests in common, he started really having fun playing D&D with them and learning about what they were into and actually got to thinking that they were pretty cool. This was just what they did to have fun, and it was just as legitimate a way to have fun as playing kickball.

I am speechless.

Did it accurately depict my experience of dnd? No but it hit the important parts and was funny.

This. I live in Chicago but the portrayal of rural folks in Zootopia really pissed me off.

Nerds are the last acceptable target and the last resort of ghostwriters stuck with filler.

It's usually made for the types of people who retweet nigger media on twitter, listen to R&B music because worshipping nog culture has influenced every aspect of their life, you know the type. Chicks who reweet bullshit platitudes about just being urself and tumblr gifs. These people are the Nu West and everything disgusting about our society, and the reason tabletop players are portrayed the way they are is because of the gaze of such people.

This sphere of society makes me empathize with critiques of the west from extremist Muslims. So yeah, I don't care for it.

Whenever I see posts like this all I can picture is some rail thin 14-year maddeningly mashing his keyboard, a small bit of foam around his clenched teeth. In only a couple years he's gone from ironic shitposting to halfway believing all the shit he spews.

I jerk off to the fantasy of calling him a little faggot on the internet and then heading over to his house and fucking his mom.

whenever I see a post like this I imagine some gen y retard who has made Veeky Forums the cesspool it has become over the last five years, who is too retarded to understand that some people often extremely exaggerate their views, and who takes everything at face value in between laughing at funny facebook videos and being late to our scheduled blowjob session where he licks my ass after finishing me off

While the last line is 2edgy5me, if you don't think such culture has influenced our society in a deeply negative way you are either willfully ignorant or trying to sell something.

What story?

alright buddy, it's time to go back

after you

He's still getting more pussy that you'd ever get

Beware the Sacrilege

>mfw this scrub can't even get to level 12 in tekken

I bet you have a tiny penis, too.

>aging comedian doing a vidya gag
>he knows what he's talking about

Is that real?

yes

It's one thing to portray it incorrectly, especially if it's for a laugh. It's somethign quite different when portraying it incorrectly, while mocking it, and in such a way as to make it clear that the writers don't know the first thing about what they're mocking. Gravity Falls was pretty guilty of this.

In game was called Dungeons, Dungeons, and more Dungeons. When Dipper starts trying to explain to Mabel how to play, he starts with, "First, we make a graph." Have you ever made a graph in a tabletop game? Can you think of a way in which a graph could come up in a tabletop system?

The rule book is the size of a hefty phonebook and is described as being incredibly complex. Okay, fine. Except in the end of the episode the protagonists save the day when they realize that, in this game you literally just make up whatever you want and that appears to be all there is to it. So what's the rulebook do?

The game also included a monster which was apparently "banned," as if the game was had some kind of organized competitive play, which can only be defeated by rolling maximum on your die roll.

The game also uses a 38-sided die, which like the Dexter example above was just drawn as a d12.

>It's an inside joke among programmers that they make hacking as silly as possible because people are dumb. It's only been recently that they've actually shown a few more accurate depictions of it in media.

Well, it's also because much of hacking is boring and or simplistic, which isn't very much fun to watch. What I found hilarious was that the movie Hackers - early 90's "There's this thing called the internet..." zeitgeist and all - has some of the most legitimate hacking ever. No, not the goofy bullshit at the end where they "Bomb the Gibson" with cartoon viruses in VR, but the subtler stuff. Where the main character tricks a security guard into giving up his password over the phone, or where Lord Nikon pretends to be a delivery guy so he can wander the floor of the target office and watch people type in their passwords. Hell, they even use phone phreaking (a moment of silence for an art that has almost no medium any more) and read The Conscience of a Hacker almost verbatim.

The rest of it is invented garbage because it wouldn't be as flashy as it needed to be on the screen, but it's obvious some research was done.

>Have you ever made a graph in a tabletop game?

Most DMs who have played pre 3e probably have, or just people who wanted miniature combat before popular wet erase mats.

>Most DMs who have played pre 3e probably have, or just people who wanted miniature combat before popular wet erase mats.

I think the implication is that he was saying to make an X,Y coordinate graph, not a grid.

>vimeo.com/39114507
why won't the fucking camera hold still god damn it

So it's GURPS?

In a generation obsessed with shallow emotions and "being yourself", strategic thinking is portrayed as legitimately funny, and unironically ironic.

>The game also included a monster which was apparently "banned," as if the game was had some kind of organized competitive play

It was a thing back in the day, you know
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D&D_Championship_Series

>The rules are simple. First you roll a 38-sided die to determine the level of each player's statistical analysis power orb. These orbs relate directly to the mount of quadrants that your team has dominion over, which is inverse to the anti-quadrants in your quadrant satchel.

>And then we ride unicorns?

>Yes, and no. First, we make a graph.

I'll give them the jargon about the orbs and quadrants, since it's poking fun at the complexity of the rules in a very complex game, but none of that sounds like the writers actually know anything about the rules they're poking fun at.

And yeah, they were totally going to make a line graph or something on that graph paper. As like the second step of character creation. Come on.

community does it cool

I remembed Dredd doing that as well.

Veeky Forums has its own tumblr board?

...

What does Veeky Forums think of Bender's Game, at least the D&D-y parts before the jump to Cornwood and after? Meaning when the kids were playing their fantasy tabletop game, and when they shifted to Bender's fantasy land.