From: alfie@mail.invalid   
      
   On Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:32:08 +0930, Luke Hooft  wrote:   
      
   >Yeah, any extreme (extremist?) fandom is scary. I'm a huge   
   >nerd/geek/whatever, but I love all sorts of properties to a moderate   
   >degree. Anyone who obsesses over one thing, be it trek, firefly,   
   >twilight etc so the degree that some people do, to the point that it   
   >becomes almost the defining thing in their life... well like I said, scary.   
      
   Having been heavily into role play gaming when I was younger, I tend   
   to understand this kind of fanaticism over a genre/background.   
      
   I was secretary of the largest London-based role play club which had   
   at it's height over 140 active members. We had Trekkies to the degree   
   that they used Klingon phrases in conversation, people that talked   
   about what 'they' had done instead of their characters, people that   
   call each other by character names, people that dressed up for the   
   game that they were playing (including the pointy-ear brigade), we   
   knew people from the live action role play scene who took over whole   
   venues dressed up, people that cried over a character dying in-game,   
   etc, etc.   
      
   Sometimes something just sparks in people and it begins to define   
   their life, their dreams, and they need to 'BE' part of it in any way   
   they can.   
      
   On the converse, there was a small group of us that used to say that   
   we were 'gamers' not 'players'. The players took it too seriously, we   
   just liked to try new game systems out and see how we could get some   
   fun out of them :)   
      
   Blade Runner, on the other hand, hooked me. It has been a driver in my   
   life, not to the point that I must own the perfect replica police   
   blaster, or dress like Deckard, but the background intrigues me, and I   
   always end up coming back to BR for inspiration. I used to run   
   Cyberpunk RPGs which had a BR-feel to them, a friend and I tried to   
   invent our own RPG based upon BR called Rain City, and the regs here   
   will have heard me talking about a 3D computer version of Rain City   
   that I've been trying to build for ages that has a heavy BR influence.   
      
   I suppose that there is some line that defines obsession from   
   interest, I think that it's a blurry wide line, and many of us here   
   are probably skating on the obsession side, but hey...it's all good   
   fun :))   
   --   
   Alfie [UK]   
      
   Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of   
   language.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)