D&D Sterotypes [Archive] - Wizards Community

D&D Sterotypes [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Geek_of_Doom
10-17-06, 10:00 PM I'm writing a play for my drama class of which will parody D&D and role-playing games in general, but of course not make any specific mentions for legal reasons.

So what I need is some good stereotypes that even non-games could get and laugh at.

Stuff like someone playing a wizard and wearing a pointy hat.
Einvaldurinn_mikli
10-17-06, 10:18 PM Mention twenty sided dice.
Arcane Drow
10-17-06, 10:21 PM Bring up something about an elf going off to do battle against evil orcs. That's common enough in modern day media that most people will get it.
Elrinade
10-17-06, 10:22 PM Just dont make wizards old ugly men..my wizzy has a charisma of 19!
Necropolitan
10-17-06, 10:29 PM That all players are unattractive, overweight men that live in their mother's basement.
Godzilla
10-17-06, 10:30 PM Yeah, have Elves go fight some Orcs. Everyone will get it, and there's no legal issue involved. But, if you go too far, like by having Dwarves and Humans help, people might think you're parodying Lord of the Rings, not D&D.
a_psh
10-17-06, 10:32 PM See "Fear of Girls" and the Dead Alewives skits.
Stardrake
10-17-06, 10:32 PM Big guy, big sword, small brain.

Invoke Chee-tos and Mountain Dew (or parodies thereof)

All Dwarves are Scots.

A Paladin who acts rather too much like Dudley Do-Right (if you don't get it, ask your parents)
DwarvinJedi
10-17-06, 10:34 PM Cool, but any context?(being a Drama student(I am Parris in the Crucible on the first week of November) I am intrigued)
Geek_of_Doom
10-17-06, 10:41 PM Cool, but any context?(being a Drama student(I am Parris in the Crucible on the first week of November) I am intrigued)

1. Perhaps the styles of our teachers are different, but I'm not familliar with what you mean by context.

2. Parris? He seems like he'd be fun to play. My school does primairly plays our director writes, but we're doing Big the Musicial, of which my overly low voice led me to not getting a part I seeked.
Solaris
10-17-06, 11:04 PM I'm writing a play for my drama class of which will parody D&D and role-playing games in general, but of course not make any specific mentions for legal reasons.

What legal reasons? Parody is protected under fair use. Listen to the Dead Alewives skit. It mentions "Dungeons & Dragons", "magic missile", "+9" weapons, etc. And then there's the Order of the Stick webcomic, which pokes fun at numerous game rules and concepts.

WotC isn't going to try to sue you over a drama class parody.

Your biggest concern should be whether or not you're actually funny.
DwarvinJedi
10-17-06, 11:21 PM 1. Perhaps the styles of our teachers are different, but I'm not familliar with what you mean by context.
Well, what else is happening? Right now all you are telling me is the topic, but is there any plot? or is it a comedy sketch?
2. Parris? He seems like he'd be fun to play. My school does primairly plays our director writes, but we're doing Big the Musicial, of which my overly low voice led me to not getting a part I seeked.
Parris is fun and a complicated character and since the class that I am in is effectively an acting troupe, we do published plays, even though I know Mr. Kissel has written a few plays, and I think even 1 was published, we usually do 3 plays, including 1 Shakespeare per year, this year, A Midsummer's Night Dream
SpawnOfMorgoth
10-17-06, 11:22 PM Have you read Order of the Stick (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html)?

It's a great parody of dnd characters.

If it's humor relating to players as well as characters, then pick up "Knights of the Dinner Table" comics or anthologies. KotDT is the architypical hack and slash DND paradigm. The publishers even got together Gary Gygax and wrote a real RPG 'Hackmaster' based on the KotDT's parody of DND.

Great material in both these comics, though being a gamer often makes these seem tens times funnier (since you can see the truth in it, and the funny-ness of humor usually is proportional with how closely it resembles perceived reality).
Donkeypunch
10-18-06, 12:36 AM Yeah, have Elves go fight some Orcs. Everyone will get it, and there's no legal issue involved. But, if you go too far, like by having Dwarves and Humans help, people might think you're parodying Lord of the Rings, not D&D.

LoL....wait...

Is this a joke or not?

You're either super-duper post modern, or you didn't know D&D was created as a mechanism to duplicate LOTR...
Tempest Stormwind
10-18-06, 01:49 AM LoL....wait...

Is this a joke or not?

You're either super-duper post modern, or you didn't know D&D was created as a mechanism to duplicate LOTR...
In truth it originated by using wargame rules with reflavored components (a catapult's explosive radius becomes a wizard's fireball) and expanded to a full set of wargame rules. The roleplaying component came far, far later, and stole from many, many other things beyond LotR.

To the OP: I too suggest looking at the Dead Alewives. You don't need to know D&D in general to get the gags there.

Do note that due to internet memes, it's actually easier to find the infamous Dead Alewives skit by looking up the things it's been used in -- namely, the "Summoner Geeks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zng5kRle4FA)" easter egg video (the skit as 'performed' by characters from Summoner and Red Faction, probably the better of the two, although it omits the introduction that sets the stage to the non-gamer and boosts the irony and tongue-in-cheek feel to the whole thing) and the "8-Bit D&D (http://www.cybermoonstudios.com/8bitDandD.html)" flash video (which is better known due to the connection to 8-Bit Theater, and while IMHO lower-quality, it DOES contain the entire skit). The important part to these -- in other words, the Dead Alewives component -- is just the audio. The visuals are for kicks.

Note: I've only ever seen it as "Deadale Wives" (except one place, which called them the Dead Ale Wives), but Wikipedia correctly cites them as the Dead Alewives. It's an example of an easily-understood D&D parody skit, poking fun at the stereotypical player over the rules.

The afforementioned "Fear of Girls (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7521044027821122670)" is another one, as is the (to my knowledge, untitled) "I'm wearing Boots of Escaping! (http://gprime.net/video.php/magicmissile)" video. All of these stick to parodies of the player stereotype over specific content, which is what makes them so funny.

Order of the Stick manages to be funny by poking fun at gaming issues. Burlew TRIES to be funny if you're an outsider, but the only non-gamers I know who read it do so because they like the cast, not because they get the gaming jokes (in fact, they look at it as any other fantasy comic, just with obscure jokes). It's VERY good from an insider perspective, but from an outsider it's a compelling story with awkward moments, particularly at the beginning when nearly all the jokes were game-mechanical in origin. (Note that this paragraph came across as derogatory; this is not my intent. I'm a longtime OotS fan, and love Burlew's work. I just think it'd be less applicable in general to non-gamers than the above examples would.)
Solaris
10-18-06, 02:09 AM I've only ever seen it as "Deadale Wives" (except one place, which called them the Dead Ale Wives), but Wikipedia cites them as the Dead Alewives.

Wikipedia is correct. Who the hell spells it those other ways? Unlike "deadale", "alewife (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=alewife)" is actually a word.

Edit: Not many, it seems. Google finds 13,200 results for "dead alewives", but only 262 for "deadale wives" (and 4,060 for "dead ale wives").

Edit Edit: And if I include "demento" as a keyword, to get rid of any links about fish, the results are still in favor of "dead alewives".
Tempest Stormwind
10-18-06, 02:17 AM Wikipedia is correct. Who the hell spells it those other ways? Unlike "deadale", "alewife (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=alewife)" is actually a word.

Edit: Not many, it seems. Google finds 13,200 results for "dead alewives", but only 262 for "deadale wives" (and 4,060 for "dead ale wives").
I never claimed I was correct, and I apologize. They're not terribly well-known around here.

I'll correct my post accordingly. (And I was aware of the word beforehand.)
Solaris
10-18-06, 02:22 AM Here's a Dead Alewives poster, or something, from the web page of a guy who used to work with them.

http://www.tomclark.com/images/tom_dead.jpg
http://www.tomclark.com/photo.htm
Dunkey
10-18-06, 05:22 AM I don't recommend using the stereotypical dwarven cleric imbibing to much of the holy water (mead). Might set a bad example for having drunken midgets on school grounds. ;)
Nom
10-18-06, 09:51 AM Hinted at before, but I'll say it explicitly: you need to parody what is in the public perception, not the games themselves. As Tempest notes, OotS is hilarious to those of us who actually play D&D and care about the mechanics, but gobbledegook to outsiders. If you're making the skit for outsiders, you need to make sure that you don't actually include any real RPG content in the sketch - not for copyright reasons, but because the audience won't get it.

In many ways, this makes it hard to write a really funny sketch on the topic. If you go beyond simple nerd jokes, you'll fail to resonate with your audience. Good humour picks something the audience is familiar with and twists it in funny ways, not something that they are not.

Which does give me an idea. Opening concept - really nerdy group huddled around table playing stereotypical RPG, ham up the nerdiness. Then show group of (say) footballers bragging about bragging together, acting out past glories and then planning future glories. Alternate between the two groups (the other freezes), such that both groups are telling the "same" story in their different fields, each side hamming it up so that the RPG guys look really goofy and the footballers are obviously doing the same thing. As an finish, you could try swapping a member from each group, with the final couple of events having a footballer talking football as if part of the RPG group and similarly a RPG-er in the football group ("you hit him with a slow spell and I'll make the pass"). Playing it over in my mind makes it seem hard to pull off, but if you could find some way for all the audience to laugh at themselves then it might work.
Cincinnati
10-18-06, 11:25 AM Stuff like someone playing a wizard and wearing a pointy hat.

bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: Oh, I like to play dress up.
bloodninja: Me too baby.
Puca
10-18-06, 11:45 AM Ill tell you how I would do it:

You have the stereotypical scene: four or five dork virgins sitting around a table talking like heros and doing mighty deeds. The humor comes from the fact that they are pretending to be something they arent. The skinny geek is a mighty warrior, ha ha.

But then juxtapose that with the scene in the players minds: actors who are actually mighty and good-looking in medieval attire. But the humor comes from the fact that they are still dorks. Even as mighty warriors, they are still 14-year-old virgins. In the “imagination scenes” include anachronisms from the gaming table: the sword carrying fighter has a bag of Cheetos and a can of Mountain Dew. He spills and is reprimanded by the DM: Hey, my mom is going to freak out if this table gets all sticky. She needs it for bridge tomorrow.

Have the DM follow them through the scene, dressed in street-clothes, making mistakes in his descriptions:

DM: Four orcs burst from the door on the left.

Togal the Mighty: What door?

A door appears on the left. It opens and four orcs appear.

Weglit the Wizard turns to the DM: You never said there was a door! I would have cast my Mage Armor spell!

DM: Ok you have Mage Armor. Roll to see who gets to attack first!

Go back and forth between the table setting and the dungeon setting.
afiremain
10-18-06, 11:49 AM That all players are unattractive, overweight men that live in their mother's basement.

I live upstairs.
The_Jester
10-18-06, 03:23 PM 1: Virginity references
2: Still living with parents
3: Continual reference to intercourse and/or intercourse with fictional beings. Thinly veiled innuendo that could fit in with an AC/DC song
4: Arguing over trivial and mindless details and insignificant facts.
5: Attitudes of superiority mixed with sour grapes
6: Taking games and television very seriously, almost religiously
7: Working in a entry-level job (ussually retail or a convenience store/ gas station) for many, many years
8: Red Bull = nectar
9: Laughing at how people still continue to stereotypes and how unrealistic they are
The_Jester
10-18-06, 03:32 PM dbl post
AaronDireBear
10-18-06, 05:59 PM If you perpetuate ANY of those god awful stereotypes I will hunt you down and kill you.

Those god damn xstereotypes have made it very hard for me to get laid and I want them to stop being spread.

You had better portray gamers in a positive light and make at least one of them a real lady's man. I dont want to hear about a single one being "afraid of girls" or not showering or any of those other hateful lies.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Geek_of_Doom 10-17-06, 10:00 PM	I'm writing a play for my drama class of which will parody D&D and role-playing games in general, but of course not make any specific mentions for legal reasons. So what I need is some good stereotypes that even non-games could get and laugh at. Stuff like someone playing a wizard and wearing a pointy hat.
Einvaldurinn_mikli 10-17-06, 10:18 PM	Mention twenty sided dice.
Arcane Drow 10-17-06, 10:21 PM	Bring up something about an elf going off to do battle against evil orcs. That's common enough in modern day media that most people will get it.
Elrinade 10-17-06, 10:22 PM	Just dont make wizards old ugly men..my wizzy has a charisma of 19!
Necropolitan 10-17-06, 10:29 PM	That all players are unattractive, overweight men that live in their mother's basement.
Godzilla 10-17-06, 10:30 PM	Yeah, have Elves go fight some Orcs. Everyone will get it, and there's no legal issue involved. But, if you go too far, like by having Dwarves and Humans help, people might think you're parodying Lord of the Rings, not D&D.
a_psh 10-17-06, 10:32 PM	See "Fear of Girls" and the Dead Alewives skits.
Stardrake 10-17-06, 10:32 PM	Big guy, big sword, small brain. Invoke Chee-tos and Mountain Dew (or parodies thereof) All Dwarves are Scots. A Paladin who acts rather too much like Dudley Do-Right (if you don't get it, ask your parents)
DwarvinJedi 10-17-06, 10:34 PM	Cool, but any context?(being a Drama student(I am Parris in the Crucible on the first week of November) I am intrigued)
Geek_of_Doom 10-17-06, 10:41 PM	Cool, but any context?(being a Drama student(I am Parris in the Crucible on the first week of November) I am intrigued) 1. Perhaps the styles of our teachers are different, but I'm not familliar with what you mean by context. 2. Parris? He seems like he'd be fun to play. My school does primairly plays our director writes, but we're doing Big the Musicial, of which my overly low voice led me to not getting a part I seeked.
Solaris 10-17-06, 11:04 PM	I'm writing a play for my drama class of which will parody D&D and role-playing games in general, but of course not make any specific mentions for legal reasons. What legal reasons? Parody is protected under fair use. Listen to the Dead Alewives skit. It mentions "Dungeons & Dragons", "magic missile", "+9" weapons, etc. And then there's the Order of the Stick webcomic, which pokes fun at numerous game rules and concepts. WotC isn't going to try to sue you over a drama class parody. Your biggest concern should be whether or not you're actually funny.
DwarvinJedi 10-17-06, 11:21 PM	1. Perhaps the styles of our teachers are different, but I'm not familliar with what you mean by context. Well, what else is happening? Right now all you are telling me is the topic, but is there any plot? or is it a comedy sketch? 2. Parris? He seems like he'd be fun to play. My school does primairly plays our director writes, but we're doing Big the Musicial, of which my overly low voice led me to not getting a part I seeked. Parris is fun and a complicated character and since the class that I am in is effectively an acting troupe, we do published plays, even though I know Mr. Kissel has written a few plays, and I think even 1 was published, we usually do 3 plays, including 1 Shakespeare per year, this year, A Midsummer's Night Dream
SpawnOfMorgoth 10-17-06, 11:22 PM	Have you read Order of the Stick (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html)? It's a great parody of dnd characters. If it's humor relating to players as well as characters, then pick up "Knights of the Dinner Table" comics or anthologies. KotDT is the architypical hack and slash DND paradigm. The publishers even got together Gary Gygax and wrote a real RPG 'Hackmaster' based on the KotDT's parody of DND. Great material in both these comics, though being a gamer often makes these seem tens times funnier (since you can see the truth in it, and the funny-ness of humor usually is proportional with how closely it resembles perceived reality).
Donkeypunch 10-18-06, 12:36 AM	Yeah, have Elves go fight some Orcs. Everyone will get it, and there's no legal issue involved. But, if you go too far, like by having Dwarves and Humans help, people might think you're parodying Lord of the Rings, not D&D. LoL....wait... Is this a joke or not? You're either super-duper post modern, or you didn't know D&D was created as a mechanism to duplicate LOTR...
Tempest Stormwind 10-18-06, 01:49 AM	LoL....wait... Is this a joke or not? You're either super-duper post modern, or you didn't know D&D was created as a mechanism to duplicate LOTR... In truth it originated by using wargame rules with reflavored components (a catapult's explosive radius becomes a wizard's fireball) and expanded to a full set of wargame rules. The roleplaying component came far, far later, and stole from many, many other things beyond LotR. To the OP: I too suggest looking at the Dead Alewives. You don't need to know D&D in general to get the gags there. Do note that due to internet memes, it's actually easier to find the infamous Dead Alewives skit by looking up the things it's been used in -- namely, the "Summoner Geeks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zng5kRle4FA)" easter egg video (the skit as 'performed' by characters from Summoner and Red Faction, probably the better of the two, although it omits the introduction that sets the stage to the non-gamer and boosts the irony and tongue-in-cheek feel to the whole thing) and the "8-Bit D&D (http://www.cybermoonstudios.com/8bitDandD.html)" flash video (which is better known due to the connection to 8-Bit Theater, and while IMHO lower-quality, it DOES contain the entire skit). The important part to these -- in other words, the Dead Alewives component -- is just the audio. The visuals are for kicks. Note: I've only ever seen it as "Deadale Wives" (except one place, which called them the Dead Ale Wives), but Wikipedia correctly cites them as the Dead Alewives. It's an example of an easily-understood D&D parody skit, poking fun at the stereotypical player over the rules. The afforementioned "Fear of Girls (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7521044027821122670)" is another one, as is the (to my knowledge, untitled) "I'm wearing Boots of Escaping! (http://gprime.net/video.php/magicmissile)" video. All of these stick to parodies of the player stereotype over specific content, which is what makes them so funny. Order of the Stick manages to be funny by poking fun at gaming issues. Burlew TRIES to be funny if you're an outsider, but the only non-gamers I know who read it do so because they like the cast, not because they get the gaming jokes (in fact, they look at it as any other fantasy comic, just with obscure jokes). It's VERY good from an insider perspective, but from an outsider it's a compelling story with awkward moments, particularly at the beginning when nearly all the jokes were game-mechanical in origin. (Note that this paragraph came across as derogatory; this is not my intent. I'm a longtime OotS fan, and love Burlew's work. I just think it'd be less applicable in general to non-gamers than the above examples would.)
Solaris 10-18-06, 02:09 AM	I've only ever seen it as "Deadale Wives" (except one place, which called them the Dead Ale Wives), but Wikipedia cites them as the Dead Alewives. Wikipedia is correct. Who the hell spells it those other ways? Unlike "deadale", "alewife (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=alewife)" is actually a word. Edit: Not many, it seems. Google finds 13,200 results for "dead alewives", but only 262 for "deadale wives" (and 4,060 for "dead ale wives"). Edit Edit: And if I include "demento" as a keyword, to get rid of any links about fish, the results are still in favor of "dead alewives".
Tempest Stormwind 10-18-06, 02:17 AM	Wikipedia is correct. Who the hell spells it those other ways? Unlike "deadale", "alewife (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=alewife)" is actually a word. Edit: Not many, it seems. Google finds 13,200 results for "dead alewives", but only 262 for "deadale wives" (and 4,060 for "dead ale wives"). I never claimed I was correct, and I apologize. They're not terribly well-known around here. I'll correct my post accordingly. (And I was aware of the word beforehand.)
Solaris 10-18-06, 02:22 AM	Here's a Dead Alewives poster, or something, from the web page of a guy who used to work with them. http://www.tomclark.com/images/tom_dead.jpg http://www.tomclark.com/photo.htm
Dunkey 10-18-06, 05:22 AM	I don't recommend using the stereotypical dwarven cleric imbibing to much of the holy water (mead). Might set a bad example for having drunken midgets on school grounds. ;)
Nom 10-18-06, 09:51 AM	Hinted at before, but I'll say it explicitly: you need to parody what is in the public perception, not the games themselves. As Tempest notes, OotS is hilarious to those of us who actually play D&D and care about the mechanics, but gobbledegook to outsiders. If you're making the skit for outsiders, you need to make sure that you don't actually include any real RPG content in the sketch - not for copyright reasons, but because the audience won't get it. In many ways, this makes it hard to write a really funny sketch on the topic. If you go beyond simple nerd jokes, you'll fail to resonate with your audience. Good humour picks something the audience is familiar with and twists it in funny ways, not something that they are not. Which does give me an idea. Opening concept - really nerdy group huddled around table playing stereotypical RPG, ham up the nerdiness. Then show group of (say) footballers bragging about bragging together, acting out past glories and then planning future glories. Alternate between the two groups (the other freezes), such that both groups are telling the "same" story in their different fields, each side hamming it up so that the RPG guys look really goofy and the footballers are obviously doing the same thing. As an finish, you could try swapping a member from each group, with the final couple of events having a footballer talking football as if part of the RPG group and similarly a RPG-er in the football group ("you hit him with a slow spell and I'll make the pass"). Playing it over in my mind makes it seem hard to pull off, but if you could find some way for all the audience to laugh at themselves then it might work.
Cincinnati 10-18-06, 11:25 AM	Stuff like someone playing a wizard and wearing a pointy hat. bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat. BritneySpears14: Oh, I like to play dress up. bloodninja: Me too baby.
Puca 10-18-06, 11:45 AM	Ill tell you how I would do it: You have the stereotypical scene: four or five dork virgins sitting around a table talking like heros and doing mighty deeds. The humor comes from the fact that they are pretending to be something they arent. The skinny geek is a mighty warrior, ha ha. But then juxtapose that with the scene in the players minds: actors who are actually mighty and good-looking in medieval attire. But the humor comes from the fact that they are still dorks. Even as mighty warriors, they are still 14-year-old virgins. In the “imagination scenes” include anachronisms from the gaming table: the sword carrying fighter has a bag of Cheetos and a can of Mountain Dew. He spills and is reprimanded by the DM: Hey, my mom is going to freak out if this table gets all sticky. She needs it for bridge tomorrow. Have the DM follow them through the scene, dressed in street-clothes, making mistakes in his descriptions: DM: Four orcs burst from the door on the left. Togal the Mighty: What door? A door appears on the left. It opens and four orcs appear. Weglit the Wizard turns to the DM: You never said there was a door! I would have cast my Mage Armor spell! DM: Ok you have Mage Armor. Roll to see who gets to attack first! Go back and forth between the table setting and the dungeon setting.
afiremain 10-18-06, 11:49 AM	That all players are unattractive, overweight men that live in their mother's basement. I live upstairs.
The_Jester 10-18-06, 03:23 PM	1: Virginity references 2: Still living with parents 3: Continual reference to intercourse and/or intercourse with fictional beings. Thinly veiled innuendo that could fit in with an AC/DC song 4: Arguing over trivial and mindless details and insignificant facts. 5: Attitudes of superiority mixed with sour grapes 6: Taking games and television very seriously, almost religiously 7: Working in a entry-level job (ussually retail or a convenience store/ gas station) for many, many years 8: Red Bull = nectar 9: Laughing at how people still continue to stereotypes and how unrealistic they are
The_Jester 10-18-06, 03:32 PM	dbl post
AaronDireBear 10-18-06, 05:59 PM	If you perpetuate ANY of those god awful stereotypes I will hunt you down and kill you. Those god damn xstereotypes have made it very hard for me to get laid and I want them to stop being spread. You had better portray gamers in a positive light and make at least one of them a real lady's man. I dont want to hear about a single one being "afraid of girls" or not showering or any of those other hateful lies.