Monday, December 1, 2008

Kickoff

Well, this marks my fourth blog. But while the other three were all tied to specific games, this one is reserved for my reflections on geek life. I am a forty-one year old teacher in a prep school in the Philadelphia suburbs. As a matter of fact, it is the same school I used to attend, so I have that whole "Welcome Back, Kotter" thing going.

I was a geek then, and I am a geek now. Several years ago, some students asked me to teach them how to play D+D. One thing led to another, and I am not the faculty adviser for not one but two gaming clubs (one for RPGs, one for wargames). One of those early students decided to give me a nickname "The Mad Doctor." Since that time, I began my second life as "Mad Doctor Mark" online.

I made my initial entry into geekdom in 1979, when I picked up a copy of The Lord of the Rings. I have read that book at least a dozen times since then. Tolkien led to D+D, which led to wargaming, which led to a medieval studies major in college and a Ph.D soon after. It has taken 30 years, but I am finally over the social anxieties which led me to keep my gaming life a secret for so long.

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