Toledo Magazine: Out of the dungeon

<img src=http://www.toledoblade.com/assets/gif/TO1599743.GIF> <b><font color=red>VIEW:</b></font color=red> <a href="/assets/pdf/TO7155244.PDF" target="_blank "><b>Toledo Magazine, Out of the dungeon: </b></a> April 4, 2010 Enlarge

For decades, those who played Dungeons & Dragons have been derided as geeks by some, and as suicidal Satanists by others.

D&D, to put it mildly, has been a social pariah, but that stereotype doesn't hold up much anymore.

The negative perception is “slowly changing, ever so slowly,” said Frank Belter, a 41-year-old gaming enthusiast who meets up with fellow role-playing gamers at least once a week at Game Room Comics 3131 West Sylvania Ave.

And for that, the gamers have technology to thank.

The popularity of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, otherwise known by their abbreviation MMORPG and played on computers and video game consoles, has made gaining experience points and slaying medieval creatures borderline cool.

World of Warcraft, the most popular MMORPG, is played by more than 10 million people online, including celebrities such as William Shatner, Dave Chappelle, and Mr. T.

And as a new audience has embraced role-playing games, the myth of D&D college-age basement dwellers living with their parents has been mostly banished along with it.

Dungeons & Dragons is an old school style of gaming that has been played for about 40 years.

Players gather and assume characters such as fi ghters, magicians, elves, and dwarves, while someone serves as the dungeon master and as a sort of referee.

From there the players pursue quests while battling everything from orcs to vampires, and, you guessed it, dragons, using dice, a board game, and their imaginations.

The current crop of 300 or so D&D hobbyists at Game Room Comics includes doctors, lawyers, teachers, and accountants.

And, in the case of Belter, a computer expert who owns a consulting business.

“This is a hobby, my getaway, so to speak,” he said.

Belter has been playing the game for nearly three decades.

Compare that to Lisa Stankavich, a 22-year-old University of Toledo education major, who has been playing the game for two months, after her boyfriend convinced her to join up.

“I was looking for a way to meet people,” she said.

Despite the vast difference in Belter's and Stankavich's experience with the game, both are playing Dungeons and Dragons for the same reason: the face-to-face interaction, which World of Warcraft and other multiplayer and single-player RPGs don't provide.

“Even though video games and computer games are fun, after a while you disconnect yourself from life,” said Darryl Dean, who has owned Game Room Comics for 23 years.

“These are interactive games; you meet people and interact with them.

Most of my customers still play video games, but this gives them something else to do so they don't have to sit at home all the time.” Added Jason Shultz, a 36-year-old UT graduate student: “I know people who play [World of Warcraft] and it takes up all of their time.

But I want contact with people and not just over the Internet.” D&D enthusiasts meet at Game Room Comics usually three times a week, anywhere from 5 p.m. to midnight.

For more information, call 419- 475-3775.

Contact Kirk Baird at: kbaird@theblade.com or 419-724-6734.