Mark Barrowcliffe - The Elfish Gene
When Mark Barrowcliffe tires of his weekly wargaming club he is enticed by the magical and mystical game of Dungeons and Dragons. Armed with a basic rulebook and a few polyhedral dice, he persuades other boys to join him in a game. Far from being a replacement for the Friday night wargame, roleplaying becomes an all-encompassing obsession for the teenager. He spends all his money and all his spare time on the game, and it dominates his conversation to the point of interrogating his gran on the relative merits of succubae and harpies.
The memoir explores the social mores of teenage boys in the seventies and provides several wry observations on the outlook of the British Working Class of the 1970s. This was my era and I remember it well – I even lived only a few miles away from Coventry and remember several of the places he mentions.
I enjoyed this book immensely for both the memorabilia of the background and the memories of Dungeons and Dragons (though I didn’t get into RPGs until I met some boys who played AD&D in the eighties.) I even nodded in amusement at the authors scathing criticisms of the game’s illustrations.
I give this book a 4 out of 5 stars, but if you’ve never grown up in 70’s Britain, or never been in a room until the early hours of the morning because you didn’t trust your friends not to kill off your character, you won’t enjoy is as much.
Product Description
Coventry, 1976. For a brief, blazing summer, twelve-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had the chance to be normal. He blew it. While other teenagers concentrated on being coolly rebellious, Mark - like twenty million other boys in the '70s and '80s - chose to spend his entire adolescence in fart-filled bedrooms pretending to be a wizard or a warrior, an evil priest or a dwarf. Armed only with pen, paper and some funny-shaped dice, this lost generation gave themselves up to the craze of fantasy role-playing games, stopped chatting up girls and started killing dragons. Extremely funny, not a little sad and really quite strange, "The Elfish Gene" is an attempt to understand the true inner nerd of the adolescent male. Last pick at football, spat at by bullies and laughed at by girls, they were the fantasy wargamers, and this is their story.
8 comments:
So this is a book The Man might enjoy - even though not from Britain....but RPG's - uh....think so. He certainly does love his video games now.
If he's ever rolled a D20 with furrowed brow he'd like it -- also the film 'Dorkness Rising' which I thought hilarious. (http://tinyurl.com/5zoau7)
Sounds like my sort of thing ... :-) Does the author admit to ever running a fanzine or dressing up in chainmail knitted by their grandma?
The latter, certainly, Neil. He admits to LARPing in the last chapters. I'll send you this copy -- it deserves a new home :)
I've already ordered a copy, thanks!
I know you'll enjoy it!
Great review! I may just order a copy myself. (At least I have been in the character position described!)
You'll like it from a social psychiatrist's POV!
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