Friday, August 27, 2010

Goatees and Black Trench coats




I never put much thought to gamer fashion. At least here in California, it tends to be the same stuff you see anywhere on the streets – t-shirts and jeans or shorts.

Sometime in the late 90’s I noticed a strange fashion trend in gamers. Around 1998 or so I had gone to a handful of GURPS sessions in West LA. This was a rare move for me; for most of the 90’s I had decent sized groups and consider it the heydays of my D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and Champions campaigns. But my group was slowly petering out towards the end of the decade, and a couple of strong players had moved away or got married or whatever. So I will admit that I looked for some local groups to game with and maybe troll for and cull some decent players for my own group. What was I to do? I still wanted a large group, and I didn’t go to cons or hang out at game stores. At the time I had no idea of what was going on in the gaming world outside my circle, besides the occasional trip out to Long Beach to The Warhouse (for some of the reasons I would not set foot in the more local Aero Hobbies of Santa Monica, look at this old experimental post).

So there I was sitting in on sessions of some kind of GURPS games, run by a dude who used no notebook and made it up as he went along. And not in any kind of good way. It was some kind of science fiction thing where all science fiction things existed at the same time. Sounds like a great idea (which I think the dude stole from Nexus Comics, but he denied it), but the execution was pretty poor. You would go out and do something, and he would brainstorm on what to have happen to you. The host of the games thought this GM was “imaginative,” but I did not agree. Over a couple of games my guy would go out jogging or out to a bar, and the only thing the guy could think of was “a predator from the Predator movies is jogging there too,” or “a predator from the Predator movies is on the barstool next to you. “ I guess Predator was on HBO the night before or something.

Ugh. Horrible. But here is the rub, the guy wore a black trench coat. Not bad you say? It’s fucking summer here in So Cal, dude. Really? A black trench on a warm summer night? OK, not that big a deal. Columbine was still a year or two away, and the black trench was yet to be thought of nationwide as the gear of pathetic loser geeks who got picked on and went batshit instead of lifting weights or taking karate or whatever. it struck me as weird. But hey, I’m a lifelong beach dude, so what do I know of trench coats?

I did not last long in that little group. My gaming life with my own group continued on.

Sometime around 2001 or 2002 I went for a couple of hours to the Gateway convention over at LAX to do a little shopping for miniatures or what not. I parked a few blocks away, and I noticed groups of the pretty much all-male convention goers heading back and forth to the Jack in the Box across the street. Of the 20 or 30 guys I saw in that few minutes, 90% of them (I’m not kidding) were wearing black trenches. OK, so I don’t recall what time of year it was, but this is Southern California. In deepest winter it is often 75 degrees. Jeez.

Now, keep in mind this was not all that long after columbine. Granted, Columbine had nothing to do with goatees. The Columbine jack-offs were pretty clean cut and studly compared to the squirrely dorked-out trenchers I saw around that con hotel. And at the time I did notice a lot of goatees in various fandom gatherings in general, especially at Renaissance Faires. So I guess that is neither here nor there (outside of the fact that combined with the coats it made the con dudes look like a bunch of clones).

Not long after Columbine I was partying at the So Cal Ren Faire one night and saw the head of security giving a hard time to a pair of black trench donning teenagers for being so stupid as to adopt the fashion of a pair of losers who shot up their school because they were the only two kids in the school who couldn’t get laid. And those were teens, lots of these con dudes looked well into their 30’s at least. I remember also thinking about the crummy “imaginative” GM from those GURPS games, who attended that same con from what I understood. But at least that douche was doing it without the stigma of the shooting hanging around.

I only had a pass for the shopping area, but from what I could see there was an ocean of these black trenched yobbos at the tables.

I just didn’t get it. Why would you want to wear anything associated with the biggest high school losers in human history? It was mind boggling. Maybe after 10 years or something, but a couple? C’moan. Some of them in addition also seemed to like to wear those fingerless driving gloves with the coats which was just extra weird.

Next week I am going to be in attendance for a couple of days at a So Cal game convention. No shit. That’s right, hell froze over. And this isn’t for lack of my own decent group. I’m actually trying to get out there more in the game community since I blog and all that. I’m getting older, and who knows if this is my last big hurrah for gaming. I’m not sure I can see myself doing this at 50. But of course, I said I wouldn’t be doing it at 40 when I was 30. My, how time flies and we lie to ourselves.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing the latest con going fashions. If it’s just t-shirts and shorts I guess I might secretly be a little disappointed. Hmmm…maybe I’ll drop by the thrift store and see if I can find a trench in my size.

14 comments:

  1. My recent experiences at the LAX/Strategicon conventions have been generally very positive (it helps that I like boardgames too). Sure, there are some weirdos and dud sessions, but if you ask around you can usually find the reputable GMs that attract mature and interesting players. There are TONS of RPGs going down at these cons, often including old school games.

    I'm actually a bit more skeptical about how the SoCal Smackdown is going to turn out. It seems like it's mostly a collectible card game / Warhammer-type scene. In my experience these gamers conform more to the "black trenchcoat" stereotype than the RPGers I've been seeing at the Strategicon cons recently. Anyway, I don't want to write off the Smackdown before I've seen it - so I guess I'll meet you there and we'll see how it turns out!

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  2. Cyclo: Well, really, the opportunity to continue my little dungeon crawl with some of the fellas from Minicon was a big factor in my going to this thing. I don't know that I'll be spending a whole lot of time there outside of my own little thing. If I do, I get the feeling I'll be making lots of stops at the hotel bar. I don't have a lot of interest in Magic anymore, but a boardgame of some kind (that doesn't go 6 hours) might be fun. Looking forward to seeing you there.

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  3. Shit. I wore black trenchcoats in high school and college. Columbine pissed me off because all-of-a-sudden there was a stigma to it. But, I was the only guy who had one in school. And they were comfy. I mean, this is in Jersey, during the fall and winter. The black trench also was great in the rain. It had a billion pockets in which I could put stuff.

    Even in college, the trenchcoat thing didn't seem to kick off. Guess it was really more of a West Coast thing. But I almost scored with these two chicks at a party who thought I looked like Kevin Smith (I didn't close the deal because I had a girlfriend at the time).

    But... I grew out of it. If I wear a trenchcoat now, it's more like something you wear over your suit, or with a fedora, and usually only in the cold or the rain. I look back on wearing a trenchcoat as something I did as a kid who was searching for an identity. I wouldn't wear one now.

    As for that GM who was just "winging it," man, you described 50% of the GMs in Newark, DE.

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  4. It ain't California, but what I saw at GenCon was fairly trench-coat free, but frock coats and related steampunk gear seemed all the rage. Ditto for kilts.

    But, for the most part, it was jeans and shorts with the occasional khakis, t-shirts and polos, and the occasional baseball cap. Fairly pedestrian, honestly.

    Womens' fashion was more varied and far more interesting, but that's pretty much par for the course, right?

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  5. Gee, it gets very cold in northern Idaho and I don't believe I have ever seen an attack of trenchies at a gaming situation here.

    However, clean clothes always concern me. There are unbathing mouth-breathers out there that turn to gaming as their social outlet and I pride myself in my later years in my ability to dodge them. Oh, during desperate times I gamed with this guys, yet now I cull the herd of these guys, often suggesting thrilling games on Uno or Battleship somewhere else to them. A writer friend of mine in New York is big into Arkham Horror and has a big group who plays that. I am curious as to who would show up to play that and if it is the same as the CoC crowd.

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  6. Dave:I will admit that I had a sort of black trench when I was around 20. But I had just been to Scotland and got it there, and when I brought it back I thought it was kind of cool. I loved that coat, but I got drunk at a New Years Eve party, grabbed the wrong coat (that I eventually got back to the owner), and never saw my Scottish trench again.
    Troll: Really, kilts? Wow. Outside of Highland Games where I compete in bagpiping solos, I rarely see kilts. When I go to parties with Ren Faire or folk music people in attendance, you tend to see them from time to time. Not tartans, but those utilikilts. But at a game con?
    AncientV:Oh man, I for sure remember the stankers from my young game shop playing days. The one dude who smelled like cigarettes and stale Ranier Ale was a treat to sit next to compared to some of those cat-piss fume dudes!

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  7. > I’m not sure I can see myself doing this at 50.

    Nice try!

    > But of course, I said I wouldn’t be doing it at 40 when I was 30. My, how time flies and we lie to ourselves.

    Now that's more like it.
    Speaking as one who knows, if you're still in it at this point, resistance is indeed futile...

    But it's all for the best -- at least, I'm certainly looking forward to your game at the convention!

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  8. Dave: oh, and another thing, D. I can see the Kevin Smith look working on the east coast (hard workers, cold weather, baseball caps beloved, etc), but in my part of Cali you get more chicks dressing like a black dude than a Jersey "bridge and tunnel" white boy.
    Fred: Well, when I went for a few years without a group in the 2000's, I was starting to get pretty hard up for some dice rolling. I guess I should just stay on the ride and hold on till grim death.

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  9. Dude, what the hell is it with kilts? The first time I saw one, I figured it was pretty cool. Leo Laporte on Tech TV back in the day had a utili-kilt. But now they are everywhere at conventions. Seriously, outside of such a convention, all of these guys wearing kilts would get the crap kicked outta them.

    As for bridge-n-tunnel, I'm not from THAT Jersey. I'm from South Jersey, near Philly. But right now, I'm living in Busan, South Korea. And gaming here pretty much consists wholly of StarCraft I & II and WoW. Some of us have tried to introduce the younger Koreans to D&D, but they always go for the newest version, and 4th edition is not up my alley. However, Warhammer FB and 40K are actually gaining popularity here. Thankfully, there are no mouth-breathing unwashed geeks (yet). All of that Western geek chic is nonexistent.

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  10. I had a goatee and trenchcoat in the early 90s (pre-1995), but I lived in Seattle where it rains a lot and that whole "grunge thing" was going on (growing up in the Northwest, I wore a lot of blue jeans and flannel shirts, too). But all of this look was gone by 1995 or '96...around the same time Chris Cornell cut his hair.

    I'm not surprised that it took a few years for the style to hit Columbine...I AM surprised that it was in California as late as 1998+ (I generally think of CA as being ahead of us un-hipsters up north).

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  11. As far as doing this when you are fifty: You know, I know people in their 50's that don't even like to read books, relying on movies and television 100% for their entertainment.

    I would rather play D&D until I am 100 than lose interest in reading and using my imagination.

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  12. @ancientvaults: Well said. Amen, brother.

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  13. I blame the "cool kids" wearing trench coats on John Cusack in "Say anything"

    hopefully the image of Loyd Dobs standing there with "in Your Eyes" playign put of his boom box will keep endure as time goes by :-)

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  14. double, comment, sorry...

    "I’m not sure I can see myself doing this at 50. But of course, I said I wouldn’t be doing it at 40 when I was 30."

    My dad is in his 60's and he still plays RPGS with his 40 something son and friends.

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