Episode 44 features Ethan Gilsdorf, journalist, teacher, essayist, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks.
We discuss his book, how gaming is important to who we are, being creatives, finding your place, and so much more.
During the episode we cover:
- Generational Geekdom
- Gaming Apprenticeship
- Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
- Dungeon Master or Player
- Theatre of the Mind
- When it all clicks
- Grognard
- Digital Infringement on Pen and Paper
- Being a Creative
- Teaching
- Inclusion
- Escapism
- And much more…
Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode
Watch Ethan’s TEDx Talk “Why Dungeons and Dragons is Good for You (In Real Life).
Get a copy of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf at your favorite books store or at IndieBound or Amazon.
Read my review of Ethan’s book.
Music created and provided by Henno Heitur of Monkey Tongue Productions.
–End Show Notes Transmission–
–Begin Transcription–
00:00:00:05 – 00:00:21:07
Agent Palmer
Previously on Agent Palmer dot com. Mick Foley brings the heat with scooter even in Lego form. The International Space Station is an engineering marvel, and I’m still thinking back fondly to my time behind the curtain. Thanks to Ilana. This is The Palmer Files, episode 44 with Ethan Gilsdorf, journalist, teacher, essayist, and author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks.
00:00:21:20 – 00:01:01:50
Agent Palmer
We discuss his book, How Gaming is Important to who We Are, Being Creatives, Finding Your place, and so much more. Are you ready? Let’s do the show!
00:01:01:55 – 00:01:24:06
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to the Palmer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic. Also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 44th episode is Ethan Gilsdorf, whose book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks I recently reviewed and is a part of what we discussed. As much as I recommend that book, I will tell you that the conversation you’re about to hear will not spoil that book, but it is a good taste.
00:01:24:11 – 00:01:47:26
Agent Palmer
If you enjoy what you are about to hear. Seek out his book. Perhaps you haven’t read his book as I did, but you may have read something else he wrote. He has had pieces in such publications as The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, wired, salon, National Geographic. You get the idea. He’s a journalist, memoirist, essayist, and teacher, as well as a geek.
00:01:47:35 – 00:02:12:06
Agent Palmer
And all of those things made me want to talk to Ethan, because outside of his prolific career as a writer, we have a lot of things in common. What you are about to hear is a discussion by two geeks about what that means to us and our stories, plus what digital means to the RPG theater of the mind that we still enjoy being a creative with the day job, leaving things up to chance.
00:02:12:15 – 00:02:39:48
Agent Palmer
The new face of geekdom is everyone and the moment when it all clicks. Plus, much more. Before we get going, remember that if you want to discuss this episode as you listen or afterwards, you can tweet me at Agent Palmer or Ethan at Ethan Freak. That’s ET and freak. And this show at the Palmer Files, you can get all of Ethan’s particulars, including where to buy his book and a look at his Ted talk.
00:02:39:51 – 00:03:09:43
Agent Palmer
Why Dungeons and Dragons is good for You in Real life. At Ethan Gills dorf.com, that’s e t a and guild dorf.com. You can see my review of Ethan’s book and all of my other writings and rantings on Agent palmer.com. An email can be sent to the Palmer Files at gmail.com. So without further ado. Roll for initiative.
00:03:09:48 – 00:03:33:43
Agent Palmer
Ethan, I’m going to start out with an unorthodox thing for my podcast. I’m not going to ask you a question. I want to thank you for being, one of the leaders. But just by being slightly older than me, who kind of embraced the geek culture so that there was something for me when I got there.
00:03:33:44 – 00:04:07:11
Agent Palmer
Because I’m. I’m years your junior, and you know, for me, it was playing D&D at camp and then, you know, playing Magic The Gathering at camp. And it was just, well, this is wow. Okay. I’m opened. That’s this is this is the greatest. These are my hobbies now. And then I went and it just so happened that after I found Magic the Gathering, a hobby store, a gaming store appeared in my town.
00:04:07:20 – 00:04:32:42
Agent Palmer
Literally. That summer after I came back from camp. And I worked there for 5 or 6 years just learning collectible card games and playing D&D. It was amazing, and I feel like I owe you something for having been there before me and having gone through as I know now, all of the D&D is the devil stuff, and I just like thank you.
00:04:32:47 – 00:04:54:59
Ethan Gilsdorf
Well you’re welcome. That’s a that’s a very generous and kind thing to say. I wouldn’t have thought that that, you know, that I play that role. You know, for anybody in particular. But it’s it’s kind of you to to say so. And I think that as all of these geeky, nerdy pursuits, you know, become more mainstream for a variety of reasons, which perhaps we’ll, we’ll talk about.
00:04:54:59 – 00:05:15:26
Ethan Gilsdorf
I think that, you know, what I’m realizing is there are so many, so many people out there who’ve been touched by this stuff. At one point in their lives. Your story sounds amazing. That’s that’s a story. Like I came over from summer camp. And as if by magic, you know, someone had conjured this gaming store in my neighborhood as if as if you had willed it to happen.
00:05:15:31 – 00:05:19:25
Ethan Gilsdorf
I mean, that’s kind of an amazing I don’t know how old you were at the time, but, like.
00:05:19:30 – 00:05:39:17
Agent Palmer
So sure, I would have been 12 and it was it ended or 13. Something about and you know, I became friends with the owner. It was my first job, although I think I got paid more in store credit than than money. But I mean, I was a kid, I that’s where I was spending my money anyway. So, probably the best job I’ve ever had.
00:05:39:17 – 00:05:56:17
Agent Palmer
I mean, one of the, one of the perks was that I got to learn or one of the. I saw it as a perk. There were other people that were employed there that didn’t. But I got to learn how to play all of the games because somebody on staff had to teach anybody who might have been interested in a game.
00:05:56:22 – 00:06:16:58
Agent Palmer
So I learned to play the Monty Python, the short lived Monty Python collectible card game, and Magic, of course, but spell fire and middle Earth, which was also short lived. And the Star Wars game from 95 or 96. All these games, I just got to learn them. I don’t remember any of it now.
00:06:17:03 – 00:06:25:44
Ethan Gilsdorf
Right, right. But wouldn’t take much. It wouldn’t take much to to fall back into that. What an incredible what an incredible, apprenticeship in a way, it really is.
00:06:25:44 – 00:07:05:06
Agent Palmer
And then. And then I lost it, like you just I you you fall out of love with it. I mean, similar to the narrative in the beginning of your book where you’re talking about, like, well, then I went to college, right? And I, I look back because I’ve Magic’s my main one, and I played a lot and I went to tournaments and I tried to, you know, before there was, you know, digital platforms and stuff like I, we would drive around New England and the Mid-Atlantic going to Pro Tour qualifiers and, you know, then all of a sudden it was gone.
00:07:05:11 – 00:07:35:24
Agent Palmer
And then I picked it up again and then I didn’t. And now I draft with some friends every couple sets. Now again, I’m back into it. And it’s so weird that like, he was there and it wasn’t he was there with I don’t I don’t know if it ever really leaves. Right. I mean, you are you started with D and D and then, towards the end of the book, you are getting back into D and D, right?
00:07:35:29 – 00:07:39:37
Agent Palmer
And that was a while ago. Are you back into D and D now?
00:07:39:42 – 00:07:56:31
Ethan Gilsdorf
Fully? Yeah, fully. I’ve been playing in a funny way. If I could rewrite the book today, because it has been, well, about 12 years since I wrote it, since it came out. I think that last chapter would be a little bit different because it ends in a somewhat ambivalent place, you know, sort of, I’ll probably try this out.
00:07:56:31 – 00:08:17:30
Ethan Gilsdorf
I’m not sure it’s going to be something I would regularly do, but in fact, what did happen was as a result of the book, I found myself sort of, you know, in some ways wanting to be a more public entity, a sort of more public advocate for this game. And as a result, I started to play more regularly just because it was fun.
00:08:17:30 – 00:08:41:03
Ethan Gilsdorf
Anyway, so I do have a group of, mostly guys, sadly. Maybe that part hasn’t changed. You know, 55 year old guys in my peer group who we play with, we play, you know, every so often. The joke is that, you know, when you grow old, grow older, you have more money for these gaming. You know, all the toys that you need to, but you have less time.
00:08:41:03 – 00:08:58:42
Ethan Gilsdorf
And when you’re a kid is the opposite, right? Unless, like you, you have a inside track and you have a job at a game store. But when you’re a kid, it’s the opposite. You can’t you can’t get enough of the stuff, right? And you have to ask your parents to give you a ride to the mall, or you have to send send a money order to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.
00:08:58:42 – 00:09:16:48
Ethan Gilsdorf
You know, which is where dad was, was made. You know, it was impossible to get the stuff that you had tons of time. At least that was my memory. Summers after school, weekends, so little responsibilities, so much. And then of course, the you know, you mentioned you were 12 like I was 12 to when I got into D&D is the perfect year.
00:09:16:53 – 00:09:35:44
Ethan Gilsdorf
It captured my imagination so clearly. And and so yeah, I have I haven’t been playing quite regularly. I’m also playing in a, in a group as the Dungeon Master for a high school group in my town, where I live as a sort of an after school club, as kind of there, you know, leader of the of the group.
00:09:35:44 – 00:09:37:45
Ethan Gilsdorf
And that’s been really interesting to play with young people.
00:09:37:52 – 00:09:59:40
Agent Palmer
Do you prefer. So I, I always and this isn’t necessarily for the podcast, but any time I ever I meet somebody who plays RPGs of any kind, I like to ask, do you prefer to be a player or, you know, the one in control, you know, given the game? Yeah. You know, for D&D it’s Dungeon Master. Like, what do you do?
00:09:59:40 – 00:10:01:25
Agent Palmer
You have a preference?
00:10:01:29 – 00:10:21:49
Ethan Gilsdorf
I think I kind of like to be the game master. As a general rule. I would say that. And and if you’ve ever run a game before, you may know sort of the, the sort of, routine here, but like, there’s a lot of preparation and a lot of thinking, a lot of imagining. And in my case, I, I’m a sort of amateur artist.
00:10:21:49 – 00:10:40:35
Ethan Gilsdorf
So I do some doodling and I make drawings of things that I’m trying to sort of get my, get my creative, spirit, sort of, you know, harness is something that’s somewhat somewhat tangible. And so I make light drawings. I love to make maps, you know, all that sort of stuff that in the end, you know, one tiny percentage of that really makes it into the game.
00:10:40:40 – 00:11:07:01
Ethan Gilsdorf
And of course, a lot of it changes when you’re playing. But what I love about that is just that imaginative, creative space that, you know, being the Dungeon master, the referee, of the game, the sort of world world builder god, you know, whatever everything else that that role entails is, is preferable. I mean, in some ways I love playing, too, of course, but I love I love the idea of kind of making up the stuff, see.
00:11:07:06 – 00:11:42:16
Agent Palmer
And I, I, I am the quintessential, like, let me roll a character. I just want to play like, I, I, I enjoy the problem solving as much as I enjoy like the I mean, it sounds cliche, but like the team dynamic, right? Like, you know, especially when and there have been a couple of games long ago that I played where we rolled for a lineman because like, oh, that’s so and so you’re going to be a wizard and you’re going to be, you know, you know, chaotic neutral, so you can do whatever the heck you want.
00:11:42:20 – 00:12:11:12
Agent Palmer
But there were a couple times we rolled for alignment and it was just like, well, I’m a nice guy, but my character is evil. So, sorry, but and it’s it’s one of those things where I think all of those experiences, you know, problem solving is universal, like, and we don’t all get enough experience in problem solving at a younger age.
00:12:11:12 – 00:12:40:27
Agent Palmer
And I don’t want to be so, not on the nose, but like, so cliche that’s like, well, there’s a reason the geeks inherited the earth. Well, when, when everybody else was, you know, I, I don’t want to get too far like the public school system is. These are the answers. Do do this funnel you through. And we’re on Friday nights going like well I don’t know how to get around this trap but you got to figure it out.
00:12:40:27 – 00:13:09:42
Agent Palmer
And so the problem solving, we’re levels and miles ahead of everyone else. And it’s so different than video games where it’s structured and there’s a physics to it because you can make anything else up for D&D. And I love the imagination of the mind, the theater of the mind of it. And I just I recently got back into Pathfinder, you know, because that’s the group I’m, I’m, I’m around.
00:13:09:42 – 00:13:22:16
Agent Palmer
But it had been a while, admittedly, since I had done any kind of role playing games, and I just you fall right back into it. I feel like I’m playing characters from before.
00:13:22:21 – 00:13:23:23
Ethan Gilsdorf
00:13:23:27 – 00:13:32:38
Agent Palmer
I haven’t grown well or my characters haven’t grown right. I’m doing the same stuff I did a decade ago, like. Right.
00:13:32:43 – 00:13:51:56
Ethan Gilsdorf
And I think that’s, I think that’s part of the, what’s surprising to me is that I, I thought that I had outgrown it or that I would be too, you know, mature or too concerned about what people thought of me. And that was certainly a factor as to why I kind of was not part of the, the game for, for a very long time.
00:13:51:56 – 00:14:06:17
Ethan Gilsdorf
Also. I just wasn’t around it, but I really had, as I write about in my book, you know, really sort of made a conscious decision, semi-conscious decision just this isn’t going to come with me into adulthood. I’m going to put this away. But what I’ve discovered in playing is that it isn’t that hard to get back into that.
00:14:06:17 – 00:14:26:38
Ethan Gilsdorf
As you said, that theater of the mind experience. And I love I love the idea that just for you know, not clear a half an hour at a time, but maybe just a few moments in a game, all of us, just maybe a different time, sort of. You can tell that we’re engaging with something that is not, you know, not palpable.
00:14:26:38 – 00:14:50:28
Ethan Gilsdorf
It’s not real. It’s not really what we’re the situation in the room, what we what, you know, the the wallpaper or the whatever, the, you know, the the pictures on the wall, like the real world really just does completely disappear. And I don’t think that it’s easy to recapture the experience of playing as a kid, because I think kids have this unique capacity.
00:14:50:28 – 00:15:06:51
Ethan Gilsdorf
In particular, when you’re first learning to play a game like Dungeons and Dragons, but you don’t really know what the game is and you just trying to figure it out, there’s just something incredibly powerful about being led into an experience. You don’t really understand what it is. If you have a good, you know, a good leader that can can bring you into that experience.
00:15:06:51 – 00:15:18:42
Ethan Gilsdorf
But but in a way, I’m chase. I feel like I’m chasing that like that, that that memory I had when I was 12 years old and in 1979, like trying to like re connect to that that part of me it can’t of course really.
00:15:18:42 – 00:15:50:42
Agent Palmer
I will say having like what as you as you say those things. Right. I think back to being in the store, you know, 1415 and seeing like that first time player in any kind of even like an introductory campaign go like, I, you know, tentatively, like, so hesitant, like it’s your turn to say, I’m going to, shoot it with my arrow.
00:15:50:42 – 00:16:21:17
Agent Palmer
And they’re like, it’s it’s a question more than an answer. And then they get a decent role and they’re like, and, you know, and the and it’s dead and really like and and it’s there’s always that moment and maybe it’s not the first time or the first encounter, but there’s that moment in a game where it, it clicks maybe not like, oh, I can do anything I want, you know, oh, I just happen to have this weapon and I used it, but like, oh, I said a thing and it happened like that, right.
00:16:21:22 – 00:16:46:18
Agent Palmer
That, that first moment, like there’s, there’s like a little thing that clicks, right? And it I think it’s early on for everybody, you know, you know, when I was playing magic competitively, I remember the first time I won at a like, quote unquote sleepaway tournament, right? Like we drove all this way. All right. Well, I’ve been playing in my store for so long.
00:16:46:18 – 00:17:17:01
Agent Palmer
Like I know everybody. This is a stranger. I’m sitting down next to what I’m not now. But then when the game’s over, you’re on the same level. And I played with, you know, people super older than me. Men, women, you know, it. It’s the great equalizer right now. And I think that as everybody starts to go like, well, I, I played that back in the day or you know, I, you know it levels the playing field a little bit but and I, I didn’t want to go here like straight away.
00:17:17:01 – 00:17:36:29
Agent Palmer
But like the digital the digital is infringing upon all of those things. And you know some of that existed when, when you were writing the book, but to a larger extent I don’t play that many video games, I just don’t do you.
00:17:36:33 – 00:18:05:16
Ethan Gilsdorf
I don’t, I don’t have, I don’t even have the equipment. I mean, it’s not something that particularly interests me. I actually like the experience of the music and the atmospheres, the sort of visual world building that a lot of these games have and would sometimes, if I’m bored, I’ll go on to YouTube and look at just look at some actual play or whatever, Twitch, you know, just to kind of get a flavor for what these games are like.
00:18:05:16 – 00:18:29:49
Ethan Gilsdorf
But I was recently writing a story about competitive, about e-sports, basically at the collegiate level, and hung out with some folks and, at a local college not too far from where I live, who were on the varsity sports team and got my head back into that world. I mean, it’s been so long and I, you know, in particular that team was it was an Overwatch team, which is not a game I’d ever, you know, played before.
00:18:30:00 – 00:18:48:49
Ethan Gilsdorf
And I tried to learn how to play or at least tried to take it up for a spin. And I was so humiliated. And I realized that for so many reasons, it just would not be the kind of thing I would be good at, nor do I had the time or want to necessarily put the time in just to get good at, you know, the practice stuff.
00:18:48:49 – 00:19:06:53
Ethan Gilsdorf
It’s the bits that, you know, you fall, you fall down, you pick yourself up, you do it again. You do it again. You know, that sort of muscle memory stuff that’s never been the kind of gaming experience that’s interested me in the same way, you know, unlike D&D, which is I mean, obviously there is a bit of that, but it’s not this sort of hand-eye coordination stuff.
00:19:06:53 – 00:19:08:16
Ethan Gilsdorf
It’s not that it’s not about that at all.
00:19:08:16 – 00:19:35:56
Agent Palmer
So I remember at the store, say, 96, we put in 3 or 4 networked computers. And I mean, these were local network. These were this was LAN Party City. Right. But it was just for in store. You know, something else. Right. And it was quake. It was Diablo and it was Warcraft two Tides of Darkness. Those were the three main things.
00:19:35:56 – 00:20:03:10
Agent Palmer
Everybody played. And I’m going to borrow a term that I love from your book. I am now a video game grog nerd, basically, because I still go back and play those three games. Like, yes, first person shooters have come a long way. Give me quake. Or maybe like Duke Nukem 3D from the same era, and Diablo is in its millionth incarnation and Wow has taken off.
00:20:03:12 – 00:20:27:25
Agent Palmer
Give me the original like Warcraft two Tides Darkness. Give me the original Diablo. I just go back to these original things and I played them and I picked them up. And I always make sure I have an old computer just so I can make them run. But I just I have no interest in Diablo four or and I never got into Wow in any capacity.
00:20:27:39 – 00:20:40:07
Agent Palmer
And I just keep going back. Yeah, I don’t know what I’m looking for. Although, I mean, I guess I, I guess when I’m playing, I’m transported right back to the store, like to a certain extent, but.
00:20:40:16 – 00:21:16:57
Ethan Gilsdorf
It may be a comforting or familiar experience, but also, at least from my my own experience playing those games. Because as I said before, I’m not particularly skilled at at least those kinds of, you know, first person shooter or sort of the kinds of games where there’s a lot decided in, in a combat situation where you have to do a lot of, you know, frantic buttons mashing and making the right, you know, doing the right combinations of things to make things happen, but that, you know, those kinds of skills are the kinds of things that, you know, I could I could manage maybe, a joystick with 1 or 2 buttons, you know, because my,
00:21:16:57 – 00:21:43:14
Ethan Gilsdorf
my coming of age in video games was arcade games, basically, and the early, early console games like Atari. And we had this system called Intellivision, which was was pretty terrible, actually. But, you know, there was a limited amount of things you could do. And obviously the graphics were very, very, limited. But I love I love going to these classic arcades where you can play the coin out games, and I’ll go right to Galaga or, you know, Robotron or some of these games that I loved.
00:21:43:14 – 00:21:45:51
Ethan Gilsdorf
And I can weirdly, it doesn’t take that long to.
00:21:45:56 – 00:21:46:36
Agent Palmer
Get back to.
00:21:46:36 – 00:22:04:08
Ethan Gilsdorf
It, getting back, like I can actually do pretty well in Galaga, you know, for a time or joust or some of these other games that I just loved is very comforting. It’s very comforting to go back to that and to be, you know, it’s a transporting experience, but it’s also, like this was a this was something I was good at back then, and I’m still okay at it.
00:22:04:11 – 00:22:13:21
Ethan Gilsdorf
It kind of makes me, makes me feel like maybe I’m not getting I haven’t quite, you know, whatever given up, I can still can still compete at something.
00:22:13:21 – 00:22:27:29
Agent Palmer
Well, Galaga is the one box I would want physically full in my house, I think, but I, I wanted to ask you. You are a writer by trade, right? Is that.
00:22:27:34 – 00:22:28:04
Ethan Gilsdorf
That’s correct.
00:22:28:04 – 00:22:46:58
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And I mean, obviously, I can I can make an easy path from D&D to writer, like, that’s that’s not a stretch at all. But was writer always in the cards free or or I shouldn’t say writer, but was being a creative always in the cards for you?
00:22:47:03 – 00:23:11:04
Ethan Gilsdorf
I think so I don’t know that I had any clear sense for how I would make a living at it, or be able to find a way to, you know, cobble together some kind of existence where mostly some creative, you know, endeavor would be, would form some core, you know, part of my day to day life, and that’s taken different forms over the different years.
00:23:11:08 – 00:23:37:10
Ethan Gilsdorf
Now I’m into my fifth decade, well, I guess sixth decade, sixth decade. But I feel like, you know, what’s interesting is that when I look back on the sort of archeological evidence of stuff that I’ve kept, know this is something I write about in my book. This I had this thing called the blue cooler, which is this, you know, this box of my old Dungeons and Dragons stuff, which I had kind of forgot about and didn’t rediscover until I was around 40.
00:23:37:15 – 00:24:00:17
Ethan Gilsdorf
And in that, box was all my dad’s stuff, which included a lot of typical stuff you’d expect with the game, but lots of stuff written in longhand, pencil in notebooks that are scenarios for games. But really, I think they were efforts to write novels. I mean, they were sort of very, very, very, you know, primitive as it were, and pretty, pretty poorly executed.
00:24:00:17 – 00:24:25:02
Ethan Gilsdorf
But there are other there’s other, other evidence. When I look back, I look at some high school, papers and I see, you know, creative assignments that were like collections of poems that I had written that were, again, all terrible, projects I did in history class, which were I did a lot of movie making as a kid, right around the same time that I was actually before I discovered Dungeons and Dragons, my mom gave me a super eight movie camera.
00:24:25:06 – 00:24:48:56
Ethan Gilsdorf
So I was interested in movies, and I’d seen Star Wars just the year before, and I was very excited about making my own sort of spaceship movies and monster claymation monster movies and things like that. So all of that stuff was there. And so when you look back at that, it’s not as a as the older Ethan. As I look back at that, it’s pretty clear that this was kind of baked into my existence pretty early on.
00:24:48:56 – 00:24:53:24
Ethan Gilsdorf
But like, if you’d asked me when I was in college, how were you going to make a living at this? Ethan, I wouldn’t have the slightest.
00:24:53:29 – 00:24:59:02
Agent Palmer
But what did you go to school like? Did you go to school for, you know, communications, writing. Like. Is that.
00:24:59:02 – 00:25:21:19
Ethan Gilsdorf
Yeah. Essentially, yeah. It was. I went to a liberal arts college in Western Mass, this sort of experimental place called Hampshire College and, studied filmmaking. And, eventually kind of got out of the nuts and bolts of filmmaking and became interested in creative writing and studied poetry and, tried to write poems and short stories. And then I did an MFA degree, a master’s in fine arts in poetry.
00:25:21:23 – 00:25:37:02
Ethan Gilsdorf
A couple years after I graduated from college and thought that maybe my creative pursuit would be poetry, like, I would have a day job, I’d be like, Wallace Stevens, you know? And I would walk to work and go to my insurance. Well, not in my case, an insurance firm. But, you know, something mundane.
00:25:37:02 – 00:25:37:18
Agent Palmer
Yep.
00:25:37:18 – 00:25:56:08
Ethan Gilsdorf
Yeah, a mundane 9 to 5 job. And then in the weekends and evenings I would write my great, great American poems and I would get these, you know, prestigious awards, and I would have collections of poetry, and I’d get my poetry published in The New Yorker. And and that didn’t quite happen. I, you know, had some success in that realm.
00:25:56:08 – 00:26:14:44
Ethan Gilsdorf
But success in poetry is like it’s like saying, I don’t know, like success in woodworking or something. I don’t know, that’s not a good example, but unless you know about it, you don’t know about it. It’s not something that anybody’s aware of. There might be 1 or 2 poets that people could maybe name. So in any case, and then it was a series of day jobs where, you know, around books.
00:26:14:44 – 00:26:35:04
Ethan Gilsdorf
And I worked in a bookstore, I worked for a small college, and then I moved to France for five years and became a journalist, a freelance journalist. And that was kind of my way back into storytelling, because I started to write sort of travel stories about me going off on these adventures. And there I was like, Bilbo Baggins or whatever, you know, all over again.
00:26:35:09 – 00:26:50:38
Ethan Gilsdorf
And so that was my way back into sort of narrative storytelling and writing through journalism and essays. And then then the book and then the and it began to circle back to the and again, that’s all sort of there. Like you can see it retrospectively.
00:26:50:53 – 00:27:17:08
Agent Palmer
So I, you know, I, I have a similar thing. I went to a, liberal arts college and I didn’t, you know, I just majored in communications. It was like, all right, like, no, it’s the one thing I think you go back and tell your, you know, your past self like, no, get it like get a degree in something you can like concrete do like communications.
00:27:17:21 – 00:27:42:46
Agent Palmer
You can do anything you want, okay. But then you get your degree and you go, I don’t, I don’t know, right. Like but for me it ended up being podcasting in and it’s only been in doing the podcast that I put the pieces together. I did soundboard and and sound for behind the scenes of theater. You know, when I went away to the summer camp where I found D and D, I did some radio stuff.
00:27:42:46 – 00:28:08:01
Agent Palmer
I did some radio stuff in college, I it was it in a roundabout way, it was all there. But you don’t usually. And I feel like this is, a D and D thing as well. You don’t necessarily see like that. You were headed this quote unquote direction until you get there and you’re like, oh, that. Okay, okay.
00:28:08:01 – 00:28:33:59
Agent Palmer
Now it makes sense. Like, and while this isn’t paying the bills like I, I’m not going to stop doing it like I, I found a place right. And first of all, I’m happy you found back to writing because I did enjoy the book. And I feel like all of that stuff leads to the book, obviously. And you’re not just going to be like, you know, had you gotten the mundane job, been like, you know what I’m going to do?
00:28:33:59 – 00:28:55:30
Agent Palmer
I’m just going to write a book. Like, I feel like we need to be put in scenarios where we get challenged or challenge ourselves. Obviously, when you got back into writing was quote unquote, The Great American Novel, because it’s what we all say. I’m guilty of it as well. Was there a like publishing a book, a goal for you, even when you got back into writing?
00:28:55:35 – 00:29:10:19
Ethan Gilsdorf
Yeah, I think I wasn’t sure what kind of book it was going to be. I think for many years the I thought it would be a novel, or fantasy novel, and then I thought it was going to be a collection of poems. At a certain point, I thought it would be some kind of memoir, because I really wanted to.
00:29:10:23 – 00:29:33:57
Ethan Gilsdorf
The material that’s in the front of the book, the first couple of chapters about particular what happened to my mom and, her brain aneurysm as a, as a young woman when I was a young kid, you know, that was a powerful experience. And I felt like that was something that, you know, for my own, for my own purposes, psychologically, therapeutically, emotionally, psychically felt important for me to be able to write and process.
00:29:33:57 – 00:29:56:53
Ethan Gilsdorf
So that felt like the story I was going to write. And I tried did try prior to writing Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, a version of a sort of a memoir, and I wasn’t sure what the story would be, but had something to do with my life and my mother’s life, and sort of trying to recapture or account for or preserve, you know, in some way preserve, preserve her legacy.
00:29:56:58 – 00:30:24:05
Ethan Gilsdorf
I didn’t think it was going to be this book. But as it turned out, I was writing a lot about I’d been lucky in that because I had been writing mostly nonfiction. The stuff that I write about is often stuff that I’m curious about, stuff that I’m interested in. And as a journalist, you’re really you can be lucky if you can, you know, be writing in a field or in a subject area that you enjoy, you know, and obviously I was going to be a sports reporter, although I was madly in love with the Boston Red Sox as a kid.
00:30:24:05 – 00:30:41:09
Ethan Gilsdorf
And I remember getting the Boston Globe, as a kid and reading the sports pages and reading the funnies, as we called them. And that was about as much as I read. But, you know, that part was always struck me as something I could do. But I didn’t study journalism in college as as I said, I studied filmmaking, which is fairly useless in some ways.
00:30:41:14 – 00:31:01:47
Ethan Gilsdorf
But I think that, you know, I think I smartly just decided that I wanted to write about something that felt like it meant something to me personally. I was curious about what this game had meant to me, but also it was felt culturally sort of of the moment. There was something happening. And then this goes back again. This goes back 10 or 12 years.
00:31:01:47 – 00:31:20:40
Ethan Gilsdorf
There was something happening at that moment that felt like something was on the verge. You know, we had Harry Potter, we had Lord of the rings, we had World of Warcraft. All this stuff was kind of coalescing. And I felt like, here’s a chance for me to sort of weigh in on this, but but not as a social critic, really, or as a, you know, a kind of, psychologist.
00:31:20:40 – 00:31:39:30
Ethan Gilsdorf
That’s not my background, just me, you know, like, what does this stuff mean to me? And what might it mean to other people? So I do have other, other sort of more pure memoir projects in the, on the back burner that I’ve dipped my toes into from time to time. I don’t think that the idea of writing fiction is really.
00:31:39:30 – 00:32:00:31
Ethan Gilsdorf
I’ve tried in the interim to try to also write fiction. I don’t think I’m very good at making up things, strangely enough, in a in a plotted way, I feel like in an improvizational way, like you and I are doing here and in the D&D game. I feel like I can randomly make up things. And it’s funny you say the radio thing because I was also a radio DJ for a while as well, just as a hobby, like a college DJ kind of thing.
00:32:00:35 – 00:32:17:19
Ethan Gilsdorf
So that part’s exciting to me. It’s been at the end of incredibly fortunate, you know, incredibly fortunate that I’m able to find a way to make make a some kind of living mostly. I’m also teaching, right? I’m doing a lot of creative writing, teaching, which is, another way that writers make their money, right? They find a way to, to teach something.
00:32:17:24 – 00:32:22:32
Ethan Gilsdorf
And a lot of creative pursuits are similar. You know, you might be an art teacher, you might be a music teacher.
00:32:22:37 – 00:32:48:29
Agent Palmer
You talk about, like, something coalescing around the time that you’re putting that book together. But a lot has happened in the, you know, ten years on since. And I was trying to put myself back into, you know, I mean, it was released in 2009, so I’m presuming you wrote it over 070809 yeah. And I just kept going. Well, Iron Man comes out in 2008.
00:32:48:43 – 00:33:34:48
Agent Palmer
So you’re not in hindsight, sure, it’s a cultural touchstone, but it’s just a hey, we finally got a comic book. Like another comic book movie that’s not Batman. You wouldn’t have known it would spawn something bigger, right? And then obviously that’s a completely different kind of geekdom, but there’s so much like that has kind of exploded Twitch, obviously, which, you know, I, I feel like and this is, wholeheartedly for me, a harking back to RPGs of any kind to which is your character got killed, but you don’t want to leave.
00:33:34:53 – 00:34:02:13
Agent Palmer
And I know you know it. Not everybody’s playing those kind of games, but that’s always what it feels to me like when I’m watching, because I have had characters die in campaigns, and you don’t just pack up and leave like you, you either reroll a new character that they’ll stumble across or you just hang out. And to me, in a nutshell, that’s twitch like, okay, it’s interesting.
00:34:02:13 – 00:34:15:10
Agent Palmer
I’ve got my character, but I’m not. I’m not going anywhere. But I wonder, oh, you know what? Before I go there, first of all, can I tell you that your Ted talk feels like an addendum to the book?
00:34:15:15 – 00:34:31:48
Ethan Gilsdorf
Yeah, that seems fair. I think that’s a good way to look at it. And it feels like that would be. That’s probably what I would say. You know, if I could write a, a, updated, you know, revised edition or something like that, because obviously so much has happened in the world of D&D since my book was published.
00:34:31:53 – 00:34:41:07
Ethan Gilsdorf
Which is pretty astounding, when I really think about what the cultural imprint or the cultural sort of footprint it has now, is beyond my wildest dreams.
00:34:41:12 – 00:35:05:26
Agent Palmer
I go back to Vin Diesel. He’s the touchstone for me of, like, it’s not just guys with glasses anymore. And I know there were others. And, you know, in your Ted talk, you have that slide of everybody. But for me, it was this was after Fast and Furious had become a franchise. And I was just like, yay!
00:35:05:27 – 00:35:14:19
Agent Palmer
Like somebody who doesn’t look like me, you know, not just pasty with glasses. I’ll bring them out. And do you bring the Doritos?
00:35:14:19 – 00:35:37:58
Ethan Gilsdorf
Like, yeah, that’s been huge. I think that’s been I mean, it’s hard to know whether, you know, which came first. You know, the celebrity who admitted to playing D&D, or was it someone else who encouraged the celebrity, you know, to come out of the closet? But I feel like those larger cultural figures who have been willing to reveal that about themselves has been incredibly affirming for many people.
00:35:38:03 – 00:36:02:31
Ethan Gilsdorf
And I think also the advent, as you mentioned, Twitch. I mean, I think the advent of streaming, live streaming got any kind of a real play game where people can see how it actually works, and it can be sort of good looking people, and they can be voice actors, or they can be sort of or not, that there’s not much to the game and it doesn’t require, you know, the sort of arcane, you know, super, nerdy research.
00:36:02:43 – 00:36:25:50
Ethan Gilsdorf
You can just you can just start playing with very, very limited experience, very limited rules. It kind of demystifies it. And I think that’s an important part of it. I think also people my age who are in Hollywood or in Silicon Valley or people my age between, let’s say, your age and my age, who are now, to a certain extent in control of producing content that we are all, you know, absorbing.
00:36:25:50 – 00:36:47:58
Ethan Gilsdorf
You know, these people are a lot of them are being quite articulate about saying how the game was important to them as at a time in their lives, you know, to help them through difficult things they were going through or help them, as we were talking about earlier, learn about sort of creative problem solving or out-of-the-box thinking or, you know, plot or story or character.
00:36:47:58 – 00:37:03:29
Ethan Gilsdorf
All these all these things that, of course, are, how to run a company, how to run a.com, you know, I mean, what, what kind of training goes into being a dungeon master and, you know, running a campaign, it isn’t applicable to any number of managerial. You know, pursuits. Right?
00:37:03:33 – 00:37:20:33
Agent Palmer
You know what that gives me the. So I have not told this story yet, and I’m so thankful I get to tell it to you. I had one of my previous jobs. I had a boss who was very much like a mother to me, but there was a point where, for better or worse, I was just not happy.
00:37:20:38 – 00:37:42:25
Agent Palmer
And. And you know, it was probably short lived. It was probably a couple weeks or months, and I had just given up and decided that there was some politics with some coworkers, and I was just not having it wasn’t as easy as it had once been. And I, I was cleaning up my home office and I found a d20 and I went, you know what?
00:37:42:29 – 00:38:19:03
Agent Palmer
For tomorrow, all of my decisions are going to be based on a roll of the dice, and I think it lasted till lunch because my boss, the mother figure, was like, can you do this? And I was like, hold on a second. I, yes, I can write like, you know, not all of my coworkers got such favorable roles, and I, I just it it was such, like, I almost wish I could do that for for everything just because it would be wonderful to put it all to chance.
00:38:19:03 – 00:38:44:07
Agent Palmer
Like, I don’t have to think any more. Or necessarily it’s just like, oh, can you do this one moment? Role roll? No, no, I can’t like it. And look, I understand the my coworkers did not like that at all. And that’s why I got told to, you know, put the dice away at lunch. Right. But for that morning, it was a little freeing.
00:38:44:12 – 00:39:04:11
Ethan Gilsdorf
Yeah, yeah. That is a beautiful, beautiful part of the game, which I think is so interesting that it is both this expansive universe that has sort of no limits, unlike a video game, which does have limits, you know, to a certain extent, you can only go as far as the programmers have produced that corner of the world.
00:39:04:11 – 00:39:24:36
Ethan Gilsdorf
You know, is, and yet is bound by this very strange notion that there’s a probability for anything happening. And you just have to sort of the, the luck of the gods has to be with you. You know, you get to add things to the role which represent kind of your own, your own sort of personal, you know, experience your own personal, you know, skill.
00:39:24:41 – 00:39:49:03
Ethan Gilsdorf
But it’s always just random shit, you know, you just don’t know what chance and you might. And there’s and if you roll 20 it happens. You know, there’s a sort of wonderful inside joke in a way, but a kind of a kind of, it’s hopeful. It’s hopeful. Anyone can can succeed at doing something. And I can just picture you at your at your workplace, you, you devise a chart for like, all these activities.
00:39:49:03 – 00:39:53:23
Ethan Gilsdorf
And if I roll out higher than do I will, you know, then I will say that I will, you know, whatever.
00:39:53:27 – 00:39:56:18
Agent Palmer
I had, I had just made it a point basically.
00:39:56:18 – 00:39:57:01
Ethan Gilsdorf
Yeah. Okay.
00:39:57:04 – 00:40:23:10
Agent Palmer
It was more like, you know, it was a scale of one. No. 20. Yes. And then varying degrees until it got to like ten. And then it would, you know, in the middle it would be like, well who’s asking. Right. You know, and so, you know, I didn’t I didn’t think it through, obviously, because I feel like, had I and I told friends after the fact and they were all like, you did what?
00:40:23:15 – 00:40:40:00
Agent Palmer
Like I and I feel like all of them, as good friends would, would have tried to talk me out of it had I been like, you know what? Tomorrow I’m thinking about taking the dice to work and just that’s what I’m going to do. And they’re going to be like, yeah, what? No, no, don’t don’t do that. But I did it.
00:40:40:00 – 00:41:06:43
Agent Palmer
And you know what? Yeah, it makes for a great story. But it also, you know, I said no to a coworker and it felt great. And you know what? In hindsight, it was the right thing to do. But I probably would have said yes if I didn’t roll a die. Right? Right. Like that’s right. Okay. You know, and I feel like that’s part of the role playing aspect of it, which is you get to experience things you wouldn’t normally do.
00:41:06:48 – 00:41:30:43
Agent Palmer
And for one morning, right. I got to experience saying no to someone I would normally say yes to. And you know, what wasn’t a problem? Like, no, nothing. Like nothing happened, right? It was just the fact that, you know, all of my coworkers, like, he’s in there rolling a dice every time you ask him a question like, yeah, all right, fair enough.
00:41:30:48 – 00:41:51:56
Agent Palmer
But, you know, to go back to where we started, I think gaming is important. And I bring up, you know, D&D and the devil worship big thing. But when I was playing Magic The Gathering early, very early on, the school board was like, not this is the debt. Or somebody was like, this is the devil’s card game.
00:41:52:01 – 00:42:14:44
Agent Palmer
And I remember and I this is one of those like, I’ve been told the story, so I feel like I was there, but I no, I absolutely was not where I know my parents went to the school board meeting and defended it, being like he’s reading at a higher level. He’s he knows words he wouldn’t otherwise normally know.
00:42:14:46 – 00:42:37:24
Agent Palmer
His math has improved. Like, yeah, it’s still a card game. It’s still all based on chance. But there are so many other things. And you know, I, I would have never been like, yeah, I’m playing Magic The Gathering for my vocabulary like that. Right. Who who says that? But my parents noticed. So I mean there’s part of it must be true.
00:42:37:29 – 00:43:03:21
Agent Palmer
Right. And and D&D is the same thing. Like there are weapons and just the combat mechanics and just, well, what do you want to do? I throw rock like, that’s not we don’t talk like that when we’re in a campaign. And so you’re building this not only storytelling, but you’re building your vocabulary and all of these things that are just it’s wonderful.
00:43:03:33 – 00:43:10:58
Agent Palmer
Like, yeah, this is why gaming is important. But I think you have the job I want.
00:43:11:03 – 00:43:11:43
Ethan Gilsdorf
What would that be?
00:43:11:55 – 00:43:50:46
Agent Palmer
I think all of it, like the whole thing, like, you know, the teaching, the writing, like it all. Like, I’ve been unemployed for for way too long now. Let’s go with way too long. Yeah. And it’s been a lot of. What do I want to do now. And honestly I, I don’t know like it’s, I want a job but that’s, that’s a cop out you know because I, I don’t want to just, I, you know, I don’t want the mundane job, I want something else but something creative is next to something creative.
00:43:50:46 – 00:44:08:07
Agent Palmer
I feel like is unrealistic like because I feel like even when you were telling your story, you ended up getting lucky. Like you said, you rolled the 20 man like, that’s you you got or at least a 19. And you had some, you know, some buffs, right?
00:44:08:12 – 00:44:33:38
Ethan Gilsdorf
Well, yeah. So that I mean, I think, I think I’ve been I’ve been fortunate. I mean, I think the downside for all the listeners out there, I mean, the downside is that most creative people I know, I have to tolerate a certain level of job insecurity. And I don’t exactly have I mean, there are some that I know who have full time jobs or others who who they might be writers, and so they can sell a book every few years, and that kind of keeps them going.
00:44:33:42 – 00:44:52:32
Ethan Gilsdorf
But in between those places where they have, you know, where they don’t have a, a contract or they don’t have, you know, a book advance, you know, they have to find something to do. And I haven’t had a real 9 to 5 job in the longest time, and it’s probably been since 1999. So it’s been 20 plus years, 20, 23 years, 20 years.
00:44:52:37 – 00:45:21:54
Ethan Gilsdorf
And I think in many ways, you get incredibly fortunate and lucky. But the downside is, you know, I don’t have a retirement figure it out. You know, in my 50s, you know, paying for my own health insurance, my wife and I, you know, sort of limit this continually. And she’s a freelancer as well in a different field. So, it’s becoming more attractive this notion that you just sort of find something that’s safe and stable, you know, that’s going to have that weekly paycheck and benefits.
00:45:21:55 – 00:45:46:07
Agent Palmer
I so I, I have two questions. One but isn’t this your retirement? Like, I, to a certain extent, I mean, obviously you don’t want to have to worry about the next paycheck, but, I mean, you you get I mean, you you’re a writer. And you’re a teacher, and I feel like if I gave you $1 million, you would still be a writer and a teacher tomorrow.
00:45:46:09 – 00:45:47:25
Ethan Gilsdorf
True, true.
00:45:47:30 – 00:46:05:07
Agent Palmer
Yeah. Which is why, you know, I I’ve said on this podcast before, do I want to be a blogger and a podcaster for the rest of my life? Yeah, I do, do. I want it to be my full time job? I don’t know, there’s there’s a different level of pressure. I feel like that you have to put on yourself if that’s your main source of income.
00:46:05:07 – 00:46:30:55
Agent Palmer
But, you know, hi, I’m Jason, I’m a creative, you know, like, I feel like that’s a thing. We could we could create, a support group for us because, like, it. I don’t want to say it goes back to gaming because I don’t know if it necessarily does. I think that pigeonholes it too much. But as a creative, as a writer, as someone who wants to produce things like we’re all dreamers, right?
00:46:31:10 – 00:46:31:52
Ethan Gilsdorf
Yeah.
00:46:31:56 – 00:47:01:03
Agent Palmer
But the second thing, and this is, a question for you directly from the book, really is, is your wife a fellow geek because you talk not to get like two in the book, but you talk about one of my favorite movies, diner and potentially creating a quiz, a geek quiz, not a Baltimore Colts quiz, but like a Geek Fridays for your significant other.
00:47:01:08 – 00:47:19:54
Agent Palmer
And I have joked with my parents that that is a thing I would absolutely love to do. And it was before I had read your book. This has been like an ongoing thing for my parents, and I actually have a partner who could pass that. This is probably the first partner I’ve ever had who could pass whatever geek quiz I throw at her.
00:47:19:59 – 00:47:24:39
Agent Palmer
Right? But like, did you did you go through with that?
00:47:24:39 – 00:47:26:47
Ethan Gilsdorf
Is that. No, I, I, I didn’t really.
00:47:27:01 – 00:47:27:49
Agent Palmer
I.
00:47:27:54 – 00:47:57:24
Ethan Gilsdorf
Although my wife is very, very tolerant of, of my interests and, you know, she, she shares some of it, but not to the level, to the level that I do. You know, I know that she she had read Lord of the Rings in The Hobbit and she, she can converse in some of the stuff, but it’s not something that she has her own, you know, she has her own version, I would say of this, but it’s in a different field and probably not something that people would consider to be sort of traditionally nerdy or geeky.
00:47:57:28 – 00:48:25:51
Ethan Gilsdorf
But she’s a designer and, you know, she’s really interested in graphic design and typefaces and, you know, interior decorating and that kind of stuff. It’s not the same kind of level of geekdom, but I feel like part of what I hope the lesson of the book is, and certainly what I think everyone is observing, in our culture is that whatever this, whatever this thing is that you’re really passionate about is just as good and just as sort of valid and just as worthy as anyone else’s thing that they’re really into, whatever it is.
00:48:25:51 – 00:48:43:09
Ethan Gilsdorf
Even if this group of activities which are games, you know, which are dress up, which are make believe, they’ve always sort of been shunted to the side here, you know, that’s for kids or that’s for, you know, people who can’t handle the real world or whatever, those sort of pejorative, you know, things are thrown at those, those kinds of activities.
00:48:43:09 – 00:49:03:08
Ethan Gilsdorf
But it’s there’s always this level of sort of super detailed, arcane knowledge and sort of inside information and, and sort of obsessive, you know, attention to detail, all that sort of stuff that, and passion, you know, and passion. I think that’s the main thing. But yeah, short answer to your question. I’m giving you a bad long answer.
00:49:03:08 – 00:49:21:55
Ethan Gilsdorf
Is it basically, no, I didn’t exactly do the diner quiz. But she did agree to play D&D with me once, which was lovely. And, and she, you know, she will do other sort of, you know, certainly indulge me in certain certain activities, but not not like she’s going to join my my, there’s an ID and group, you know.
00:49:21:59 – 00:49:48:15
Agent Palmer
No. And you know what? I think the. So I’ve learned and my partner Stephanie has kind of I won’t be able to do it a quiz either, because I couldn’t pass hers. Right. Like, you know, I mean, we, we have overlapping geek DMs and nerd DMs and whatever, right. But, you know, I’m not the biggest Doctor Who fan, so I have nothing for her.
00:49:48:15 – 00:50:10:54
Agent Palmer
There I was Star Wars, she was Star Wars and Star Trek. So I’ve got nothing for Trek like. And I’m I’m open to experiencing these fandoms. You know, I’m not like, oh, you know, I’m not hardline like one or the other. It’s just I know that with time we will experience these things together, and that’s fine. But any quiz I could give her that would be rough.
00:50:10:54 – 00:50:33:57
Agent Palmer
That she’d have to study for, like, then I’d have to get hers. And it’s like, I don’t. Oh, that that seems like a lot of work and relationships aren’t easy to begin with. And I’m talking like, just friendships, right? So I don’t want to. There’s no point in adding another layer on top of it. Right. You know, she, she plays in our Pathfinder with us.
00:50:33:57 – 00:50:57:41
Agent Palmer
In fact, the first part of the campaign, you know, she was the DM for. So it was wonderful. And. Yeah, now, the friend who was my kind of cohort is now the in charge, and she’s more, player with me now. And again, it’s because I have no interest in it, and I’m just, you know, give me my character.
00:50:57:52 – 00:51:21:06
Agent Palmer
You know, I’m right. I love this part. I’m. I’m a gnome with a longbow. Like it just. I ended up rolling for that. I’m a I’m a no. A rogue gnome that can, you know, handle a longbow. It’s the it’s the craziest thing I’ve ever played in my role playing and it’s, it’s wonderful. But I, I come back to it.
00:51:21:11 – 00:51:28:39
Agent Palmer
I mean, I feel like, you know, we’ve circled it kind of a few times, but like, we always end up coming back to this stuff.
00:51:28:44 – 00:51:29:31
Ethan Gilsdorf
00:51:29:36 – 00:51:52:31
Agent Palmer
And I, I don’t know if it’s necessarily because of where we started because not everybody started at 12 with the with D and D, I know people that started earlier and later that still absolutely love it, but I, I, I like the open world ness. I was always the guy who if you gave me a game, I’d go to the edge.
00:51:52:35 – 00:52:12:13
Agent Palmer
Yeah. And I know No Man’s Sky and all these other games came out that like, no, there’s no edge. But really like, yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna go to the edge. That’s right. That’s it. And in an open world like daddy, you don’t have to worry about that. Well, I mean, you don’t want to outsmart your your leader, right?
00:52:12:15 – 00:52:16:58
Agent Palmer
Your storyteller, you know, respect the DM. Like, seriously.
00:52:17:03 – 00:52:37:11
Ethan Gilsdorf
But but a good a good a good game master will find a way to, you know, indulge their players in the thing that they want to do and, you know, work, work them into it. I feel like that’s that’s one of the things that I have noticed in my own, even my own playstyle where I was as a teenager, I was very obsessed with rules and sort of every everybody playing the right way.
00:52:37:11 – 00:53:08:03
Ethan Gilsdorf
And there was lots of thumbing through the Dungeon Master’s guide to argue with each other about certain, you know, rules that, each of us felt very strongly about the only way to play this. The only answer to this question was, you know, yes or no on off, you know, black, white. But today it’s more it is more of the open to me, the open world, as you talked about earlier, the, the the theater of the mind, the sort of imaginative space I’m, you know, I’m pretty skeptical of the modern world in some ways.
00:53:08:03 – 00:53:47:36
Ethan Gilsdorf
I feel very, tenuously connected to it in many ways. And I find myself just in a daily on a daily basis, sort of. I go for walks and just think about what would life be like if, you know, dot, dot, dot, you know, if this weren’t cars here and there weren’t, you know, strip malls, just sort of this, this, place that I go to in my head that is admittedly, a fantasy, but has there’s something about what I’m doing there that feels really important that, maybe, maybe it is going to to recharge or just have to take a little rest.
00:53:47:40 – 00:54:00:00
Ethan Gilsdorf
But but I’m very I’m very, in some ways very disappointed with the, in some ways how the modern life is, it’s it’s sort of sort of boring, you know, sort of drab on some level.
00:54:00:03 – 00:54:29:45
Agent Palmer
So it reminds me of, I’m going to I’m going to try and get this quote right from your book. Not that I want to quote you to you, but, when you talk about escapism and fantasy and, you know, the need for imagination and escape, you, you and this was obviously written a while ago, but you said something like, the real world is a mostly known.
00:54:29:45 – 00:54:35:42
Agent Palmer
I think it is mostly known and scary. Quantity, I think.
00:54:35:47 – 00:54:37:55
Ethan Gilsdorf
00:54:38:00 – 00:55:00:00
Agent Palmer
I I don’t know if it’s feather in your cap but you were right like then you were right now you’re right. Like you, you think that that statement is just generally you know it can go up there with, you know, gravity laws of gravity. Like it’s just yeah. No, we know what it is and it’s scary, right?
00:55:00:05 – 00:55:35:51
Ethan Gilsdorf
Particularly given what’s happened this last year or even depending on your political views, just the sort of state of our country, the upheaval, the sort of pessimism, the sort of sense that we’re not making progress in some ways, then the, you know, obviously the pandemic, the world is a scary place. It can be a scary place. And it’s not no wonder that, you know, D&D and sort of serialized television, you know, a Netflix or HBO Max or, you know, Hulu or whatever, wherever you watch it is so incredibly popular, but sort of needed in a way.
00:55:35:56 – 00:55:59:52
Agent Palmer
And, and you know what? I go back to our younger selves because, you know, I, I admittedly ran cross country, but that’s like being a geek in sport. Okay. For sure, like, I, I was I was also in the band. So, you know, my father points at me when, we watch revenge of the nerds together.
00:55:59:52 – 00:56:25:42
Agent Palmer
And, you know, anybody who’s ever feel oppressed in the whole band gets up, right? Like so I know that of our younger selves, the world was a scary place. Like, if you, you know, maybe now as adults, it’s a different kind of scary. But for those of us that didn’t go out on Friday night, we were staying in or we were going out to a friend’s house to stay in the world was scary.
00:56:25:42 – 00:56:47:50
Agent Palmer
Then. Like the degree to which it is scary has changed, but that fact has remained, constant. And I, I feel that while we are better prepared, I think, than some, it doesn’t make it any less scary. In fact, what happens is we grew up, we got more knowledge and realized it’s even scarier.
00:56:47:55 – 00:57:20:51
Ethan Gilsdorf
Right? Right. More places for our worries and our neuroses and whatever that would be. You’re absolutely right. I think that the I remember as a kid, I was terrified of growing up and being an adult, partly because of my experience of it was a little bit, different from other people, given what had happened to my mom. But even before my mom got got sick, I think it was something I couldn’t fathom bit about being an adult and having that, having to get a job and money and, insurance, all the stuff, getting a driver’s license.
00:57:20:51 – 00:57:45:44
Ethan Gilsdorf
It all just seemed too much. And, and I despite my, my fears, I’d managed to conquer a lot of that. And I am, you know, making money. And I have to file my taxes and, you know, basically, you know, functioning. But it is it is surprising, how at times those, those fears don’t go, don’t go away.
00:57:45:49 – 00:58:04:19
Ethan Gilsdorf
And it’s not that hard for me to remember that I’m just an older version of the younger Ethan who was, you know, found found that the real world. Really? Challenging place, you know, for so many, for so many reasons. And here we are, 2021.
00:58:04:24 – 00:58:29:44
Agent Palmer
Yeah. It’s, I, I hate the more things change, the more they stay the same. But, like, I’m still that scared kid. Like, I don’t know if I will. I have anxiety now, and I’ve been living it with it for a while. Probably actually, I probably been living with it for, approximately as long as your books been in print.
00:58:29:49 – 00:58:58:37
Agent Palmer
Right. And, you know, you know, somewhere around there, maybe longer. I didn’t have that when I was a kid, but I was still scared, like, I, you know, and I think this is, you know, thanks to dad, I know I can overcome it, right? Like, I’ve. I’ve overcome things they wouldn’t normally be able to. So a little anxiety.
00:58:58:42 – 00:59:01:10
Agent Palmer
All right. Well, I’m still going to go outside today.
00:59:01:15 – 00:59:03:02
Ethan Gilsdorf
Right, right, right.
00:59:03:07 – 00:59:27:54
Agent Palmer
You know, I mean, you know, you, I’m going to take the shot instead of hiding behind my shield. I’m going to take the shot. Right? Like, because you don’t know. And, you know, part of that is right brain, left brain, growing up, not growing up, whatever. But I have seen miracles happen, right? They might have been again in the theater of the mind that we keep going back to.
00:59:27:57 – 00:59:38:01
Agent Palmer
But I’ve seen them, so I know they exist. I’ve seen the guy make the saving throw. Right? That doesn’t happen all the time, right? Some people actually die, like.
00:59:38:01 – 00:59:38:46
Ethan Gilsdorf
Right? Right.
00:59:38:59 – 00:59:42:32
Agent Palmer
Okay. Well, yeah, I if I don’t roll to die.
00:59:42:37 – 01:00:05:45
Ethan Gilsdorf
You’ll never know. Oh, yeah. Right now that’s very true. It’s very true. I think inside all of us is that that version of ourselves that, you know, maybe we’re trying to protect or trying to be gentle with and have compassion towards and I, I struggle with that all the time as an adult, you know, how much of the is the man and how much of me is the.
01:00:05:50 – 01:00:28:28
Ethan Gilsdorf
Is the scared kid still trying to find voice or trying to be protected or and yet, you know, as you were saying with the game, I mean, that’s what’s to be one of the beautiful things of the game. And maybe, maybe this isn’t unique to dad, maybe it’s any kind of storytelling experience. But this notion that it’s a kind of role playing, even when you’re reading a book, you’re empathizing with someone else’s experience.
01:00:28:28 – 01:00:51:31
Ethan Gilsdorf
Maybe you’re trying something out that you wouldn’t normally do in real life. I talk about this in my creative writing classes all the time. The importance of personal narrative, and how just the idea that we’re reading so we don’t feel so alone, you know, we’re not the only person who’s been through this thing that gives us courage, that gives us some sense that we may, you know, survive whatever we’re going through or someone else has survived it.
01:00:51:31 – 01:01:20:19
Ethan Gilsdorf
And maybe I can find how did they how did they how did they deal with that? How did they process that? How did they recover from this loss? How did they, you know, grieve? How did they, you know, pick themselves up off the ground? I mean, and that’s what’s so great about D&D or whether it’s about the, to my mind, what feels like an explosion of storytelling, whether it’s in podcasts, whether it’s, you know, all the self-publishing that’s happening and you can argue about quality and you can argue about who the gatekeepers and sort of who should be allowed, you know, to produce content and who should.
01:01:20:20 – 01:01:41:23
Ethan Gilsdorf
But in the end, it’s just it’s this impulse just to share the human experience. And it’s all valuable. It’s all, you know, people just trying to figure their shit out, get it, get it, you know, into some form that hopefully will have, have be useful to someone else. And whether that’s a fantasy story or whether that’s a real story, you know, it doesn’t ultimately matter that much.
01:01:41:28 – 01:01:54:34
Ethan Gilsdorf
You know how you tell your own story, you know, how do you how do you what kind of character do you want to be in in the story of your life, you know, are you going to be a victim or are you going to be hero? Or are you going to be the comeback kid? Or you’re going to be, you know, resurrected?
01:01:54:34 – 01:01:56:24
Ethan Gilsdorf
You know, I mean, there’s all kinds of metaphors.
01:01:56:29 – 01:01:56:44
Agent Palmer
Yeah.
01:01:56:44 – 01:01:57:19
Ethan Gilsdorf
Can you talk about.
01:01:57:27 – 01:02:25:59
Agent Palmer
And and I’ve been I’ve been reading a lot prolifically actually, for probably the most I’ve ever read in my life for the last 5 or 6 years. And I have started to read things I wouldn’t normally read. And I every other book I read seems to be biography these days. Just because I want people’s stories and I prefer autobiography because while I know there’s some embellishment, I’m okay with it.
01:02:25:59 – 01:02:46:23
Agent Palmer
I want your story. But I’ve also been doing the whole well, this book mentioned another book, so I’m going to go get it. And because of you, actually, I picked up the nerds book that you mentioned in your book. Yeah. And I, I haven’t cracked it open yet, but I’m excited too, because I’m like, well, let’s find out.
01:02:46:23 – 01:03:06:28
Agent Palmer
And now, maybe, maybe 20 years ago, I would have just read your book and that would be that. But I’m trying to broaden myself, like, how else am I going to get books recommended to me? Like, you like what you like, so-and-so likes what they like. So it was mentioned in your book and I enjoyed your book. So I picking up this other thing.
01:03:06:28 – 01:03:22:11
Agent Palmer
Right. I’ve kind of been doing that for the better part of the last few years and I’ve, I’ve read things I wouldn’t have normally. So it’s like I’ve at least leveled that part of myself up. Right, right.
01:03:22:16 – 01:03:34:08
Ethan Gilsdorf
And that’s good. That’s good I think, I think that, following your nose, there is a good instinct.
01:03:34:13 – 01:03:38:25
Agent Palmer
You.
01:03:38:30 – 01:04:00:18
Agent Palmer
As Ethan and I discussed, the world is a scary place and fairly unknown. And I don’t want to harp on that too much. But there is exponentially more that we don’t know than we do. And that of itself doesn’t inherently make the world scary. But it doesn’t help either. Which is why we need art, entertainment, and games for escape.
01:04:00:23 – 01:04:31:33
Agent Palmer
And most commonly, when we escape, we go back to the things that comfort us. Thus, we go back to our comfort zone. The music. You always go back to the movies and television shows you always go back to, and yes, the games you always go back to. That circular nature is a part of who we are. It’s the very reason that we have the concept of comfort movies and comfort albums, because they mean something to us and we go back to them when we need comfort, especially when the world is a scary place.
01:04:31:40 – 01:04:59:13
Agent Palmer
And more to the point, especially when being overwhelmed doesn’t just seem to go away because you get older. Which again brings me back to escapism. Lots of things are circular. Our games, our hobbies, even our skills. The more I talk to people, especially in the creative fields, but certainly not limited to them, the more I believe that we all end up where we’re supposed to be.
01:04:59:18 – 01:05:25:56
Agent Palmer
But, and this is certainly related to my tabletop roleplaying experiences, you only know you belong. And once you arrive, and if you don’t know or feel that sense of belonging, then you just haven’t arrived yet. It may be an oversimplistic explanation or even a bit saccharine, but as I am still in the process of heading to where I belong, I know what’s missing.
01:05:26:00 – 01:05:48:25
Agent Palmer
I’m just not sure where it is. Again, we’re back to the unknowns of the world that we can all be skeptical of. And again, that brings us back to the reason and need for escape. So before I get stuck in a loop, are you where you belong? If you are, congratulations. If you aren’t, are you making strides to end up there?
01:05:48:40 – 01:06:13:39
Agent Palmer
And if you aren’t, why not? Thanks for listening to The Palmer Files episode 44. As a reminder, all links are available in the show notes. And now for the official business. The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays. If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion. You can tweet me at Adrian Palmer, my guest Ethan at Ethan Freak, that’s ET and freak.
01:06:13:41 – 01:06:42:37
Agent Palmer
And this show at the Palmer Files. You can get all of Ethan’s particulars, including where to buy his book and a look at his Ted talk at Ethan Gills dorf.com. That’s ET and gills Drf.com. You can see my review of Ethan’s book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks, plus all of my other writings and rantings on Agent palmer.com. An email can be sent to the Palmer files at gmail.com.
01:06:42:42 – 01:07:18:39
Unknown
You.
01:07:18:43 – 01:07:23:57
Unknown
See, Ethan.
01:07:24:02 – 01:07:26:04
Agent Palmer
Do you have one final question for me?
01:07:26:18 – 01:08:00:41
Ethan Gilsdorf
Well, actually, this is this does follow up on one of the things we were saying earlier. You were you were mulling over what what you could do, you know, if you could either have the perfect job or maybe you you have in a fantasy world, sort of, unlimited resources, and money’s not an issue. What would be your, your dream, you know, going forward five years from now or ten years from now, would you want to be, a syndicated talk show host or a podcast, you know, creator, host who has, you know, millions of listeners and could make your living that way?
01:08:00:41 – 01:08:13:13
Ethan Gilsdorf
Or is there some other creative pursuit you mentioned? Creatives. It’s a sort of the creative pursuit that you you would you could do if you if you just, you know, without any connection to reality. Like, I mean, this could happen.
01:08:13:21 – 01:08:37:42
Agent Palmer
So, I, I know I would continue the podcast and the blog because I enjoy the writing and I enjoy the recording and I enjoy the editing and I even don’t mind, you know, like, like I just reached out to you like I had, you know, I, I’m not afraid of that. In fact, that’s a like, a thing I’ve gotten over, like, oh, like nobody’s going to want to do my show.
01:08:37:42 – 01:09:31:58
Agent Palmer
But you got to ask, like, otherwise, you know, I, I, I don’t want to be syndicated. I almost feel like I only want to be successful enough, and I. I know it sounds like slightly counterintuitive. I would be happy to cap my listenership at, like, 50,000, 100,000 and not a million. I would rather a small, dedicated fan base, but the only thing, that I would do differently than what I’m doing now is I would get an assistant or some fans or someone to point out smaller podcasts or smaller bloggers that I could then guest on, because the one thing that drives me nuts about both blogging and podcasting is that there’s not
01:09:31:58 – 01:09:58:17
Agent Palmer
necessarily gate keepers, right? But someone like me who does it because I enjoy it getting the eye of or the ear of or the, you know, whatever of the next rung up the ladder of people who get, you know, more downloads than me or are moderately successful as opposed to like, you know, you know, Marc Maron or Kevin Smith’s, right?
01:09:58:17 – 01:10:34:24
Agent Palmer
Like the people in between us that are closer to me, are always so looking forward or doing their own thing, they don’t look back down to where they were. And I just want to make sure that and maybe this is why I said you had the perfect job for me. Like, I don’t necessarily want to teach, but if I can take my moderately successful podcast of 75,000, you know, for my audience and go back down to somebody who gets like 50 downloads and be on their show and bring my audience that.
01:10:34:24 – 01:10:52:30
Agent Palmer
I want to do that because it’s the one thing that I cannot find people doing for me. So I go, there’s a void. I want to do that for other people. And I would need, you know, an assistant or I need my listeners to be like, hey, there’s this other show I really like that’s really small. Would you do it?
01:10:52:30 – 01:11:31:19
Agent Palmer
Like, yeah, yeah, like I would, but I just, I’m trying to find, like I’m trying to jump up right now. And I just know that, you know, I keep I’ve written it down several times so I don’t forget. But like when I, whenever I get there, whenever I get to whatever level that happens to be for me, I just want to turn it around and help the people behind me, because it always seems like everybody wants to go, go like, oh, you know, like I if I’m, you know, I start a podcast, I start a blog, you know, if I can’t sell it, if I can’t, you know, get to millions of downloads, I’m
01:11:31:19 – 01:11:59:52
Agent Palmer
out. Right. And there’s people that just do it passionately, that are of moderate success or that are of no success at all. You know, they’ve got their core ten listeners. I want to help them. I just want to give them a platform, whether it’s guesting on my show or having me on theirs. Like I just I want to turn around and help those people and I that’s it’s the one thing I would do differently otherwise I would just keep writing and reading and talking to people.
01:11:59:52 – 01:12:02:31
Agent Palmer
I guess.
01:12:02:36 – 01:12:19:34
Ethan Gilsdorf
Which is not a bad, not a bad way to live. I mean, that’s what’s wonderful about both what you do. You know what I do? I feel like because you get to interact with people we wouldn’t normally interact with on a daily basis or for me, in the course of teaching, you know, just get to get some random people in the room together.
01:12:19:34 – 01:12:27:13
Ethan Gilsdorf
In your case, reach out to someone, have them on your show and just have conversations, so important, you know, especially now.
01:12:27:18 – 01:12:27:50
Agent Palmer
I, I.
01:12:27:54 – 01:12:29:20
Ethan Gilsdorf
For everyone’s locked at home. You know, it’s.
01:12:29:20 – 01:13:00:36
Agent Palmer
So weird, but I feel like conversations are just hard. Like it’s a day I. I know it’s over. Said like, conversations are a dying art, but I feel like they are, because there are there are like three types of people that I’ve found. There’s the people that are okay with the awkward silence because, you know, they’re thinking of something better to say, or they’re just thinking, there’s the people that have to fill the silence, and then there’s the people that just couldn’t be bothered.
01:13:00:41 – 01:13:30:16
Agent Palmer
Right. Why would I talk to that guy? Like what? Right. Like, and I know, I mean, you should be comfortable with an awkward silence every once in a while. That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. And you should be able to talk to anybody and you know, that’s that’s just the way it works. I still get nervous. I had my friends on this show and got nervous when they were on.
01:13:30:21 – 01:13:38:11
Agent Palmer
So as long as I have those nerves, I’m cool. Like, I feel like that. That reminds me like, oh, this still matters. Okay.
01:13:38:16 – 01:14:05:30
Ethan Gilsdorf
Right. Well, there’s an art to it. As you said, there’s an art. And, you know, people aren’t certainly sitting down for an hour, an hour and a half as we have. It’s not something people really have the training or time to do. And I don’t know if it’s it’s going to be a generational thing or whether it’s our perpetual the way in which the technology has made a made it so much easier to become distracted and to sort of make it acceptable not to be fully tuned in to someone else.
01:14:05:30 – 01:14:25:08
Ethan Gilsdorf
It’s so easy to, as you said during that awkward silence, it’s it’s like, well, I better check my phone then, you know, to send it in at five second intervals. It’s like, well, you know, I’m not engaging you, so now I can go do something else. It’s really hard to resist that. Yeah. Because because of these stupid devices that we all have in our back pocket.
01:14:25:08 – 01:14:25:24
Ethan Gilsdorf
So.
–End Transcription–
This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).