I've mentioned many times before that, when I first got into roleplaying games, I sought out newspaper and magazine articles that talked about the then-novel hobby. Thanks to the Internet, I've been able to locate evidence of some of the articles I remember from my youth, such as this one from the January 27, 1980 issue of Parade. For those who don't know, Parade is a supplement inserted into the Sunday edition of certain American newspapers. When I was a kid growing up in Maryland, Parade appeared first in The News American paper and, later, in The Baltimore Sun.
Why these cosplayers/LARPers appear at all is a good question, since the accompanying article makes no reference to them. I can only assume that this was done to attract the eyes of readers. Based on my recollections, many articles like this included incongruous photographs since, at the time, I suppose very few people understood what "roleplaying" actually entailed. The mistaken notion that wearing a costume was part of the hobby is an old one, going back to at least as far as early reports of the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert in 1979, if not further.
In this case, it's especially frustrating, because the article itself is pretty good and includes some quotes from J. Eric Holmes about roleplaying and D&D that are both positive and illuminating for outsiders.
From the vantage point of 2022, it's often difficult to remember that roleplaying wasn't just seen as a weird hobby for weird people, it was well nigh incomprehensible to many people, hence the appearance of so many articles like this one. That that's no longer the case is thanks in no small part to the success of Dungeons & Dragons, a game whose appearance and popularity really did change the world forever.
My RPG experience begins with this issue of Parade. The LARPers may not have had much to do with D&D, but they were a great selling point to 9 year olds coming off of their first Tolkien experience.
ReplyDeleteI bet they are from Dagorhir. It was founded in the D.C. area. Think of it as Society of Creative Anachronism lite with a lot of fantasy elements.
ReplyDeleteOn the first page of the article proper, there's a note under the photo thanking Dream Wizards, a gaming store in Rockville, Maryland that still exists. I have no idea what that means here, but your hunch might well be right.
DeleteI'm clearly out of the loop for LARPing, they've been around since 1977 and this is the first I've heard of them. Still going strong, apparently. https://dagorhir.com/
DeleteI used to be a regular customer at Dream Wizards in the eighties through to the naughties.
DeleteI remember Parade from my youth, but not that particular issue. Might be just as well, if my parents had seen that they'd probably have been even more twitchy about me gaming. Cripes, my sister and I weren't allowed to wear t-shirts with logos or art on them back in the day. They were "gang symbols" you know. :\
ReplyDelete"No son of mine is going to dress up as a werewolf and strangle women in public!"
I remember that issue. I kept it for about 10 years or so.
ReplyDeleteIncomprehensibility: My introduction to D&D was Freshman year (1977) at an all-boys Catholic HS. Classmate brought in the Holmes Basic set to recruit a group in our homeroom. The only takers were those of us who were wargamers. Wargamers were considered weirdos too back then. Our homeroom teacher, Brother Patrick, convinced us to start an afterschool D&D club -- so he could watch our sessions. He thought it was a very interesting artistic / intellectual hobby. Weirdness: Fast forward to college. Fond (and ironic) memories of being derisively called "Fantasy Man" by people who spent their weekends drinking, passing out, and then urinating on themselves on a regular basis. Did not run into any LARPers back then.
ReplyDeleteMade me look twice at the title (Parade being (was? not sure if it's still going) one of the main porn mags in the UK).
ReplyDeleteWell, you made me look it up. Assuming wiki is roughly accurate, the magazine died around 2007. It started life in 1916 as "Blighty" which was apparently a risque humor mag for servicemen (much like Reveille and Tit-Bits), was published in that form until 1920, then relaunched in 1939 as "Blighty Parade" as a pinup magazine (again, for servicemen). This time it stayed in print, transforming to just "Parade" in 1960 and going to topless and nude images in the 1970s before settling into hardcore in the 1990s. Had four different publishers over the years and a convoluted publishing history, as you'd expect for a magazine of its age.
DeleteWhoop, minor correction: Reveille actually started up in WW2, not WW1. Tit-Bits began in the 1880s and has a fascinatingly complex history and variety of content, and included material from writers including PG Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf, and GK Chesterton.
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