Last night I was a guest speaker during a PTA meeting at my son’s school. I spoke about video games, ratings and the importance of paying attention to what your kids are playing. I thought it went really well and I figured I’d break down my talk here in case anyone wanted to take some of my ideas and do something similar at their kid’s school.
You know… people probably should. I remember what many parents (including mine!) got pretty wrong about roleplaying games, when I was a kid; I imagine that it’s a lot worse for video games, given that there really is a lot more in the way of objectionable material that’s accessible to kids. Sharing one’s knowledge on this topic seems like a mitzvah.
My parents were strictly anti-occult when I was a lad, so much so that He-Man was strictly out of scope. For some reason, technology and mutagenics passed muster, though, so I was allowed to play the TSR 2d10 Marvel yellow box, as long as I didn’t roll as a character with occult-derived powers. (Doctor Strange: right out.)
My dad was always keeping tabs on me. When I was maybe 15 he had me read him a bit of the book I was reading, which happened to be one of the Dune series. He was surprised at how really good it was and has read almost exclusively sci fi and fantasy ever since
I hold that D&D being loudly and publicly denounced in the same breath as KISS and Ghostbusters was the main reason the RPG hobby took off.
🙂 It certainly worked on me!
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I also recall our parents being quite satisfied with the idea of knowing exactly where we were all weekend, with neither booze nor girls anywhere involved.
One theme from Gabe’s post kept repeating: Get involved in your kid’s lives!!!! Some things never change.