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Israeli Army Frowns on D&D
Big Rob found us a gem of a story about the Israeli Army frowning on D&D players. Apparently '18-year-olds who tell recruiters they play the popular fantasy game are automatically given low security clearance.' I especially enjoyed the pictures of D&D players with swords, as generally the only thing in my hand during D&D is soda and/or swiss cake rolls.
I'm thinking that a few generals should meet up with Jack Chick and have a good long discussion about the evils of role playing.
haha... your funny. This is nothing more then ignorance.
The numbers they cite where pointless. How many people would not qualify for high clearence if ALL recruits went to see the psychiatrist? who knows.
Another case where someone who does something different has to experience bigitory. Personally, I would welcome some good open studies on role-players. The few that where done(that I know of) never found in results worth reporting.
I say this as someone who has play role-playing games since '76*.
*I loath to put out how long I have been playing, because I hate those 'I've been playing for x years therefore I am right' types. I do feel that disclosure is neccessary for context in this discussion.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Something carried on 60 minutes (take with whativer size grain of salw you wish) One other thing you may wish to consider, few of the radical-right, orhtodox jews, serve in combat rolls in the IDF. Why? Because they're religious scholars and exempt from such duty. Yet, they are usually the ones howling the loudest about how it's their promised land and establish these lovely settlements in whatever speck of land the palestinians have left. You can usually tell, when you see some footage on TV, these people are heavily armed and ready to die for their house on the pile of rocks they claimed for themselves. They also tend to have larger families and are expected to control the majority of the electorate in a country where the armed forces are mostly composed of the secular or moderate jews.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm guessing that the IDF pshrinks found that D&D gamers tend to be more indivualistic. Being in the military is, by necessity, to be part of a team and the team has to come first, thereby presenting an inherant conflict of interest which may present itself at some very inopportune moment.
The biggest supporters for the state of Isreal are radical Christians, who see it as a neccessary precursor to the rapture.
:-)
Not that they'd neccessarily agree on much in one-on-one dialog
I was in a combat engineering group (ariborne!), had secret clearance, and was in charge of many men and equipment. My squad would often play D&D or other RPGs during down time. I think it helped us to think outside the box and come up with unique solutions to the problems presented to us during military exercises. In fact, it got so the whole platoon used to play Squad Leader (and other board games) along with my squad.
I think it has to do more with being creative and maybe anti-establishment. My squad (and I) would often ruffle brass when we did something that worked and worked well BUT wasn't by the book.
Oh well, that was 20 years ago. Now the US Army just wants bodies...
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Actually, in one of my pre-recruitment interviews I told the interviewer that I read Slashdot and he was enthusiastic because he did too. :) That was an interview by technical people for a technical job, though, not the generic screening interviews that all Israeli teenagers do. (Recruitment is mandatory in Israel)
However, it should be noted that this was news to me, as I know quite a few people who played or still play D&D and other RPGs (I did, too) and served in highly classified jobs (Like myself).
Also, a prominent Israeli portal posted this caricature about the issue.
The guy on the dragon is saying (Very loosely translated) "I won't go anywhere but Golani", which is an elite unit.
And for the Slashdot crowd, the artist (Miki Mottes) was once the Sysop of a major Israeli BBS.
Then your DM was a weenie. One of my players tried to pull that once. He had a nice time watching TV while the rest played the rest of the session after he offed a character that wasn't "maxed out" to his satisfaction.
Had he done it a second time, he'd have found his seat taken come the 3rd session.
That's exactly the sort of people you want in your army. Clueless nimrods who can't function if the expected parameters are altered are exactly what they should be trying to avoid.
I ship out to Marine boot camp Aug. 1st and people have told me over and over again that when I get there...I shouldn't stand out. D&D players are different...and normally very smart.
You assume that being smart will make you stand out in the military. Well, sorry to burst your bubble but the military has a LOT of smart people, and chances are your intelligence won't stand out as much as you think. Anyone who says "don't let on that you're smart" is really saying "don't spout off trying to be a know-it-all". Keeping your mouth shut and your eyes open (particularly when in boot camp) is the wisest course. Once you've been in a while you'll figure out when it's appropriate to offer your "smarts". Nobody (particularly drill sergeants) likes a wise-ass.
In an army you want drones who can think for themselves but will never question orders.
You got a lot to learn about the nature of the US military. Your description fits the old Soviet military, but not ours. In an army you want people who can understand an objective and modify an operational plan of the fly as the situation changes. Soldiers who stop and look at their commanding officer every time they run into an unexpected obstacle are worthless. I suspect you'll get quite an eye-opening education on this come 2005AUG01, courtesy of the US Marine Corps.
Why do you think the great dictators killed teachers???
Which "great dictators"? Name a dictator that had an effective army full of mindless, uneducated "drones". Name an effective army that wasn't backed by a solid educational system. Killing teachers is a move to solidify a political position, not to create an ignorant pool of cannon fodder.
As for the IDF automatically lowering RPG-ers security clearances, I think they're idiots. I spent 4 years in the US Army as a SIGINT analyst, and I'd say that fully half the people I worked with played role playing games. I wonder, do they think that D&D is "bad" and that hex-map war games are good? At what point does pretending you're Rommel the general become OK, vs. playing Skorzeny the commando? Is it the level of abstraction? Is it the medieval fantasy aspect of D&D? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that most people entering the IDF are there for compulsory service. I knew a lot of D&D dorks in high school who would never be a good fit for military service. The thing is, those of us dorks who were a good fit would have been stuck as truck drivers or something under an IDF-style rule. I think the IDF is tossing out the baby with the bathwater here, but hey, it's their stupid army.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I've had a very Fundie Christian relative who started blabbing off about how roleplaying was letting Satan into your heart with all that magic and fantastical creatures.
In his autobiography 'Black Boy', Richard Wright recalls his grandmother's attitude towards his writing. She believed that fiction was the work of the Devil. Paraphrasing: 'You writin' down things that ain' true. Tha's the Devil's work, boy.' (My apologies to Richard Wright for my crude approximation of his characteristic style.)
Things are getting a little better as time goes on, I hope.
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. --Isaac Bashevis Singer