It's nearly impossible to enforce actual consequences in video games at the moment, but at a table, sitting face-to-face across a tabletop game, or even playing at a LAN party, sportsmanship matters.
I'm guess I'm up to about 70% of normal, which is a real relief. My doctor gave me clearance to go out in public again, so I've been able to go to the store and help out a little bit around the house.
Even when I was little and going on auditions, it was clear who was there because they wanted to be there, and who was there because their stage parents were making them be there. There was a major difference.
Even when I was little, people would always ask me if I wanted to be a movie star, and I would always say, 'No, I just want to be an actor.'
I spent a lot of my childhood not fitting in, in a lot of different ways.
I was obsessed with 'Ghostbusters.'
People who don't want to give a creator money are never going to give a creator money.
When you say a 'former child star,' you may as well say 'failed child star.'
It probably wasn't until I was a freshman in high school and I met the people who became my gaming group that I finally found people who were weird like I was: that loved reading and playing games and not just watching a science fiction or fantasy movie but talking all about it.
I'm basically a professional nerd, and I'm still not cool. I'm around people who are cool sometimes, and I know I'm not them. But that's OK; I don't care.
Anonymity, in some cases a key civil liberty, also enables society's worst actors.
I was lucky to have been a seven-year-old kid when I saw 'Star Wars.'
One of the things that I've never seen in tabletop gaming is this juvenile notion that the existence of a game that I don't like, or the existence of a gamer who's different than me, threatens my very existence and the very existence of my hobby.
I'm very lucky in that I was inspired by science fiction while I was a little kid, and I was interested in science and technology and was encouraged to pursue those interests.
To understand a field, you look at its arts. Arts can be cautionary as well as inspiring.
When I was a boy, I was called a nerd all the time - because I didn't like sports, I loved to read, I liked math and science, I thought school was really cool - and it hurt a lot. Because it's never OK when a person makes fun of you for something you didn't choose. You know, we don't choose to be nerds.
I really try my best to be the person I want other people to be.
I'm privileged to occasionally stand on a table, and people listen to what I say, and in those moments, it's important to me that I have something to say and that I honor it.
