Tabletop gamers love to argue. For some of us, it is as much a part of the hobby as actually playing. At some point in any lengthy disagreement between enthusiasts someone will say, “I don’t know what you are all getting worked up about, it’s just a game.”

It is usually meant as a dismissive statement. This “elf game” hobby isn’t all that important, not really. It’s not worth arguing over. It isn’t worth getting upset about. It isn’t worth being invested in financially, temporally, or emotionally.

When I was 19, I was in a deep dark hole. I was depressed. Horribly depressed. I had joined the Marine Corps a little less than a year before. I completed boot camp. Went to the school of infantry and on to the Fleet Marine Force. And I was disappointed, disillusioned and miserable. I found out that many, if not most of my brothers in arms were chain-smoking, foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, ignorant, anti-intellectual, sexist, skirt-chasing assholes of the highest order. They were really good at their jobs, but they were assholes.

If you didn’t want to get drunk, go get a lap dance from the strippers, play the same card game all weekend, watch porn in a room full of dudes, drive down to Myrtle Beach and pick up some drunk college girls or chase married women whose husbands were on deployment… then there was something wrong with you as far as they were concerned.

I was then, and remain today, a nerd. I was different. I liked books. I liked sci-fi, comics, and Dungeons and Dragons.

I will admit, I was as interested in casual sex and drunken tomfoolery as much as the next guy but defiling myself all weekend, every weekend was hard on the pocket book. I didn’t feel very good about myself when the weekend was over. The whole thing was unwholesome. I withdrew from the partying and wallet draining trips to the strip club and felt lonely.

I had brought my Dungeons and Dragons books with me from home after leave and was trying to put together a game group. It wasn’t going well. I got a few guys to play and it was fun but there was a corporal in the platoon that would disrupt my game every time we got going. He was meathead bully. He loved to mess with me. It was the highlight of his day. I was a private first class and my squad leader was weak. He did nothing to shield me from this asshole. My game fizzled.

I found myself alone in the barracks, a lot. I didn’t have many friends and no one was particularly interested in what I was interested in. I became depressed and hated every minute of every day.

I wanted to die. I started thinking how I could bring that about.

One of the guys that had played in my game, was telling me about a game he was playing with another group. The game master was in a different company that lived in a different barracks.

I managed to worm my way into the game, and it saved my life. I found my people.

I found a reason to live.

We played a lot of different games over the next few years. These guys became my best friends. We spent practically every off duty hour together. We played games; both tabletop and video games. We went to the movies. We went to the game shop and book stores. We shared music, books, films and stories. When our battalion went on deployment to Europe, we would go look at castles and museums and architecture together. We spent many hours in some small compartment aboard ship rolling dice and imagining our characters in adventures.

This group of guys became like brothers to me. I’m still in contact with several of them even though we are spread across the world.

I believe with certainty, that if they hadn’t accepted me as part of their group, I would have not survived to see 20. I would have found some way to end my life.

Yes, role-playing games are “just games.” But for those of us who find our best friends, our spouses, our careers, our fondest memories, our selves; It is far more than, “just a game.”