Israely army considers some forms of detachment from reality more serious than others:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles//0,7340,L-3052074,00.html
I remember playing the very first version of D&D in my late teens. I was detached from reality waay before that.
Old problem, old concern. I played with a bunch of my brother’s geek friends in the 70’s. There were most definitely some maladjusted nerds (note: not all nerds are maladjusted, don’t go getting all worked up) for whom a strong, charismatic, game personality became a bit of an obsession and an escape from what seemed an ineffective reality. I think they got over it and moved on though. I honestly don’t think most D&D players would be less fit for military duty than average, if in fact anyone’s fit for it.
I don’t even know what dungeons and dragons is (are?). I’m old school. As far up the video game evolutionary ladder that I climb is gameboy. I loves me some Tetris. 
Sounds like a funhouse mirror image of “Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell” and makes just about as much sense.
Cranberry, it’s not a video game, but a bunch of people roleplaying in a setting organized by one of ther number. Think of a group of method actors in a storytelling session and you’d come pretty close.
I played a little in college, and still have a few of my old rulebooks kicking around (had more, but gave them to my friend’s kids when they started playing), but for us it was just a cheap, somewhat structured, way of passing time with our friends - anybody who obsessed over the game would have been laughed at.
Now my older daughter occasionally plays with High School friends - and the same sort of dynamic seems to apply. I’d be a lot more worried if she was obsessed with, say, cheerleading, or had a hard-and-heavy romance. About the only downside I see is that she has a crush on the actor who played Gimli in the LoTR movies (she likes his big . . . axe). 
Shows how much I know!
Thanks.
There I days when I think that there’s no way that Cranberry and I actually live on the same
planet. I thought everyone had heard of D&D, especially after that whole business with
the religious right trying to label it as a source of demonically inspired suicides and all that.
(Of course, it has nothing to do with getting older. It was just a couple of couple of couple of couple years ago that that happened… give or take a couple. 
)
(Tangenting a bit, D&D is, sort of, a videogame now… see ‘Neverwinter Nights’ and
‘Greyhawk’. Of course, as a videogame, it’s really nothing like the pencil, paper, and
funny dice game, but it does implement the rules for fighting and such similarly.
Gary Gygax would roll over in his grave except that, a) he’s not dead yet, and
b) he’s to busyrolling in royalty money. )
I used to play in junior high through early college. Our players were different than your average “nerdy” profile (I was the 1st line center on our high school hockey team, another player was a lineman on our school football team, one of the girls was a model). There was always beer and malt duck by the time we hit high school (you could buy at 18), and I remember it being a lot of fun.
Eric
Well, Hack and NetHack have been around forever.
http://www.nethack.org
For whatever weird reason, Wheaton College, a small conservative Christian college in the American Midwest, is (or at least was when i was around) a NetHack Mecca. They used to have the official spoilers file. NetHack is a pretty good D&D implementation, although it’s not multiplayer. Very hard game, casual playing doesn’t get you very far.
chokes on her lunch
Oookay then. You’d think the Israeli army would have, um… other things to worry about?
Wouldn’t it be wise to screen everyone before they serve in sensitive IDF positions, not just those who have played the game? Isn’t there just as good of chance of someone having a “weak personality” who has not participated in such a game?
I don’t get it.
But then, Dungeons and Dragons and such has never been my sort of thing anyway.
Sara
a buncha guys i hung out with in high school were heavily into D&D. they used to get me to play sometimes but i found it kind of boring and pointless. they were definitely nerdy, but then so was i 
funny thing is, all of them went on to make lots and lots of money from the tech sector. i remember when i was out of college and scraping by playing music and doing temp work, i bumped into one of these guys and he mentioned that he was working on SDI (“Star Wars”) for the government… he always had a brilliant mind, so i wasn’t surprised…
Nethack is great fun, but it’s not really D&D, although it’s obviously derived from D&D.
Early on it was -deliberately- not D&D for fear that TSR would come down with a fleet
of lawyers and whomp somebody. I think its gotten more D&Dish over time in some ways,
but in other ways… at the risk of spoilers for anybody who plays the game, really, where
else can you find such bizarre twists as having a cursed potion of gain level move you up
one floor (a ‘dungeon level’ instead of a ‘character level’). The strange twists of reading
scrolls while confused… all those bizarre little twists that almost make sense, if only in
retrospect.
I won the game a couple of times a few years ago. I think its gotten easier with versions
going up - all the extra quirks that can save you. Once you know them. If you don’t forget.
I don’t do well at the game anymore, I’m out of practice. That’s okay, practice on my flute
is probably a more productive activity. At least, it produces a lot of noise.
Well, it’s not another planet but for eleventy months of the year I live under Bloomfield’s bed (or pile of leaves, whichever you prefer), so I don’t know these things, you see…
I used to play it in college, and we had a couple of SCA types who totally flipped into their D&D characters (one girl started coming to class in her SCA clothing and insisted that we call her by her favorite D&D character’s name, but she was nutty from the word go anyway), but most of us were just in it for the craic and didn’t take it all that seriously. I’d say for the average player it’s no more a “detachment from reality” than reading fantasy novels.
Redwolf
Reality sucks, why on earth would I want to be attached to it?
Wow…you mean we were going to have to duke it out over Bloomfield before you moved on and I gave him back to Susan?
Gu.
As I suspected.
Kabi loku magar sin oma sili no.