What are your worst nerd lacunae?

Greyhawk GrognardUncategorized, 22 Comments on What are your worst nerd lacunae?

Do you have an odd gap in your nerd-cred? Something that “every nerd knows” that you’ve just never seen? Or maybe a game that “every gamer’s tried that” that you never tried?

I’ve got a couple…

  • Red Dwarf – I know it sort of looks like Doctor Who, and it’s a comedy, and that’s about it.
  • E.T. The Extra-terrestrial – Never saw it, never cared.
  • The Fifth Element – Ditto.
  • BECMI – I’ve played and loved Holmes, but never played any of the other “Basic” D&D boxed sets.

How about you? What iconic nerd-thing have you just never gotten around to?

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Wargamer and RPG'er since the 1970's, author of Adventures Dark and Deep, Castle of the Mad Archmage, and other things, and proprietor of the Greyhawk Grognard blog.

22 thoughts on “What are your worst nerd lacunae?”

  1. Never seen Independence Day. No Game of Thrones in any form so far. Never played or even read Traveler.

    If you run a Nerd Cred achievement topic mine is, I saw the third Starblazers series (the Bolar Wars) when it was first run in syndication

  4. Dr. Who…I mean…*why?*

    Any Marvel movie after something like…the Spiderman movie with Dr. Octopus. I'd rather do something else with my life.

    Game of Thrones series. Not my fantasy bag. Gimme a Fafhrd & Grey Mouser series instead.

  5. I haven't gotten around to reading the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. However, it is in my reading queue.

    I know only the pop cultural references to Tarzan.

    I've never seen anything after the first (maybe second) season of Babylon 5.

    I know next to nothing about Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise, and still haven't seen the later seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

    I have hardly seen any of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or its spinoffs (spinoff? I'm not even sure how many it had). Maybe I've seen the first three seasons of BtVS, now that I think about it, but it didn't stick with me. I didn't start following Whedon's work until Firefly, which looked like Traveller: The TV Series to me in its early promotional material.

    I've never watched an episode of Farscape.

    I've never actually read the Fuzzy stories, which even I find surprising. I should fix that.

  11. Never watched ET, till this year when I watched a five minute clip on youtube after discovering they played D&D in it.

    Star Wars, Don't know why adults like it.

    Oh and as much as I try to understand the phrase "Jump the Shark," I find myself unable to grasp the idea, because I can't grasp the concept of people thinking Happy Days is cool.

  12. Didn't watch Tim Burton's Batman films or Merlin, Robin Hood (BBC) or Xena on the telly. Haven't read any David Gemmel, Robin Hobb, Trudi Canavan, and I couldn't care less about the Wheel of Time. Was bought a couple of Christopher Paolini which are gathering dust. Didn't make it to the end of Battlestar Galactica or Lost and I don't watch Dr. Who either.

  13. 1) Comic books in general. Tiny bit of familiarity with some of the biggies, but otherwise ignorant.

    2)Magic: The Gathering

    P.S. — I do recommend Red Dwarf, if you think a sci-fi sit-com would appeal to you. I'd say it has more in common with Hitchhiker's Guide (books, not the movie) than with Dr. Who.

  14. Never saw a single episode of Buffy. MAYBE I watched a couple minutes of an episode here and there as I was flipping channels, but otherwise…nada. No interest, either. I took a horror literature class in college, and the professor used to rave about watching Buffy with his teenaged kids. Whatever, prof. No thanks.

    Hmm, what else? Someone else mentioned Red Dwarf. Again, watched a few minutes of an episode here and there. No interest.

  17. Oh, and Dragonlance. Read the first book, hated it, never read another or any of the adventures (I did pick up the one adventure that had siege rules for 1E Battlesystem, but I still haven't read the adventure included with those). Still can't remember what happened in that first book, either, except that it was terribly boring.

    I don't play video games much, so people talk about Halo or Bioshock or such, and I don't know what they are talking about. I was interested enough in Portal to watch some playthroughs on the Youtubes, but that's about how far that goes. My video gaming interest ended in the era of Darklands and Civilization (though I have retained interest up through each version of that one, but haven't had a chance to play V yet), and only revived for King of Dragon Pass, some of the Total War series, the Pirates! remake, and Mount & Blade. Notice especially the extensive lack of first-person shooter games in that list.

    I should also mention that I am not really knowledgeable about the details of 4E D&D. I took one look and decided that it wasn't for me, which has been reinforced every time I hear more about it, pro or con. As a result, I don't actually know how to play it.

  18. Video games are another big one for me, too. I haven't bought a PC game since Star Trek Borg in 1996. I haven't played Mass Effect, or anything. Even on our consoles, I don't play anything more involved than Wii Bowling. And I've never played WoW…

    On the TV front, another to the list is Farscape. Never seen it.

  19. I think everyone has huge gaps. Because it's like asking what gaps do you have in human knowledge.

    I have never seen, played or done alot of things. I may as well copy wikipedia into the post and say all this. haha,

    I guess there might be really common things that it seams like everyone has seen or read. But then even that would only be common within certain groups. I'm sure there are people who have never heard of Firefly or Traveler but would be shocked if they found out we never read or watched Schindlers list Im not even sure if that has a movie.

  20. No interest whatsoever in any Joss Whedon stuff. Thought Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse all sucked and had interchangeable character dialogue: all snarky all the time.

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