The athlete stereotype bears its antecedents -- fast, powerful, and of stout constitution. I can think of other categories: the wealthy don brand names for obvious reasons, and ambitious smooth-talkers lay the unctuous foundations for political authority.

So why does the habitual purchase of Magic: The Gathering cards correlate with weak social skills and render a gamer's shower unusable?

This I have labored over for many moons (which may be found directly above players’ beltlines on one side), and not infrequently during my own hygiene ritual. The cards will be waiting for me when I'm done, I've checked. I have played, or currently play, a variety of games such as Magic, Dungeons and Dragons, Android: Netrunner, etc.

I will tell you, there is a culture. There is a bacterial culture in the unwashed linens of cardstock pushers, to reformat a classic chess appellative (amateur Bobby Fischers are, charmingly, wood pushers). When they push their attacking creature cards toward you with a little extra force, you will learn to hold your breath. That sort of exertion can stir up quite a current.

Scent is tied strongly to memory and I am not pleased to report an acute recollection as I write. But I flatter myself to think that I may pass for someone who would innocently buy some young cousin a magician’s toolkit for his birthday. You said you liked magic cards…

I wouldn't make that mistake of course. This trend has roots in middle school if I can think back, and while I was not a paragon of social grace in that era, there was a difference between me and “the Magic kids,” and believe me, I noticed it.

Is this a process of cultural norms? Are the critically unwashed compelled into the darkest corner of the common room for not having fit anywhere else? This doesn't explain why they play in the first place, shouting perversely at each other over an imaginary backdrop of high fantasy combat — and every MtG table is sure to include at least one strident cackler.

Could the numeric challenges of Magic (please, it is a wonderful and deep game) attract the autistic? They must, I'm sure. But I cannot form a coherent syllogism about all players being savants; they're not. I'll clarify that autism need not impair one's sense of personal cleanliness - it needn't, but on occasion, well...

It was put to me once, and I think pretty insightfully, that the Friday Night Magic people (this being the day on which players gather at local game stores) are often those who rely on distant promises of prize money and lucrative booster pack findings to fund their rent. Then would come your viable hypothesis, these fellows are not dysfunctional because they play the game. It's the other way around. As against that, they are not all destitute Mos Eisley hivers — that is but a subtype.

So together in reverse order, we have the allure of the gamble, the social perplexities of the "spectrum," and a snowballing community that attracts and inflates on a diet of Doritos and Mountain Dew. Is this enough?

Let's get to what we can guess on the face of it: tabletop games, on the whole, have traditionally drawn them, and if we begin with Dungeons and Dragons, the real-life powerhouse has rarely needed to roleplay - it's noteworthy when he does. Tom Vasel, to provide a less surprising gamer, is the upper echelon of an archetype, and proof that dedicated tabletop players have their own social hierarchy.

Unfortunately, if a member of the A-Clique harbors an attraction to wizards, he probably learns from a young age to keep this to himself. Thus do a community of gamers admit more like unto their own ponytailed selves, and invisibly barricade the curious onlooker.

Gaming culture, both tabletop and video, has marketed itself heavily to boys and men. As if awkward lads needed another nail in the coffin of sexual isolation, here is an alluring fantasy world to which so many women have been unable to relate. And if you found yourself handsome, capable and hetero, would you, as a dude, allow the ripe herd females to observe your presence among the stragglers?

It is a sad state of things. But if my musing offends, don't tell me you haven't peeked into a game store and turned up your nose at those fedoras.