I think I've played D&D twice in my life, as I recall, and have no other RPGing experience I recall. I've never been much of any sort of gamer, save for a couple of years of some enthusiasm for chess as an adolescent. (Okay, one significant strike: I've always been a video game fan, and a computer game fan.)
So I'm not hardly taking it personally, but I do have lots of friends who are life-long RPG/board/card gamers to varying degrees. None have body-odor, none are impolitic or unsocial or have problems relating people. They're all extremely bright, outgoing, articulate, and gasp, oh my, sometimes even athletic.
So I completely miss what's so funny about such a quote, and why it's more funny than talking about, say, a baseball game. (Or football or basketball or the Olympics; a game is a game is a game is a game.) Which a lot of people are doing at present. How hilarious! How stupid they must be!
Or maybe not.
Really, I completely don't get what's funny. Can you explain?
If it had been clear that he was talking about an RPG all along, it would have been just geeky, like talking about the election or fantasy football or any other corner of geekdom. What made it funny to me was that I overheard the bit about fleeing a collapsing building and thought...damn but this guy was at an out-of-control party-- then he revealed it was, you know, not really happening. The fact that the Special Item has a yiddish-style Yoda-ish name is the icing.