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Ask Slashdot: Explaining Role-Playing Games To the Uninitiated?
An anonymous reader writes "As a kid in the late 1970s and the 1980s, Dungeons and Dragons, as well as many other fine tabletop roleplaying games, figured heavily in my life. From learning about various forms of governments (theocracies, oligarchies, etc.) and Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology, to what N.B. and et al. mean, to the social glue that enabled people like me to get together, write cool adventures, problem-solve, and have a blast doing it all, role playing games were a powerful force in my life. The thing is, I still enjoy playing them. A lot. I get together once a month with friends and we play for sometimes up to eight straight hours of epic battles, puzzles, legends, lore, and camaraderie. All of this, unfortunately, seems totally alien to someone who did not grow up with RPGs and who has never experienced the sheer joy of a dungeon crawl. Have you ever had to explain to your spouse or significant other why you value gaming so much, or why it is ok to spend a hunk of time with other gamers? How do you begin to relate it all to them?"
Are you trying to get your spouse to let you pull the trigger on the Reaper minis Kickstarter?
My UID is prime... is yours?
Dont explain it. EIther your s.o is tolerant enough or not. Thats it.
My fun involves killing orcs. Seriously, you have to explain why you play games to people you know?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Serial improv within (usually) numerical/statistical constraints.
Please don't start with the example of "remember when we were kids, and we played Cops & Robbers?". I've heard well-meaning role-players start with this, and it just seems to me that it infantilizes the experience.
Dark Reflection
Well, start by making it perfectly clear that RPGs do NOT involve angsty, spiky-haired amnesiacs on quests to depress the world armed only with a sword that screams "artists and/or designers are compensating for something". If you can get that spelled out in no uncertain terms, the rest should go much, much easier. Trust me.
You can explain 'til you're blue in the face, but they'll never get it. You're weird, it's what they like about you. It's fun, and they'll either see you play it and be interested, or shake their heads and walk away and tell the dog they don't get it either.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
Role Playing Games are really just a framework of rules that you all agree to in order to tell a story. One person takes on the role of Narrator (The DM) and the others take on the roles of main characters in the story. It doesn't have to be a fantasy based story, it could be anything. But the joy is in taking an initial vision and writing the story together as you all experience it. It's just a more interactive version of reading your favorite book. Almost everyone that enjoys some kind of media has wished at one time or another that they could be part of the story they are watching. Role playing games are a way to make that desire a little more real.
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This depends on what your games play out like and what aspects you personally like, of course. But for me, I like the aspect of participating in and helping tell a story, so that's how I explain it. That it's a cooperative story-telling adventure.
The other part that often comes up is that since you're helping tell the story, you don't run into plot events that you fundamentally disagree with which ends up making a more compelling story to me. (For instance, "You know how in Story X the main character lets NPC Y die? If that were a table top, you could decide whether or not you thought the main character would have done that)
Only your the actor and the director is insane and drunk and on drugs just like the movies or Broadway. And just like in the movies and Broadway you are their for their amusement as they play God. Your playing a part and things may or may not go your pay way, that's partly up to the dice and partly up to how well your fellow players work together and handle things. The parallels are common which is why many actors and theater types are / were gamers over the years.
Like many things done well it can be a lot of fun. The influences of gaming are far larger on society than I think a lot of society has a clue. I would also imagine that there a probably many millions of more gamers than society realizes. Unfortunately like many things when politics or power trips get in the way the fun is ruined and I have seen more than one friendship damaged and or ruined over the years when people forgot to keep perspective on things.
Don't forget the fun. Really, seriously, don't forget the fun.
Other people hang out at bars, I hang out with friends at home BSing and playing a game. Aren't you glad its not drugs|another woman|gambling|other things my wife would disprove of?
If you need to explain to your SO why you need to hang with your pals doing something without the SO every so often, you have a problem. You don't need to justify why something is important to you or fun. It's OK to spend time away from the SO doing something that interests you because it's a part of having a healthy life. The SO's "tolerance" of that is part of having a healthy relationship.
Just do it.
Let them be part of it. That is how I explained it to a few friends, who are now vivid gamers (AD&D 2nd edition, there is no other IMHO).
Just do it, let them play along, and explain the rules as you go. Help them out a bit, for example telling them what to throw and which dice is the 1d10. After a bit they will either understand or maybe even join, depending on their fantasie-skills, imagination and interest in the world you play in.
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
It's a lot like playing house, or playing with dolls, or playing with toy soldiers.
Except it's judged "age appropriate".
Oh, and it is NOT ok to drag your SO along with you on an 18 hour marathon dungeon crawl and yell at her the whole time because she "doesn't know what to do".
Ever.
Stick to the basic questing and take breaks when THEY want to take breaks.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's like a child's game of 'let's pretend' for grownups who like lots of pieces of paper, dice and rules. :-)
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Instead of unrehearsed singing for your own entertainment, you're writing and acting out an unrehearsed dramatic or comedic story for your own entertainment. The DM is the director, the players are actors, and they all collaborate as writers.
But rather than explaining what it is to someone, just have them tag along. Bring a book in case they get bored, but they might just want to join in next time.
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
Disclaimer: I'm not a roleplayer myself. But two of my brothers do the LARP thing. And the thing is, it's far more than a game. It's a bit of a lifestyle. Sure, there's some good clean fun and fantasy involved. The fantasy/role playing bit allows people to exaggerate parts of their personality. But there's more. There's a bit of a self-improvement angle in there too. Stepping out of your comfort zone. Skills such as cooking meals on an open fire. Crafts, to make (foam and carbon fiber) weapons and outfits. These role playing games hardly ever take place in a science-fiction style future, after all. When you look through the fantasy and storytelling, there's stuff to be learned and skills to be picked up. Skills that -god forbid- might actually prove useful if you ever find yourself in a survival situation.
Of course, when it's board games, it's board games... Does your SO play monopoly? In comparison to D&D, the former is relatively boring. D&D is to monopoly what monopoly is to snakes&ladders.
Seems like the writer may still have some repressed nerd/geek issues to ask such a question anonymously. Be proud of your RPG nerdness. Shout out loud, shout out strong..
I did RPGs for a short time in graduate school, many years ago. I was interviewed for a friend's security clearance, and at some point RPGs came up. I tried my best to explain RPGs to the nice government lady. Afterward I heard that my friend got no end to grief because Ms. gov't lady came to the conclusion that playing Champions entailed dressing up as superheroes and running around Washington DC acting out comic book stories. This is not something a person with a clearance should be doing, apparently. He did get his clearance in the end, though.
"Every time you've ever complained that a character in a movie or a book did something dumb, irrational, or illogical you're saying you'd have done something different. Gaming lets you make the choice in the story, instead of just watching it."
"Ever time you've ever complained that a movie setting was weird, or badly constructed, or made no sense, you're saying you'd have run the world differently. Running a game lets you set those things up yourself."
Or if you're lucky enough to be involved with someone who at least knows computer RPGs:
"Every time you've ever complained that a video game forced you to make a choice, when you saw a third alternative, you're saying you want more scope and flexibility. Having people instead of computers to game with is a way of getting that scope and flexibility."
When I was a kid, I was such a loser that I had to play D&D by myself. I would buy all the books and modules, but didn't have any friends to play it with. And I laugh when other people say they were losers because they AND THEIR FRIENDS played D&D. At least they had friends.
Humans "play" for a reason. That reason is enjoyment, which by itself should be reason enough. But look one step further, and you'll see that all enjoyment (except for mind-altering substances) has its roots in our evolution.
Call it playing Sims (or some facebook game they may know about), just face-to-face using physical items like pencil, paper, and dice. It allows for more creativity & imagination.
Akin to playing Kick-the-Can became Golf when we grew up or Toss-the-Ball became Tennis, playing Cops & Robbers didn't become terrorism, it became Rollplaying.
-- Wagr
Your girlfriend will never understand and will always find it creepy. Dump her, and find another one.
And then lend them your copy of "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising".
"Well, honey, you see, umm, my old habits, well, it turns I was so damned good with the one-handed dice-shaking motion, there was this natural synergy with D&D..."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Anything else is mere justification.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
I don't think explanations work with this topic. It's not like there's a lot to explain. The issue is experiencing roll playing games. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an experience is worth a lifetime of explanation.
You can read about the Grand Canyon on Wikipedia and look at thousands of pictures, but until you've stood on the rim at Sunset you have no idea what it's like to stand on the rim at Sunset.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Seriously, this sort of question gets asked here on a weekly basis - dear Slashdot, I do something that other people don't and obviously they haven't been exposed to it correctly, otherwise they'd love it as much as I do.
You've got to realise that not everyone enjoys the same things and it's not because they don't know about it.
Explaining can be misunderstood, boring and confusing. I just had her join us in one of our sessions. I told her that there would be snacks, pizza, soda and beer. I also told her that she could just sit there and watch or leave if she wanted (no hard feelings) or that she could join us by quickly making a character for her. She chose to simply observe, eating her pizza and sipping soda, and she left early, but in the end she had understood that, all in all, its just a game. She also loves table-top games, so it wasn't that hard for her. She was overwhelmed by the rule books though, and, her being the shy type, didn't choose to join next time. But she got what it was all about.
You are alone on a beach, behind you is the sea and in front of you you see trees. You don't know if you're on an island or on mainland. You don't know how you got there, you actually don't remember anything at all. Your clothes are ragged and wet. What do you do?
"From learning about various forms of governments (theocracies, oligarchies, etc.) and Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology, to what N.B. and et al. mean"...
Other things:
- reading, vocabulary, and comprehension --(puissant, anyone?) D&D and other games can be very complex systems. The initiated tend to take it from granted.
- rudimentary statistics and probability analysis -- anything involving dice -- savings throws, rolls to hit, consulting and analyzing those tables
- arithmetic -- I solidified my understanding of percentages pouring over the Thieves' table of skills
- game theory
- story telling
It's like fantasy football, without the football.
That comes from the observation that fantasy football is just D&D for people who spent their high school years beating up those of us who played D&D.
If you want a more serious answer, role-playing is cooperative storytelling. The rules exist to give a framework within which the story can be told, and to help determine the outcome of character interactions.
Really, though, it's not the kind of thing you can explain to someone who doesn't get it. It's like sports. Many of us on Slashdot are baffled by sport fans. We can't imagine why anyone would want to watch the game on TV, let alone paint themselves in team colors and go sit on a cold bleacher seat to pay $7 for a cup of pisswater beer. But we each probably have someone we love who does enjoy it. Or if it's not sports, it's My Little Pony fandom, or hunting, or cycling or fixing cars or playing music. Think of something you simply can't fathom. Then assume that's what RPGs are like to your spouse or whoever. If they don't get it then there's no point in trying to make them. Just say, "It's an excuse to go hang out with my friends for a few hours every week." and leave it at that.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
I had to explain gaming to my sister-in-law, who would constantly ask me if I "won". I had her watch the video Uber Goober that goes through miniature war games, role-playing games, and LARPing. I think it helped her to see what actually goes on while playing, without me sounding like an idiot trying to explain it.
Season 2, Episode 14: Advanced Dungeons and Dragon.
Playing an RPG is like acting a part in a free-form play where you have a self-developed character appropriate to the environment who acts or reacts to an ever-changing environment controlled by the director (GM). Anyone who has ever caught the drama bug will definitely get it, and it will give non-gamers a more familiar theme to base their views on.
Lots of people don't get it, the same reason why I don't get why organized sports are fun. I understand why others like football or basketball, I just don't have any real feel for it. And you don't have to dump any kind of a relationship just because they don't get it unless they're being antagonistic about it.
"Courage is being afraid to do the Right Thing, and doing it anyway."
I explain it as a nerd's poker night. Before there were movies there were books. Before there were books, there were storytellers. We tell stories in a way that engages us the most, by imagining ourselves as the characters in the story. As Captain Kirk said, "the more complex the mind, the greater the need for play."
Here are two I've used before:
1) It's like monopoly, but there are hit points and you can die!
2) It's a cooperative group activity that involves creating a persona, acting. storytelling, creative problem solving, and typically some violent conflict resolution.
You don't need justification. Attempting to justify something will simply open it to counter-arguments, which is not the proper reaction to this situation.
My wife loves to watch tv and movies. I can't stand just sitting in front of a screen and staring at it without moving or interacting. She knows this, and therefore doesn't expect me to sit and watch with her the vast majority of the time. She also realizes that there are things that I like to do that she doesn't enjoy whatsoever, and knows that my gaming is like her tv-watching. She used to nag me about it until I started nagging her about tv watching (not to be mean, but using diction to draw parallels between her complaints and my complaints). She's a smart girl, and figured it out. When the time was right, I simply stated that gaming was my version of watching tv, and by that time she was able to completely understand (important note - stop the nagging, the point is made =P). Since then, she's been happily watching tv and I've been happily gaming. Neither of us enjoys each other's activity, but we understand that the other person very much enjoys it, and support their enjoyment.
My wife and I have a friend who's into D&D and wants to play. She's interested because she's a geek, but has never played before. I've been pushing it off coming up with lame excuses mostly because I didn't want to hurt anyones feeling strait out. But a day or two ago I was forced to explain. First D&D requires dedicated planning with a regular group. Having someone who wants to be the DM who regularly cancels for what I'll call "medical" reasons isn't going to make for a good group member or even a DM. His last group fell apart because of that, and the "ultra" paladin personality that clashes with anyone who even likes to have a drink now and then. It's easy in HS and Early College to get groups together because you all pretty much share the same schedule. Late college and adult life usually makes it impossible to get a good consistent group together. One person will be interested with Tue and Fri free and the other will be a Wed and Sat. This is why I've basically given up on a consistent D&D group, and have switched to the D&D based board games. Quick and easy to setup and don't require a consistent group just to play.
If you have the patience and visual imagination to enjoy RPGs, they're self-explanatory. If you don't (and I have to admit I don't), then they're simply boring and any explanation of them is even more boring. So save your breath to blow on your 20-sided die.
Count me as another who would never have had time for RPGing (at least not in a consistent campaign) as an adult, and went over to boardgames. People expect different things from RPGs, though, so you shouldn't be surprised some GMs don't enjoy players drinking during play.
But why D&D based boardgames? I mean, Lords of Waterdeep is OK, but especially original or well-balanced it is not. It's not 7 Wonders, to put it like that. Man, I kicked ass with Rhodos last thursday.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Why would I go out with someone who didn't even know what RPGs were? I'm not even that much of a pen-and-paper gamer these days, but still. If a person doesn't even know what an RPG is, there are probably other things that person also doesn't grok that would make us not particularly compatible. Both of the decent-length romantic relationships I've had (that is, the one I'm in now and one previous) were with people who had, at the time I met them, DM'd games far more recently than I had.
My mom, though, I've tried to explain it... I'm just happy when she doesn't call it a Nintendo game. Cause she does, sometimes.
The Pollinate Show.
I know the kids that created this podcast, and when I after I had mentioned to one of them that what they were doing was basically like D&D (he didn't know anything about it before, other than having heard the name), he ended up joining my game.
But if you absolutely must, here's what you do: Don't change your shirt or shower for a day. Don't brush your teeth that morning. Then, walk up to them, grab by the shoulders and shake them lightly while yelling in the loudest obnoxious voice you can manage: "I AM A GIGANTICAL NERD! (insert snorting laugh here) WILL YOU PLAY D&D WITH ME IT'LL BE AWESOME!"
You will save lots of time. You will achieve exactly the same effect in seconds that you could spend an hour with a carefully constructed introduction to role-playing games to someone who, in spite of a decade of the Internet and popular culture references, doesn't yet know what RPGs are.
Education and problem-solving are great ways to explain the merits of RPGs. For me, it opened windows into design and, eventually, software design.
In elementary school, I taught myself to research, spending hours in the public library pouring through books on swords and other historical weaponry aspiring to add them to D&D. From this, I learned to love research and history in general.
This also taught me about the necessity of balance; a weapon, spell, race, or class that was too powerful would be fun to think about, perhaps even fun for the individual using it, but not so fun for everybody else, or even that individual if given enough time. That said, players need to feel special, so the art to design is in creating balanced elements that do not appear balanced, so there must be pros pitted against cons; an underpowered weapon or other game mechanic would be dull and uninteresting. Game balance is something I have an intuitive understanding of, and this is because I started with all of this at such an early age. (This has even resulted in friends asking me for rulings on games that I'd never even heard of.)
This carried over to Magic: The Gathering when that fad landed; you need the proper balance of cards so you always have something you can afford to play while maintaining a lean 60-card (minimum size) deck so as to maximize the probability of drawing the card you need (the formulae everybody knows are the mana/spell ratio, typically 20-24 to 36-40, and having the maximum allowed number of instances (4) of a card in a deck, so your opening hand of seven cards should have two or three mana providers and roughly half of your 4x cards). This, along with understanding how to balance die rolls in game development, leads directly into probability.
RPGs are also a good way to meet people. They attract really smart people that aren't otherwise good at socializing and create a venue in which that barrier can be broken. Running a game as a Game Master (a.k.a. Dungeon Master, GM, DM) gives you leadership skills -- even management skills, as you're directly rewarding and punishing the players, as well as handling disputes and issues between them.
I once took a class on Tolkien. This launched my interest in linguistics; Tolkien wasn't that great a writer, but he created an immaculate world with unrivaled depths. This stemmed from his linguistics background -- he only created Middle Earth because he had pet languages he was constructing and they needed histories to be complete.
As an adult, I can say that the skills RPGs taught me --balance, probability, research, history, leading, socializing, and others-- have made me a star player in the workforce and in social circles. I am a software engineer who can actually express himself, be it in person, in front of an audience, or in writing. This is not at all common, and it gives me an unfair advantage (a lack of balance? Does that make me a power-gamer?)
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Its a game where you all make up a story as you go along - one person knows what the general plot is going to be and everyone else gets to make up the details as they find out more of the plot. To keep things interesting no one has absolute control over what happens. Players suggest what they think should happen and dice are used to see if it pans out exactly the way they wanted. The bits you aren't in control of are compelling for the same reason a movie or a book are compelling and the bits you do control are satisfying for same reason any creative act is satisfying. There may be more to it but anything else might be more difficult to relate.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Could you share her reason she cares about such floofy things? I've always wondered, myself.
From my perspective it all seems to be about who can spend more money on their outfit, like a prestige thing. I don't think the "hottest, newest fashions" really look "better" than the stuff on clearance.
Is this the case? Or is there a genuine art appreciation or something similar behind it? At least I could respect it slightly more if it's the latter.
Just tell them its analog World of Warcraft. Everyone knows what WoW is.
Show them the "IT Crowd" episode entitled "Jen the Fredo".
Besides being one of the best geek sitcoms ever (and conveniently on Netflix) that episode I think does a perfect job of demonstrating the appeal of the pen-and-paper RPG.
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
Or like an improvised play. Or like a half-written thriller novel, where you're trying to work out how it might have ended. Depends who I'm trying to explain it to, and why.
I got a job once because on the interview form, where it said to state an achievement I was most proud of, I listed a 3.5 year RPG campaign that I wrote from scratch, designed the system for and GM'med every episode on a weekly basis. When they asked me about it, I explained how this involves system design, small-team leadership, group discussion and input, fast reactions to new data and events, and a huge amount of thinking on one's feet.
What I didn't mention were the puns that could stun at 20 paces; laughing so hard that it felt like God herself had opened the top of my head and kissed my naked brain; and the ability to reduce grown men and women to genuine laughter and tears with a handful of pencilled notes on a piece of paper.
What I couldn't mention is that some things grow out of these adventures organically, and there exists no way to describe them to outsiders. There is too much context required, and you know their eyes would glaze over long before you reached the punchline. There are only a handful of people on this planet who will ever understand why: "Range to target?" "B flat!" is funny, or grok what we meant by "Warm up the anthrax cannons, the main speakers, and the rotisserie!", or know why the cry of "Death from above!" is *always* followed by the line "Chocolates from Switzerland!". And that's as it should be.
I'll never understand why anyone would care about the outcome of a game that they didn't have money riding on; the mundanes will never understand why we never stopped telling ourselves stories.
The games run most smoothly when there is no competition between players. That's the highest selling point to parents. Plus they're low cost hobbies (~$100 initial expense for the entire group, and decades of fun can be had with those materials; you spend more on the doritos).
In terms of describing them; just say it's cops & robbers for grown ups. Remember when cops and robbers stopped being fun? It was right around the time when some kid figured out the "Nuh uh! you missed!" line. Role playing games allow people to play a role, and if there's ever a question of whether someone failed at a task, there are rules (usually involving dice) that allow for a definitive answer. But as I said above, the games are usually structured in a way that the players are acting as a cohesive group against (or with) the rest of the game world. So cooperation is king, everyone has a good time, and yes, you can have a mountain dew, just go get one.
Explain to your wife that people play games (all kinds of games) together in order to make a human connection. Whether it is golf or poker or mahjong or softball or Risk or bridge. So, at root, one participates in a role playing game for the same reason that one plays any game. To be with other people and get beneath the surface, to challenge onesself and take the measure of others. But in a kind of simulation of life. Your social ass is on the line, but not totally on the line. (And any serious golfer or chess player will tell you that their game is life and life is their game.) The truth is that the money in a friendly poker game is usually secondary to the social payoff in winning or even in losing. And even the outcome is subordinated to the experience. And, if one thinks about it, a poker night gives the players an opportunity to undertake roles as well. The focus is admittedly clearer when there is a winner and a loser. And, to an outsider, a player's motivation is more easily understandable because there is money in the picture. But, if you can get across the idea to your wife that you play D&D (or whatever you play) for basically the same reason that other people play golf or Scrabble or pinochle, then you are at a good starting place.
It sounds to me that the long sessions have her worried. But you could point out that when guys go out for 18 holes eight hours is normal if you include the postmortem in the club taproom and pre-lubrication. All in the name of sport, of course.
Mentally healthy people play games with each other and that's a fact. It feeds a pretty deep-seated social need. As to why you find role playing more satisfying than, say, golf. Say it fits your intellect and personality better. Role playing games require a lot of imagination, mental and emotional investment, but no-one (we hope) completely forgets that he or she is gaming. Point out that actors do not forget who they are when they are performing. They successfully suspend who they are, but they don't forget. One of the most popular games of all time is Charades. And what is it but a free-form role playing game? In theater circles it is referred to as simply "The Game." Put in this perspective hopefully she won't think D&D is so weird. It is weird. But not that weird in the scheme of things.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Context is everything.
Back in college, we had an oral presentation class; basically public speaking and learning how to target your audience and such. I decided to do one of mine on role playing games, in particular the early history of them, and how they've slowly become more accepted due to modern computer games. I didn't get into much detail, but did talk about the standard elves and dwarves, as well as the fun of essentially pretending to be someone you aren't, in a world much more interesting than yours.
It was only about a 10 minute speech, and at the end were were supposed to do a quick Q&A session, if anyone had questions. Well, the whole room was dead silent for probably the slowest 10 seconds of my life, until one young lady raised her hand and very timidly asked "are you talking about sex?"
It became very clear I approached the topic without even considering that, for a lot of people, the term 'role playing' was a sexual term. I quickly replayed my speech in my head and realized that I probably ended up looking like a completely psychopathic sexual pervert to most of the room for the last 10 minutes.
Improv acting with dice. We're heavy on the characters and story, and will cheerfully ignore the rules when it makes for more fun. Some people hate those kinds of games, though.
Okay, so I explained the merits in my parent post. Now on to how to explain the genre itself.
I typically describe paper/dice RPGs as unbounded versions of video game RPGs. In a video game, if you are stuck in a hedge maze, you have to navigate your way out. In a paper/dice RPG, you can cut through the shrubbery, or if it's too stubborn, you can climb atop it and survey the maze. If confronted by a superior foe, you are forced to run or else die in a video game, but with a paper/dice game, you could talk your way out of the situation or come up with a clever workaround ("It's a good thing I brought this tasty meat!" *toss*).
It's this kind of out-of-the-box thinking that makes it so exciting, and that prevents me from ever being able to enjoy things like Everquest or World of Warcraft.
To turn this back to "justifying" your time playing as an adult, it still spurs imagination --and camaraderie-- for you and your group in ways that may otherwise fail to exist. It's the excuse to get together and network, to throw ideas around and escape the trappings of everyday life. It helps you focus on work and family by giving you a distraction (wind down the stress of everything else and just relax), leaving the opportunity for an "a ha" moment, hopefully that doesn't involve your streaking through the neighborhood buck-naked shouting Greek words.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I found this part interesting:
Have you ever had to explain to your spouse or significant other why you value gaming so much, or why it is ok to spend a hunk of time with other gamers? How do you begin to relate it all to them?
If you have to explain why you spend time with your friends there is something wrong with your relationship. Either your partner is being clinging or you're being a distant jerk. Perhaps you should spent some time considering that question.
Has for how to explain D&D and other RPGs, I usually describe them as "playing pretend" in a LOTR type setting or as an interactive version of Choose Your Own Adventure books.
Role playing games are a form of social interaction for people with vivid imaginations and half decent math skills. It's a balance between left-brain logic (the gaming system) and right-brain creativity (the gaming story), which is why role playing gamers find it so mentally stimulating.
Why do some people spend hours playing sport on Saturday afternoon? Why do some people go to the pub on Friday night? Why do some people spend a day watching the superbowl with their friends? Why do some people spend 4 hours going to dinner and a movie with a group? Why do people go on ocean cruises? Why do people play scrabble or monopoly? Why do people have dinner parties?
My group split into two groups: the parents and the childless. It's much easier that way, because the parents all have the same schedule mostly, and the childless can change their schedules around gaming sessions for the most part. Summer schedules get a little wonky, but hey, it's summer. Get some sun.
Personally I think Savage Worlds, especially Necessary Evil, is fun. Additionally the cost is cheap, so it is easier to get into.
You enjoy it, you're not cheating on her, you're not spending huge amounts of money, and the time you spend isn't causing you to neglect your relationship with her, right?
Who you spend your time with is an indication of where you are investing your intimacy, so it might feel threatening to her that every month you choose to spend 8 hours of free time with some people she doesn't know or understand, excluding her from the group.
Next month invite the group to your house so she can see what it's all about. Don't make her join the game, just to see that it's your peer group's version of a poker night or a book club. Maybe have the other spouses come along; when they get bored watching, they can go to lunch or a movie together.
Why do you want to explain? That's an important consideration here. The only clue I see in your post is "...why it is ok to spend a hunk of time with other gamers?" However, that's still unclear. Why wouldn't it be OK? The activity is kind of irrelevant. What you are essentially saying is that you like to spend time with your friends. Is that a hard concept for your spouse/SO to understand?
What does your spouse/SO like to do? In particular, I'm looking for activities with friends. Perhaps instead of trying to explain your obsession, you should inquire about hers or his. Then, when you know more about that person's activities, you can explain how you get similar benefits from your activities. Perhaps the problem isn't determining what to say, but to learn about your partner.
You also might consider if the real issue is the time that you have not been spending with your spouse/significant other. Are you neglecting that person? Perhaps that's the real issue and role-playing games is just a red herring.
A bunch of kids get together who wish they were going off on vacation.
Each kid pretends they have a different make and model of car, except one is appointed car god, to decide who gets what, and what the outcomes are.
They each roll dice many many times, and the outcomes for certain sets of dice rolls will decide how powerful their car will be, such as structural strength, speed, maneuverability, luck, and reliability against breakdowns, and how much money they will get to buy equipment enhancements for their imaginary car, such as +1 nitro boost, fenders of +10m/h speed, or +10m/s/s of braking force. All of this gets put on a sheet of paper called the "car sheet".
The imaginary drivers set off on their quest, adventure, err, vacation, and do their best to pretend they are actually driving across the continent.
The car god sets up encounters with adversaries, such as random pot holes, bums on the street who randomly decide they want to steal the car keys, as soon as the player gets out to take a quick rest after 10 hours of driving, and ultimately decide if someone wins, or if anyone even finishes.
Sometimes a driver might find additional items on the track to aid them, they might gain more cash, or a sad random unexpected fate may suddenly befall them, destroying them upon the car god's whim; without warning, a tree suddenly collapses on you, your car that you have been improving with new equipment for 6 months is destroyed R.I.P.; car god tears up the car sheet.
In the event any of the drivers survive the adventure, they get to keep their surviving car sheets and use them for next time, as long as the car god for the next adventure does not object, or if their car is considered to be too powerful, may adjust it down. Those that were destroyed, lose everything, and have to go through the whole car creation process again next time.
Alternatively, a player might build up multiple car sheets over time, and then have a choice of which car they will play next adventure, and some car gods might let a player pretend they are two different drivers driving two of their different cars, simultaneously.
Maybe my experience can offer insight.
I can get great joy designing a new digitizer, or building a heat transfer engine. I feel I've created something. It makes me feel worthwhile.
Nothing bores me worse than sports. I have no part in controlling the outcome, and even if I did - I fail to see any benefit to me or anyone else. I had just as soon sit above a bridge over a freeway overpass and root for one lane over another, scoring a point for that lane every time a vehicle passes under the bridge. Maybe even two points and a touchdown if its a truck. Root! Root! Root for Lane number! 3 Yay!
Gambling is yet another common human entertainment that completely eludes me. Slot machines. Casinos. Cards. What's the point?
Recreational boating... spending all day on a small unstable platform? May as well spend the day sitting on the toilet.
After an argument with a supervisor over which CAD system I would be permitted to use at work resulted in my layoff from the aerospace industry, I went to the local college and consulted the psychology dean, and offered my services as a subject for their students. I felt I had good reason to question my own sanity, as I was overwhelmed with what I perceived as complete and utter nonsense and waste of resources. I felt I could trust them to tell me if I was nuts far more than I could trust a "licensed professional", as I felt a licensed professional had a vested interest in finding anything he could treat for a fee. I felt at least the students and college would be honest. They were.
They subjected me to a series of tests. Myers Briggs. Keirsey. Turns out we all have a lot of different personality types, just as much as we have varying skin color, eye color, hair type, whatever. I am INTP. Dead center INTP. INTP often has problems with authority types, as INTP types respect truth, not position. They introduced me to Stanley Milgram ( Obedience to Authority ) which finally got through my thick head why the managers did what they did - which seemed so completely illogical to me. I was hung up on not expending resources to make something until I was confident it would work. The managers saw the economic and human side of things - the salesmanship side - that I have a lot of problems with. I really have problems there because in my mind, I can not even see it and those concepts are about as hard for me to comprehend as time distortions in particle physics studies. I have yet to comprehend why someone would value someone else to tell me I no longer had a job more than they valued me. I realize its my fault somehow. I know in our American society, the skills of getting someone else to do the work far out-trumps actually doing the work. That's why we have such a steep Pareto curve over here. We control the world's reserve currency - we are the only nation allowed to debase our currency by just printing more. I rationalize it by postulating I live in a world where economics, not physics, is the overruling force, despite my belief to the contrary. I will be allowed to live in my make-believe world of energy and thermodynamics as long as I do not cause problems for the people of the suit-and-tie. The shakers of the hand. The writers of one-sided contracts.
So, I was not crazy. I just have a fringe thinking pattern. They pointed out if Tesla had have taken their exams, he would most likely have been INTP too. Well, Nikola Tesla has long been my idol... so that explained that. Nikola died in poverty, a lot of his work never understood. I expect the same. I know others have little interest in the alternative refrigeration schemes that interest me, just as the Edison folks could care less about Tesla's alternating current, much less his three-phase concept. When I saw three-phase, I thought it was one of the most elegant things I had ever seen. I live in a world where a joule has great value, where the world runs on dollars, not joules. We can print endless amounts of dollars, but I wonder how many
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
If so a rough approximation is role playing is FF where each character is controlled by a different person and things are decided using dice and/or well placed bribes to the DM/equivalent. If not: explain it as a board game with dice. Random stuff happens depending on where on the "board" you decide to go and the result is determined by the role of a dice (almost always except for things like Settlers of Catan).
When you were a child you played cowboy and indians or cops and robbers. Eventually the argument broke out "I shot you\no you didn't" and thus the first rules of RPGs was born. The actions were abstracted into semi-random determinations. You got two dice out and the highest roll wins.
Once that was done, like any game objectives were added. Rules were added to support resolving objects. RPGs progressed.
Then we needed a narrative to tie together the objectives and quests were born.
The rest is refinement to those basic cores.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I would never expose my spouse to some of the more "hardcore" stuff within a given genre/hobby. That's not how you expose somebody who is uninitiated.
Anime: Mostly Studio Ghibli ... she read a book while I was playing but caught enough of the story, the ending made her cry. Uncharted 2, Portal.
Video Games: Final Fantasy 10
Movies: (Well, she is into Sci-Fi as much as I am, but I would start with the new Star Trek, Stargate, a few others)
For the RPG genre, if you know you will be having a shorter 1-2 hour session, see if the group would be OK with recording it. Proceed as normal, then sit down and watch the tape with your spouse afterwards, explaining it as you go along. It may not be her cup of tea, but if she honestly sees why you enjoy the hobby that much, it will help out with the relationship that much more.
(That, and its a good way for them to understand how to buy gifts you actually want!).
If you can explain hit points, you're 90% there.
TLDR
Role Playing is something you do as an escape. If you're the kind of person that's looking for that you'll find it on your own. If not, you'll probably never find it, or want to...
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Tell them from what they already know. There are board games with campaigns and boxed sets that set up like much the same. D&D in fact is known for this, and such resources are still available for purchase last I checked. Introduce it do them from a card game version. Explain it from the video game angle-- World of Warcraft is one, but many computer RPGs owe their roots to the old dice-rolling versions. And so on. There's always a good possibility that the SO/spouse/GF plays a game of some sort. Take some time, be informed of that interest. *shrug* I dunno. Maybe she won't share the interest. Take Wil Wheaton; he's written a fair bit this situation. Apparently his wife Anne will play arcade games with him but just isn't that jazzed about playing tabletop RPGs. He's fine with that. I happened to marry a woman who was rolling the dice longer than me AND with her parents (mine never did). I didn't have to explain it to her. My sister picked things up years ago sitting in on games with my friends and now plays all sorts of stuff-- with the zeal of the converted-- far more than I ever did. You may win some, you may lose some. All depends on how well you've been training the social skills and what you want and the end of the day, y'know?
A bunch of people sit down and negotiate rules that they can all live with. The dungeon master is a person whom acts as the lead writer of a story, he designs the world the characters will find themselves in, but leaves a lot of room for changes so that players have freedom to act out their characters however they see fit. During this negotiation session the players also decide upon which rulebook they will use, there are several versions to choose from, and each version has changes to the rules that make them incompatible with each other. The rulebooks define rules the skeleton rules, those that deal with abilities that characters either start with or can acquire while playing, they also define how combat flows to avoid any favoritism during one of the game's key parts.
Once the rules are decided, the players go on to developing characters that they will play. Some players have a bunch of characters they've already developed which only need minor changes to fit them into a particular world, while others like to design a new character for each new world. The rules for developing a character start with the rulebook they choose, these rules are kind of somewhat complicated but explained in a step-by-step manner in the rulebook to avoid confusion. Either before or after doing the rulebook defined character development steps, the player must write a paragraph or two about their character. The goal here is to come up with a believable past that acts as a guide for yourself when acting out that character, and for others when they act out interactions with your character.
After all the preparation work is done, it's then time to actually play. It may seem odd that so much work goes into a game, but it's worth putting in a lot of thought because you may be playing that character for a long time if the group you play with turns into a regular thing. While playing occasionally players will argue over a couple valid but mutually exclusive things that can happen, when this happens the dungeon master picks a dice and some number range for each of those things to figure out which one actually happens. This happens a lot and it goes as an unspoken rule that once something is decided with dice that the players accept it and act accordingly. Sometimes the stats for a character will be part of what helps give your argument a larger number range, this depends on the situation and the player to plead their case on why some stat matters.
Outside of all of that it's make believe. Think of it as writing a story with a bunch of friends. Hard feelings are unavoidable but they certainly make for much more interesting happenings in the story.
If you're looking for a soundbite, you can try "collaborative storytelling with one person acting as a sort of editor, and a randomizing agent to keep everything dynamic and everyone on their toes."
If you really want your spouse/SO to understand, though, why not try running a short game for them? Keep it to a small amount of players and short amount of time, use a really simple system, and make it more like a traditional movie night. Get dinner, talk about the basics of the game over said dinner, and try to stay away from telling too many stories about past games - focus instead on what-if questions like, "What kinds of things would you do if you were James Bond for a day?". Hell, base the game off one of your SO's favorite movies or movie genres. Make sure the other players know that this is about your SO so that they won't monopolize the gaming table. At the end of the night, your SO may not have gained some love of gaming, but he/she will certainly have a greater understanding of what you do. And who knows? You may just find your SO enjoys gaming, and it can be an activity you can share together :)
"Structured, collaborative, real-time storytelling with an element of chance to keep events from becoming too predictable. Generally each person controls the actions and speech of a protagonist, sometimes more, with another person who keeps the story within certain broad paths and plays the role of the various antagonists or elaborates the essential conflicts."
This applies to everything from message-board RP or RP via IM (thank god for ICQ's higher character limit), or chat rooms with dice rolls, all the way to PnP DnD. In-character to cinematic to munchkining.
Of course I'm lucky enough to have a spouse who DMs and highly literate friends who have been writing for decades, so that helps.
"its like Skyrim made out of dead trees"
or
"shut up and roll the goddamn dice or I'm putting your iphone in the blender"
I remember in the '90s overhearing a conversation between two RPGers at my college, waiting for the bus. There was a business-major looking guy in a suit next to them reading a newspaper.
The two nerds are talking about how the Cyber Adepts created the internet to control the world, so it's ironic that the internet is actually diluting their power.
I don't play RPGs, but most of my friends do so I recognize the talk as being about a game. The guy next to them, however, obviously does not know so he seems slightly worried about the apparently crazy people next to him.
Then the nerds start talking about wraiths as if they're real, and then casually mention "It's a good thing we nuked the wraith centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" and the suit guy's eyes go wide and he comically moves his newspaper up to cover his face. This whole time the nerds are oblivious to how their talk sounds to non-nerds around them.
Hide your powerlevels, guys. Normals are not going to understand.
If you're sadistic you can hand them Playing at the World.
I'd just tell them it's interactive storytelling. The person in charge sets down the general framework, the people in it act and react as closely as possible to how the characters they portray would act, then you use dice to help even out the ideas of chance and likelihood of something being possible. It's one of the most creative ways people can interact, since you're collectively creating stories within a world that you also partially or fully created. Or you could just tell them you're playing pretend, but its better than the way a lot of guys spend their time together.
After years of trying to explain it to people, I finally found something that usually works.
:)
It's like an improv play where you play the part of a member of a group of heroes and we have rules to determine what you can do. If you've ever seen kids playing cops & robbers (cowboys & indians, or whatever), and two of them are arguing if somebody got shot or not, you'll understand why we have rules to determine if you are successful or not. Also, RPGs have a referee (names vary) that acts like the play director, script writer, and also plays the parts for all the non-hero characters.
Ok, for the gamers out there, you could pick at the vagaries and inaccuracies in that description, especially if you look at it from the view of one or two specific games. Well tough, it's not for you, it's for noobs that have no idea what our favored hobby is.
All children play role playing games of some sort. So "unitiated" here can be taken to mean "had no childhood".
"Remember when you were kids and used to play forts with the sofa cushions, and kill monsters? It's like that, but at the kitchen table with Red Bull and chips."
Here is how I do it :
- "So you want to know what roleplaying game is ? ok. picture this : you are driving in your car on a small road lost in the countryside. you were supposed to go to a friend's house, but obviously you got lost. It's getting dark outside, and rainy. A cold wind is tearing down the last leaves from the trees. Suddenly, you hear a weird noise in your engine and your control of the vehicle is not so good. What do you do ? ... I pull over the side of the road and step out of my car
- ok, errr
- right. after a few hundred meters struggling with your car, you find a small track leaving the road towards a wood. You park there and step outside. You tighten your collar as a few cold drops fall on your neck. What do you do ?
- I open the hood of the car and try to find the problem.
- You get to the front of your car and search for the lever to open the hood. You pull it and it goes "klang" as it opens. But you heard something else. You are not sure. It was just at the same time as you opened the hood, maybe it's just your imagination. It seemed to come from the forest behind you. The hood is opened now. What do you do ?"
I like to use the hunting analogy because, to me, role-playing behavior has a lot in common with ancestral group hunting patterns. The game is oriented toward acquiring goods (treasure) by a pack of hunters (adventurers) who track their prey (monsters) and bring them down through the use of weapons (+magic) and tactics. There's other aspects of hunting in play: group bonding, sharing of war stories, exchanging food and drinks, discussing tactics, and so forth. So you could just tell her it's like a hunting simulation. If I may be so bold, the likeness to hunting may even be why we enjoy it so much.
If your SO has read Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or something similar, ask them if they've ever imagined themselves as part of the story. Do they envision themselves as Harry, Hermione, Ginny, or Gandalf? Do they ever think about fighting orcs like Aragorn, Eowyn, or Legolas? Role-playing is like that, just a bit more formalized. The DM is the author of the story, controlling the minor characters, but the players representing the stars contribute by describing what their characters do. But instead of just being able to say "I slide down the stairs on a shield, shooting and killing an orc each time." you need to roll dice and the better you roll, the more successful you are at the action you described your character taking.
If they haven't read HP or LOTR, use the metaphor of a game as an improv movie or TV show. The DM is the director, and controls most of what's going on in the game, but the players control the main characters and describe what those main characters do. In a live-action role playing game (or LARP) the players actually act as their characters; in a non-LARP RPG they instead just describe what their characters do.
The elevator pitch here is that it's a "Poker night for geeks".
The best way to actually explain it that I've found is to just sit the person down and watch "The Gamers: Dorkness Rising". http://deadgentlemen.com/projects/the-gamers-series/dorkness-rising/ It's actually funny and enjoyable without knowing role playing previously, and basically explains what role playing is (and more importantly, what the appeal is) without getting bogged down in the lingo.
The way I explain it (now) - It's like World of Warcraft, but instead of a computer/s doing the visual stuff, it all happens in the heads of those playing the game. A bit like how stories around a camp fire or on radio used to be before television did the images for everyone.
The popularity of WoW and other games of that nature prove that it can be understood by millions. They may not nec. like it or love it, in the same way that some people like some sports and hate others, or how some people like certain genres of fiction books but hate others, but if they can understand liking something (anything), then they should be able to accept that you like to play games that take place in your head rather than on the screen etc.
The way I used to explain it - it's like a book/movie, except you & you're friends are the characters.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
I always just explain it as playing a video game, except you do all of the math by hand and dice, and make up the story rather than having to choose the options given to you by a video game. Seems to make sense to most people I've told it to.
The problem with explaining role playing games is that everyone is different. More so that movies, books or other such media, a roleplaying game can be what ever you make it. I have friends who will flatly refuse to play any game that actually involves dice rolling, whereas others still like the dungeon bash style games which are essentially elaborate board games. Some like melodrama, others like politics, others simply like the problem solving. All of these aspects can be included.
To answer the original question, I would start by sitting back and thinking about what you get out of the game and explaining that (like godrik did with his excellant explination of fashion, which taught me some things). Then attempt to explain that the style of a game reflects the people playing it and the person running it. A game about child-like fairies is going to be quite different from a game about spy vs spy action at the height of the Cold War, which is going to be different from a classic D&D dungeon bash. Just as a horror film is very different from an action film.
To me it is all about the wide variety of human interaction, reguardless of genre, setting or style of game, so I can enjoy nearly any type of game.
Show them the "Astropia" movie :-)