So, earlier this week, I explained D&D to someone who is like 40 or 50. The person told me she had tried D&D one time with a bunch of est cultists (don't know exactly what those are) and couldn't get into it. So, I decided to try and explain it.

I told her that in 1st edition D&D, you don't really have the ability to imagine and then create a character per se, since your abilities are all randomly generated, and you have to wrap your character concept around what you rolled up. Rather, it's kind of like a Tarantino film, where you portray certain literary tropes. For example the mystic or monk is a direct reference to The Destoryer series of novels, which she'd heard of, and the barbarian was a direct reference to the works of Robert E. Howard.

I also explained how the meat of the game is just endless tactics. The fighters block, the mages cast stinking cloud, and the theives backstab. I told her that it's kind of like if a SWAT team went and cleared and endless mansion. They just go from room to room, clearing and clearing forever, and then periodically come out to resupply.

I thought she got the concept.

One day I went to the local public library where I was supposed to GM a game for the youth of the neighborhood.
Turned out that there were only the two employees and a retired woman. They insisted on playing anyway so I GMed the Shadowrun game that I had prepared. The retired woman played a weapon specialist. When came the time to shoot at guards, she looked at her character sheet, and said:
"I guess the grenade launcher would be the most effective?"

After the game she told me that even if it wasn't really her thing she could see why people had fun with that and that it might be good for one of her family member who had shyness issues.

Sometimes when I have to explain what a RPG is, I just tell them something like:
"Imagine you're in your car. It's the night, you're driving back home through a forest. Suddenly, your car makes a strange noise, and it starts slowing down. According to the fuel gauge, it's not empty, so it's probably something else. What do you do?"
And then keep playing for a while (roleplaying the conversation with the mechanic or friend/family they call for example) and then I tell them:
"You've played your first RPG session. Except that most of the time the story we play are more interesting than a car problem."

Was it?

~J

I have explained role playing games to my silly family who has religious hang ups by expressing it as being a form of improvisational theatre where the rules are only there to setup two things: stop arguments among players about whose turn it is and challenge for the players to over come with guided improvisation. I explained my role as GM was to be the setting in which they improvised their characters, I was the set designer, the director, and the characters who weren't the leads, which were their characters. Finally, as this theatre of the mind started springing up in their imaginations, I told them people had been doing this since the first time someone told a story around a fire with their family.

Done, no more bullshit about cults, evil magicians, and devil worship from them - that's for me to spring on their ass kicking do gooders later!

Edit: Re-worked a sentence that came off wrong.

I showed my parents the books.

Lay for literacy!

The other players convinced her to stick with a pistol/rifle for the guards, but it was used later when reinforcements tried to arrive from the sea. And it was indeed very effective.

Dream a little bigger...

General gaming is a difficult thing for someone of an older generation to get their head around unless they grew up with it or were exposed at a young age.

It's basically pretending with a bunch of arbitrary rules loosely based on reality. They use terms that seem to not mean anything and almost have their own language and culture. From the perspective of generations where that sort of pretending was ok when you were young but not when you're older, I'm not terribly surprised that most tabletop gamers tend to be younger.

I'd bump that age to 60+....gamers in that age group are rarer than in mine (going on 38 soon---those cant buy alchahol stickers make me feel old. ). Alot of the folks I play with are in their mid-30's to early 40's.

Remember those in their 40's experience the Atari 2600, Coleco, Nintendo, and a host of other old school console games. Though it might be more of a local thing in the DC area.

Some links from someone "who is like 40 or 50":

The "est cultists" refers to a New Age-y movement of people who took Erhard Seminars Training, and followed its teachings in life, often with a zealous fervor. I don't know much else about it, other than a realization when I was very young that the intersection between people who dropped a lot of acid a decade earlier and the people who followed est was pretty large.

As far as explaining role playing, this PDF from Greg Stolze does it better than most (link is a zipped pdf).

It started out good, but then got too in-depth (assuming the person reading it is a newbie or novice to RPGs). He should have stayed simple with his examples and not tangented as much as he did. I don't think someone picking that up and reading it for the first time, with no RPG experience, is going to get much out of it.

I like the theater explanation better.

General gaming is a difficult thing for a person of a certain mindset period. You have to have a well developed imagination among other things.

Being exposed to it while young helps (im between 40 and 50 by the way). I tried getting my neighbors into D&D way back when. They just
couldn't get their heads around it. After that i was more careful about who i introduced. That was a painful experience.

K

For what it's worth, I find that a game like Fiasco is a much better introduction to role-playing for adults than D&D ever will be. For one thing, it is built to be played as a single session game, with no preparation at all, so it is easier to get buy in. It is easy to pick up and "smells" more like a zany party activity than some sort of geeky ritual. "It’s like making your own Coen brothers movie, in about the same amount of time it’d take to watch one."

Another benefit is that, for games like Fiasco, the "theater explanation" mentioned above is actually true, whereas for D&D, it pretty much isn't.

My explanation goes as follows:

Imagine your favorite book series. Now, imagine that you and your friends are the writers. All of you getting together, every day, to put your characters through their paces, overcoming challenges, making heroic sacrifices, all of it. Now, throw in a dash of improv theater, and you know what role-playing games are.

lol got my grandmother interested, who'll be turning twenty-five for the fortieth time soon (note that she had bought into the whole "D&D is for devil worshippers" bit)

Then again, that's also how I built my current group. So maybe it's a good pitch. Or maybe I've just figured out how to sell it. Not sure which lol

50 years old is about the age you would be if you played D&D when it was new. My dad build a dungeon that filled a note book. He just kept adding to it as long as he played, probably 20 years. He even named a microscopic species of diatoms after Gary Gygax.

If you were 40 or 50 you probably grew up as a child playing more board games and card games than we do now. RPGs are not unlike those really. They just have more complicated rules and are a lot more fun because of it.

Thats strange, Cuz I was just explaining shadowrun to a guy Im deployed with right now. I started talking about a charactor I have, and realized he has no idea to gauge the concept so I began explaining the game layout, the time, atmosphere, certain events, and events that tie into my char (backround.) Now he cant get enough and is always asking me questions about it, I figure Ill run a game for em when we get back to the states.

Just curious, what is stopping you from running a game while deployed, SinN? Its ok if you aren't allowed to say, stay safe.

I just dont have any of my books out here. And since its been a while since Ive ran an SR game (havent had a group in 3 years) There are some rules and such I dont recall. That and we work some crazy hours, so when were not working, we're eating then sleeping.
And thanks man

Keep your head and muzzle down, SinN! Be glad when you're back with your books and, hopefully, a group!

Danke

And if I should ever find myself in some danger, and totally fuck it up, Ill just say outloud to my buddies:

"Its cool guys, I got some edge left."