Pizza
I like to let my geek flag fly high and free. Talk to me for ten minutes and chances are that gaming will enter the conversation. That might have something to do with my status as a comic writer / game designer / aspiring academic, but it might be a generational thing as well.
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but one of my gaming groups is Laurel’s dad’s group. These are the gamers that had to live through the satanic panic. They cut their teeth on polyhedral dice when “geek is chic” was most decidedly not a popular phrase. I can’t imagine what that must have been like, but I am thankful that Chick tracts and bizarre 700 club PSAs are artifacts of a distant past. That said, this hobby of ours still isn’t exactly mainstream.
Today’s comic is based off of a work experience I had. I was enjoying a personal call in the break room, describing my campaign to an old college buddy who’d called out of the blue. I don’t remember exactly what was said, but my coworkers took away a few select phrases. Among them were “in my basement,” “torture victims,” and “a bunch of demons.” That took some explaining afterwards.
That particular example may be extreme, but I’m willing to bet every one of us has had to explain roleplaying to a bewildered friend or family member. “No, it isn’t a cult. No, we don’t hit each other with fake swords. No, I’ve never shouted lighting bolt while pelting my buddies with beanbags.”
How about it? Have you ever had a difficult time explaining this hobby of ours to the uninitiated? Any comical misunderstandings to divulge? Tell us your tale in the comments!
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I remember meeting a friend’s sister one time about when I was just starting tabletop gaming, and was pretty wound up from the fight our group had had with a white dragon and several elves and some gnomes I think. I spent several minutes telling her about everything we’d done in excruciating detail and it took way to long for me to pick up on the “uh huh” and “oh really” and “isn’t that nice”. I was geeking out over it while she was bored out of her mind.
Ultimately it was a good lesson for me that I have to pay more attention some times to other people.
The whole “you had to be there” thing is a struggle for RPGers. It’s like writing book blurbs. You don’t want to tell the whole story, but you want to explain enough to sound intriguing. That’s not an easy thing to do in a few short sentences.
Much of my hobby life can be explained by “Well it’s like playing a video game or a board game with people in the same room, but way more complicated.”
Hypothetical coworker: “Is it like Risk? That game is pretty complicated.”
Board-game clubs are becoming more popular these days, maybe compare it to that. Not everyone will have heard of things like Settlers of Catan or Pandemic, but some people might. Especially if you compare it to some of the more cooperative boardgames.
Yah. “It’s just like this game you know, but…” is a solid way to go. Unfortunately, it’s given me this strange craving to try a 1920’s realty themed one shot.
Phew luckly i live in Europe (Austria), and People mostly just don’t care what you talk about. I swear you can discuss the weirdest Stuff, and People won’t give you a second look. At worst they have a WTF moment, for a second, but then they shrug and are like, well doesn’t concern me anyway.
I can’t imagin how it is oversees with in the USA, i heard that some People there are rather uptight, and that some weirdos even thought D&D was the Work of the Devil or something,…
Depends where you are in the US. It’s a rather big place, and attitudes towards this type of thing or even talking about your hobbies can vary quite a bit from region to region.
The people get stupider the further you get from the coast
Hit those “Chick tracts” and “700 club PSAs” links in the blog. Those are real things. They were created in earnest. Most of that attitude has died away with time, but there is still an underlying unease about D&D in some quarters.
My go to description is “collaberative story telling.” It’s like writing your own book, except you and your friends are the main characters. So when I describe sessions to people, I try to do it like I’m telling them about a book I like. The main difference is when describing something a player did that was really stupid, where I switch to like I’m describing a video game. Still, I have gotten my share of weird looks when telling people if the time the players dropped magically sleeping pirates overboard, attracting the attention of a megaladon eagle shark in the process.
Now see, I think that “we poisoned the rum and fed ’em to sharks” is pithy enough to work. Where I think you start getting into trouble is “megaladon eagle shark.” To most folks, that’s ancient psychic tandem war elephant territory.
http://adventuretime.wikia.com/wiki/Ancient_Psychic_Tandem_War_Elephant
Yeah, when you start having to offer explanations for your explanations, that’s when people start to lose the thread of where you’re going and if you don’t find a way to cut it short some people stop thinking “fan” and start thinking “weirdo”.
Which can be tough for gamers who tend to favor a high degree of accuracy. And I’m not just talking about mechanics- I’m sure we’ve all had moments when the group was trying to remember the exact wording of a prophecy an NPC said once several sessions ago, or we have a riddle that hinges on the use of a particular preposition.
True that. If you look at something like DnDGreentext or RPG Horror Stories…
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDGreentext/
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/
…You start getting these long accounts with highly stylized techniques. I’m thinking that “be me” phrase in the former and the need to introduce the full cast of characters up front in the latter. That is not conventional storytelling. It can be used to good effect, but it sure isn’t going to sell the hobby to the uninitiated.
Not related to the question, but I love how the pizza boy is a goblin
I’m hoping Pizza Delivery Warg shows up on Laurel’s sketch feed one day soon.
Well personally I can mostly explain tabletop as this, “you can have doom-guy, a trio of Spanish inquisitors and a crusader team up to fight hell and dragons and anything between.” Recently I have begun comparing it to darkest dungeons where its a group of people explore a dungeon or do an objective together while fighting enemies along the way to complete there objective.
While the group fights among themselves for who wants the loot, who wants to the glory and who wants to see if they can try to ride the giant demon bear hybrid…That last one may or may not be me.
I can empathize with riding the giant demon bear. My steed happened to be a giant mutant boar, but it’s the same principle.
I’ve certainly had my share of “Whaaaaat????” looks from people nearby while talking to someone else about a gaming experiencing, knowing they only heard/understood something particularly weird.
Then again, roleplaying is so full of “you had to be there” and “yeah, it actually just WAS that weird in the moment too” situations that even talking to other roleplayers you can get a lot of “whhhhaaaaatttttt???” reactions.
Which is kind a part of the joy of roleplaying, that we just let ourselves go nuts sometimes and dive headfirst into the weirdest.
We are all Lewis Black: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ0s0KUUpxo
I’ve been more amazed by how many people I mention it to say, “Oh, I played that once back in the 70s/80s.”
Unrelated, but, I have a hard time following this comic. What exactly is happening?
I think the team is fighting a trio of vampire-ladies (with various degrees of success) in a crypt of sorts, and they ordered a pizza but the delivery-boy is not a high-level adventurer and totally not equipped to deal with picking locks and avoiding traps and fighting the various spookies that would be required to actually deliver said pizza.
I also get the impression that the crypt is somewhat stylized, so the group might be a bit farther in than just 2 short flights of stairs.
We had to cut some dialogue due to space / complex background. I think the joke may have been lost in the process.
The gag is basically, “Hey pizza boy… Why don’t you bring that hot box of pizza down to our dungeon? All these sexy vamp chicks are a little tied up at the moment.” I’ve had more than one person get wide-eyed and freaked out when they heard me mention the phrase “my dungeon.” To some people, ‘dungeon’ implies more of a “50 Shades of Gray” vibe than “D&D.”
Sigh… I thought the scroll-over might have been enough to get the point across, but it looks like that wasn’t the case. In retrospect, this is one of those comics that needed to be workshopped a littler longer before making it to the page. Oh well.
I think the comic might have benefited more from being double-sized vertically, and as you scrolled down you saw all the obstacles the group had gone through. I know that would have required a different format, though.
I’ve never had the “dungeon” problem, but I do remember describing my monk-character to a friend once, and they were very confused because while I was playing a brawling shaolin-baddass, they were picturing a religious hermit: http://medieval-contol.weebly.com/uploads/3/1/6/5/31652571/1869179.jpg?197
Also, who is the Fighter’s cell-plan provider? I think I might want to switch- I lose the signal every time I walk under a tree, while he’s still got a clear call going through despite being under literally tons of stone and dirt.
😛
Scry-Phone offers superior coverage:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/scheduling-conflicts
The monk class is very very poorly named. The archetype it represents is barely suggested by the class name at all. Hell, even if they were to specify a buddhist monk I would be more likely to picture someone like the Dalai Lama.
Personally, I would have called it the “Kung-Fu Master” or the “Karate Guy” or something.
The game designers really dropped the ball on this one.
I think the goblin represents a guy coming to deliver a pizza to the people actually playing the game
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/012/132/thatsthejoke.jpg
Dang. I really should have workshopped this one a little more. Sad times.
You know, they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, so I wonder how many goths and metalheads the hobby picked up as a direct result of the satanic panic
If only Wizards would spring for some new market research. The old stuff is (apparently) problematic:
http://trustrum.com/wotc-market-research/
I read an account of a game where the DM killed off a favorite NPC during a session, and the next day at the local BigBoxStore one of the players was giving him a bad time about it. “Why’d you have to kill ‘Sandy’? I really liked her!”. The out-of-uniform police officer the next aisle over had some questions, but ultimately ended up joining the group for a session or two.
Similarly, NEVER plan a “Run” in public for a Shadowrun game. Building blueprints combined with talk of modern weapons and explosives… it’s just not a good thing to have uniformed Concerned Citizens overhear.
Cyberpunk is a very serious thought crime:
http://www.sjgames.com/SS/
Arg. “Uniformed” is way too close to “uninformed”. I really meant “uninformed Concerned Citizens” there…
When I was in Tech-School at Keesler Air Force Base, I was studying Electronics. I also participated in several different RPGs. One of them was a futuristic space game. I was in the study hall working on an android design for the game, when another airman came up and said, “What are you studying?” His eyes got big as he looked at the open book and read the titles “Android design and the abilities of Positronic Brains”.
I quickly closed the book and said, “It’s classified!”
I kept this up for over a week, with him whispering to others about me whenever he saw me. Then I invited him to play that game. He called me a few names, eventually we became pretty good friends.
That is one of the better gaming stories I’ve read in a while. Well played, dude!
First time reader binging through your archive! Really enjoying the comic so far!
I just thought I should mention that the “moral panic” is still alive and well in certain parts of the U.S. The region I grew up in believed D&D was synonymous with Demon worship, honestly. Even though my parents raised me on D&D (since age 6) I was taught that I absolutely cannot discuss it with others without tripping all sorts of exciting red flags. I’ve moved to a much more open-minded region and am now happily DMing two campaigns, but it’s still quite the surprise to see my friends cheerfully talking about D&D to acquaintances who don’t play.
Welcome to the comic. Please enjoy your binge. 🙂
I lived in Alabama for a while as a kid. The closest I ever came to moral panic was when my mom object to the art on this guy:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=6079&type=card
It was always “you’re a nerd” rather than “you’re a satanist” for me. Did you ever try and discuss it and wind up triggering those red flags your parents warned you about?
I kept a low profile, so thankfully no, I never wound up triggering any of those red flags. That being said, even those I was born in ’92, I remember receiving multiple “chick tracts” on Halloween during senior year of highschool. That and the kerfuffle between concerned parents and our school library over purchasing Harry Potter books.
I just played D&D with my family and a very close friend exclusively til after college. Then my fiance’s coworkers found out I had DMed in the past and persuaded me to run a game for them. Now we’re conning our way into the assassins’ guild and founding new religions.
Just finished reading all of your comics so far. Well done! You and Laurel have earned yourselves a new steady reader at the very least.
Huzzah! Happy to have you. We update Mondays and Fridays.
I saw my first IRL Chick tract walking around Old Town in Fort Collins, CO a few months back. I thought it was a handbill for a new bar or something. When we realized what it was my buddies and I got a pretty good laugh out of the fact that these things continue to exist. Then we tossed it in the trash and went on our merry. It’s frightening to think that there are places where that mess is still taken seriously.
My uncle has written and now edits gaming manuals and books. I’ve never had to explain much to anyone, really. Actually, thinking back, I almost feel like I’ve always known what it involved and the like.
I don’t go into great detail. “I run story-based games, over the internet” is about the most that most people will hear about it. Sometimes I will suggest “think of it as a group creative writing project”.
I mean, do other people really need to know? If I ever find a partner I suppose she’d need a better explanation, but I tend to leave the detail out on my first few dates.
It’s a case of judging your audience I suppose, but I find that “I play D&D” doesn’t have much stigma attached. As long as you don’t dwell on it and bring it up in conversation, I find that most people are interested in the hobby. “Oh, D&D. I’ve heard of it, but never really sat down to give it a try. Sounds fun!”
My gaming group has had moments where one of us (usually me) points out how weird our conversation must sound to anyone listening. Especially when we go a while without mentioning the species of the people we killed.
I think that i haven’t had to explain it in a long time, but back then i had a explanation prepared for older people (we had our satanic panic here too but on 1994-1999): it is like in a theater but with lots of improvisation. Worked like a charm and even grandmas saw it positively.
What i have a lot more difficulty explaining is what i studied at college due to some bad fame it has. Nowadays i just say it is like mixing engineering with company management. It is not exactly the truth, but it is easier to explain and leads to a lot less misunderstandings.