Let's say you're in a situation where you're talking to a "normal" person who knows very little about your hobby, but knows enough to know that it usually attracts undesirable people. Yet they ask you to explain to them how is your hobby like.
If you had to, how do you explain, defend, or talk about your hobby with a regular person without sounding like an autistic sperglord?
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Shrug and move along unless they are forced by circumstance to stay with you.
In that case, hold nothing back and sperg away.
There is little in this world more fun than rubbing your lack of social skills in the face of someone who can't do anything other than stand there and take it.
"Well, it's like Mass Effect/Dragon Age/the Witcher except the world is being described by another guy rather than running on your screen."
Hooray, RPGs are mainstream now.
Pretty much this.
Another tack is to describe it as collective storytelling where people play make believe within a set of agreed upon rules.
"it's actually fun, maybe I can show you sometime?"
If he doesn't take you up on the offer then there's no point in trying and you can move along with your life.
"It's like fantasy football, except instead of being the team manager you're an elf."
It's always amazed me that people play Fantasy Football whilst insulting people for playing other Veeky Forums material.
It's like they can admit to themselves that it's the same thing because that would destroy their them vs us mentality and they just can't deal with that.
In much the same way it's fun to watch them sperg out if you claim James Bond is sci-fi.
The films are.
The original books, not so much.
If you're not fat, you've already won half the battle.
"Me and my buddies hang out, drink beer and play magic. Its like poker night, but with more dragons and swearing" Yes we occasionly put money down
The point is that they can't possibly be seen watching, and worse, enjoying sci-fi.
Sci-fi is for nerds and they are not nerds, if they enjoy it then that means it couldn't possibly be sci-fi.
Or that's how it was when I was a wee nipper. It seems to have changed now thank fuck.
Also
>books
Pretty sue they never knew it was based on any books.
The acknowledgement to Ian Fleming shows up in the title sequence full of dancing lady silhouettes of every film. How could they not?
>implying people reading text in title sequences
It's usually boring stuff about director and writer and shit, nobody cares about that, unless they hear familiar name.
are you being serious?
Breh that sequence is when most people are getting popcorn or their last-minute piss or talking to their friends.
Literally fucking nobody I know so much as glances at the naked lady-shadows, let alone the text on the screen at the time.
"It's like playing what No Man's Sky promised, instead of what it delivered."
All this plus
>reading is hard
>but knows enough to know that it usually attracts undesirable people
american roleplayers must be terrible people
>Let's say you're in a situation where you're talking to a "normal" person who knows very little about your hobby, but knows enough to know that it usually attracts undesirable people. Yet they ask you to explain to them how is your hobby like.
>If you had to, how do you explain, defend, or talk about your hobby with a regular person without sounding like an autistic sperglord?
Step 1: Don't be an autistic sperglord in the first place. (this is a very good first step to most things)
Step 2: Be self aware. Remember to pay attention to your level of excitement and interest and do not let it overly exceed theirs.
Step 3: Be aware of others. Pay attention to the level of interest, excitement, amusement, and scorn being displayed by those listening.
Step 4: Have self control. Pay attention to the words you say. Dispense information to the level of interest of those listening.
Step 5: Dispell misconception. If they believe things that are not true, advise them of the facts. Only dispel what they actually believe, not what you think they might believe.
Step 6: Do not apologize. There is nothing to defend or apologize for. Simply share information about the hobby you enjoy. If there are undesirable people who also enjoy it, remember that even Hitler liked some good things.
>it's pretty much just improv acting with more dice rolling.
All my friends and actors so I think that'll suffice.
>full of dancing lady silhouettes
you answered your own question
If he knows the hobby "attracts undesirable people" why is he talking to me in the first place?
>It usually attracts undesirable people
That's a pretty heavy assumption right out in the open. Why would he think that, I'd ask.
Big Bang Theory and it's nerd blackface
80's American Satanic Panic along with the shit it spawned like Monsters and Mazes and Jack Chick.
The stinking ham-planets with the voices set to annoying all the time and the weaponized autism that seem to take up all available space in any environment.
It's not football and if a boy is interested in anything other than football he's a freak.
See a lot of the comments here going on about just talking about it casually or even showing their powerlevel like it's nothing. Can't understand how y'all do that, I mean, I might be an angsty teen and what-not but if I told my mates I did DnD I'd be looked at like a weirdo.
I mean even now it's still a bridge too far for a lot of people to talk about it like that, unless you wanna be looked at like an idiot.
Where do you guys live?
It's perfectly common in BC, and most people with even a passing interest in fantasy stuff (even the dudebros) have played in at least one game of DnD and watched a few anime series.
I think you guys are all just permavirgin spergs and everyone pretends it's the RP and Anime they dislike, when in reality it's you.
Not any of those posters but please notice that OP said "normal" people. I don't think most "normal" people have played a game of DnD and all the input they have is nerds from films and The Big Bang Theory, so I'm with them.
So, please, since you seem to have it all so figured it out, tell me how would you sell your hobby to a female cousin of yours who is "normal" and is sitting next to you in a family dinner you can't excuse yourself from.
Good for you. I really mean that.
My childhood was the late 80s and early 90s in the north west of England.
I had a friend (lady) who played a lot of MTG. I brought up 40k one time and she commented that Warhammer seemed kinda cool but she was turned off by the fact that there weren't women (aka she heard Space Marines couldn't be women thing)
I just responded by saying "It's actually not that bad. It's true Space Marines can't be female but there are dozens of other factions and species with females playing active roles, especially with the Eldar, Tau and Adeptus Sororitas, who are basically female space marines. A lot of it really just boils down to the fact that the company GW is just really lazy and can't be bothered to produce variant models. The Fantasy Flight warhammer RPGs do a much better job at covering this, and I'd reccomend playing that over the miniature wargame anyways, since the latter is just so expensive and not really worth it. You'd easily be able to roll a female character in one of them!"
It was a little lengthy, but seemed to reassure her. If I had actually had the time to run an 40k RPG that late into the semester I think she would have gone for it. Did I do good?
It's like GoT, except we pretend to be the characters.
I actually did, and she wanted to play with my group.
Its like a video game. You make a character and play with others. Only, instead of using a computer you are using your imagination.
Look, if a guy in a remote village in the Balkans can make anime and tabletop look cool and normal, so can you.
I hhave never heard of people doing that. Fantasy football players are kinda looked down on themselves
>things that never happened
>Sci-fi is for nerds
What the fuck am I trapped in 1988?
I suspect user is a bitter oldfag who never bothered to socialize with irl humans since he graduated high school
Yeah man, you did good.
You talked too much. You fucked it up
No he didn't, fuck off.
>it's like [closest normie thing] but with [vague content/quality/practice]
don't start the second phrase with "without" or "instead" as the thing you're describing will be perceived as inferior or lacking in comparison with what you used for the parallelism
don't mention a game mechanic that needs a context to be understood
don't try to explain the context of game mechanics
never sound like you think the normie thing you're using as comparison is bad
don't go on more than 7 seconds about the quality/content/practice of your hobby or game of choice
don't try to use/describe inside jokes (aka memes) to people who don't have the adequate context knoeledge to understand
don't try to explain the context to understand the memes
the only feeling you can express having from your hobby/game of choice are "fun" and "relax"; everything else can and will be perceived as creepy and/or childish
don't try to explain why it isn't creepy or childish, in fact, don't try to describe your hobby/game of choice by trying to disprove the preconceptions of people from the outside
Where are you people from? In the Twin Cities it's not demonized at all.
Hell, our Ren Fest is heavily advertised and highly profitable every year because so many people attend and enjoy it.
As for the question of how do you explain it, I just tell them it's like a Final Fantasy game that you play with other people.
yes, he did
>A lot of it really just boils down to the fact that the company GW is just really lazy and can't be bothered to produce variant models. The Fantasy Flight warhammer RPGs do a much better job at covering this, and I'd reccomend playing that over the miniature wargame anyways, since the latter is just so expensive and not really worth it. You'd easily be able to roll a female character in one of them!"
this is the borderline between answering and sperging.
This
>this is the borderline between answering and sperging.
No, it's informative, a few sentences long, would take about a minute to say, and less involved than explaining what audio cassettes were.
>No, it's informative, a few sentences long, would take about a minute to say, and less involved than explaining what audio cassettes were.
Also it was said to someone who plays a lot of MtG and thought Warhammer sounds kinda cool. In other words, someone who could be assumed to have some interest in these things. Context matters, as it always does, and in this context user's answer seems perfectly acceptable.
>Context matters, as it always does, and in this context user's answer seems perfectly acceptable.
Truth.
If user had the exact same things he did in response to a stranger's question about the bus schedule, I would have much different appraisal of him.
It's a game without so many invisible walls.
>Another tack is to describe it as collective storytelling where people play make believe within a set of agreed upon rules.
Yeah, that really makes it sound like it's for children.
I'll be honest, D&D is well-known enough that even normies get it if you just say "It's sorta like D&D." I die a little inside likening good games to D&D but it's something only autists like us care about.
This is far too useful a response for this thread
The trick to redpill normies into RPGs is heating the water slowly. First you start with something easy or "memetic", like bang! or munchkin. Depending how do they react, next you move to more miniature hard games, a dungeon crawler or zombicide for example. The last step is to introduce them into a true RPG.
I managed to turn a girl whose only hobbies were bing drink and dancing with randoms into one of the best roleplayers I ever had. In a year.
>Hell, our Ren Fest is heavily advertised and highly profitable every year because so many people attend and enjoy it.
There's a huge ren fair not far from where I live in DC, too. Not to mention more than a couple comic and anime cons in Baltimore.
This stuff isn't as rare as Veeky Forums seems to think.
>Step 5: Dispell misconception. If they believe things that are not true, advise them of the facts. Only dispel what they actually believe, not what you think they might believe.
If one can dispel a myth without actually accusing someone of believing that myth, that's ideal.
For instance, arguing how it's not for children accuses the listener of thinking it's for children. Saying something like "It all depends on who you play with - some people like something light and fun and others write really deep and complex stories" or something along those lines makes the same point in a non-accusatory tone.
A reverse 80's movie where the nerds make a bet that they can get the prom queen to play DnD
Anyone who understands that probably isn't asking you what RPGs are about out of lack of understanding.
That's not even just
>us gamers rite?
It requires enough knowledge of video games not just to play them when they come out, but to follow their development in advance and feel disappointment when following a game that ends up not delivering what it promised years ago.
Anyone who knows vidya even that well knows what RPGs are and thus can at least infer the basics of TTRPGs. Fuck, they've probably played a few video games based on TTRPGs - it's not like everything from D&D to Warhammer and WH40k to Shadowrun haven't had plenty of popular, successful video game adaptations.
I'd pirate it
"At least is not drugs."
Dunno man, I prefer to not talk about it. And if forced to, I just point out the benefits it might have on my mental and or physicall heath.
My advice is to just don't talk about it.
Imagine a theater showing Lord of The rings.
Now you are one of the characters and you do a play for yourself.
If you shave as well, you're pretty much done.
>If you had to, how do you explain, defend, or talk about your hobby with a regular person without sounding like an autistic sperglord?
"It's like bdsm, except with less whips and much more drama"
What the fuck - white Hermione?
That's racist! Stop whitewashing PoC characters.
Veeky Forums is not stigmatized where I live. It's more a question of trying to keep my scummiest friends and my normal people friends from meeting eachother.
TG wants this stuff to be rare, for no girls being interested to be the norm, and so on, to justify to themselves why they are overweight foreveralone sperg lords.
Look you're not special and the hobby you like is absolutely nothing remarkable. People have been playing pretend waaay before DnD or anything like that ever came out.
Just admit this thread is you desperately wanting to feel "different" when in all cases there is nothing about you that is.
>and then she played tyranids like 99% of female 40k players
It's like improv except there are some rules to make sure things stay coherent.
I think he just wanted to take a crack at NMS more than anything else.
Or like what Fable promised?
It's basically group storytelling. We get together and each work together (or sometimes against each other) as the characters in a story, with one of the guys giving us the setting and scenes and letting us choose what we do in them. We determine if we succeed or fail by rolling dice, so there is always a chance of something bad happening or something good happening.
It's like if Skyrim... Was a board game.
All the people I play with are otherwise succesful, well-kept and decent people. Since I'm not much of a sperg myself I don't see the problem.
>Sci-fi is for nerds
Every, or at least nearly every, Hollywood blockbuster in the last decades at least has been sci-fi. Americans literally don't watch anything else.
Wait how is fantasy football similar to a tabletop game at all? I thought they just pick players that are good and if those guys do well they win.
Jesus, I hate that more than anything. I usually change the subject as quick as possible. I casually watch sports just to have something else to talk about.
None the less, Magic is usually pretty easy to explain. I just say I have a gambling addiction and show them some neat art. Dark souls, by contrast, is impossible to relate to normal people. I quit buying the new games after preordering dark souls 2 for ps3 before SotFS was released, AND buying all the dlc, AND AND making a character into the max SM tiers before that bullshit ring was added. As soon as it comes up, people are either completely apathetic, or ravenous sperglords. I'd almost rather people gloss over it, I can't fucking stand listening to the horrible "mlg pro" gaming philosophy and hearing about the same 4 builds over and over again. I just want to be a clunky knight playing an ARPG with a large sword, and it seems like everyone else wants to play ninja-flipping pew-pew lag simulator.
1d4chan.org
>"You know how some people act like raging assholes in football games, cause problems before, during, and after them? The ones that start fights or at the very least act like irrationally defensive assholes towards fans of other teams?"
>"Literally every hobby has people like that and this one isn't an exception."
It's my understanding that it's a fair bit more complex than that.
I think it runs like a simulation of season with an alternate universe team line up decided by the players, utilizing actual real world games to represent variables and events instead of RNG.
The parallels are there, but not overly deep, aside from the passion involved in a game of make believe.