Explaining the Game

[paulsometimes]

A friend of mine has (or had as the case now is) never heard of D&D. Another was under the impression it was board game. Both of these people are adults (which kind of shocked me that the one had NEVER heard of it all. I tried explaining D&D to them and found myself constantly falling short of a simple explanation. I kept trying to think of a way to explain it that if written out, wouldn't come to more than a couple paragraphs. Yet all I could come up with was similar to the whole page essays in every RPG book usually titled "What is Role-Playing?" Any suggestions on a simpler way of explaining this game to people that are very much ignorant to RPGs? Anything anyone else commonly uses for explaining the game? In a way that doesn't sound like I'm trying to explain a new game to young kids? Thanks.

 

[diaglo]

an openended sword & sorcery game of lets pretend using the randomness of dice to decide the outcome

 

[Technomancer]

I suck at explaining anything, and even I got my girlfriend to understand with the good ol' movie/novel comparison:

"It's like being a main character in a movie or a novel. You've got one person who runs the game who makes up the story, and everyone else plays a character in the story. The guy who runs the game tells the players what's happening, and the players tell him how their characters react. There are rules to determine how well the characters do whatever they do, usually by rolling dice."

 

[Shades of Green]

Explaning role-playing, in general, to my girlfriend was surprisingly easy; we already had developed a habit of inventing stories (usually homourous or semi-homourous) togather for fun, and she had already read Tolkien's Hobbit, so the basics were quite easy to explain (something along the lines of "it's like inventing a story togather or in a group, with one person responsible for the background and situation, and each other player controlling the actions of one character in this story; dice and simple rules are used to determine the outcome of actions significant to the story in which some sort of random factor is involved"). What sword-and-sorcery fantasy is was another easy subject - reading Tolkien's Hobbit and knowing quite alot about mythology and anthropology made her very receptive to this. She've even seriously thumbed through the three core-books (3.0E) out of pure couriousity (sp?) BEFORE I've told her anything about D&D - she came and asked me about it.

The big difficulties were:
1) Explaining the hirarchial nature of the game (i.e. DM/GM/Referee vs. player); she was quite fixed on the idea of egalitarian joint-authoring and joint-storytelling, but eventually I got the point over.
2) Rules. My girlfriend hates math (she was traumatized by several ultra-difficult differential and integral calculus courses she had to take in the university) to a degree that even mild tables and formulae creep her out; while I've eventually got her to understand the rules, I think she'll always lean towards rules-light, story-heavy gaming.

 

[Stormborn]

I explained it to my cousin thusly:

"Remember when we used to pretend to be gunfighters or knights and wing and shoot at each other with imaginary swords? And how we would argue about who shot who for hours? Its kinda like that, except with rules about who hits who and we don't have to run around in the yard."

 

[kenobi65]

I've been using something somewhere between what Technomancer and Shades of Green describe for a while now. Seems to get the point across.

 

[Arkhandus]

The short-but-not-inadequately-so description:

Dungeons and Dragons is a combination of group storytelling and tactical wargame, where the players take on the roles of characters in a fantasy world, often vaguely similar in concept to Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings trilogy or the myths of medieval Europe. The Players describe their chosen characters' actions, while the Dungeon Master describes the background and supporting cast of characters when needed, and dice rolls are used by everyone to determine the outcome of actions, based on a set of rulebooks. Player Characters can pursue just about any goals, quests, or adventures they want to, within the context of the imaginary world the Dungeon Master has chosen to use. The DM serves as rules referee, tour guide, and main narrator to an extent, generally deciding what sort of adventures will be available to the Player Characters.

Usually the PCs are heroes seeking adventure, treasure, fame and glory, whether for themselves, their family, their homeland, their king, or their religion. Sometimes they may even save the world. They may rescue princesses, slay dragons, overthrow tyrants, free hostages, plunder tombs filled with zombies, loot monster lairs, traverse mazes, seek after legendary artifacts, battle demons, or whatever else they fancy.

 

[Merkuri]

It's kinda like making up the story where everyone plays characters in a story, but there's one person who describes what happens around the characters. You have a bunch of numbers that represent the abilities of the characters and you use those numbers and dice to determine whether they suceed at certain actions or not.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

A combo of interactive storytelling and improvisational acting with dice that are used to resolve the actions of the players.

 

[Nyaricus]

Here's how I would explain it, if asked.

D&D is a game which is part storytelling and part wargame. You play a hero who can be and do whatever he wants - within the rules of the game, of course. I am a GM, a Game Master who gives the story and the background and you are the players who interact in the world and have a story.

or something along those lines.