How to explain to your mom you aren’t playing a sex game…
[Liz]
(image found here: planetkustom.com)
So, my mom and I are close. Gilmore Girls close, but with more responsibility and less adorable quips. I tell her everything and basically vice versa (so far as I know and much to some parts of my childhood being ruined). She also unilaterally supports me in anything that I do, she is amazing.
So years ago in my first year of Univeristy when I told her I had started playing real life role play games (I had been an avid computer role player for years before) she struggled a smile and asked, “This isn’t a sex thing is it honey?”
My eyes went wide, my head started to sweat, thousands of things began to run through my head. How does my mom know about sex role playing? How am I going to explain this to her now without making it sound like it is about sex (you roll the dice with a big group of other people, you assume one role and one guy has control over the entire scene, I love character interaction o_o)? What the hell did she think I was doing in HS on the computer till wee hours in the morning with a bunch of other people?!?!
There was no time to think of those things now, I needed to explain to my mom what I was doing. “It is like Dungeons and Dragons!” Ughhhhh….. not a good start, my mom is a well traveled upstate NYC pseudo-hippy she has no friggen clue what D&D is and I used the word dungeon *facepalm*. I then went into, what I can only assume was, a three hour tirade about how awesome role play is and what it was about. I think in the end my mom was very confused, but sure it was no longer about sex.
To this day, I don’t think my mom has any clue about what a TTRPG is. She knows I am making WITCH she knows I wrote some stuff for WoTC, and while she supports me and even has the URL of WITCH in her email signature so everyone knows about my game (it literally reads: Or are you a gamer? Then visit: http://angryhamsterpublishing.
How do you explain to people what a TTRPG is without showing them? I am curious to know and funny stories are always welcome :D!