PSA: How to talk about your D&D campaign

[Tiadoppler]

I love D&D.

I love playing D&D.
I love DMing.

I love listening to others talk about their games, and sharing stories from my campaigns.
I even enjoy reading D&D discussions in online forums!

But...

When I'm listening to others tell stories from their campaigns, I frequently have great difficulty restraining myself from yawning in their faces. I listen, patiently, to friends who want to share their amazing D&D experiences and relay their characters' tales to me, and they say things like:

"I got a 21 (I rolled a 17, and my modifier was +4), and climbed out of the pit, but the wizard rolled a 10 and couldn't."
or
"We were mostly level 7, but I was level 8 already because I had extra xp from a solo adventure, last session."
or
"Then we rolled stealth checks and got a surprise round!"

I know what you're talking about, and I love the game you're playing, but I'm BORED. Tell me that Sornag the Imperative leaped from the depths, then reached his scarred hand back into the dark to help his best friend, the weakling Relia. Tell me that Captain Betsareoff learned a special blade maneuver when he was attacked by Kobolds last week. Tell me about the whispered planning session you held while lying perfectly still under the bushes, as the Elven patrol passed by.

If someone who knows the game fairly well is bored, can you imagine how bored a non-D&D player must be when hearing a stream of numbers and words that they don't have the context to understand. There's a reason for the cliche that you should "never tell people about your D&D character" and that reason seems to be that D&D players frequently talk about all the wrong things.


So, please, when you get the urge to share stories from the fascinating interactive fiction which is D&D, share the stories, and not the stats or the combat log. I don't care that you rolled a crit, I care that your mighty blow knocked the shaman backwards off the edge of the cliff.



Does anyone else have some recommendations for talking D&D to the uninitiated? I've been fairly frustrated recently, trying to listen to friends' stories (of an interesting and exciting campaign!), but being unable to convince them to not bore me to tears in the process.

[Kane0]

lets see, i'll grab my last session recap for the players who didn't make it:

'So following the finding of the dragonling, you guys raided the trophy room, refused to raid the pantry, spoke to and then killed some goblin 'bandits', circumvented goblinville and skewered the hobgoblin chief and his men before looting the bodies (including the ring of another lost adventurer) and descending to the purple fungi level where you found a pair of skeleton gardeners and spotted a bear-face peering at you in the darkness'

That one was done in deliberate TL;DR fashion though, so probably not what you're looking for.

[UrielAwakened]

So much of what makes an individual moment in a D&D session great is predicated on knowing what happened in the past.

It makes it difficult to talk about without tons of exposition about who the characters are and why them doing this thing in particular is awesome.

[McSkrag]

In my experience, it's a lot easier for people to talk about the dice, rolls, and mechanics since they are obvious and literal. But RP and storytelling are harder and don't come naturally to a lot of people. Then looking at the rolls and improving them into story and RP in the moment is even harder and takes practice and experience.

When I DM, I am always trying to tell the story. But sometimes I regularly find myself slipping into dice rolls and mechanics when running hectic combats.

So I think it is about the culture at the table and the experience of the players. It seems like something more experienced players should teach newer players.

[Ronnocius]

I love D&D.

I love playing D&D.
I love DMing.

I love listening to others talk about their games, and sharing stories from my campaigns.
I even enjoy reading D&D discussions in online forums!

But...

When I'm listening to others tell stories from their campaigns, I frequently have great difficulty restraining myself from yawning in their faces. I listen, patiently, to friends who want to share their amazing D&D experiences and relay their characters' tales to me, and they say things like:

"I got a 21 (I rolled a 17, and my modifier was +4), and climbed out of the pit, but the wizard rolled a 10 and couldn't."
or
"We were mostly level 7, but I was level 8 already because I had extra xp from a solo adventure, last session."
or
"Then we rolled stealth checks and got a surprise round!"

I know what you're talking about, and I love the game you're playing, but I'm BORED. Tell me that Sornag the Imperative leaped from the depths, then reached his scarred hand back into the dark to help his best friend, the weakling Relia. Tell me that Captain Betsareoff learned a special blade maneuver when he was attacked by Kobolds last week. Tell me about the whispered planning session you held while lying perfectly still under the bushes, as the Elven patrol passed by.

If someone who knows the game fairly well is bored, can you imagine how bored a non-D&D player must be when hearing a stream of numbers and words that they don't have the context to understand. There's a reason for the cliche that you should "never tell people about your D&D character" and that reason seems to be that D&D players frequently talk about all the wrong things.


So, please, when you get the urge to share stories from the fascinating interactive fiction which is D&D, share the stories, and not the stats or the combat log. I don't care that you rolled a crit, I care that your mighty blow knocked the shaman backwards off the edge of the cliff.



Does anyone else have some recommendations for talking D&D to the uninitiated? I've been fairly frustrated recently, trying to listen to friends' stories (of an interesting and exciting campaign!), but being unable to convince them to not bore me to tears in the process.

I disagree. While it can be annoying if someone obsessed over the mechanical part of the game, I don't see why mentioning the fact that you got a critical hit diminishes from the story.

[kamap]

Are you looking for something like this?

The conspiracy and its exploits! (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?567280-(Campaing-written-as-a-story)-The-conspiracy-and-its-exploits)

[Astofel]

So much of what makes an individual moment in a D&D session great is predicated on knowing what happened in the past.

It makes it difficult to talk about without tons of exposition about who the characters are and why them doing this thing in particular is awesome.

Very true. When I want to tell the story about the major-villain-I-never-expected-to-be-a-major-villain in the campaign I run, I feel like in order to tell it properly I have to give a long string of "but before I can tell you that story I have to tell you THIS story"s going back as far as the backstory one of the PCs gave me at character generation. I'm a natural rambler too, so often I end up talking someone's ear off and more than likely boring the crap out of them.

[EggKookoo]

Of course the best way to get someone into D&D is to just sit down and play out a small encounter. They'll know right away if it's their kind of thing.

D&D (and TTRPGs in general) are like Shakespeare. It's okay to read Shakespeare, but he really wants to be performed.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

Do you mean someting like this:

We where a weak group, we where in the middel of a fort in the city we got an army to attack.

We where looking for micale the fort owner in order to creat a new leadership for the city.

4 mecanical big lyzards(raptors, but we didn't know that yet) attacked us.

I as a small female halfling wasn't able to help as all my hits to the vital points didn't work.

The Wizard raven spoted a very big 9 haded monster coming to us from a melted down cage.

I started riding my dog to a bush in the monster way and in the same time the barbarian droped his skull that became a gaint bone creture.

The barbarian made the bone creture to trow the last lyzard.

I throw one of my knife at the monster vital point and hit, the monster starten to smell the area but I was still hiding, after a few seconds as my poisen got into her blood she started to vomit like crazy.
The lyzard just landed on the half dead vomiting monster as I throw my second knife killing in with the second throw.

I will edit the mistakes when I will have time GTG.

[Pelle]

I dunno, I find stories about rolling critical 20s at timely opportunities at least relatable, although they are stories about what the player experienced and not about the character. "My mighty blow knocked the shaman backwards off the edge of the cliff" is also boring without any context or intention, so what? It's like telling other people about your dreams, why should they care?


Does anyone else have some recommendations for talking D&D to the uninitiated? I've been fairly frustrated recently, trying to listen to friends' stories (of an interesting and exciting campaign!), but being unable to convince them to not bore me to tears in the process.

Try telling a story about the character that leads somewhere and has a point to it? D&D being an emergent story leads to much of "then this happens, then this happens, then this happens", which is exciting at the table, but boring as a story afterwards. It is possible to pick out events that can be presented as an interesting story by itself, but a summary of events is not. Requires understanding what will be interesting to someone else than yourself, though.

[EggKookoo]

Try telling a story about the character that leads somewhere and has a point to it? D&D being an emergent story leads to much of "then this happens, then this happens, then this happens", which is exciting at the table, but boring as a story afterwards. It is possible to pick out events that can be presented as an interesting story by itself, but a summary of events is not. Requires understanding what will be interesting to someone else than yourself, though.

You could also work backwards from the "punchline" as it were. This is paraphrased but it's not too far off from an actual conversation I had with someone years back.

Player: So yeah, last game our barbarian was running around with an axe stuck in his head. Didn't slow him down at all. Well, except the one time he slipped on his own blood...
Non-Player: Wait, he did what? How does that happen?
P: Yeah, barbarians can kind of ignore damage when they're all Hulk-y rage-y so he just kind of didn't notice the axe. It was awesome... [note, P is simplifying the barb's damage resistance here]
NP: The game lets you just... have an axe... in your head?
P: Well, sort of. Someone took a swing at him and got a really bad die roll, and usually the DM decides you drop your weapon when that happens. But the player asked if the axe could stay stuck in his head.
NP: Why would he do that?
P: That's Jim's character. You know Jim, right?
NP: Alright, yeah, say no more... So the game is kind of silly, then? [NP is vaguely intrigued]
P: It can be sometimes, yeah. You never really know how it's going to go.
NP: So, does slipping on your own blood cause, like, a bad roll or something? [NP is trying to grasp the mechanics a bit]
P: Ok, right, so you sometimes make die rolls to see if you trip or whatever. It sounds more complicated than it is when you sit down to play it... [P goes on to explain a few things based on NP's apparent interest]

[Edenbeast]

I understand the sentiment. And I also love roleplaying and a good story. As player I usually keep a diary of what happened each session. I do think it depends on the situation. Dice rolls can play a significant part of the story. However, I agree that numbers don't need to be mentioned at for others to get the point.

I remember a game of Eclipse (the boardgame), where the most memorable moment in the game was one guy was seemingly overrun by a fleet with two dreadnoughts and some more, and all he had was this heavily upgraded fighter. The odds were strongly in favour of the dreadnought fleet, but that player just failed every single roll, while my friend with his single fighter one-shotted ship after ship each round. It was hilarious! Even the guy with his fleet could laugh about it (he detests games relying on chance and prefers games like Terra Mystica).

We had similar situations in D&D: I remember one scene where we all had to climb down a chasm, and none of us was very skilled in climbing, except for our monk. The only one to fall down from halfway down the chasm: the monk... I guess it was just the pay-off of overconfidence.

I don't know if that was entertaining at all, but keep in mind that not everyone is a novel writer or a storyteller. Also, if you find joy in number crunching, then that is what's on your tongue. Or as we have the saying: the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.


trying to listen to friends' stories (of an interesting and exciting campaign!), but being unable to convince them to not bore me to tears in the process.
If you need inspiration (how's your Dutch?):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMctztB-vKs

[Theodoxus]

No $#!^, there I was, minding me own business, when this wicked weird fog rolls in, plain as curdled milk, and the happy little forest road I was painting with these happy trees is suddenly, and I kid you not, a bloody town!

So I look around, and well if there weren't these other blokes standing around confused like, and we all ask the same question at the same time "did you see the weird fog?"

Then these two gents come running out of this rather dreary looking brownstone type housing unit yelling something about ghost kids, and where's Johnny and Pete, we've lost Johnny and Pete! And wait, who're you?

Well, about this point, this big hulking figure of a orcish type who had been standing with us just burps and says "I'm gonna find me a right good tavern and get $#!^faced real good."

We figure it's a sensible reaction given the state of things and Ted and Bill (the new scared blokes) join us. We find this old dilapidated inn called Blood on the Vine and we settle for some grub. Well, Leroy saunters off and go gabbing with some cloaked types, but the rest of us gob down some smackers and drink this pretty nasty "wine". The bard, I don't remember his name, took to playing his flute like Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull fame and we get free room. Still had to pay for the boarding, but they accepted our currency well enough, despite the fact that each of us had different types of coin.

So, Leroy comes back to the group and says the ladies have a request for us to go talk to their aunt. Another feller asked us to help take him and his sister to a neighboring village, as the town's lord had taking a creepy interest in his sister and she wanted out.

Me, being of a holy persuasion, agreed to the second, was wary of the first but really wanted to get me prayers on, and asked about the local abbey. I was pointed to the far end of town, and everyone else, not really having anything to do until morning, went with - though the bard (gosh, it sucks not remembering his name, he so wants to be famous), wanted to stop at a shop to buy some adventuring things.

So, after failing to haggle down to exorbitant prices, we reach the abbey, slaughter a vampire spawn in the name of Kelemvor and bury a couple of dead people performing last rites.

And that's how Theodoxus the somewhat brave, found himself in Barovia.

[Laserlight]

A good storyteller certainly CAN make his character's life and times interesting, as several novels prove. But that doesn't mean that you are a good storyteller, nor that your co worker wants to hear that kind of novel. Feed them little snippets, check for interest, and if they aren't obviously interested, stop.

"So we thought we were in Lord of the Rings, right? Happy little hobbits, quaint country villages, rolling fields. all that. And then the road goes into a fog cloud and now we're in a Tim Burton movie."

If your listener says "Oh wow, what happened?" then you go on with "we didn't know it, but the whole valley is controlled by a vampire lord, so everything's creepy weird. The first house we come to? Haunted. The ghosts actually ask us for help."

Whereas if your listener says "Sounds like you had a good time", you say "Yeah, it was great. How was your weekend?"

[Contrast]

"I got a 21 (I rolled a 17, and my modifier was +4), and climbed out of the pit, but the wizard rolled a 10 and couldn't."
or
"We were mostly level 7, but I was level 8 already because I had extra xp from a solo adventure, last session."
or
"Then we rolled stealth checks and got a surprise round!"

Man I thought this was going to be a thread about how listening to in jokes and stories about a game you weren't there for can be tedious but...wow that's much worse.

[MilkmanDanimal]

One of the first lessons I gave my son when I introduced him to D&D was "The game stays at the table. Nobody gives a crap about your character, and they don't want to hear about it."

I can't imagine ever talking about my D&D games with people who weren't sharing their own D&D stories.