D&D stories are impossible to explain

[MikeRoxTheBoat]

While my Goblin Shadow Monk was dodging hate fueled lasers from our nemesis, a plane shifting bear we had accidentally doomed to Pandemonium, and dealing with the time and reality warping properties of the current plane of the abyss we were on that was causing our spells to generate random effects instead of the intended spell effects, our sorcerer made the offhand comment that this situation would be impossible to explain to anyone outside the game.

I came to the realization that this was true of almost all D&D game stories. I remember that for a long time I was hesitant to try D&D 'cause every story I heard had some weird, implausible, or absurd element that they seemed to take very seriously, but seemed silly to me. The problem is that people usually tell you the punchline, or the ending scenario, but it's hard to portray the steps that it took to get there. Every weird end game story always starts as a series of seemingly rational (sometimes) choices made at the time over the course of weeks and months of investment that snowball into something absurd that, from the player's perspective, makes absolute sense in the context of their game and experiences, but ends up being incredibly difficult to explain to an outsider due to all the twists and turns it took to get there.

Just a realization I had, that I'm sure many people have eventually come to after dedicating anytime to D&D. It's definitely something I'll keep in mind now when my roommate starts explaining that the reason their castle has indoor plumbing is because they had to build an elaborate pipe system to funnel water from a nearby river into the basement where they'd trapped three vampires that they couldn't kill otherwise.

Anyone else come to a similar realization?

[EggKookoo]

[laughs in Buckaroo Banzai]

[LibraryOgre]

It's not that the stories are impossible to explain, it's that the listeners lack the experience and knowledge to understand what you're talking about.

I can go off on tangents about the Dewey Decimal system that a lot of people are going to have trouble following, but that's not because the DDS is hard to explain, it's because they don't deal with it every day. I used to play at a table with two NASA engineers who would go into NASA politics and heavy lift systems and **** and I could only follow half of it... it's just that I don't have the background to make it intelligible.

[Duff]

... and it seemed like such a good idea at the time!



My group use a phrase "Skillfully adjusted" to refer to a person who's upbringing was deeply troubled and skilled and effective professionals (often some sort of mind mage) have worked hard to produce the somewhat functional person that results.

Came from a dragonquest game - 2 PCs both from the wildcat clan (So shapeshifters who can turn into asian fishing cats).
He was one of the original PCs and had picked up a fortunate combination of move at double speed but age twice as fast and then unaging.
She was the privileged child of the richest and most powerful family in the clan. She's just been rescued when a new player joined the party.

She and he had a fling for a bit which ended when he accidentally killed her. (She got better, but, you know, it took the glow off...)

And her mother was desperate for grandchildren so had been "Taking steps" with her fertility

And then they arrived at a tropical island paradise for a festival where the the highlight was the sticky rice...
which was spiked with aphrodisiacs and narcotics and so on to get everyone into the "party mood"

and the players were flirting in the way they played their characters flirting...

So ... The resulting child was aging at double speed AND spending as much time as she could get away with in cat form (So aging at cat speed), mostly raised in Grandma's house because mum and dad were adventurers. And there were all these ISSUES around a child who had been alive for about 3 years but was near full grown and so fast.
A lot of work went into trying to produce a functional person ( who was fun for a not-very-committed player to play. Player gets board and wanders off? Kitten is asleep under the chair!

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Is it really that much more complicated than Star Wars

[togapika]

[Laughs in Legends of Tomorrow]

[EggKookoo]

[Laughs in Legends of Tomorrow]

Highly underrated show!

[ShikomeKidoMi]

This reminds me of trying to explain long-running comic books to an outsider. It's not impossible, but boy is it a lot of work.

[Bubzors]

It's part of the reason I love it so much. Some small seemingly unimportant detail can become the whole crux of the campaign. The hundreds of little steps that led to the epic moment is so hard to explain to outsiders but makes perfect sense within the group.

My favorite as DM is when I introduce a throw away NPC that for some reason the party attaches to and ends up being one of the most important characters of the campaign. Happens in almost every campaign I run

[Benny89]

The most impossible thing in DnD for me is to wrap my head around how anything can go right or wrong in this world where there is so much magic and spells for every scenario and most plots, secrets, problems etc. can be usually resolved with hiring enough high level Arcane Caster or Cleric to cast one spell instead of wasting time and resources.

The whole healing magic itself and resurrection magic makes whole world already so illogical that you should just stop thinking about it.

But hey- that is what Heroic Fantasy games are for. There are tons of more grounded systems to try out for different experience.