When you want to gush about greatness...

[rubycona]

When you've got a game that's going so amazing, and you're having so much fun, and you want to tell the world... do you actually have anyone who likes hearing the tales?

I've been having this game, where we've been so ungodly amazing, and I don't mean in the "Haha, I've got spells or BAB or whatever that you don't have" kind of way, I mean in the sense that through roleplay, careful use of bluff and diplomacy (edited for non-brokenness), we've rallied an entire people to our cause. Stories of interrogations, and rescues, and friends lying dead at our feet, while another friend weeps with relief that we saved the one that mattered to her...

And I've got no one to gush to :( Even if it's an amazing story, I just get "it's just a game, that sort of thing happens in games." Mind, a D&D enthusiast might actually get how cool it is, but I hardly know any D&D players IRL. Boo on them >.>

So do you lot have friends you can gush to, or is it enough for you that You remember?

[bokodasu]

The problem is, most D&D stories are "you had to be there" kinds of things. Sometimes you can slip one in to one of the "funny/dramatic/stupid RP stories" threads, but the really really good ones, nobody wants to hear. And there's nothing worse than telling your dramatic story of utter awesomeness and looking up to see the completely glazed-over expression of your listener, who's still going, "uh-huh. Really? Wow." even though you stopped talking two minutes ago.

Which is why my answer to "how was gaming night?" is always "Fine." Save the reminiscing for the people who were there, because they are the only ones who care.

[Doughnut Master]

I have a lot of friends who play D&D (a fact that I did not discover until recently), so they can kinda understand. I just try to work on being a better story-teller so that I can get them to really understand. Sometimes I'm successful. Sometimes I'm not.

I like to think of storytelling as a skill check for life.

[valadil]

It definitely depends on the story. I have 3 distinct gaming groups and know plenty of other gamers, so I've got no shortage of audience.

The biggest factor for me in sharing a gaming story is its relevance. If I told you about what happened at last week's game, it would probably come off as one of those "you had to be there" type stories. But, if I picked a story that was relevant to something someone just told me, they'd be more receptive to it. It's easiest to trade gamer stories when you go back and forth, coming up with things that the other person reminded you of.

[bokodasu]

Yeah, I didn't mean to be such a downer. You can tell pretty much anyone about the time your party all started summoning animals at the top of the hole and they all fell in and squashed the cleric, or the time the party's rogue sneak-attacked the dragon and they'll get it. It's just the really epic stories that don't translate well - nobody else has the backstory to understand *why* your story is so epic, and explaining it all takes too long.

[DungeonDelver]

For me the best stories to tell are the ones that are easier for other people to relate to. Talking about how your character killed so-and-so isn't easy to understand, but explaining an outrageous plan you and your party came up with that somehow worked...that's a story.

[BridgeCity]

My girlfriend. She doesn't have time to play due to her job, but she loves hearing about what my D&D group and I get up to in our games.

[Quietus]

The sad fact is, outside of the group of people you played through that story with, if the retelling takes more than two minutes total, you've lost them. Anything that requires explaining a backstory to understand why it's awesome, is only awesome if you were there and already know everything else, so you can explain how cool it was when your snake-themed elf druid, musclebound plant-man barbarian, six armed sorceress, and halfling ex-vampire cleric teamed off against a divinely-powered criminal who'd just staged a coup of the world's biggest empire.

[rubycona]

*nods* Yeah, it's kind of sad, I'm only really able to share the less-than-epic moments. Like, I enjoyed the look on my friend's face when I said...

"Try to picture the possible causes for this situation. A sorceress and a bard are sneaking down an Academy of Magic's hallways, past curfew, both enlarged and sneaking with a 12 foot tree that they just stole from a druid."

It was a funny situation, and she was amused to hear about it, but the Really epic stuff was in regards to people. NPCs, that we'd grown to know and care about (or hate, as the case may be). The feeling I shared with my character as I gazed down at the face of someone I, personally, knew, someone I'd worked with... someone I was too late to save. And then, rushing through, terrified of what zombie faces might be around each corner... how many friends have fallen here? How many of them knew my name, and prayed to whatever god they served that I, and my herald (the other PC) would save them? And planning on how I was going to deal with the necromancer that had murdered and enslaved them. THAT was epic.

But yeah, it requires background to get it all, that's just the easiest bit to relate. I'm glad, though, that some people have someone to share it with. I suppose I can just gush to my fellow PC, hehe. Fun times.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

It's just the really epic stories that don't translate well - nobody else has the backstory to understand *why* your story is so epic, and explaining it all takes too long.

Speak for yourself. My story about the campaign with the dragon-dragon-dragon-dragon-dragon-dragon, the gigantic flying turtle fortress, and the time-traveling githyanki ship tends to go over pretty well, D&D background or no.

[ajkkjjk52]

As said above repeatedly, the best person to share stories with is other people who were there. It's why every group develops inside jokes.

Every group also spends time sharing stories about previous campaigns each player has been in, but nobody's actually listening, they're just waiting to tell their awesome story.

[Telok]

Gush here.

We found a templated cyro-hydra, about 12 heads worth, in it's lair. Three melee, a cleric, and the summoner wizard move in to fight while the xeph speedster/warblade hangs back.

Near the end of the third round the cleric is worrying about trying to heal himself, the barbarian at -2 and falling, and the paladin with 12 hp. One of the wizard's best summons is dead and the other is nearly so. The hydra now has 14 heads.

Xeph: Sudden Leap for [roll], plus boots of speed, plus xeph speed boost, plus skill is... I land on top of it, blade first. Death from above!
DM: Huh?
Xeph: Insightful Strike at... [roll] Ooh, twenty. [roll] Thirtyish, it's a crit. Umm, 18 plus skill, times three... erk. Ah, [lots of damage]?
DM: It's dead. How tall are you?
Xeph: Five foot two. Sorry, I didn't realize I could do that sort of damage.
DM: The hydra's body is about thirteen feet high. If the heart's in the center that's 6 and a half feet. So with your punch dagger and your arm out you'd be seven plus feet long. Your boots are sticking out of it's back.
Xeph: Could someone please pull me out?
DM: I'm going to have to do something about you now. You know that.
Xeph: I'll switch to a kukri. It's times two crit instead of times three.
DM: [moan]

[Baveboi]

I have some D&D player friends in RL, but we too far apart most of the time. I often writte things down for them and they often writte to me.

However I always told my stories to anyone who can actually hear them, I just need to be careful to create "interest".

Most people are not going to give a prick about your build or spells or just anything you got on your sheet so you leave that outside the stories. Go for the juicy parts like "well, I hit the thing on the head so hard that it explodes in a thousand bits of goo and bones. It was amazing, we had to takea bath later" (<<actually happened.. hehe) Non-geek people (and even some geeks) don't care if you scored a critical hit in a x3 two-handed weapon with +10 Power Attack damage. They don't care if the thing had 50 HP and you dealt 130 damage to it. People, besides us, don't know the rules, so make the stories you tell more interesting to them.

Damn, I even told Warhammer40k stories to my own Mother because I felt like it. My father and brothers, whenever we meet, likes to hear many of my gamin histories, but I often talk more about the girls on the session or what kind of beer we had and etc.

Stories are like pearls: just little grains of sand enveloped in layers and layers of smalt. You gotta "pretten it up" for them.

[Draz74]

Online, the question is really just, "How well can you write up the story?" Which includes complicated questions like how much of the mechanics to include (hint: people don't want to know every die roll, or even every round of combat).

But if you can pull it off ... well, have you seen how many Views SilverClawShift's threads get?