Just this morning, several of my coworkers caught me off-guard while I was looking at the Paizo homepage. I had to awkwardly explain to them that "Secrets to a Super Dungeon" was not what they thought, and that I was not some kind of creepy perv. (It didn't help that I happened to be setting up a photo studio down the hall.)
I've also lost count of how many times I've introduced people to my hobby in conversation, only to have them mistake "tabletop roleplaying" for a kinky sex game.
What are some humorous situations that this fine hobby has got you into?
It's not like he could have done much to you without any evidence of anything.
I recall a similar story about a bunch of kids discussing their game late one night at a Denny's Restaurant, which happened to be full of cops who took a keen interest in their "plot to murder someone in the near future."
In game: My Summoner fired a crazy halfling wearing an alchemist's fire suicide vest at an enemy ship in Skulls and Shackles
Dot!
"No, no, tying him to a wooden stake and setting him on fire won't work... Asmodeus requires you to cut out his heart first and replace it with a special piece of burning coal that has been soaked in virgin's blood. Man, where are the virgins going to come from?"
"Why, hello minister. What are you doing with that crucifix and bottle of water?"
We tend to do more of the embarrassing than getting embarrassed around here. Here's just one example:
Our family friends & neighbors know we game. One weekend we had a neighborhood cookout & I was a little late to the party so some of them asked where I was. My wife answered, "Oh, probably on one of his porn sites".
She said the shocked looks were priceless as she kept her nonchalant attitude. "Mark," she started, "would you go in & get him please?"
With not just a little bit of trepidation, he came in. I could tell he was trying to get my attention without coming into eye contact with the screen, but his curiosity finally got the better of him.
When he saw what I was doing, he chuckled & said "Your wife said you were looking at porn..."
I answered, "I am!" as I proceeded to show him tabs opened to Paizo, Amazon, eBay, the Pathfinder prd & others.
"I don't understand." Mark expressed.
These are my porn sites; I get on them, spend money & a LOT of time which usually gets me into trouble.
"M I C H A E L !!!" came the wife's voice from the back deck.
"Seeeee?"
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I'm not sure I've ever been embarrassed by gaming. I've always just started off by saying I do RPGs "Like Dungeons and Dragons, y'know?" If additional information is required I have a whole spiel for people who don't know about gaming ("It's playing pretend, kinda like cops and robbers, but we roll dice to see if we succeed at thing so as to avoid that whole 'I shot you.' 'No you didn't!' argument." is the gist of it...)
"RPGs" or "gaming", despite meaning the same thing, are quite a lot less fraught with embarrassing double meanings than "roleplaying", and thus good terms to use. They're just more wholesome sounding. :)
Besides, I'm pretty private about details of my sexual proclivities, but I've made it clear I'm interested in BDSM to most of my friends at this point (in a 'coming out of the closet' sorta way)...so there'd be a lot less embarrassment for me than many if things did get misinterpreted. ;)
Some guys were on their way home from a weekend in the woods were they had a LARP (Live action role playing). The weekend was spend with a lot of crawling through the woods, little sleep and no shower. The sun had already set when they were stopped by the police.
Seeing the two guys the police demanded to look into the trunk.
Before opening it the driver said: "Sir, I should explain something before I open this up. We have some props in there which might, in this dim light, look like bloody weapons and severed limbs. We need it for some game with which we spend the weekend." To which the police officer answered "Good that you told me that before. That stuff really looks real at first glance."
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Another one:
Some guys were playing some special agent/spy live roleplaying game at a large train station. They were scattered throughout the station with walkie-talkies doing their stuff when one of them witnessed a man robbing some old lady's bag.
At once their game turned into some kind of manhunt where they used their numbers, knowledge of the location and their walkie-talkies to surround him and cut off all escape routes while the one farthest (who could not really help) informed the police of what was happening.
Few minutes later the robber was put into police custody and was rather embarrassed when he learned he's been caught by some playing teens.
Everything they did was well within the law, at no point did they pretend to be something they were not. They used no weapons to hold him or otherwise even bend the law. Don't know if that could have happened that way somewhere else.
In our Skull & Shackles game, we have 4 straight men and 3 gay men. Due to the absence of one guy and another who had to step away from the table for about 15 minutes, the DM and I (the two straight men left at the table) had to roleplay out a situation in which one of the NPCs took a drunken romantic interest in my female character who decided to sleep with him in order to get the information she desired. One of the guys particularily likes to watch me squirm and really, REALLY tried to make it uncomfortable.
At the table, it was very hilarious and I'm certain I was blushing about half the time the situation was unfolding, lol. In game, my character got what she wanted and all was well.
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This was a while ago now but... I was roleplaying at university and got a christmas card from my GM. In the game I was known for being pretty unlucky, and any re-rolls I had never worked. The card included a little message about that.
So I went back to my parent's home for christmas, and left the card there when I came back to uni for the next term.
Now my mum is very anti-drugs, but I never partake, so I was a bit confused when my dad rang me up saying how upset my mum was over my drug taking. I asked what he was talking about and he told me they'd read the christmas card that said...
"May you always pass your re-rolls."
Yeah, so they'd taken that rather the wrong way, but I found it pretty funny.
You may be interested in some of the posts in the following thread:
Socially compromising quotes overheard by people calling you during a game.
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I used to play a game in university and decided to play a character with a sterotypical foreign accent. This wasn't a problem when we played at someones house and it was accepted that it was done in good humour and not as a slight against said nationality.
However, one evening we ended up playing in a communal room at the University. Not thinking I played away with the accent as always, growing confused as the table started sniggering. Turned out a guy known to be from the country I was (poorly) mimicking was stood right behind me and stormed off assuming I was mocking him. I quickly realised and chased after him, explaining what I was actually doing. We had a good laugh about it from then on and he even gave me tips to improve the accent (thankfully the game didn't go on much longer.) As a result of that I ended up befreinding the guy until the end of university.
, and that I was not some kind of creepy perv.
only to have them mistake "tabletop roleplaying" for a kinky sex game.
You're not? ;-)
You mean it's not? I guess I have been playing it wrong lo these many years.....
;-)