My mother has never entirely understood roleplaying. I don't intend to belabor the point, but when I was a young man it was the position of our church that Dungeons & Dragons held within it the clustered seeds of apostasy. She was so bewildered by what she had seen during Of Dice and Men [a stage play about D&D] that she made it a point to attend our D&D Live panel, where her son and his friends played this mysterious game on stage. The devil did show up, true, and we did go to hell, just as the clergy had suggested we might. Except in the actual version of events, as has happened so many times, we stood against the King of Lies at the very gates of his damned realm and emerged triumphant. My mother came up to me after the panel was over, saying, "I'm sorry, Jerry. I'm sorry." She wiped the corner of her left eye with her thumb. "They told me it was something else."
-Jerry Holkins, Penny Arcade
If there were a way to dedicate a significant chunk of my life to clearing up such misunderstandings on such a deeply personal level, I'd certainly do it.