Excited over a simple 'first intro to D&D' session with my 71 year old mother

Long story short: My brother had a traumatic brain injury. He needed physical and cognitive therapy to recover (he recovered very quickly, he is 100% now). They recommend one of the things he do was play games, like card or board games, that involve things spread out over a large area to improve his spacial thinking, and to just get him thinking logically and strategically. I very enthusiastically tried to get him to play D&D with me (I had just started playing at the time). I thought it was perfect. He and my other brother are not really into fantasy stuff at all but I was really excited to share this game that I'm positive would have been a great experience with my family. Unfortunately we did not end up playing. The brain injury part is unrelated but my point being: I wish I could have shared D&D with a couple people, especially members of the family, who would have been unlikely to play D&D (like a 71 year old woman is an unlikely first time player) for whatever reason. Maybe their already set ideas about what it was and that it wasn't their "thing". They aren't "that kind of nerd" or whatever the heck. Etc. I'm not shaming anybody who isn't super open to playing D&D though! Everyone has their things like they or don't think or think they'll like or don't like. I don't like tons of things people love. My point is that I think there's a lot of people who can't imagine playing a table top RPG and having fun but totally would because it is actually so damn naturally fun. I mean, you really have to try hard not to have fun. I don't even know why I gave D&D a first try (a little less than a year ago) because I'm also not really into fantasy and games normally but I'm really glad I did. It was a truly magical experience to play D&D for the first few sessions with other people who were also mostly new (and still is! But especially at first). Yelling around the table in character. Thinking "I can't believe we just did that!" as if we actually just did kill a bunch of goblins and it wasn't a game and that we barely had anything in front of us besides shared dice, pens and paper. I was very surprised that I was able to immerse myself that easily once you're having fun. There's tons of people who'd have a ridiculously fantastic time playing even a one off session of D&D who would probably not expect it of themselves.

I think you're very lucky and rightly excited to have introduced D&D to someone new so successfully. Especially since it was a family member and someone who was such an unlikely player (as you say, but also for real! 71 year old woman playing D&D for the first time as a fighter with her longs word pwning some giant rats! haha awesome). You had a ton of fun. New player had a ton of fun. 100% success. So ya, very lucky. I wish I had got my brothers to play and I hope to one day spread D&D to new players because that would be a thrill. Thanks for the recap of your session.

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