Your experiences with people who won't try RPG despite it likely being a great fit?

This has come up time and time again in my life. -> I have friends or good acquaintances who will not give table-top RPG a try, sometimes even jokingly dissing it, despite it likely being a perfect fit for them. By that I mean that these people in question love board games, computer game fantasy RPGs, MTG, socializing and snacking in small groups and often also are into fantasy/LOTR/GOT.

I certainly wouldn’t ever want to push or hard-sell anyone on any pastime or hobby! So I don’t. But when they keep being surprised at the fact that I play regular. Or, when I rarely and very briefly mention something from my last game/the fun that was had and they show interest, I usually do say that a good RPG session is on my Mount Rushmore of fun. By that I mean that it is in my top 4 of most fun, valuable and worthwhile activities I have ever taken up. Of course I always hope this motivates them to try it and if they ask a number of questions about the game itself of their own volition and interest, I do explain a little and make it clear that a spot is always open if they want to try it the once, with 0 expectations from my side beyond that. They almost never take me up on it.

Another thing that I also noticed is that in my experience, if you let people who have never played sit and watch rather than actually play they are far less likely to try it later. They will literally be the odd one out and it easily comes across as a hyper in-crowd or nerdy in the sense that a listener who has no idea how it works will have bit of trouble to enjoy it and especially understand what is going on. It is a bit like me listening to classical musicians talk shop. I play Guitar, never took lessons, so I don’t understand their music theory, jargon, subtleties and would find it hard to join in the fun or socializing because they are all so unlike the things that I do know well.

When people solely watch and do not play for a few hours, it is easy for them to feel a bit bored, left out (always made it clear they can think along or give suggestions but they don’t dare to take me up on it so much) and get the impression that RPG is hard/complex/mysterious/in-crowd and would require a large time investment and have a big learning curve and be hard to manage socially. Nobody likes to feel like the new kid at (Old) School walking into their first class, especially if it feels like everyone in the class not only knows each other but they all have tons of knowledge you have to rush to catch up on.

I think more evidence for this perceived, and mostly mistaken notion that table-top is hard and a little scary is the amount of posts all over the internet as well as Youtube comments of people saying that table-top “looks waaaay fun, always wanted to try it but don’t really know how to start,… Seems like it would be hard.”. In terms of Youtube these comments are often even under videos of people actually playing D&D, so the interest in the watcher is very much there, but there is mental or emotional or psychological block.

Conversely, whenever I had total newbies not just sit in but actually play, they without exception totally grok it within 2 hours and couldn’t wait to play again. This surprised me, since I am talking about at least 50 newbies, of course all of them also had some of the pre-disposing interests I mention above, but even so, I had figured that at least a few would be like “it is fun, but it is not for me, I am only doing this one-off”. Them wanting to play again asap, is not a reflection on me as a GM, I am pretty good host and nothing special as a GM. It is the game/fun and learning it that makes them want to try again.

My friends who will never try it, it is sometimes due to time constraints, but that is more often not the case or the actual reason since they will gladly put many -additional- hours into certain computer games or a bunch of social activities. I think it has to do with the fact that table-top is truly like nothing else. People do not know what to expect at all, they have no frame of reference and that alone can seem intimidating, while picking up a new computer game or putting more time into a hobby you already know is easy, safe and familiar. Of course the unique nature of RPG also means that some people are almost magically drawn to it and that many that do try it, end up having a life-long love affair with it.

The one thing I have found that mitigates “Newbie Fear of the Dungeon Dark” is making it super clear that I run a low on rules and very inclusive game. That, and even more helpful, if everyone who will show up for the newbies’ first session is also totally new to table-top/ a first-timer, that seems to be the push that a lot of people need.

Am I alone in this? Or have some of you also experienced the things above?

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I agree with this so much. It seems obvious, but a lot of people push any d&d edition on new players, who are intimidated. and rightly so. By starting with very rules-light systems you can then scale up the complexity when the players feel more confident.

This strikes me as very odd. At my lgs everyone played everything. Tuesdays it was rpgs, fridays - mtg. I think people really liked just hanging out with each other, no matter the game. And I believe that description applies to your friends as well. Maybe ask what they expect in your sessions? Maybe they had a negative experience with rpgs, and that is why they are hesitant?

I am fortunate enough to have everyone from my circle of friends (and I mean everyone) has played rpgs with me at least once. Maybe the difference is the age range? My friends are 20-25, and they are always eager to try new things. Even if they didn’t follow up on rpgs they still wanted to join for 1 session to see what’s the big deal with roleplaying.

Most of them played character oriented video games, and I like to build their expectations from there.
(paraphrasing a conversation I had)
Me: “Imagine [video game title] but you can do anything you want.”
Friend: “Really? What’s the goal of the game? How do I finish it?”
Me: "You can make goals yourself! You can explore dungeons, build a castle… "
Friend: “Sounds cool, can I join on Saturday?”
Usually this gets people hooked. And during the next few sessions they discover that the rpg medium is its own thing. Then they ask me to DM the next session. And that’s when I know my job is done.

Some players have heard of d&d, or had bad experiences in high school with it. I feel like it’s a bit harder to hook them, because they already have some kind of expectation set in their head. Maybe it’s as hard as for people with no expectations. For both cases I try to advertise it as a nice evening between friends with snacks and beer, playing an adventure included. Works 100% of the time.

But that’s my experience. In your case, I would probably chat and ask about their expectations. See if you can understand why they feel hesitant.

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Grognard, I hear what you are saying, and I sympathize. Still, my experiences are mostly different.

In the days I played constantly ('80s and early '90s), there were gamers and non-gamers. Almost every male my age had tried D&D, but there was a strong social stigma associated with playing. To this day, as a middle-aged man, I am very shy about my gaming. Consequent to the stigma, we had a subculture that generated ways to find each other, like bulletin boards with pins for notes at the local game or comic store. We had no internet and no cell phones, so you’d just write on a note card, “Hi! We are gamers who meet to play game X at place Y at time Z. If you want to play, show up and have fun with us!” If people showed up, they would join if everybody got along and your play-styles meshed. But mostly it was gamer friends from different circles who mingled from group to group. You’d hear about Bob’s group, and you might visit it, and one of those players would then come to your group, and then join in with one of my other player’s other groups, and so on. On the positive side, there was never the problem of introducing a new player. Anybody who responded did so out of a preexisting interest in gaming. Rarely did I have to “break somebody in,” although that did happen here and there.

As for now, I have literally nobody to play with except my family and, occasionally, a few kids my son knows. My old gaming pals and I have not spoken or communicated for many years, though the love remains. I’m way too busy with work and home responsibilities to go out and make new friends in the hobby. If you have people showing up to contemplate playing with you, I consider you lucky!

My wife is an artist and scholar, and she got off the fence to play only when my kids and I were playing and she wanted to be a part of that. And when her bad-ass warrior woman–imagine Brienne of Tarth but from Morocco–kicked brigand butt, and she saved the day while our kids were making saves vs dying, she got more excited about it. Nothing like a natural 20 to fire you up, I guess. So there’s a case in which participation played a role in getting someone interested in playing more. I wouldn’t call her a convert, though. She plays to be creative with us.

I think the key with new players is to make sure that their characters get to activate their special abilities in a critical way in the first session. I see that with my son’s players, too. If they can’t use their abilities, they start wiggling and getting distracted–but these are kids.

Still, that doesn’t solve your problem: converting the heathen masses!

It sounds as if Max’s technique works well. Emphasize the sociability, with party game attached.

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Thanks for replies. :slight_smile:
I realized it might have read like I was implying I had trouble finding players. I have (almost) never had trouble finding players, not 30 years ago and certainly not since 5e came out. Also having relatively few problems converting people to OSR or other games, if you play rules lite, people also don’t get attached to a whole laundry list of complex rules. Easier to throw overboard and learn new ones.

It was more that I feel bad for those friends, because I feel they are missing out on a great experience or hobby, I would say it is only one in five friends perhaps, where this phenomena occurs. I do also emphasize the social aspect of course, but come to think of it, the last 2 person where they ended up not playing are not super social, one of them got way deep into FortNite, so that takes a huge chunk of his free time.

While location, location, location (I live in Berlin, so that is a big pool) does still apply, I would say there has never! been a better or easier time to recruit new players for a GM/host. At least for myself, every time a new edition came out it was not hard to get players for a year or two, except perhaps a fairly brief period around the time after WOW became huge and 4e came out.

Since 5e came out / OSR became massive / RPG was referenced a ton in shows like “Community” and “Stranger Things” and especially since watching Youtube D&D sessions became so huge, there has never been such a massive number of potential, new players as well as old hands coming (back) to the hobby. The variety of people looking to start playing D&D has also expanded a lot, everything from 8 year olds to 88 year olds, from the stereotypical basement nerds of yore to some of the most celebrated people in music and Hollywood are playing now. The gender gap, which once was massive, seems to have closed to a large degree, perhaps even closed completely now that there are also plenty of women only or women majority groups. My two groups are both female majority.

Finding players, especially if you GM and and host should not be a problem for most people, particularly if you start a newbie group from scratch. The internet is a great tool in that you do not need! to go out and meet and befriend people IRL in order to find new persons to play with at least once (try out). For the last ca. twenty years I would say 90% of my players were strangers I found on Facebook groups or on a local SubReddit. Of course hanging a flyer in the local game store or library also still remains a viable option, once they open up again. A good proportion of those strangers I found online later became friends, a few even really good friends. It is never too late, and you are never too old. :slight_smile: Making time is certainly a challenge if you have responsibilities, but planning a single session a month should be doable for almost anyone, once the current restrictions are lifted and you are allowed to have 5 people in your home. You just have to make sure you find a group of 4 players that almost never cancel, so you don’t end up having to cancel an entire session if 1 or 2 persons are (a bit) flaky or have a true emergency.

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Grognard, thanks for writing that. What you describe sounds completely incredible to me, in multiple senses of the word. I simply cannot imagine a face-to-face gaming scene like what you describe! Yet I have to believe you.

I don’t know how to describe the feeling. It is really like I have been in another world for twenty-five years, and then came back to look upon this hobby that was once literally my daily joy, and it’s now all different. It’s like time travel and I can’t get my bearings now that I landed.

Part of the context is that I never use social media. I scarcely know how and I have no wish to do so. I mean, I have my silly blog over the last couple of months to try to process my thoughts about gaming. This posting here is as far as I have ever gone into social media. I don’t know what a SubReddit or an MTG is. I have heard of Facebook. :slight_smile: But I have never used it. It sounds as if social media has greatly facilitated meetings of gamers. I also have never watched one of these YouTube D&D sessions of which you speak. I can’t imagine watching it instead of playing. I don’t know any video games. The last I played were old Nintendo.

Another factor is my job. I have a public persona in higher education. In no way am I a “celebrated person.” I do serious non-fiction historical research, write books and articles, and publishers publish them. I teach. Okay, I am on a social network–of researchers. Plenty of people follow my articles, and I get correspondence from around the world weekly pertaining to it. Being somehow publicly, searchably, involved in fantasy gaming would definitely undermine my regard in my field, in which every participant is supposed to be monomaniacally and competitively devoted to research. It’s a great line of work and intensely rewarding but we don’t share or talk about our hobbies in public.

Before I left off gaming, way back then, I remember going to GenCon with my main group at the time, which included my sister, and having almost to act as a satellite around my sister and the other female member of our group to intercept guys subtly who veered in to try to bump into them… just to touch a cute girl minimally. And the constant staring. It was just as creepy for females as people say it was. My sister, who is extremely kind and has thick skin emotionally, had a laugh about it, saying she was never made to feel so pretty. My sister would turn a corner and boom dozens of fat and skinny guys with pony-tails and backpacks turned to stare. Not exaggerating. A rising star game designer accosted and recruited us there to playtest a module of his, I’m sure because we were one of those rare mixed male-female groups. Vampire was changing things, very slowly. That’s what I remember. The idea that there are majority-female role-playing groups now blows my mind. I mean, read this to get a sense of perspective about the beginning of this hobby. It makes me happy, though, for my daughter, for the world.

Let me share something personal. What I’m feeling these days is so strange. It all started late last year, with my family getting interested in gaming. A vault of uncurated memories cracked open and started to emit powerful emotions and visions of times gone by. My current book project, the most exciting thing I’ve ever written, has skidded to a halt and I just want to write my personal game rules instead. Partly, I think, it’s gotten more intense with the pandemic shutdown. I can’t access all my work materials. I’m cut off from my professional colleagues and students except for Zoom meetings. But this was starting last fall. It’s not letting up. I don’t know what this is. I mean, I used to game almost every single day. And then I just stopped. I left everything behind. And now it’s leaking back in. It’s like at a wedding, when two big groups of people from two completely different areas of your life collide, but I don’t want that to happen.

You make it sound so easy to just go out and “pick up” gamers. But I’ve been in libraries and archives and classrooms, without role-playing games, for half my life. It’s not that I’m too old. I’m not. I suppose the analytical summary is that there are both emotional and social hurdles that I face, particular to me, but not necessarily unique to me.

Maybe, oddly, I’m like the people you described at the outset of your first post here.

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4 posts were split to a new topic: How and when has the perception of RPGs changes?

Hey Lich, thanks for sharing all that! It is very interesting and I do not discount your experience in any way, everything I wrote above is true, yet what you say makes total sense to me and aligns with some of my experiences as well.

The creepiness of dudes at cons or in “nerdy” pursuits is both legion and legendary, even now, and on Reddit there are subs called “RPG horror stories” and “Neckbeards” with girls and guys relating 100s of creepster stories and experiences. I also have about 5 stories myself of players acting extremely inappropriately at my games. Mostly it was stuff along the lines of being a Munchkin/Min-Maxer, an attention hog or just plain weird, and not so much creepy.

Since GMing my first game I have also made it my mission to never let this stuff slide, before I even agree to play with anyone I send them a short document (good-natured in tone yet extremely clear) of what I go for and what I do not tolerate at my table. Being creepy to women or making anyone feel uncomfortable for your own jollies is at the very top of that list, it is as clear as can be and as such there is no warning, discussion or second chance, I kick you out of the group. Done. I don’t ever want to spend time with bad humans, much less when I am trying to have fun and hosting people at my home. Especially since I started sending that document about 15 years ago, I have had 0 problems. Sometimes people do not work out in the group but that has never been due to creepyness in last ten years or more, just wasn’t the best fit.

As you say, It is truly amazing, this Renaissance in table-top (I am not talking only about the OSR, talking about the whole thing, OSR is one of several components, perhaps not even the most important one). And the beautiful thing about it, is that I think it will never go away. The huge stigma (“only for losers/nerds, satanic, difficult”) that D&D once had has been thoroughly debunked or at least gets rapidly smaller every year. With this critical mass of new players and information out there, table-top will never become super niche or obscure again. :slight_smile: As long as the internet persists, table-top will remain a large hobby with many (would be) players. But I will never forget the reputation it once had, only seven years ago I would never mention that I played RPGs on a first date or any first impression type scenario. I had learned the hard way, through experience, that talking about D&D with a not insignificant amount of people could precipitate disaster or a too long and/or very awkward conversations where you would have to try to erase a bunch of totally mistaken preconceptions and prejudice. Often, despite trying, I would not succeed at completely erasing any misgivings or even a little mistrust.

I would love for you or anyone to start playing (again)! You obviously love RPGs! So I will give some tips and opinions below that might help in this.

While Facebook is a good way to find players I would recommend you do not make an account. They are imho truly an amoral/evil company that destroys your privacy. I wish I had never! gotten an account, I did delete my account wholesale and had FB remove the data (as much as that can be done and trusted) about five years ago and it feels great. I have found players just as easily since then, on Reddit and through friends of my existing players. At most perhaps you could use a friends (if they do not mind) FB account to find prospective players and simply have them e-mail you on any e-mail address that does not feature your real name. Direct messaging or texting is also an option as soon as you establish first contact on FB.

Reddit is not great in terms of privacy either but it is leaps and bounds better than Facebook. All it is, is a very large forum with a subforum for almost anything and millions of users, which all upvote or downvote content. You simply decide which subforums you join/you want to see. If you can use this forum, you can certainly use Reddit! :slight_smile: Is very easy really. This explains it a bit more: https://youtu.be/tlI022aUWQQ

So if you want to find players, just go and have a look at Reddit and use their search function to look for any Subreddit (=subforum) that is only about your city or locality and see if it appears quite active. If so, you can almost certainly find players there with a few weeks patience. This is just an example, say you lived in Pittsburgh, you would just check this: https://old.reddit.com/r/pittsburgh/

Of course “selling” the game you intend to run, if you make a Reddit post asking for players, is not a bad idea, I explain the vibe of my group, that you need 0 money to join, how we play and how much fun we have. Last time I posted one of these virtual flyers I got literally more than 15 persons who were very keen to play, all responding within days. I had to whittle it down to 3 candidates. Two of which still play with me today. All this despite putting up a few barriers to entry in my flyer/first post. Such as people needing to be very reliable and showing up on time, ideally being in our age range etc.

Concerning keeping your professional and gaming life separate, this is not a problem and a good practice anywhere online. Make sure you sign up to Reddit with an email (for privacy I like Posteo or Tutanota and stay faaar from Gmail etc) that does not have your real name or any tie to you profession, pick a user name on Reddit that could never be used to identify you, your job or location. If you post on Reddit asking for players, I always put my zip code to explain where I live and we will be playing, but I do not post any information pertaining to my real name, exact location, my job etc on Reddit or anywhere online. You simple ask people to email you for that info or use something like Telegram (my RPG group communicates via a Telegram group chat, which is exactly like Whatsapp except with better privacy, Signal is another good alternative).

Youtube, to be honest I never watch RPG playing sessions either, any time I tried I lasted five minutes since I just keep thinking: “I wish I was GMing/playing!”, “I would not use that system!”, “Why is the group so large and the combat so loooong?”,… XD But I think it is wonderful that it does entertain and pique the interest of tens of thousands of people who have never played! For them it is a gateway drug, for me, I want the real thing! I prefer to watch videos from really experienced GMs explaining their craft, their house rules/own system, their campaign setting and GM notes, those videos are far shorter, instantly applicable for me and some of them are extremely entertaining to boot.

About the women in RPG, it is honestly awesome! It changes the dynamic at the table, and I would say for the better, for everyone. My best and longest serving player at the table is a woman, she is way smarter than I, gets super into the game and her investment in turn reflects on the others and makes them also get more present, emotionally tied to the game and not afraid to show a more vulnerable side. She, and her dog she brings, makes us laugh every session. And at the same time this girl and the other two women in the group can be more creative or ruthless in combat than I could ever hope to be as a player.

What you describe, your feelings, make it plain you really want to start playing again. So just try it! Try the above. I do recognize those feelings, in those thirty years as a GM I have started writing my own rules/entire game system at least 4 times, never finished it, however this time around, I am about to!

More importantly, there were periods of 6 months and perhaps one period of 3 years that I did absolutely 0! with RPGs. Life happened, circumstances etc. But every time I would miss it, feel that pull, more and more,… I too would remember what an amazing time I had and crave both the unique social and gaming aspect of table-tops.

As I write elsewhere, I put a good RPG session on par with anything else I have done in my life including skateboarding, playing music live in front of an audience, romance, being out in beautiful nature etc etc.

Nietzsche wrote “Without music, life would be a mistake”,… I feel the same about RPG.

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