Gamers Making Gamers
About a week ago, we had my sister-in-law and her husband come visit us for the weekend. While they were here, they saw my massive collection of RPGs. Both admitted to having never played, but John, my brother-in-law, has been pretty deep into WoW in the past, and Trina, my sister-in-law, has played a bit of WoW as well. I explained that an RPG is pretty much the same thing, but with the ability to do a thousand more things.
They were both interested in perhaps trying sometime, and Bridget mentioned playing Mouse Guard with them. I think it’s definitely a good possibility.
As Matthew from My Girlfriend is a DM said in the comments of my post Starting from Scratch, “For the most part, I try to find ways to introduce the game to completely new people. I sincerely believe RPGs, especially 4e, are a form of entertainment EVERYONE can enjoy. You don’t have to be a geek or a fantasy fan to enjoy them.”
I definitely agree. I think that anyone can, but there’s a large majority who never will, simply because it’s not a socially acceptable thing in American society. Hell, I know a few people who have played, really enjoyed it, but never would play again because of that very reason.
So it’s good to see that perhaps corrupting the family I’ve got is a good place to start.
I also agree that RPGs are something everyone can enjoy, not just geeks. I’ve also run into the problem of people not trying them out just because they are not socially acceptable. One of my old players quit the group because of this because a few of her friends thought it was too weird and she didn’t want to be labeled such.
Because of this, I try to explain that RPGs are not the evil things the Chick Tracks have made them out to be before trying to get them to play. The best way to get people to play is to go for people who are already playing things like WoW or other MMOs in my opinion. They are already somewhat adjusted to some of the aspects they will see in a table-top RPG and will only have to adjust to some of the other things.
For me, it’s difficult to change the minds of people and tell them, no it’s not geeky. So I don’t try to persuade them that way. Instead, I’m willing to run my games in ways that match their interests. Do you want the world to be steampunk and have boats? It can. Do you want to be a bail bondsman and repo agent? Yes you can. Do you want to play a cleric who is a ‘Clueless’ style girl from an all Catholic school? Yes you can.
Right now we’re running a game where the ranger is boat-obsessed (Q: What does your character fear? A: Losing her boat.) the swordmage is a bimbo lesbian who likes blondes and the cleric is a ditzy schoolgirl. And has a yaya. In another campaign, we ran arcane characters who were all private investigators.
.-= Matthew Arcilla´s last blog ..Video Wednesdays: Improvised Weapons Deal Double Damage To Ongoing Campaigns =-.
[...] anticipation for the upcoming “conversion“, I was told by Bridget that my sister-in-law wants me to play a character as well as DMing. [...]