RPGaDay 2022 #6 How would you get more people playing RPGs?

 The important thing to get more people playing RPGs is creating more Game Masters.

Unfortunately, most games these days are not built for this. The standard method is what's called the "older cousin method." The GM doesn't learn their craft from the rulebooks, but instead learns at the knee (or table) of another GM. Typically, the prospective GM starts as a player in someone's campaign, then decides that they want to run their own game. So they take what they've absorbed from their gaming experience and start to apply it in their own campaign. Add a few lessons from the Gaming School of Hard Knocks.

The end result is that every RPG book has an obligatory chapter for GM advice, but it's more often written for the experienced player who will be GMing for the first time rather than the total n00b who might have gotten the book for Christmas by some clueless, but well-meaning relative. As much as I wanted to make my own game, Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road, as n00b-friendly as possible, I can't really claim that I broke this trend. Maybe something to keep in mind if I ever do a Second Edition.

RPGaDay 2022 #5 Why will they like this game?

 I think this question is assuming that my prior posts have built up some sort of narrative about introducing someone to gaming. But since I didn't do that, I'll just have to improvise.

If I am introducing someone to RPGs, I will try to find a game that they will like. If someone is an Oz fan, I am more than happy to run Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. Fantasy fans will have me breaking out D&D or some other fantasy game. Trekkies will be invited to play in a Star Trek campaign.

More often, the process works somewhat in reverse. I'll decide the game that I'm going to run and recruit players based on that game. If I want to run D&D (preferably OSR), I will look for fantasy fans in my social circles to recruit. When I finally get around to writing a Star Trek campaign, my Trekkie friends will be first to know.

If I know that I'll be someone's first Game Master, I will make the effort to be supportive and talk them through their options for character creation and during play. Hopefully this ensures that they have a good time and are more likely to play in the next session or the next game I run.

RPGaDay 2022 #4 Where would you host a first game?

Hosting at my house right now is not practical for a number of reasons. And since a first game would probably involve people that I am still in the process of making friends with, the rules of where to meet for a first game would closely mirror the rules of where to meet for a first date.

Meet somewhere public, preferably with other people around. A Friendly Local Gaming Store is good for this, but a coffee shop that's open late is also a good meeting place. Gaming conventions also count, but by the time you've gotten them to the convention, this is unlikely to be their first game. Maybe the first game of whatever you're running, which is still good.

Make sure that if anyone is uncomfortable, they can leave. Meeting in public addresses some of this, but also make sure that your location isn't too far from their home or in a neighborhood that they're not comfortable being in.

RPGaDay #3 When were you first introduced to RPGs?

 I was first introduced to RPGs in 1999 at the age of 20. I had met the woman who was going to become my wife the previous year (though the wedding wound up being much farther off) and she had shown me her copy of GURPS Wild Cards. I had caught the bug, but it wasn't until 1999 that I actually played a game.

She was going to college, living in the dorms and I spent a lot of time hanging out around the campus in between her classes. A good portion of this time was spent on this crazy new-fangled thing called the internet. I found someone's personal website that had played GURPS, was within what I thought was a reasonable distance from me, and listed an email address. I took a leap and emailed him. His current campaign wasn't GURPS, but another game called Rolemaster. He was kind enough to create a character for me (though it would be a few more years before I realized how much of a favor he had done me) and we played a few sessions before the challenges of traveling to a neighboring city by bus became overwhelming.

Over the summer of 1999, I became a regular at a game store conveniently close to my grandmother's house, where I stayed when I wasn't spending excessive amounts of time with my girlfriend. That's where I got invited to a game of Legend of the 5 Rings, a samurai-inspired game. It might have gone on for a few more sessions, but the money ran out and we had to run back to northern California at about that time.

I didn't get introduced to an actual campaign until 2000, when D&D 3rd edition was released.

A lot of small introductions, but that's the point where I considered myself a gamer.

RPGaDay 2022 #2 What is a great introductory RPG?

 Of course I want people to play Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.

But the secret ingredient to any great introductory RPG is making it easy to run for a newbie GM. I certainly tried to do that with AiO, but I can't confirm that.

Fiasco doesn't require a GM, so it's got a leg up there. The new card based version adds a nice tactile element as well.

I am a big fan of Fate Accelerated for this, as well. The low cost, the simple rules and the sample characters designed to be slightly off of your favorite YA franchises are all good points. Coupled with the "It's Not My Fault!" story starter cards, you could have a lot of fun with just a little work.

With the popularity of online roleplaying via chat, forum or blog, the idea of a game to add structure or variety to that sort of activity could be fun. There are solo RPGs that use journaling to some degree, but not a lot that involve more than one player. The only one I"m aware of is Dear Elizabeth, which is played by writing letters to a partner.

Earlier boxed versions of D&D could also work. By leaning more strongly into the structured, boardgame style of play, it's much more approachable.

RPGaDay 2022 #1: Who would you like to introduce to RPGs?

 Well, I certainly think more people should be playing RPGs. It's great fun and there are lots to choose from, so there's an RPG for nearly every taste.

One idea that's been on my mind for a long time is to introduce people at an Oz convention to Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road.

I think it's important to meet people where they are when trying to get them to take on a new interest or hobby. D&D got its start during a surge of popularity for The Lord of the Rings and other fantasy fiction. The creation of cyberpunk fiction led to a number of cyberpunk games. Vampire: The Masquerade rode the wave of the Goth subculture.

It's common to think of the gaming hobby/industry like a pie chart, with the wedges representing which games are being played or purchased. Most publishers and designers are content to struggle over their share of the pie to see if they can make it larger. Actually growing the pie by turning non-gamers into gamers is much harder, and therefore less cost-effective from a financial standpoint.

So just like the old Coke commercial wants to teach the world to sing, I would love to teach the world to game.

 Fairly positive developments this week.

I bought a Magic deck (though they are much more expensive than I remember) and gave it a couple of tries. Just enough for me to get a sense of what the deck is built to do. So good start there.

The game store bought all of my copies of Adventures in Oz: Fantasy Roleplaying Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. There was some talk of doing a demo or author event, but my feelings are complicated. I am still proud of my accomplishment and familiar enough that I could run the sample adventure at the drop of a hat, but it was first published over 10 years ago and a lot of water has run under a lot of bridges over that time. As much as I hate to admit it, I'm a different person than I was when I first published it.

The prompt list for the 2022 RPGaDay blogfest released a few days ago, so I think I'm going to take the rest of the time with my writing group to try to get a head start on it.