Gaming Evangelists Part two – The Roleplaying. Make: Believe...
Yesterday I had a bit of a stream of consciousness about getting people
into playing games, board games to be precise, and I said that it’s usually
easy to get people into playing those sorts of things because most of them have
played a board game at some point in their lives and so have some idea of the
premise...
Now the turn of roleplaying...
And I know what everyone’s saying, everyone’s
done this at some point in their lives, whether they were soldiers when they
were kids, running around with potato guns (No Nerf when I was a kid), or as
they’ve grown older, as they’ve been told to roleplay through things when
they’re going for an interview or to consider what they would do in some fictional
scenario.
Everyone’s done this before.
So why would that make it so hard to get people into the game?
Because most people have only had to do it at (figurative) gunpoint,
and then with something they really didn’t want to play as, so some idiot
trainer could assess how they’d react in some manner. So the only memory they’ve got, just like the
boardgames, is of something that they did because they had to that was dull and
irritating.
How to get around this...?
Ask the question, when you describe roleplaying games, how do you do
it? Do you tell them that it’s a game
where you get to be someone else, a brave hero or a bold adventurer, do you
tell them that it’s a chance to behave how you really want to behave and a way
to let the cares of the world go by?
I don’t...
I ask them if they’ve ever seen a film when the main character did
something stupid...
They have...
I ask them if they’d have done something different...
They would...
Got them...
And from there it’s just a matter of getting them into the idea that
they’re not themselves for now, and it’s easier for those who’ve been given the
film line, because they’re already looking at it from the point of view that
they’re that character, rather than themselves. It’s a lot easier for people to
jump into characters that they already have some familiarity with than asking
them to go for something completely new and then telling them to make it up as
they go along. Kids do well with making
it up as they go along, most adults have to be eased back into the idea of
letting go of this world, if only for a short while.
The problem is that for a lot of conventions, you don’t get real
newbies into the scene, you get people who are curious, but haven’t taken all
the steps to get there, so again you’re already starting from a good position
because they took the first step and came to you. With people like this, you do the ground
work, you find out what they’re interested in, you start them on a game that’s
not four hours long, because they’re going to have problems being in character
for more than half an hour at a time, and you don’t include anything that needs
heavy thought in the game. A lot of
systems are now learning that the one hour taster sessions are amongst the best
ways to get people interested in things without costing them time and money to
do so. A lot of conventions
(particularly those who have very few newbies) have yet to cotton on to this,
but it is this that will be the future for getting people into games.
How can I be so sure?
The analogy that most people have tried before is that you’d give up
four hours to go see a film, half an hour travel there and back, ten minutes
parking, ten minutes queuing, twenty minutes trailers, two hours film. So theoretically that’s no different than the
normal four hour thing that you’re asking them to sit down to now is it?
It is actually...
The point behind the cinema trip is that it’s not one thing done for
four hours, it’s five different things, each one of which can be done while
you’re talking to someone else or driving or doing something other than having
to have your concentration fixed on one thing and one thing alone. When you’re in a game, you’re in a game, and you can’t break from that
to do other things or you’ll miss something about the game, and that in itself
will lessen your enjoyment of the game.
So the solution?
Shorter games...
Hold the cries of Heresy for a second, there is always time and space
for those long games, when you can put the whole weekend in to play the game
and have a good time with all those people who’ve been playing for years
alongside you. But a beginner won’t give
you that commitment, they need convincing, in the same way that the board
gamers do, that this is a good investment of the time that they could have
spent doing something more important, like making tea or checking facebook or
something else...
One hour I say, give me one hour, if you don’t like it, come back to
me, I’ll buy you a drink and a snack to make up for the disappointment...
And I mean that...
Because in all the time that I’ve been doing demo’s for people, I’ve
yet to have to pay up on that, and a part of it is because I know enough to
know when the system isn’t required and when I need to play fast and loose, I
can see when they’re getting involved and I know then which way to go to keep
them interested.
But that’s a skill I took years to learn and I still practise it most
weeks in one way or another, there’s quite a few of us out there who’ve been
there from the beginning, but most of us don’t want to play with newbies
anymore, we want to get out there with our old war buddies and fight the good
fight, we’ve done our time in the trenches and we want the rewards that we were
promised when we started this.
But the fight’s not done yet, the war never ended, it’s us against
boredom and apathy, and the enemy keeps on getting more recruits, more things
that don’t take your brains to do them, more games where pretty colours and
simple puzzles will keep you engaged doing nothing more than using up the time
you have left. So the call is still out
there, and while a lot of us have given up and gone home, we lay down those
tools years ago, we let the others get on with it...
To be fair, I went to a session with some much younger players a short
while ago, and I found that I was having problems with the way that they were
playing things, it wasn’t any different to what I’d done all those years ago,
but I have to stress...
All those years ago...
And I believe that just as I had older gamers to show me where all the
real fun was. They showed me that the
best times where those when you really got into your characters and you were
involved and not just looking for the next critical hit. So the gamers of today
that are still just getting in to it and still looking at how to minmax their
characters to be the best there is and damn the rest of the game, still need
that involvement from the rest of us, to see that there’s another level to the
game and that it’s not all about the number of kills your character has to
their name.
And that brings me back to why do I do this?
In the board games, it’s because it makes the world a little easier
once in a while, in the roleplaying games, it’s more of a calling. I’m confident, in a way that most people
aren’t, ask anyone who knows me, I spent a long time getting this way from what
I was, and a lot of it I did through roleplaying, through understanding that I
could be more than I thought I might be.
Roleplaying is now accepted as a good method of training, so you can
show people how to react to different situations, you can work through it with
them and have them be at least slightly ready for it when it happens in real
life, so it is for me and roleplaying in games.
Most people bring something of themselves to any game they play, the
usual joke is that your character is you, but turned up to 11...
I used to be like that, now my characters are me with the volume turned
down, I’d be hard pressed to tell you which is the better of the two options...
But I got a lot from roleplaying through the years and just as anyone
who’s been given something that was useful...
I just want to give something back...
Showing others how to play is my way of doing that...
Discuss...?
