How to Transform Your Friends and Family Members Into Roleplayers

How to Transform Your Friends and Family Members Into Roleplayers

When I go home for the holidays, I don’t like to sit around being bored. My family knows if I’m going to be there, we’re playing games, goddamnit, and that’s all there is to it. As such, board games and card games have been staples of my family gatherings for years. And not crap ones, either. We’re talking the good stuff: German/Euro games like Settlers, Pandemic, Bohnanza, and so forth. 

Roleplaying games, however, have always been a little trickier. In earlier years, the complexity of the more traditional games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, precluded them becoming a part of my family’s gamer language. It was always easier to just grab Carcassonne or Agricola from the game closet and be done with it.

Recently, however, the explosion of high-quality indie and story games has given me an opening. These games tend to be more rules-light, and often deal with subjects that are more universally understood than elves and dragons and shit, making them more accessible to non-geeks. And accessibility is particularly critical for introducing civilians to the hobby. We’re already asking quite a lot of new players by having them pretend to be someone else and to engage in some creative thinking and improv. You don’t want to increase the cognitive load by forcing them to also wrap their heads around a bunch of numbers and rules. 

Still, accessible as they are, there are some story games which are better than others for introducing people to the hobby and making role-players out of them. Each of the following has some particulars to recommend it, but they almost all share the quality of being more like a party game rather than a roleplaying game, which helps a lot when introducing them to new people. Please note: this post assumes some familiarity with the listed games. If you want to know more about them, they can each be Googled (or even Duck Duck Go’d) easily. 

The Final Girl This is, hands-down, the best introductory game for people who have never before played a roleplaying game. For starters, its slasher movie theme is easily understood. But where it really shines is how ably it teaches you to role-play. Each of the characters is purposely shallow (which is genre-appropriate for slasher flicks), and they only have one goal in terms of the role-play: to establish one of three types of relationship with other characters (either Frienship, Rivalry, or Screwing), which leads to a mechanical reward that helps keep the character alive. And because you don’t commit to a single character, and because the characters are literally disposable, there isn’t as much pressure to be ‘good.’ You don’t owe the character anything, except to have some fun with him/her. The end result is terrific. Everyone is having a good time camping it up, describing characters meeting their grisly fates, and rooting for the character they hope to be the final girl. But, importantly, and for our purposes, they are making the connection between the role-play (establishing Relationships) and the mechanical reward. 

Fiasco This one is a little tougher, as the characters are a bit more complex than the ones found in The Final Girl, and you have to make a deeper investment in them. Still, it has a lot to recommend it when it comes to introducing new people to the hobby. For starters, the mere act of choosing a playset and then going around the table and choosing elements from the various lists contained within is a lot of fun. That fun is reinforced once you start having the pre-game conversation about what it all means. The whole set-up process is wonderfully collaborative, and it goes a long way to getting everyone invested in the story that is about to be told. The game, having set the group up to tell a terrific story, then has the decency to get out of the way by keeping the mechanical framework as light as possible. This one has always been a big hit with my non-gamer friends.

Dungeon World Despite what I said above about ‘elves and dragons and shit,’ I’m still going to include Dungeon World. The game is just so much damn fun. Maybe we add a caveat: use Dungeon World to introduce the hobby to your friends who are already geeks in some other way (video games, board games, etc.). Maybe they have been hearing about 5E  and they want to give roleplaying games a chance. Do them (and yourself) a favor: skip Dungeons & Dragons and go straight here.

Lasers & Feelings This was a recommendation from Daniel Lewis, and I can see the logic behind it. The game is pretty light, both thematically and mechanically, but still incredibly satisfying. And because the tone is downright comic, it has that ‘party game’ quality I mentioned earlier. A great choice (and only one page of rules!). 

Inspectres Another funny game that has that ‘party game’ feel. A little more complex than Lasers & Feelings or The Final Girl, but still light enough for almost anyone to get into. This is also a great game to get traddy players into story games, as it incorporates the idea of giving players most of the narrative authority, while still having a GM around to call balls and fouls. 

Those are my thoughts. Any other recommendations? Has anyone else ever tried to introduce roleplaying games to their non-gamer friends and family? If so, how did it go?