I feel there’s plenty of interest in other RPGs if you go outside the core community. I have never been remotely interested in playing DnD, so I never got a “real RPG gamer” group, because why play anything if you can run Curse of Strahd for the 100th time.
Well, it just so happens that I got my SO to play some Mothership duet sessions with me and it was great. Then some uni friends who were fans of LOTR to play The One Ring… And now I have an ongoing TOR 2e table and a passionate duet player looking to play more horror games (we’re starting Delta Green this week). The most common reasons for these people never having played RPGs? “Too many rules and stats” or straight up “DnD is too hard”.
We sometimes talk about DnD as some sort of necessary evil, but it’s honestly a hindrance. “Normies” get pretty excited about RPGs once they learn there’s more than a fantasy setting designed to be the lowest common denominator and sell miniatures
I do believe that DND is a poor first RPG, and creates a weird survivor bias in the hobby. Because it’s so popular most people try it as their first RPG, and then some of them hate it. Some of them then think the whole hobby is like that, and then leave.
So the bulk of the people left in the hobby are people who like dnd, or at least tolerate it enough to stick around.
One of my friends has no real interest in fantasy, tactical combat (as much as DND is that), or resource management. They had no interest in DND. But they really liked Vampire.
I keep trying to get people to play fate, but all of these games struggle with finding people who will show up. Everyone seems to be just barely holding it together, and asking them to be creative and present once a week seems like a big request
I feel there’s plenty of interest in other RPGs if you go outside the core community. I have never been remotely interested in playing DnD, so I never got a “real RPG gamer” group, because why play anything if you can run Curse of Strahd for the 100th time.
Well, it just so happens that I got my SO to play some Mothership duet sessions with me and it was great. Then some uni friends who were fans of LOTR to play The One Ring… And now I have an ongoing TOR 2e table and a passionate duet player looking to play more horror games (we’re starting Delta Green this week). The most common reasons for these people never having played RPGs? “Too many rules and stats” or straight up “DnD is too hard”.
We sometimes talk about DnD as some sort of necessary evil, but it’s honestly a hindrance. “Normies” get pretty excited about RPGs once they learn there’s more than a fantasy setting designed to be the lowest common denominator and sell miniatures
I do believe that DND is a poor first RPG, and creates a weird survivor bias in the hobby. Because it’s so popular most people try it as their first RPG, and then some of them hate it. Some of them then think the whole hobby is like that, and then leave.
So the bulk of the people left in the hobby are people who like dnd, or at least tolerate it enough to stick around.
One of my friends has no real interest in fantasy, tactical combat (as much as DND is that), or resource management. They had no interest in DND. But they really liked Vampire.
I keep trying to get people to play fate, but all of these games struggle with finding people who will show up. Everyone seems to be just barely holding it together, and asking them to be creative and present once a week seems like a big request