Startroleplaying.com?

[Rob Lang]

I was actually looking to spend no money at all! Besides the domain name. It probably only needs a couple of pages: a home page and one with 'more stuff'. As everyone rightly points out, Facebook pages cost nothing, nor does YouTube hosting. The pages could be hosted here, because OUR GLORIOUS BENEFACTOR is nice.

Having a donate button would be a good idea but the money should really go to 1km1kt - (or Danifer web services, which the company that OUR GLORIOUS BENEFACTOR owns and hosts all of 1km1kt). Without OUR GLORIOUS BENEFACTOR, we wouldn't be able to have this conversation!

[Onix]

I'm usually right there with you on the "spend no money" camp but I think that if we were to raise some capital for the project it would have some weight to it and get done faster and/or better.

I have iMovie which was what I was planning on using and gimp is free so software doesn't need to be very very expensive to be able to do a competent job.

I was thinking that a little bit of camera equipment might be helpful but again, the content could be crowdsourced and I'd be cool with that but you'd still need some glue to stick it all together so thats work that would need to get done.

There would need to be a way of aggregating donated work. (even if it's just email)

If you want to do it for free, then I'll toss in $20 towards the URL cost.

Edit: Oh and just another idea, a lot of games have an intrinsically understood "why it's fun" which RPGs don't seem to have. Boardgames can also suffer from this but they're simpler to get into and more mainstreamed. It would be good to try and figure out a succinct and catchy "why it's fun" for RPGs video.

[Jontheman]

Hi, everyone - I'm Jonathan and I wrote the blog entry that got Rob on his horse flying the banner of RPGs and riding to the Holy Land! This is my first post here - long time lurker first time poster etc.

The thought that the RPG hobby was starting to cocoon itself occurred to me only recently when I picked up my D6s and started a WEG Star Wars first edition campaign. I'd looked at other games I wanted to run but ultimately put them down because of the work involved. I just wanted to have fun, and D6 Star Wars 1st Ed is probably one of the best games ever written to help people into the hobby - it's Star Wars and everyone knows it, the system is easy, and the step-by-step guidance, including examples and a solo game, were perfect. I realised then that this was what we needed for the roleplaying hobby to help bring in new players. I've been visiting RPG sites, especially the forums, and some of the references and phrases and terminology even I don't fully understand, and I've been doing this for 27 years! I don't even bother posting on forums these days because it's pointless, and I've even stopped visiting them. If it's confusing and alienating me, a die-hard, what must it be like for people interested in getting into RPGs?

Hence my blog post. I just wanted to point out a few things I thought was wrong with parts of the RPG community, not for existing gamers but for new ones. I've been toying with the idea of publishing a magazine format game for a while, something you'd see on shop shelves - if Games Workshop and De Agostini can do it - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Gam ... ddle-earth for details - then surely the RPG hobby has a chance?

What I envisioned was a monthly magazine with very simple rules in the primary issue and then following issues building on that with rules, adventures, hints and tips, that sort of thing, all for teens and pre-teens. I imagined the language used as the same as the original Basic D&D Red Box set, making it all simple, clear and filled with examples. It's aimed towards kids, because they're the one with the fertile minds. Older people can get it, too, and they can move on to the tomes-like rulebooks of the current games. A friend mentioned 'well... you don't want to leave out those who already game...' Well, yes, I do, because they're already catered for. I'm concentrating on teenage kids who's minds are fertile and sharp and who'll latch on to this hobby while they're at they're stage of their lives where they're still finding out who they are and what they want to do. Exactly like I was. These kids are why gamebooks and RPGs were so successful in the first place.

Of course, publishing a magazine takes dosh, and dosh is something we do not have. What would have been nice is a published magazine that kids can hold on to, physically use, whereas if it was all done online they'd have to get permission to use the internet and then find us. What worries me about a website is that the internet is a vast place and how are these new players supposed to find us? There's no point in advertising on existing RPG sites as they're primarily catering for existing gamers. There must be a way to target teenagers, even if it's done through their roleplaying siblings. Contacting schools and youth groups, perhaps? Advertising in local papers?

A website is a great idea and I'd donate my Farsight Games website to support it, but we need to get it out there. It sounds bad and I don't mean it the way it sounds, but I have no interest in the existing RPG community. If we're a non-profit group then we have the luxury of targeting any demographic we wish as we're not relying on sales or figures to drive the hobby. Just the passion or it.

[koipond]

Wait. Two Jonathans. One FORUM!

THIS WILL NOT END WELL! ^_^

[Onix]

[Onix]

Here's a thought, publish the game as it would appear in a comic book. There would be several games, each one 32 pages or so and focus on a group of predefined heros. There would be several games, each with different settings, heros, and villains but the rules are all the same.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

[NoobHealer]

I think CA's right that making a simple game isn't the issue here.

The biggest problem is not that the rules are too complicated. The problem is that people don't take the first step into role playing. They need to overcome the fact that playing RPG's makes you a geek and are less cool than playing Call of Duty. People instantly assume that without the external stimulus, a game cannot be fun. Tabletop RPing is a black art that very few people are willing to take part in.

I had a friend who blatantly refused to join in my Shadowrun games for FOUR YEARS because he couldn't see how using your imagination could be as fun as a video game. He said that he wouldn't pretend to be another person because it's stupid and yada yada blah blah.

Last year, he played his first game of Dungeons and Dragons. By the end of the first session he was getting to know his alcoholic thief who had a tendency to throw his shoes at monsters. Now that he overcame his negative beliefs, he's willing and more than able to learn new games.

I'd say we'd have more effectiveness running something more like when the Writers of Robot Chicken Played D&D. Do a podcast of RPG sessions, do youtube videos of people playing, do a fancy comic book of your adventures. Do whatever the heck it takes to make someone say "Hey, that actually sounds like fun."

Once they've reached the point that they think it could be fun, you give them the tools to find what they want to play. Have a database of Free RPGs that are separated by complexity and genre. They can find something that they are interested in and then try it.

At that point, they may not enjoy the hobby. But they've done it.

The rules aren't the issue... convincing them that they want to read the rules is.

[Stargazer]

I fully agree with Chainsaw Aardvark. I think that may be the way to go.

[Jontheman]

Chainsaw Aardvark raises some good points and some great ideas but I think that's still too much for new, younger gamers.

In my experience the kids interested in playing the games would go away with a Fighting Fantasy gamebook, understand the basics of what was required, and then come back to me wanting to know more. I'd sit them down with the Fighting Fantasy rules and run them through a few adventures, ease them in to the game and explain what was required of them as players. These were smart 12-13 year old kids but they still needed to be helped along. The older, smarter kids picked it up pretty quickly, and my reasoning was that they didn't need to be helped along because they were savvy enough to pick it up, and even though they still got into the game through my Fighting Fantasy games they moved on to other games pretty quickly.

The main group I created started out with Fighting Fantasy and they now have regular D&D 4th and Pathfinder groups - and these were 18-21 year old college students who approached me for help in getting into the hobby. The younger kids are only now starting up groups with Fighting Fantasy but I've already helped one small group move on to Dark Heresy (it helped that they were already playing GW stuff) and another is now Pathfinder all the way. Some of the others, as WH40K fans, bought Deathwatch (mainly because of the cool Space Marine cover) and then came to me to learn how to play it once they realised it wasn't a simple tactical combat game, so I gave them a simple-rules intro, let them get the gist of what roleplaying was about and left the rest to them. The end of last year, I must have got a couple of dozen people into the hobby in my local area. I know at least half of them are still gaming and I hope the other half are.

I wasn't thinking about providing a gateway to gaming and list options for the potential player as far as settings or actual existing games are concerned - let the companies who publish those games worry about doing that - but giving starting gamers who have hardly even considered or only touched on the hobby a jumping off point into playing. Yes, simple rules really are the way to go because it can be a daunting journey for younger gamers and if we give them a basic ideas of what RPGs are about and then give them lots of options of games to play with complicated rules, that might be too much too soon. I know that I played Basic D&D for a long time because other games seemed too complicated and I just wanted to have fun. Let them discover other games for themselves, we don't need to advertise products - I'm thinking more of advertising the hobby itself, not what can be purchased. Don't give them options, give them a single thing to concentrate on so they can channel all their energies into that one game. Where they go from there is their decision - there's nothing wrong with giving them options, but that's further down the line.

Maybe we could divide the website up into Basic, Intermediate and Expert sections so it gives the kids a sense of progression, just like the original D&D Basic sets. In Expert they then have the option of branching out into more complicated games.

I was thinking of proper, fully beginner incredibly basic explained in simple terms gaming for kids. Older kids and young adults are mature enough and I hope confident enough to sift through the mass of RPG stuff on the net or seek out and go to their local gaming shop, just like they did with mine, to get into gaming.