How to get younger players into PnP RPG's

I think that for our hobby to have a long future, it has to get to younger potential players. And they play mostly Warcraft.

I'm 38, been playing for 25 yrs. Last year I ended up with a 20 yr. old guy as a roommate. Long story, not for this thread. Anyhow, 20 yrs ago, he would have been exactly the type of guy to play D&D. Smart, reads some, is a computer geek, and plays lots of online games like World of Warcraft. He saw all my D&D books and was interested. We talked about D&D, and I had him play with my group for a few sessions. He liked it a lot.

I asked him if he knew anyone his age who played D&D. He said there were a few people, in high school, but they were the ones who couldn't afford computers. They were the poorer kids. The obvious implication being, why do it on paper when you can play it on a computer any time you feel like it?

I order to sell it to this kid, and others like him, we have to remember what it was like to be a kid. Not just a geeky kid with no money and no friends, but a regular kid who is a bit smarter than average, and who might be interested in playing.

What motivates kids today? In particular teenage boys? Being cool, and girls. Period. Same thing that motivated the cavemen boys. Part of our genetic makeup.

Perception of D&D players? Poor nerdy geeks who never get laid.

So we need to rebrand D&D as something that is cool and can get you laid.

How do we do that? Since no book, blog, review, or obscure webpage can ever convey what D&D is, and most kids don't know anyone who plays D&D, I think we need to find a way to introduce kids to it.

How?

Youtube.

We need to have someone put together a video of good-looking non-geeky teenage boys and girls playing Swords and Sorcery, having good time, and post it on Youtube. The key here is that it can't be anything even remotely geeky, nor hard to understand. Hire actors if you need to. For God's sake just don't make them look like dorks. Don't have them speak like nerds. They need to be cool. Have plenty of sexual innuendo, and try to convey that as a result of playing D&D, the smokin' hot teenage girls will likely bang the smokin' hot tenage boys.

Good looking cool people have fun playing D&D and they get laid because of it.

That's the message.

That's something playing WoW can never get you---sex with hot chicks.

Then make the videos on a regular basis. Sort of a few episode soap opera arc, where the fans of the vid can see the action of the game unfold, get interested, and hope for a RL hookup of the players. Make it a reality TV show type of thing.

That, IMHO, is the only way I can see to get new kids into the game. It has to be portrayed as cool, fun, not hard, and something that will get you laid.

joethelawyer said:

I think that for our hobby to have a long future, it has to get to younger potential players.

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Agreed.

And they play mostly Warcraft.

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Total horse pucky. They do a lot of things more often than they play D&D. Your bias is showing, I think.

I order to sell it to this kid, and others like him, we have to remember what it was like to be a kid.

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I think that's a good place to start, yeah.

What motivates kids today? In particular teenage boys? Being cool, and girls. Period. Same thing that motivated the cavemen boys. Part of our genetic makeup.

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Those are far from being the only motivators for teenage boys, as I'm sure you're aware.

Perception of D&D players? Poor nerdy geeks who never get laid.

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Why? Because one 20-year old kid told you that? I think conflating the opinion of one kid with the view of the whole world is a really, really, bad idea.

So we need to rebrand D&D as something that is cool and can get you laid.

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I was with you right up until there. Either you're on a bender, you haven't thought this through very much, or this is intended as a mean-spirited troll of the current generation of gamers. Possibly all three.

The pessimist in me says that tabletop RPGs are dying a slow death, more an artifact of Gen-X in particular than something that will continue to grow through the generations. Sure, there are still kids coming into the hobby but most who would have gotten into RPGs 20 years ago now, as you say, turn to video games instead.

I actually work with teenagers--I'm a dorm counselor and teacher at a boarding school--and have found the various responses to my status as a D&D player interesting. First of all they are surprised that a 35-year old plays Dungeons & Dragons. The nerdy computer kids think it is cool and want me to run a game for them, the non-nerdy kids are confused and associate it with the nerdy computer kids, even though I'm not at all into computer games. One overly macho kid was making fun of D&D when I pulled the Vin Diesel card on him (he was also talking about seeing Fast and Furious); he was shocked and mildly disturbed, even threatening never to see another Vin Diesel movie. Some of the more open-minded non-nerds were intrigued but the only way they would actually ever play would be if I offered to run a game (which I could at some point, I suppose). As long as it didn't interfere with their ever-so important social activities.

But it takes a certain type to actually get into gaming to the same degree that you or I, or 95% of ENWorlders, are into gaming. From the above I'd say there are three general groups in terms of potential tabletop players:

1) Nerds - these are the computer gamers, some who might have played tabletop RPGs, most of whom have not and never will. Even those that do play will still default back to computer games because they are easier and don't require others to play.
2) Closeminded non-nerds - They have a strong aversion to anything perceivably nerdy so will never even try. Lost causes
3) Openminded non-nerds - This is where a chunk of new gamers could be found--think artists, musicians, thespians, intellectuals and other creative types. But the vast majority of them, even if they enjoy their experience, won't get deeply into gaming.

So the prognosis for tabletop RPGs is, imo, unfortunately not very good. They will probably always (or at least for some decades to come) exist in at least a cult status, but I see the a steady decline from here on out...especially when you take into account the eventual rise of Virtual Reality technology...and even more so if the idea of a Singularity has any merit.

But another thing comes to mind. Given the eventual, even imminent, rise of virtual technologies I see a cultural split occuring. Not everyone is going to want implants and not everyone is going to want to replace their own imaginative capacities with virtual/computer generated ones. We see this already with the many folks (like myself) who like tabletop RPGs but don't like computer games. I am not talking about complete luddites, but there will be a large section of the population--if still a minority--that uses virtual technologies only minimally. Imagination-based activities like RPGs may even thrive among such folk.

But who knows, really?

In the interest of contributing something useful. I think that narrowing the spectrum of gamers to geeks versus jocks is useless in terms of drawing in new blood, both because it is steeped in negative stereotypes and because it ignores some pretty important demographics. For example. . .

White Wolf table-top gamers and LARPers form a significant portion of the core gamer markethere in Colorado Springs, CO; Topeka, KS; Mahattan, KS; and Lawrence, KS. I'm sure the same is true in other cities, as well. In my experience, these players come from all walks of life, from urban professionals to punk or goth subculture and college arts students. I've also known some truck drivers, stewardesses, and pilots who are heavily involved in LARP, because they can use their job to get to different play venues.

The jock/geek paradigm also ignores the military market which is, likewise, a significant game playing demographic. I know guys who have played freeform Birthright games in between barrages of incoming fire and there are semi-annual drives to get game books shipped overseas to deployed troops. According to the jock/geek paradigm, these guys are geeks because they play D&D but jocks because they shoot people in the face for a paycheck.

I think that trying to boil down people and preferences to two negative stereotypes will kill any real effort to revitalize the hobby before it will do anything useful.

WOW will get you laid. Hell, it will get you married and soon I expect it to get you married with children. I see it happy regularly, within and without my guild. WOW's already got a far great degree of popular acceptance than D&D ever achieved. You're not going to beat that with YouTube vidoes, especially since the folks already doing that sort of thing make money by exploiting the stereotype for laughs.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that the decline in PnP gaming is going right apace with the decline in reading books for pleasure.

Simply put, many people don't read much anymore- at least, not anything beyond the occasional magazine or newspaper...and if you've been looking at the news, those aren't doing so good either. Many people seem to prefer the electronic media.

Your instinct is correct- this is a marketing issue.

However, you can't hope to compete with computer RPGs on things they do better than PnP RPGs by their very nature- like handle combat.

To keep the PnP bloodline flowing, you have to offer things that computer gaming simply can't match...namely, true roleplaying outside of combat, and if you've got the skills, a sandbox-type environment.

Even the best computer RPG has boundaries, but the best PnP RPG campaigns don't.

You have to show the camaraderie that exists at the playing table. Yes, you can network a computer RPG, but its not the same as sitting around the table and socializing with your fellow gamers face-to-face...even if you do it with the same people.

Dannyalcatraz said:

Yes, you can network a computer RPG, but its not the same as sitting around the table and socializing with your fellow gamers face-to-face...even if you do it with the same people.

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Until I can transfer pizza and Mountain Dew through my HSD line, online gaming will not supplant the tabletop.

jdrakeh said:

Until I can transfer pizza and Mountain Dew through my HSD line, online gaming will not supplant the tabletop.

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While those aren't my gaming snaxxorrzzz of choice...

AMEN, BROTHER!

But even if you do like we've done and set up a LAN in someone's house for "Geek-ends," it still isn't the same.

At the very least, when seated at a table, I can crack on anyone. When gaming on a LAN, I might not even hear a mock-worthy comment.

joethelawyer said:

Good looking cool people have fun playing D&D and they get laid because of it.

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Well I think this was at the root of the success of VampireTM in the '90s, especially the LARP version - the prospect of getting off with goth chicks seems to have been quite a selling point for many guys.

I think the idea of RPGs as 'cool' is a bit ridiculuous, though. WotC's attempts to sell 4e as "It's cool now, not like that dorky old D&D!" seemed stupid to me, I don't know if they helped sales. OTOH most D&D gamers are not truly socially inept, since you need to be able to relate to other people to form a game group.

Dannyalcatraz said:

At the very least, when seated at a table, I can crack on anyone. When gaming on a LAN, I might not even hear a mock-worthy comment.

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You must not be as loud as our Geek Clan was, then I'm pretty sure that the neighbors of the two guys who hosted our LAN parties hated us with the firey passion of a thousand burning suns.