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November 25, 2003
The Irony of RPG Recruitment
Whether the hobby is a community or a market, it's generally agreed to be either a stagnant or dying one. Some blame the proliferation of entertainment choices (esp. video games). Ralph Mazza blames trends in the design of games beginning in the early 1980s. (I think he's way wrong, but co-designing Universalis earns one a few free mistakes.)
What's the real problem (Jim Version)? As noted in the Forge thread linked in the preceding paragraph, most people get into gaming because someone personally introduces them into the hobby. The unwashed don't mostly browse an RPG rules set, think cool!, make a purchase and start playing. Someone invites them to play and walks them through their early interactions.
And we are a shy people.
What a wonderful situation! The hobby thrives to the extent that the participants successfully recruit new members, and recruiting new members is what we are least temperamentally suited to do. RPGs are not unique among games or hobbies in relying on personal recruitment - probably most people learn most games from someone who already knows them. Probably most people take up skiing or golf because someone who skis invites them to try it. RPGers are simply, as a class, a poor fit with this channel.
The first problem is simple reluctance to go outside the hobby to fill vacancies in existing games. I can't find any gamers around here is how we phrase the complaint, though we might as justly say And I won't make any new ones either. The second problem is that, when we do get our hands on a marknewbie, we often squelch his interest in short order - we're not, as a class, good at orienting people.
Implications:
1) Any game that hopes to be more than a minor sensation among a coterie of a niche should include rather more than a "What Is Roleplaying?" section in the intro. It should include an entire section on how to find new players and what to do with them once you find them - how to make sure new players have fun in that crucial first session.
2) Designers and even publishers, however, come out of this very hobby, and may not even know. Before we can even get to step one, we need something of a hobby-wide inquest: who has had success recruiting from outside the hobby, and how have they done it? What works and what doesn't?
I don't believe RPGs will ever be a mainstream activity. I'm absolutely convinced we could do better than we have. Consider RPGers as a fraction of all those who
o watch Buffy/Angel/Smallville et al
o Buy the extended-edition Lord of the Rings DVDs
o regularly read fantasy and science fiction
o play collectible card games
o play MMORPGs
o read Anne Rice, time travel romances etc.
o work in IT departments
This last strikes me as telling: over the last decades the US has undergone an unprecedented "geekization" - and we're still a stagnant-to-dying hobby. There is something very wrong there. Too much rpg "advocacy" is about convincing existing RPers they should be playing the games we like rather than the ones they like. We should all put more effort into convincing non-gamers to game. There's just the little matter of figuring out how.
(PS. I realize that at least one game in the last twenty years, Vampire, actually did bring in a whole bunch of new gamers on the basis of "Ooh, that looks cool! I think I'll buy that!" I'm not averse to designers trying to design new games with this potential and publishers trying to find new channels to make it happen. But it seems a rarity.)
(PPS. Ron Edwards is one of the few thinkers in the hobby to give this problem much thought. I believe one of the Sorcerer books actually has a recruitment section in it.)
(PPPS. I've started an RPG.Net thread to canvas recruiting/orientation advice.)
Comments
One facet of the problem may be age-related, in that people who played RPGs in middle school through college leave off at some point and don't think of it as something they might continue doing. When I started up a D&D game a few years ago, it was an example of a successful recruitment -- most of the players had played the game back in the day and hadn't really ever thought of taking it up again 'till I pestered them. The others were new to roleplaying altogether.
The problem is less these days that people don't understand the concept of an RPG -- either because they've played them in the past or because they've played Baldur's Gate on their PC. It's that (because of either of the above, take your pick) they think of roleplaying as a basically adolescent activity, and don't know of any games or gamers that would keep it refreshing and rewarding later in life.
Posted by: nate at Nov 25, 2003 2:05:18 PM
I'm always reminded of the whole idea of Network Externalities.
One thing I had a great deal of success with was running a LARP on a popular author's work. In this case a Tim Powers based (Earthquake Weatehr) LARP/wine-tasting. It brought in many Tim Powers fans who hadn't LARPed before. I've always wanted to take it one step and involve the author. Unfortunately I've had a rather bad spate of problems with local SF cons and haven't been able to do it. Maybe I should make an effort to meet Tim Powers when he's at Arisia this winter and persuade him he really wants to participate in a LARP for next Worldcon. That might be enough incentive to actually get me to Arisia this year.
Posted by: Jere at Nov 25, 2003 2:07:26 PM
Nate: Yeah, the "renewable gamer" segment is a whole other area of potential.
Jere: A combination LARP/winetasting? That's like bravura, man! I salute you!
Posted by: Jim Henley at Nov 25, 2003 2:14:04 PM
I think you're making some sound arguments, Jim. I agree with much of what you're saying, and disagree with key portions.
While I don't disagree with your list of "folk" from whom we as gamers could recruit, I think precisely that "geek" thinking is what's keeping gaming on life support. We need to recruit OUTSIDE your list of folk, I argue. RPGSs need not be geeked out to be RPGs. Why do we have Sci-Fi/Fantasy games? Because we always have. Where is the "Friends" RPG? I dunno. No one non-geek has lasted long enought to do it successfully.
In other words, I'm saying geekery does not RPG-ness make, and that base assumption keeps gamers in the closet and the hobby a losing battle.
Posted by: Matt Snyder at Nov 25, 2003 3:01:31 PM
I'm not sure I agree, Matt. I think it's likely that any rpg that can achieve mass success must have a strong tie to a particular form of genre fiction. I think this is because basically all roleplaying games depend heavily on pastiche. Compared to novelists, a gaming group has two really big difficulties: first, we have to do all of our plotting on the fly, with few revisions, and second, we work in commitees. Strong conventions about plot are what make gaming work, because that's what orients everyone about what they should do next. Observe that even the striking pieces of subcreation in gaming settings, such as Glorantha, are really just brilliant mashes of all sorts of other stuff.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Nov 25, 2003 3:23:55 PM
"Where is the "Friends" RPG?"
It is waiting for us . . . in HELL!!!!!!
Hey, kidding, Matt! Good to see you. I am by no means suggesting we should limit our ambitions to just geeks. My point is that, even by the standards of geek culture, we're doing lousy.
Neel: Interesting points.
Posted by: Jim Henley at Nov 25, 2003 3:40:11 PM
Sure, I'll but that. Many, but not all games, rely on pastiche. But how is pastiche limited to what Americans point to and say "Geeks!"? What about a Jerry McGuire, Sports Agent RPG? What about SOAP, which already exists, of course? What about Fear Factor, the RPG? These are mainstream American things. Sure, RPGs are often based on pastiche and recognizable tropes. Why do they need to be sci-fi/fantasy/horror geeked out tropes?
So, let's say I agree with your assessment that games must rely on a given Genre. Fine. Where's the Tom Clancy games (maybe, maybe we have those)? Where are the Louis Lamour games (ahem)? Where are the Danille Steel games? Where are the John Grisham games? Where are the Farrelly Brothers RPGs? Where's the Sex in the City game? Forrest Gump RPG? Etc. etc. etc.
The answer, to my mind, is that the geeks aren't half as interseted in those as they are in sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads, aka lasersharking.
Posted by: Matt Snyder at Nov 25, 2003 3:44:26 PM
What do you mean by RPG? Do you mean a regulated system? Or a style of play?
If you mean a style than there are tons and tons and tons of Friends (and Dawson Creek and non-Eden Buffy, and whatever else is popular in soaps. But while their experience ha similarities they want different things out of their experience. I'm not sure that there is enough commonality with what we think makes an RPG to bring these people in. They aren't interested in the same things. Can we d better to bring over a few? Sure. The question is, how. And I've not found the how yet. I don't think it is just doing a Friends RPG. If that was the case than all those folks running Buffy games would be using Eden's system. And they are not. There’s a missing step, and probably a difference in mindsets.
Posted by: Jere at Nov 25, 2003 4:10:02 PM
So, let's say I agree with your assessment that games must rely on a given Genre. Fine. Where's the Tom Clancy games (maybe, maybe we have those)? Where are the Louis Lamour games (ahem)? Where are the Danille Steel games? Where are the John Grisham games? Where are the Farrelly Brothers RPGs? Where's the Sex in the City game? Forrest Gump RPG? Etc. etc. etc.
Lordy, do you think that a Tom Clancy or Farrelly Brothers game would be less geeky than D&D? They'd just be geeky in a different way. (Which, I suspect, was part of your point.) I was going to say things about high and low literature and the nature of Conflict, but my argument collapsed when I looked at it hard. I'll note, instead, that you could probably find examples of people riffing on these quasigenres in fanfic; something seems to differentiate gaming from another, equally geeky and pastiche-heavy hobby, and my vote is that it's the transition to being a multiperson activity. (Possibly relatedly, fanfic authors seem to trend female in much the way that gamers tend to trend male.*)
Imagine me saying something here about Vampire, Anne Rice, and tapping into previously unexplored geeky, fanficcish genres that doesn't meet a similar souffle-like demise.
* The plural of "anecdote" is "data".
Posted by: Steve at Nov 25, 2003 4:10:54 PM
Matt, it's not just recognizable tropes. First, you need a whole bunch of recognizable motifs, so that the players know what genre they're in, and second, you need a whole bunch of plot conventions. With most detective novels, you know how it's going to end even before it begins. That's critically important in an rpg, because otherwise the players don't know what they should do next. The players use the genre conventions about the range of acceptable plots to invent the vocabulary of action for the game. I don't think most of the genres you suggested would work, because they aren't strongly plotted genres, and so don't offer rich vocabularies of action. IOW, knowing the genre offers no good answers to the question "what next?", and without that play will usually stall.
Of your suggestions, only romance and legal thrillers seem like plausible candidates to me. But note: even if you're successful, it's not going to command any mainstream social respect. Romances are even more marginal in terms of status than science fiction. On the plus side, from a commercial perspective, romance readers do have a very strong fandom that you could use as a vector for a game. You'd probably need to hire some women to act as the public face of the company, though.
Posted by: Neel Krishnaswami at Nov 25, 2003 4:19:33 PM
But there is a bridge between fanfic and RPGs. There are these communities of folks who are running games, creating new stories, as a collaborative. But it’s not RPGs as we mean them.
If I had to place them in a continuum (and as a geek I love hierarchy), I'd say it goes fanfic --> letter games --> these-type-of-games-->what we mean when we say RPGs. And the major thing separating these games from our games is the degree of creativity (most of these games involve folks playing the characters from the show) and the degree of codification.
Posted by: Jere at Nov 25, 2003 4:24:30 PM
Neel, I think we're talking past one another.
You say motifs, not tropes. I'm not sure what you mean in the distinction, but I'll accept that (for the majority of games we might imagine).
But that's not really the issue I'm talking about. I'm not talking about GENRE. I'm talking about a larger group of PEOPLE who aren't interested in genres typically associated with gaming (fantasy, horor, sci-fi, "cinematic" action, etc.) Nor am I intentionall choosing "marginalized" genres, which soaps or romance may be.
Let's assume that we have Fear Factor the RPG (or RPG). Now, your post indicates you don't think it would work (you say legal drama and romance are the only ones you can imagine working). I can easily see a Fear Factor-meets-Rolemaster game in which players overcome chart-derived challenges (gross!) based on their characters' physicality and iron stomachs. Sounds like an RPG to me. And I'd play it, too, for the giggle factor fo the charts alone. Besides, I wouldn't have to milk sea cucumbers with my tongue, or whatever -- I could just role-play it!
Or how about Survivor. Or CSI. Or Law & Order. Or West Wing. Or ER. Each has what you say we require for gaming (recognizable motifs, plot conventions). None has the usual motifs and plot conventions required of 99% of RPGs created to date.
Let's say we get some hypothetical, mainstream group of players to play the Survivor RPG. It's pretty obvious what they're "supposed to do" as players. There are motifs. They do challenges, gain immunity, and ultimately compete to be the last person standing -- the survivor. This is a recognizable, agreed-upon ending. Players know from the outset what they're working toward. In all this there are physical conflicts, social conflicts, even mental puzzles are possible. Sounds very much like an RPG to me.
I loathe the television show, Survivor, and practically all so-called Reality TV. I think that reality TV is utter drivel, and that reality TV, as a rule, insults my intelligence. Yet, I'd play the Survivor RPG in a heartbeat.
I disagree whole-heartedly with the idea that the Survivor RPG or any of the others suggestions above wound NOT command more respect from mainstream American than would D&D or Vampire. I think that if someone produced those mainstream-type games at a professional level, made them easily playable and (most important) sold them OUTSIDE the RPG industry, they'd command more respect than you might expect.
Folks, what I'm talking about may not look like an RPG, but it sure quacks like one. That we, traditional gamers, can't imagine playing them means nothing at all. The question is whether regular ol'-mainstream twenty-somethings or regular-ol'-mainstream teen-agers or whomever WOULD play them. These people would greatly expand the hobby, probably making it viable.
So, now the question is REALLY this:
Are we asking whether the hobby we know -- geeks, warts, and all -- will stay alive? Or, are we asking whether the activity of role-playing, in whatever form, is sustainable?
I don't really see a remedy for the former question. I have hopes someone with more ambition and less risk adversity than me answers the latter.
Posted by: Matt Snyder at Nov 25, 2003 4:53:34 PM
Inclusion.
Reward.
Validation.
What I don't see you folks talking about is the tools for actually getting a new person to sit down and play.
My success in this so far has been teens.
That probably starts with doing GM chores for their parents. But it also has a lot to do with teens also wanting to see if they can do adult things.
With adults.
And get the validation that they can try stuff and do OK.
This is mentoring in broad terms. And you have to make it a gentle, yet vibrant process. You have to give them something, and make them want to come back.
Posted by: Arref at Nov 25, 2003 4:55:03 PM
I'd gladly play the Survivor RPG, Matt.
But maybe the discussion of genre (or motifs, or tropes) is a red herring? I think the chief barrier of entry for RPGs has less to do with the content of the games and more to do with the nature of the activity itself. Sitting around a table creating an imaginary story with great detail and rigor simply strikes many people as a strange thing to do. Whether that story is about hobbits or superheroes or surgeons would seem to me to have much less to do with it.
If there are to be solutions to the "problem"* of getting more people gaming, they will only come, I think, from the radical rethinking of standard gamer assumptions (the GM-player split, prepared scenarios, character advancement, the long campaign). Switching genres doesn't seem to me like it's going to do it.
(*I'm not actually convinced it is a problem; I don't particularly mind RPGs being a niche hobby - but I can understand if those actually in the business feel differently.)
Posted by: Rob at Nov 25, 2003 8:52:34 PM
While Jim Henley's idea is interesting, it doesn't match my personal experience, and I suspect that it doesn't match the experience of many in my cohort.
The basic problem, I think, is that RPGs tend to take a lot of time to play. As you transition from adolescence to adulthood, this time becomes less and less available, and the alternative uses of time become more profitable (in various senses). This becomes one of the factors associating RPGs with adolescence and with people who have "no life", which reinforces the whole geek stereotype.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky at Nov 25, 2003 10:54:45 PM
I had a very interesting experience transitioning from my California gaming group to my new Boston gaming group. In California, we had no time whatsoever to game. In Boston, I find I have enough time to run one game and play in two or three more.
The difference is the expected length of a session. In California, a session was six to eight hours. Out here, we go three or four hours tops.
Posted by: Bryant at Nov 25, 2003 11:05:23 PM
Rob, I actually agree with you. I think my point did over-emphasize "mainstream" dramas as part of the solution. The idea was to get gaming "out of the closet" so "normal" folks wouldn't look on it with disdain and derision. (And I'll stand firmly by the claim that "normal" folks do indeed do this.)
But, assuming that can happen, then there are still obstacles, which others touch on rightly.
Regarding too little time: I agree -- I have less time to play than I did in Jr. High. So make games that require far less time. Role-playing is not, inherently, a weeks-long investment. It could be a 5-minute investment. We just don't have (many) games that encourage that. Most games have intricate rules, absurd page-counts, and exhaustive lists. These things do not define the act of role-playing. They (mostly) define the tradition of role-playing to date. This should change.
Regarding changing the paradigm: Bring it on! I'd love to see more games that chuck the 1-GM, several players routine. Or any other innovative thinking about the activity of role-playing. This may indeed bring more, or at least different, people "to the table."
No doubt there are many other issues to explore.
In short, I'm saying the past does not have to define the future. That we're used to genre settings, thick rules, and so on does not mean that this tradition defines the activity of role-playing.
Since I doubt any person, myself included, or any group of people here (or, as far as I can tell, elsewhere) have the economic clout to see games like this made on any significant scale, I think the best approach is to go out, make games like this anyway, keep talking about it, and hope that all of this will one day influence someone who DOES have the clout down the road. The evolution will not be televised.
Posted by: Matt Snyder at Nov 26, 2003 10:30:01 AM
Hello, all,
I know this is an older thread, but I'm doing a little catch-up on the blog after reading Rob's latest on Paranoia. I hope you don't mind my posting.
I'd like to relate an anecdote that may tie in with Rob's comment that "the chief barrier of entry for RPGs [is] more to do with the nature of the activity itself". I successfully introduced my fiancee to roleplaying a couple of years ago, and in that time she's done more public awareness work for gaming than I ever have (I've been a bit sensitive about revealing my hobby in public for a while).
She's noticed a pattern whenever she brings up the hobby. The first response she gets after telling someone we play roleplaying games is, "What, like on a computer?"
She then explains that no, we get together with a bunch of friends around a table (and sometimes further explains that no, it's not a LAN Party) and roll dice and use our imaginations. She likes to try and sell it as an opportunity to step outside yourself for a while.
Almost invariably, the final response is, "Oh, I haven't got that much imagination."
Now, this may be the convenient "I'll pretend I'm not good enough for what you're suggesting, when in fact I just don't like the whole idea" type excuse, but one wonders that the reason the hobby is so hard to recruit for is because people fear they don't have enough imagination to make the cut? Or they're simply too scared of stepping outside themselves for a while?
Or perhaps that one's "fantasy life", if you will, is something that's too private to be shared, too personal to be put at risk of scorn?
Then again, of course, maybe gamers are just smarter than the average bear. I remember my first full-time job, when I'd usually pootle off to the bookstore at lunch and bring books with me to work for lunchtime/commute reading; at least one of the staff said, "I don't get reading; books are boring."
My fiancee offers the theory that people think they'll be expected to play some weird, non-human thingy or something radically different from themselves (for example, a middle-aged person expecting they'll have to play a young character), not realising that few games enforce such restrictions.
Posted by: IMAGinES at Mar 6, 2004 9:35:10 AM
Risk.
Risk is a big threshold. Not just that you may be stepping into something you won't be "good at." But also the idea that you could be critized for your imagination, creativity, insight, understanding, and ad infinitum.
Getting across the idea that there isn't a "right answer" or a "winner" is tough.
Almost counter-culture in America.
Posted by: Arref at Mar 6, 2004 11:16:59 AM
Hi, Arref,
While we're Australian in Australia, your point definitley carries over - I can't remember how many times I've tried to answer that question, "So how do you win?"
I agree with your point about risk as well. I think it's why a lot of mainstream entertainment is so "safe" nowadays - less that the media companies want to risk challenging their audience, more that the audience doesn't want to risk feeling shocked or being challenged. Why risk paying a lot of money for a well-crafted, expensive meal that might be the greatest gastronomical experience you've ever had but might also be absolutely horrid to your tastebuds, when you can go have McDonalds which, while you know it's not necessarily good, you know it's not necessarily bad.
Ahem. I think I've gone slightly off-topic here. I hope you'll pardon me.
Posted by: IMAGinES at Mar 6, 2004 9:05:50 PM
I've been writing a reserach paper on gaming as it relates to the collections and programs of Public Libraries, and this discussion has provided some great food for thought. Essentially, by tack regarding RPGs and complex board games is that they require multiple types of "intelligence" on the part of players and GM alike. I think this is ultimately what keeps it out of the mainstream - because although most people have the CAPACITY to develop the types of intelligence needed for these activities, it can be a very challenging and difficult process. And once it gets to a certain level of challenge and difficulty, it is no longer entertainment.
Gamers do tend to start out "smarter than the average bear" (as one poster put it) - but even for us, creating and playing a character for a typical D&D campaign (much less running one) can be a very challenging activity - socially and mentally. We do tend to take a good deal of pride in our mental acuity, though, and we derive great joy from manipulating our resources within the rules to accomplish difficult or seemingly impossible things. I think everyone enjoys this type of accomplishment, but if you did not have the self-confidence that such an achievement were possible, would you be motivated to go to all the time and effort of playing?
As you can probably tell, my take is that most forms of gaming will likely never hit mainstream, simply by their nature. However, I think if public libraries and school media centers would "adopt" RPGs and other games, stocking sourcebooks and fostering gaming programs (as a very few have been doing), maybe more young people at least would be exposed to these games and start playing them young. I think this would be the best chance for these games to gain some kind of foothold in our society and culture.
Paul
Posted by: Paul Carey at Mar 31, 2005 2:54:33 PM
