Hello all!  I have never played a tabletop in my life.  Board games yes, card games, video games.  I'd love to try out tabletop RPGing though.  At this point my knowledge of RPGs consists of reading parts of the Cyberpunk 2020 Core, downloading Eclipse Phase in its entirety, talking to folks who played D&D in the 80s, and listening to AP podcasts (my most current favourite - The Adventure Zone).

If I get to reading the rest of CP2020 maybe I'll try to noob my way through a GM attempt.

Any thoughts/advice out there?

Thanks!!
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 02:31, Thu 13 Oct 2016.

Hi csb,
Are you talking about tabletop RPGs, with a group of friends sitting around a table, or Play by Post RPGs on a site like Rpol?

If you’re talking about a live game, the first thing you need is half a dozen friends who are able and willing to give up at least one evening a week regularly, and who are able and willing to act a role (it can be a bit stage-fright-y for the uninitiated).

If you don’t have such a group in your circle of friends, try putting an ad out in the local rag (or one of those newfangled communication methods that dinosaurs like me struggle with) to find like-minded people within a few miles radius with the necessary time and ability.

Getting a group together is probably the hardest part. I started out in PbP because I couldn’t find enough suitable and available people locally - PbP helps people to game around increasingly busy lifestyles. If you find a foolproof way of recruiting live players, let us all know!

Next, find a game you’d all like to play. It’s best to have more than one offer on the table.

After that, there’s not much difference between live RPGs and a new board game that nobody has played before. Sit down together, read the rules, take a stab at it, and be prepared to make mistakes. The object of the game is to have fun. If you’re doing that, it doesn’t matter if you’re playing the game ‘right’. You can improve next time. And don’t be afraid to improvise the rules, either. Sometimes you may all agree that a certain rule isn’t working for you - change it. RPGs are more forgiving than board games in that respect, they’ll often still work if you change the rules around - or the minor ones, anyway.

If you already have a group of people you play board games with, you might try to introduce them slowly by playing a role-playing board game. I don’t know what’s on the market at the moment, but years ago there were games such as Cry Havoc and The Sorcerer’s Cave that might provide a stepping stone. I won’t suggest Diplomacy, you might lose your friends that way...

Maybe you should start out with simple rule sets if you’re a bunch of newbies together - the equivalent of Snap rather than Poker. Some RPGs have rule books running to hundreds of pages, whereas there are some freebie RPGs with perfectly playable rules written on two sides of A4.

OTOH, if you’re intending to play PbP RPGs, you’ve come to the right place. Keep an eye on the Players Wanted forum for games that might interest you, or put an ad in the GMs Wanted forum for a newbie-friendly GM to get you started. If you want to GM a game yourself, flesh out a basic idea and then propose it in this forum as a newbie playtest.

The advice about starting simple works here, too.

Hope that helps. If you have more specific questions, ask away. :)

I'd be happy to run a short pbp game with you. I'm not familiar with the systems you mentioned but there are not only several simple systems to use instead, I'd rather teach you roleplaying first, followed by a system after anyway (system affects roleplaying, sometimes heavily,but no system is the core game. Each system is more like an add on module to the game of roleplaying to shape the experience in a particular way.).

In reply to clubspecialbee (msg # 1):

Since you are inexperienced, do not be afraid to try new things. Most rule systems have wiki's online, and often they contain enough information to make a character and play the game.

thanks for the replies!!..and i think PbP is exactly what i'm looking for.
Is there a way to run a play-by-chat game here on rpol?
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 08:51, Tue 25 Oct 2016.

RPoL is purely forum based.

RPoL is my fav for online 'tabletop' gaming.
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was against the forum rules, at 14:55, Tue 25 Oct 2016.