thread: 2012-03-21 : Monster Mania Con: barriers to interest
On 2012-03-21, Timo wrote:
So, here's an interesting parrallel:
My lady friend Gina is not an RPG player, nor are her friends. She'll play video games, and board games, and I got her to sit down for one and a half games of Murderous Ghosts, which were kind of awkward and didn't run great (we're going to try again with other two person games as well).
Gina is also a social worker, and at one point she picked up Rory's story Cubes to use with her clients (http://www.storycubes.com/). That evening we had some of her friends came over, and all excited she showed them the cubes. I was busy in the kitchen, but I listened as they proceeded to use the cubes to create two stories, one after the other. Seeing how much fun they were having, I thought "Hey, how about Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple? It's very similar to what they just did with those dice!"
I suggested it with initial mild interest, showed them the book, and suddenly there was no real interest, the subject was changed. It wasn't the art, because they all said the art was neat and kind of cool. They were over in theory to play boardgames, so it can't be the idea of games themselves .
I think there was some sort of switch: when playing with the story cubes, they were all just being silly and goofy. When they looked at Do, they thought it looked/sounded complicated, intimidating somehow. I don't know, it was odd.
