# RPG A DAY 2025: Day 20 - Enter tags: #thoughts #thoughts/RPGaDay/2025 ![[RPG a Day 2025 (illo).png]] One of the things that gets talked about a lot in the hobby is a pivotal question: what do you think the best way to bring a new player into the hobby is? After all, if there are no new players, the hobby dies. If there's no one playing the games, the hobby doesn't exist. Vast amounts of ink, like blood, have been spent on the battlefield of the never-ending fight to try and establish the dominance of one game, one technique, or one approach over another. A lot of people use it as a proxy for proving that "their game" is superior to someone else's. After all, when the stakes are so low, fights for status can be fought as bloodily as anyone cares to. We're not really talking about high stakes, after all. As everyone knows, if someone wants to play a game, they'll play a game. If they want to play a game with you, they'll play a game with you. If you offer to play a game with someone, they'll at least give it a go. The question is never really about how best to get people into the RPG or wargaming hobby. The question almost always ends up as a struggle to affirm that whatever game, method, or system the speaker is advocating for is better than the competition. That's not only tedious, it's counterproductive. But when has anything in this hobby focused on being productive first? Rarely. The people who do so are a treasure—a treasure too often easily spent and readily undervalued. My position is one that is more than a little uncomfortable. In part, I've already told it to you. The best way to get someone into the hobby is to *ask them*. It may be a family member. It may be a friend. It may be a stranger on the street. Though I would probably keep that last to a minimum. There are often legal implications. The best way to get someone into the hobby is to ask and offer to share the enthusiasm and joy that you take in playing the games that you love. If it's sincere and if they have an inclination, they'll play with you. It's the same as it was on the kindergarten playground. It's the same as it was in high school, around the lunch table, with your well-worn and well-loved books. It's the same right now, no matter how old you are, no matter where you are, no matter where you work or what you play. That's not to say that you are guaranteed to add somebody to the hobby. Not everybody has the inclination, and that's fine. It does not serve as a judgment on you if someone else doesn't enjoy that particular kind of entertainment. Maybe it's the genre. Maybe it's the feeling of needing to be quick on their feet, because some people are intimidated by the idea of semi-structured improv. Maybe they just don't like playing things with other people. Maybe they don't like fiction. There are as many reasons not to play as there are stars in the sky and pebbles by the sea. It doesn't make your interest inferior. It doesn't open you up to judgment to offer things. It doesn't make you lesser if they say no. Nine-tenths of getting people into the hobby is being into the hobby yourself. There are days, and this one is among them, where I wonder if most of the people attached to our hobby aren't into the hobby. They're just hobby adjacent, to use the phrase I have applied to others—they don't want to do it. They want to *have done it*. They don't like the thing; they like the idea of the thing. They don't want to play games; they want to *have played games*. This is a problem for the hobby at large. No, I am not referring to "tourists." There are reams of rants about tourists in the hobby, which always struck me as completely and utterly wrongheaded, because who moves to a place who has not first been a tourist there? We want tourists in the hobby. We want people from outside who want to visit us. That's why we invite them in. The more people rant about tourists, the more they harden the borders against their own friends. It's perfectly reasonable not to want people who come in merely to tear down the place. That's a desirable focus, but it can't be the first and foremost focus when it comes to people on the perimeter. And I feel like too much of the online discourse about the hobby itself has become poisoned by this fear of encroachment. It does nothing to strengthen the hobby. It does nothing to bring people into the hobby. It does nothing to share your enthusiasm and love for the games that you play, for the pastimes you engage with, for the stories that you tell with your friends. Think about what you have done to talk about the thing that gave you joy the last time you played—not how much you hate what's going on somewhere else, at someone else's table, or in someone else's boardroom. Not how much you hate what somebody is playing at their own table. How much you disdain some other game. Not how afraid you are of what some guy in an office is going to say to put in a book that you weren't going to buy anyway. Do you really want more people to share the love of what you do? Then share what you do. That's all you've got to do. You don't have to play a special way. You don't have to have a library of first through third level funnels. You don't have to invite people to play dicelessly or demand that they have beautifully painted minis before they sit down. You don't have to do anything but enjoy the hobby. Do you enjoy the hobby? Are you having fun? Is the time that you spend playing equal to the time that you invest thinking about other people playing? Is there something this week, this month, this year that motivated you to want to sit down and pull your friend over and say, "Let me share this awesome thing that happened to me, and let me help you have this awesome thing happen to you." If not, maybe you don't want to play games. Maybe you want to have played games. If you want more people to play with you, give them a reason to. If you want more people who care about the hobby, care about your part of the hobby and your play. If you want good people to enter the hobby, be a good person in the hobby. Don't play status games. Don't denigrate others' play. Don't get caught up in one-true-wayism. Don't make the game the only thing that gives you status. Don't try to sell it. Just share it. That's all you have to do. In the end, what we want is the same all over, no matter whether you're playing hex and chit wargames or painting up Warhammer 40k miniatures for a tournament, or spending six days prepping for your Sunday D&D game, or just sitting down to play 30 minutes of Ironsworn solo and jotting a few notes. The game's the thing, as the Bard said. Is the game the thing for you? Find someone to share it with.