Getting into Tabletop RPGs

Hi all. The title is pretty self explanatory, in that I want advice for how to get into Tabletop RP Gs. I've recently had a rekindled passion for board games in the past year ever since I started watching Tabletop at Geek and Sundry. I was not interested in RP Gs though. That is until I saw Titansgrave on the same channel and saw how fun and entertaining it looked. So any tips on how to get into the landscape of Tabletop RP Gs?

GETTING STARTED

1. If you have friends who you can convince to play, you can start a group with them; if not, and nobody is doing pick-up games of D&D or something around where you live, I suggest signing up as a player for some IRC, RPOL or play-by-post/PBP campaigns online. You can also read other people's campaign logs or PBP's to get the hang of how things work.
2. There are several forums that have populous PBP sections and often quite good discussion of other elements. Giant in the Playground, home of The Order of the Stick, has a fair bit, and I hang out on rpg.net a great deal (it's not for everyone, but since I'm in the socially progressive, politically leftist group they're trying to focus on, I like it).
3. The contemporary pen and paper RPG market is really more of a keyboard and Word document/PDF RPG market. Nearly everything is available in PDF these days, and it's led to an explosion of small publishers since now you can just upload a POD-ready file rather than needing your own warehouse. Drivethrurpg is a major hub for picking up PDF's. It also contains a number of free or cheap game systems, and has regular sales for the pricier products.
4. System recommendations will vary depending on what your group likes - a lot of systems are optimised to tell one kind of story well. The World of Darkness is designed to tell stories of personal horror and moral compromise, but would struggle to tell the comparatively light-hearted character development of Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (which is really good at things like Steven Universe or Studio Ghibli movies, but is not recommended for a first-timer because the corebook can be a bit hard to grok even for experienced players), and neither of them is necessarily a good fit for the pulpy two-fisted action science of the FATE Atomic Robo adaptation, the kung-fu stuff of Feng Shui, or the grittiness of an old-school-renaissance game like Stars Without Number.
5. Just as a general rule, there's a FATE variant that's pretty good at almost everything - Nova Praxis, for example, is a nice cheap cyberpunk game - and the core system is pay-what-you-want. Meaning that if your goal is to get a game going as cheaply as possible, FATE is usually a pretty good option. It's not quite as recognisable as D&D, and its general reputation is "second best at nearly everything", but in the dedicated tabletop community it's got pretty broad recognition.

PLAYER ADVICE

1. Don't be That Guy.
2. When creating a character, try and make it something that'll fit the campaign idea. If the premise is D&D dungeon delving, create a character who's willing to delve into dungeons. If the premise is hunting down monsters in the urban jungle, create a monster hunter - a reluctant or unwilling monster hunter who'd really rather be at home in bed is fine, but someone who actually stays home in bed is disruptive. Creating a character who's unwilling to engage with the adventure generally makes you That Guy.
3. It's okay to not know all the rules, but at least knowing the basics is a good idea. No-one's going to sweat if you haven't mastered the more abstruse elements of the game, but at least try and have cliff notes on what your spells do and how your skills work. Expecting the GM to tell you everything about how your character works in play, every time you use the ability, generally makes you That Guy.
4. If you're playing in person, around a table, make sure you bathe regularly and wear clean clothes to the session. You'd think this wouldn't be necessary advice, and I assume it's not necessary for you, but enough people break it that it's probably best just to put it in the advice. Showing up to the game session in the third day of a given set of clothes surrounded by a fog of deadly toxins makes you That Guy unless you've literally been travelling all day every day for the past week and only just got home, and even then it's probably best to ask if you can skip that week to get yourself together.
5. Remember that RPG's are collaborative storytelling. You are not the star of the entire show. Let everyone else have some focus time too. Breaking this one most definitely makes you That Guy.

GMING ADVICE

1. Rule Zero is that the GM trumps the rules. While it's usually a good idea to appear to be playing by them, it's okay to cheat a bit if necessary.
2. Don't get too hung up on a mechanical issue. If you can't quite find the page for how something minor works, just bluff it and move on.
3. It's a good idea, which I really need to do sometime, to keep cribnotes and advice. For example, I recommend having a list of names for all the major cultures of your setting - if you have elves, dwarves and orcs as major players, keep a list of possible names for elf, dwarf and orc NPC's that you can refer to when you need a name quickly. Also, your NPC's will be more memorable if you can use the same name for a given NPC every time they appear.
4. Try and set a general tenor for the game before character creation. If you're planning on a heavily social campaign, and someone turns up with a barbarian queen covered in furs and skulls whose only skill outside a fight is starting one, it's going to be awkward.
5. If a game you're running collapses or the passion runs out, don't let it get you down. Maybe ask one of the others if they'd like to try being GM for a while.

edited 26th Jul '15 2:16:37 PM by CountDorku