Quote:
Originally Posted by Tegyrius
By far, the greatest common factors driving disinterest among potential players is the game's military focus. ...
A corollary to this is that most of my gaming friendships emerged from World of Darkness fandom, and thus my gaming circle is more diverse than the audience here. Several female gamers, gamers of color, and LGBTQ+ gamers have opined that T2k is not interesting because the setting lacks a place for PCs whose identities and experiences mirror their own (recall that during the era in which T2k takes place, LGBTQ+ folk were barred from U.S. military service).
I'm curious as to what barriers other referees have encountered when attempting to recruit new groups. I'm also interested in poking at what tools can be created - whether official 4e products, changes intrinsic to a hypothetical 5e, or fan creations for previous editions - to help overcome these barriers and bring more players to the game.
- C.
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Second question first: in my few groups since 1990, I do not recall female gamers having trouble getting into the setting or game. I've been a pretty lax GM about "women can't do combat", and I think most of their characters were from countries that were less rigid about women in combat arms in the 90s. LGBTQ issues haven't come up at all, since I don't think sex & romance haven't been issues in those groups, either.
The military theme has probably been stronger. 1) I have a reputation in my RPG groups as a wargamer, so there may well be a fear of "not doing it right", that I'd wipe the floor with their group with my superior tactics? 2) Very few of my friends really care about war and military things to begin with, so a game in a military setting has no pull.
Regarding rank: That may be a thing, but I've gotten some discussion about that whenever a pirate-themed D&D game came up, or a Traveller or Star Trek game. In my groups, the understanding has arisen that the captain of a ship (by extension, an officer in T2k) really shouldn't boss around other PCs, or there could be an NPC captain, open to suggestions.
My most recent experience with T2k has been at the annual Origins convention, and my groups have been about 75% guys who played T2k back in the day, 15% spouses or kids of same, and 10% people who'd only heard of the game, no military experience. I'm happy to say that I've gotten repeat business from the last group, they seemed to enjoy the tactical play of the game. That said, those have been one-off events, mostly on planning and shooting, very little of the logistics of survival.