How to run an RPG Demo

Role-playing games
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So a friend of mine has taking the (probably economically foolish) plunge and decided to buy and operate a game store.

It’s going to primarily cater to CCG players because, honestly, that’s what fuels almost 90% of independent game stores in Canada. MTG alone keeps multiple stores and their small staff employed.

Anyway, Mike and Katie, the couple who are opening the store and good friends of mine, have suggested that they’d be interested in me running “professional RPG sessions.” I’ve run RPGs for decades, and I think I’d be pretty good at it, even with strangers, but I’ve specifically never tried.

More importantly, their Grand Opening is currently planned for March 15th, and they’ve invited me to run some quick one-shot RPG sessions for people who might be interested. I’d like to diversify my income a bit more (read: I’m poor, and would like to be less poor), and think that pro-GMing might help fill in some of the financial gaps. I’m certainly willing to try!

Does anyone have any suggestions for:

  1. How much to charge for said service? My inclination is to say a 3-4 hour session should be around $200CAD, but maybe that’s too much too soon? I’m happy to work within Mike’s budget for the time being, no question, but it would be nice to know how much such a service is worth so I have something to work towards.

  2. What kind of games/systems work well for quick 1 or 2 hour (at most) intro-style games of TTRPG? Obviously I have to have a D&D 5.5 scenario set up (I’m thinking just some goblins and some heroes… probably the opening scene of “The Mines of Phandelver”), but what else works well? Maybe a quick “Paranoia” session? I suspect that one is too esoteric for most people…

The systems I already have available are: D&D 5 and 5.5e, Blades in the Dark, Scum and Villainy, Macross, Infinity the RPG, Star Trek Adventures, Fading Suns, Iron Kingdoms, Coyote and Crow, Mouse Guard, Battletech Destiny, Paranoia 5th, Rangers of Shadowdeep, Star Wars Edge of the Empire, and Five Parsecs from Home.

My instincts say that besides D&D, Five Parsecs from Home and Star Wars Edge of the Empire would be good to run a quick little session of? Or should I abandon most of the big-box games and focus on specifically created one-shots designed to introduce people to TTRPG?

I’m definitely overthinking this, but that’s kinda what I do. I overprepare. And I would really like to tell stories as a way to make a living…

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I used to run a lot of RPG demos and get paid (a) peanuts and (b) in product.

As for games, I’d have thought it would ideally be something currently in print and in stock, so that a player can go “that was great, I want to buy it” and that funnels cash to the shop. For that matter, the opening parts of a longer campaign that’s available for sale (“and now you can carry on running this with your own group”).

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If you are going to do something tactically detailed (by which I mean something like DnD not BLADES IN THE DARK or its derivatives) having minatures and a map prepared are a big selling point. Do not go all Theatre of The Mind on people who don’t quite know what a d20 looks like.

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I don’t have much to add in regards to your questions (can’t estimate how your demands look like because I don’t know Canadian dollars and your economy) but wish you good luck!

Some additional income is always great. I took up some tutoring again because I got asked to and it is some nice money in relation to energy and time I need for it.

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DnD and Star Wars Edge of Empire are pretty good shouts for games - the first obviously everyone knows and the second is an IP that most people can see that it would be fun. And has the story dice which I personally really like.

Paranoia is perfect for one-shots but to people that don’t even know what RPGs are, I suspect explaining the background and the way you can betray each other and that lot would be too much.

Warhammer Fantasy could be a popular one with the relaunch of the fantasy minis game but its pretty crunchy in its rules

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Running obscure systems at cons might be somewhat similar. What success I have had of that is that it helps a lot if the characters have abilities that players know and understand from real-world and genre examples in pop culture. It goes less well if the players have to study rules and look up abilities to figure out what their character can or should do.

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Hmm, maybe I should add at least one “Real World Adjacent” system… Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green, Kids on Bikes… ooh, I should probably consider one that works for young kids too. Something that has immediate ties to “real world” rules or abilities. Not everyone will know what an E-22 Blaster Rifle is, but almost everyone should know what a 9mm pistol is.

Maybe Fallout? It’s 2D20, I think, and I could nab some minis (or have them printed) for people who are interested…

So DnD for Fantasy, Star Wars for Sci-fi… one kid one (Tales from the Loop? Kids on Bikes?), maybe a Retro-Futurism (Fallout? I still think Paranoia is a bridge too far for most people… but maybe Mutant Year Zero or Dreams and Machines?), and one contemporary-ish (Call of Cthulhu, or Delta Green, or GURPS… you know, I’ve never tried GURPS… or FATE? I think it’s contemporary? Another one I’ve never tried).

Of course, I don’t want to fall into the trap of preparing ten different demos and then running none of them. But 4 sounds about right… especially if I can get minis and maps for most of them…

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I’m not sure you need maps and dice. I think if you’re playing a simple enough one-shot, you can do it perfectly well in ‘theatre of the mind’. Especially if you’re using simple settings that most people can imagine i.e. DnD (basic fantasy), Star Wars (pew pew heroic sci-fi) etc. I think the hobby has been saddled a bit with making people think they NEED minis and maps and all sorts of other paraphanalia (because those things are often high margin sales items!) when I think its ok to show that you need nothing but paper, pencil and a few dice.

Of course, if you’re planning on sitting at a table and waiting for people to join, then the minis and maps could have the table presence to lure people in

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OK, I have experience of GURPS specifically. And sad to say, the best thing you can do is not say it’s GURPS, because if people have heard of it, what they’ve heard is negative (“oh, it’s that system where…”) Character generation is a real problem. But if you present them with pre-generated characters and run it mostly on skill rolls (which is the way I run it anyway)… I think GURPS is best in the modern-ish day (say, the 20th century with a bit of slop either side) and relatively low on superpowers, which makes it great for investigation.

FATE is a much fuzzier game. And while I’m not a fan of it, you might look at Blades in the Dark or one of its genre derivatives, because the things that annoyed me (I just want to role-play, stop telling me ‘bad stuff happened go on to the next thing’) might be good for novices.

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PARANOIA isn’t good for an intro game to RPGs. It’s a joke, a parody of the normal standards of RPG (Co-operation between players, the GM trying to appear fair even if he isn’t) and you have to understand the normality before you get the parody.

I accept that you don’t need to use the minatures and maps but I would say that Theatre Of The Mind is an advanced technique and the focus and game realted fun of seeing the layout and handling the pieces is good for an intro and an explanation.

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Huh.

When I were a lad it was universal, unless you were Very Rich.

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Though I would definitely recommend actual dice, paper character sheets, etc. These days the competition is video games, but they can’t offer the physical pleasures. (My own preference is also “don’t do a thing which a video game can do better”, like an old school dungeon where your job is simply to kill everything, but I accept that I’m in a minority here.)

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Another thing that I tried and that was well-received at cons was to organise characters’s equipment lists into four sections in the corners of a page. Top left was exciting stuff that the character carries or wears. Top right is boring stuff that the character carries or wears. Lower left was exciting stuff that the character keeps in his vehicle or luggage. Lower right was boring stuff that the character keeps in his vehicle or luggage.

“Boring stuff” is routine everyday carry that doesn’t give the character a capability. “Exciting stuff” consists of things that the player has to know about for the character to get the advantage of.

Leave off the character sheet everything that pertains only to generation and experience; retain only the elements that are used in play. Colour-code values according to the way they are manipulated, e.g. bright blue for figures that you roll d20 against, bright red for ones you add to an attack roll etc.

And if I have a list of information to convey to the players (items of treasure looted from a crime scene, autopsy findings, facts discovered from a research effort) I don’t just write them in my notes. I print them out on a separate sheet of paper and pass them across to the players. It saves time on dictating and checking lists and cuts down on garbling. When I get really enthusiastic the list is sorted from the most obvious to the least obvious; the quality rating of the PCs’ search or research rolls dictates where I cut the bottom off the page before handing over the top part to the players.

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From experience, D&D 5e is as complicated as you can get for teaching to new players in one session. And that only gets away with it because of brand recognition.

If you want a fantasy game that’s easier to prepare, run, and play, and that people might have heard of, Daggerheart would be my pick. And it encourages people to buy more dice :stuck_out_tongue:

For D&D, I do completely premade characters where players are just filling in names and such, but Daggerheart’s cards make things much quicker and easier. I prep class sheets with domain abilities picked and then let players look through the cards for ancestries and communities to finish them off. But you could probably do everything as part of the session if you wanted.

On a similar note of “like D&D in how it plays and complexity, with similar brand recognition”, the Marvel Multiverse RPG is worth a look. It has its issues (but no more than D&D does), but “you can be Wolverine” is a pretty good selling point.

For stuff that feels like D&D, but is easier to learn, there’s all kinds of OSR games. Mork Borg probably being the most well known/popular. And people have made all kinds of variants of it. Mausritter is also worth a look.

Personally, I’d pick Perils & Princesses (and not just because it’s my favourite game) because it’s actually designed to work for all ages and experience levels.

For games that are super easy to learn, you can’t go wrong with Powered by the Apocalypse stuff. Character creation is just ticking some boxes and answering some questions. Anything that happens in the game is just deciding what Move applies and rolling 2d6. If you’ve played one PbtA game, you pretty much understand how all others work.

You can probably find a game for any genre you want, but Monster of the Week (urban fantasy) and Masks (teen superheroes) would be my top picks. Ironsworn and Ironsworn: Starforged do fantasy and sc-fi really nicely, but in an evolved version of the system (you roll 2d10 against 1d6).

On a practical level, you’re probably best focusing on what will be good for the store. I run stuff at a cafe, so the goal is just getting people to be there and buy food/drinks.

For a store, you’re probably looking at stuff that will encourage players to buy stuff from the store. So games where they actually sell rulesbooks, etc (or they think will sell if they get them in). Or that use standard dice sets people can be encouraged to buy.

One oft overlooked thing with learning RPGs is new players not knowing the names of dice and it’s not easy to point them out. I’ve seen people use colour-coded sets to help with this, which might be worth suggesting to the store. Possibly included in the price of booking a session.

Much easier to say “the yellow one” when someone asks what a d10 is than trying to point or describe its shape.

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This is why D&D is so often used as that demo because most standard sets are built for it!

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One of the principals I’ve used when designing some games is “meaningfully use all different dice values” because people like their dice!

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Whereas I’d quite happily only have 1 set!

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