Quote:
Originally Posted by Embassy of Time
It is not so much the mechanical aspects, more the, uhm, socio-narrative challenges? In video games, you go in a direction and point and click. Just getting them to talk about their characters, much less describe character actions or, gasp, ROLEPLAY, they seem completely lost at the thought of playing through talking. They see CritRoll and think being funny, dramatic, clever and so on comes as natural as playing Fortnite or remembering movie quotes.
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It's literally make believe with rules, though. I ...have an extremely hard time envisioning someone who cannot do it.
Maybe they're inhibited but inhibition doesn't necessarily mean inability.
If they can understand the notion of:
If you were trapped in a glacial rift, what do you think you could do to help you survive?
Then that's basically everything.
"Advanced roleplaying" just has more bells and whistles.
"Due to it being cold, things get worse for you, roll three six sided dice every 5 minutes of realtime, and every time you roll over 14 you lose one endurance point, and you have ten of those in total starting out"
If they can hatch plans to get out of that bind, then they can very very likely also turn it around, maybe not well, but they could be the decider if a plan of someone else (a player ) works in THEIR version of a glacial rift.
Maybe it's closer to civilization. Maybe in their world it's daytime and the sun shines in, giving more endurance, maybe there's a corpse already nearby with an old pickaxe, or synthetic rope or something.
It's not about being "good" it's about doing it, right?
They don't have to be Matt Mercer, they just have to get the notion of doing it.
And even kindergardeners play House or Grocery Store...
That said, you might be partially right with GURPS being not as used/popular as it could (should) be, cause GURPS really has the preconception of being too complex (when in reality it's basically just resolve stuff via 3d6 vs a target number, to roll below or at)
I certainly think that this problem seems ...sort of overblown for what it should be.
Not necessarily by you, but ...as a mental ...uh, obstacle by perhaps everyone involved.
Don't think having to compare to Matt Mercer is that helpful to loosen up as just an everyday student who's trying out some new concept of storytelling.
Edit/P.S.:
I got a very shy friend of mine not only into TTRPG, but GMing by choosing a random google map location and asking her to deal with the situation, and every now and then asking for a roll, including really stupid ones like "roll to successfully climb the stairs" or "a rabid hobo emerges from the alleyway cardboard boxes, what do you do"
(By the way, the hobo encounter did not end in combat, but finding out that hobo alleys are connected by magical teleportation cardboard boxes, and they let you use them if you get initiated into their circles)
I think every single session ended with her dead or going to the hospital, with one time her actually flying out of the ambulance on the stretcher like in a cartoon.
It worked.