Learning To Speak Multiple RPGs Allows You To Translate For Newer Players

If you've ever walked by a table running a game you haven't played before, it can sometimes sound like they're speaking a different language. Between the jargon used to shorten game terms, and mentions of specific rules and aspects, it can sound more like a spirited court battle on a foreign television station than a roleplaying game at times. However, if you sit down and listen, following the action, it starts to feel like that scene out of The 13th Warrior where our Arabian poet learns conversational Norwegian from watching and listening to his new companions for weeks on end.

That is the last time Ragnar talks shit about my horse!

This is a thing I've run into several times. When you're a gamer, you learn the language of the games you play. Sometimes that gives you enough parlance to make yourself understood in closely related games (most editions of DND are like romance languages, for instance... if you're fluent in one, you can pick up another pretty easily), but not all games translate easily. More than just the language of the mechanics, though, are the themes and concepts of RPGs.

Because if you want to get a new player excited, you need to be able to explain it to them in a way they understand.

How I Sucked a Werewolf Player Into a Dark Sci-Fi Dystopia

If you've never heard of Mutant Chronicles, it's a sci-fi fantasy game set in a galaxy-spanning far future where megacorporations have colonized the planets, and constantly fight for supremacy, market shares, and control of resources. The world is being inundated with a dark force that's corrupting everything it touches, destroying technology, warping humans, and spreading like a cancer that the corporate overlords have been slow to believe, and even slower to respond to. Whether you want to play warriors spreading across the stars, cops in the gritty back alleys of Luna, or nearly anything in between, you can probably pull it off in this game.

World's on fire, may as well go out with some sparkle!

For those of you who are thinking this sounds a lot like Games Workshop's signature Warhammer 40,000, you're definitely not wrong. However, the setting is unique enough to avoid lawsuits, and it provides a different kind of flavor than you can get with games like Rogue Trader or Dark Heresy. The other thing that made this Modiphius game unique was that it had a sample module and rules set, so I figured I'd download the Mutant Chronicles free quick start, and run it for a group to see what we thought.

One of my players, who's usually down to try out anything with dice, was having a hard time wrapping her head around the setting. She's not a 40k player, and generally sticks to more fantasy than sci-fi. I was having a hard time trying to find a purchase to pull her in, but when I mentioned the corrupting forces of the Dark Symmetry, I could almost see it click in her head.

"Oh," she said, nodding. "It's like how the Wyrm is trying to destroy everything in Werewolf!"

That was when I remembered that Werewolf: The Apocalypse was this player's main game. She'd played several different systems and settings, but she'd been an organization head for Werewolf, and she knew its lore back-to-front. And what had been a difficult process for me quickly became a snap of my fingers as I found direct thematic correlations between the two games, bringing across that Mutant Chronicles had that same feeling of struggling grimdark, but instead of being shape-shifting spirit warriors you were now front-line soldiers and psychic weapons trying to turn back the tide of cosmic evil.

Once I found some familiar ground for her to stand on, she was in with both feet. If I hadn't had that ability to translate the idea into a format she understood, though, I likely wouldn't have been down a player when I tried to muster my table.

Play Widely, Run Widely

We've all got games that are our mainstays. Things that we know inside and out, back to front. But it's important to spread out, and to change up your gaming diet from time to time. Partly because you might find some games that provide settings and experiences you'd never have otherwise... but also because it helps you meet gamers who speak a different language than you do.

And you can never know too many languages when it comes to finding something that makes everyone at your table happy.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. Hopefully you enjoyed, and if you've used run these kinds of games before, leave us a comment to let us know what worked for you!

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