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How to Get Your Group to Play Other RPGs

by Mike on 9 June 2025

Finding players to play tabletop RPGs remains the hardest problem for the hobby and has likely been the biggest roadblock for the hobby for the past 50 years. Options for playing online help but finding and maintaining a good group is still hard.

Getting players to try something other than D&D is also hard. But, I argue, it's not as hard as it was to get a group in the first place.

The difficulty we face convincing our group to try a different game is often in how we approach convincing them.

Players typically know what to expect with D&D. As a brand, D&D is older than the average age of its players. Players haven't ever heard about your bespoke RPG about snails going on an adventure in a sewer. They know D&D.

Before you can convince players to try another game, they have to know you.

Once you have a solid group of friends playing your game, it's easier to convince them to try something new because they trust you.

"Let's Try Something New for a Couple of Sessions"

Your group doesn't have to throw away all future D&D games to try something new. Instead, ask your group to play a couple of sessions of a new game in between campaigns. Players are often more willing to try something when they know it isn't the new thing forever. Two sessions is about the minimum number of games required to get a feeling for a new RPG and, who knows, you and your players might end up running more.

Some groups are willing to take a bigger plunge – maybe ten or twenty sessions of Shadow of the Weird Wizard. You'll have to feel them out. It's still easier to convince them to try something if they know it isn't a permanent switch from the system they already know and like.

What's In It for Them?

One thing to consider when approaching your group about a new RPG is how you talk to your players about it. You might like the game's streamlined mechanics on the GM side, but what's in it for the players? Why would they want to play this new game as opposed to D&D? What makes it worth the switching cost going from a system they know to a system they don't? Work on your pitch with a focus on what the game gives to your players.

They Still Might Not Like It

Even after trying a new game, your players might still prefer D&D. D&D is a great game. That's fine. You still had the opportunity to try something else and see how it felt. If some of your players liked the new game so much that they want to continue but other players want to go back to D&D, perhaps start a new group for the new game if you have the time.

Try Other Games

Above all, give other RPGs a shot. D&D is fantastic but there are a lot of great games out there with great ideas – ideas you can bring to just about any RPG you play.

Like finding and maintaining a great RPG group, proposing a new RPG takes effort to convince your players. Limit such a switch to just a couple of sessions and focus on what it brings to your players to help convince them to try something new.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on When to Cheat and Vestar the Shining Storm – Dragon Empire Prep Session 25.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Keep a list of monsters in your prep notes the characters might encounter in your next session. Write down their page numbers.
Spend time understanding the relationship between monster power and character power so you can better improvise combat encounters during the game.
Ask players to let you know when they feel like they earned enough in-world knowledge to level up their characters.
Mix easier encounters with hard encounters. Not every encounter needs to be a knock-down drag-out fight.
Let players know what skills are likely more relevant for a given campaign.
Ask players how their character learned of the information they received on a good ability check.
Show characters the layers of history in the dungeon they explore.

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This work includes material taken from SlyFlourish.com by Michael E. Shea available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.

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