Can you teach your wife, girlfriend, best friend, family member or anyone you love to play your favorite RPG? It’s a risky proposition, as listener Dave points out in this week’s listener question: He wants to teach his wife to play D&D, and she’s agreed to give it a try, but he’s afraid that “if she doesn’t enjoy that first session, she will never come back to the table.”

The thing is, we’ve all been there. Whether it’s a girlfriend, wife, best friend, brother … at some point, you want to share the games you love with the people you love, and you probably feel a lot of pressure to make them love it. The deck may even be stacked against you because these players may not come in dedicated to making it work. They may be shy, reluctant, or just less motivated to play RPGs than you are. What can you do to give them the best chance to become players?

In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about their experiences — both successes and failures — in bringing non-gamers into RPGs and what they’ve learned about giving them the best chance to love it.

2:00 I hate myself for loving you: Why it’s a struggle to get the people you love to play the game you love

10:00 Where to begin: Where are their common points of reference for an RPG experience

14:00 How much should you simplify the game and explain as you play?

17:00 Getting to the bottom of the kind of character they’d really like to play

19:00 Connecting with characters outside of the fantasy genre: Meet Sifa the Dazzler, a barbarian halfling based on the mom from The Goldbergs

25:00 Hurdles to roleplaying and how not to scare off your would-be players

28:00 Teaching roleplaying first, rules second

31:00 Make character creation part of the adventure and get through one adventure that’s fun

33:00 Is building characters the best place to start new players, or do you risk losing them in the weeds?

38:00 Should you bother with alignment and new players?

41:00 How do you keep new players from feeling embarrassed about roleplaying?

47:00 What we want to accomplish in a new player’s first game

58:00 Make sure you have the right table for this new player

59:00 Final thoughts and what you can learn from DMing for non-gamers