Well, I wouldn't change too much. Actually, there is only one thing I'd like to change—I wish I had maybe a bit more guidance when I started RPGing.
As I wrote earlier, most of my early RPG gaming experience comes from computer and console games, and oh boy, was I clueless at age of eight. I managed to finish some games only when I revisited them a number of years later.
To be honest, I wouldn't want to live in any of my favourite game settings! Wilderlands, Thunder Rift, Tamriel, Warhammer universe... I'm perfectly happy with my current, Terra, setting. :)
I've been an RPG game master since the age of when I got a younger brother and we smacked each other with sticks pretending to be whatever we wanted to be at the moment. Knights, samurai, Jedi, pirates...
I've been facilitating various games for decades, but I've only seriously gotten into “gamemastering” D&D this year. It's been a rewarding experience so far!
Oof, what was the first one? As I wrote before, most of my early RPG experience came from computer games. I'm not sure if Final Fantasy VII and Vandal Hearts II were among the first I bought, but they are the ones I do remember quite vividly. Oh, I played a horde of JRPGs on Play Station.
Maybe an easier question for me would be “what is the second RPG you Kickstarted?” Now that is something I can easily check... aaand it was a 5x7 DUNGEON CARD SET by Dan Smith:
Gaming magazines! And for tabletop RPGs, it were classmates in elementary school.
We tried to make sense of this really, really cool book, full of fantastic drawing and rules in foreign language. AC didn't make any sense whatsoever. Our favourite trick was dying to a gelatinous cube that falls out of a wardrobe.
The book? Well, today I know it was the first edition of the Wizards of the Coast Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook.
What a question! D&D, in all its iterations and edition, and with all its supplements, has so many systems and subsystems that I don't know where I'd start?!
Maybe I should focus on the three big house rules I've implemented:
Arduin's special ability charts. Arduin Grimoires begun their life as crazy AD&D supplements. Special ability charts were one of them. Every character can roll on their respective chart, and get anything from smelling so bad the monsters will spit them out to secretly being a were-creature. My players have been having a blast with it.
Critical hits and fumbles from the Dragon Magazine, issue 39. Common approach of natural 1 always being a fumble and natural 20 always a critical strike doesn't make sense to me. Why fixed 5%? Why doesn't a high level fighter become better? Carl Parlagreco introduces a simple system where probability of success or failure is determined as the difference between the attack roll and roll required to successfully hit. In other words, it scales with the level of the attacker.
Clinging to life. Classic D&D is very lethal. 0 hp? You are dead. For my game I decided to introduce two checks: first save versus death to see if you are still alive, and then roll under constitution score to remain conscious. This has created some rather memorable (and dramatic!) moments in my game.
There are so many cool systems and subsystem and whatnot... One life wouldn't be enough to explore them all!
Easy, you get them to talk about it. Therefore, I'd talk about playing RPGs within my community, and I'd ask others to do the same. Of course it can feel awkward, especially between adults.
What I found that works well for me is to talk about as a hobby (as it is for most), just like collecting vinyl, practising martial arts, or any other. Talk about it without shame and see what happens.
Funnily enough, that is one of the questions I've asked myself when I started recruiting for my Wilderlands campaign.
Here's how I'd answer today:
* They will enjoy an expansive, interactive, and open world that lives and breathes with them.
* They will enjoy great freedom and thrill that comes from it.
* They will like that we use simple and readily available rules (Classic D&D in B/X flavour and their retroclone Old-School Essentials).
* And last, but not least, they will like it because we are all having good time together.
There is more to it, but I reckon that above is good enough to begin with!
To be honest, due to my work online games work best.
So my where is more about the selection of the right digital tools that puts everyone at ease and allows them to immerse themselves into the game, not gadgets.
So far I've found Discord the easiest, because we can use voice, audio, and chat (including dice rollers), all in one place. Owlbear Rodeo works great as a minimalist shared map.
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