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For several years now I’ve been hosting a regular anime night over at my house once a week. The two most regular attendees over this time have been a buddy of mine who’s a GW red shirt (Scuddman) and another friend of mine who has never really gotten into 40k. We usually go out and eat dinner together and during these meals, the topic of discussion very often drifts off to 40k and GW in general. When this happens, it’s basically Scuddman and I doing all the talking while our buddy kind of listens in. We try to explain some things sometimes when it doesn’t require too much depth or oversimplification to get him in on it but for a large part of the time he’s ends up just kind of being out of the loop once we get off on a tangent. So the other day when we got off on another tangent about 5th edition and the possible ramifications there of (a common topic of discussion for us these days) I finally decided to do something about our other buddy being out of the loop. When he was heading home, I stopped and handed him the 40k rule book and told him to get reading. Even if he never touches a miniature, at least he’ll be able to understand what the heck we are talking about. Of course, you can’t just read the rule book at not try playing the game. And once you play, you can’t avoid starting an army of your own. So if my evil plan works out, we’ll have another 40k player in our mists.

Anyone else have interesting stories of how they roped their friends into playing (or perhaps how they were roped into the game)?

So you allow a conversation to "drift into" (you sure you don't mean steer?) 40k and leave your friends out from the conversation? I'm not trying to call you a badguy here and maybe your friend is more of a listener, but it sounds like you're not being a good conversationalist if this happens often.

As for the topic, I have my little painting table out at home and if a friend comes over and displays interest, I tell him I paint little dolls and leave it at that unless probed for more info. Only time I tried roping a friend in was when we were out and came across a GW so I stopped in for a few minutes.

I got a friend of mine sucked in by virtue of Dawn of War (which is actually what got me in too, though I had played miniature games before). He got sucked into the dark eye of Chaos, and decided he needed tiny little dollies to represent such pure evil.
Unfortunately, the poor guy lives in the center of the state now while he goes to school, and there is not much of a easy to find community there. That and he is more of a hermit than I am.

For me it was Space Hulk.
Terminators in cramped quarters with unknown quantities of Genestealers all around.

"A battle to the death in the chilling depths of space"

WOO-HOO

Well, my first experiences with GW were Talisman at the FLGS, then Space Hulk (same place), then Blood Bowl (just because it looked too cool NOT to play).
That was it for me for the longest time. GW models were always the priciest ones out there, and I just could not see spending $2 and $2.50 or even more PER MODEL (this was the late 80's, after all). Especially to collect an ARMY'S worth... LOL

What got me playing 40K, however, was the game group at the local FLGS I went to after moving to Richmond, VA and getting married. I got really into Chainmail when it was new, and there was a group of us that played every Friday night.
The group (about 20 - 30) eventually died down to about 6 - 8, and the varied interests of the group came out... they decided to play 40K for a while.
I picked up some OOP Warriors from Bartertown and used a bunch of the old Genestealers from Space Hulk. I just proxied a Tyrant with a new plastic warrior until I got a real one.
I wasn't even a casual player until Daemonhunters came out. Yeah, the army's crap, but I fell in love with the imagery of them. I still love it (and the concept).
Even after DH, though, I was still only casual (I split my time between that and D&D).

After moving here, I found a great gaming group, but they only play 40K. I split my time, 50/50 between them and D&D until I realized just how much I hated what the "new" D&D had become.

Now, 40K is all I do... even though I'd like to branch out (I'm the ONLY one). I like my group enough that I'd rather play 40K with them than a better game with someone else.

Eric

I took my brother to the local battle bunker. I showed him one army after another in my usual talking about myself fasion (he's used to it), until he hit the Tau crises suit, when he was, "This is cool!" And that was that. Mecha is his thing.

Ha ha, my nanny roped me into it when I was eight... She bought us an edition of white dwarf that had a bunch of black templars shooting at stuff from on top of a mountain of skulls. To an eight year old boy that is awsome incarnate.

Well I have to chime in here. I think I can give a few pointers to the whole concept of enlisting new recruits. The biggest turn off to both new players and old is the rules, for different reasons: new players tend to hear them and are like "huh that's pretty complicated" and the old players just have issues with balance. But for the new players we need to hook them with the models as well as terrain. The models alone are not enough they need to see them on the battlefield to get the whole "wow thats pretty cool effect". And they need to see other normal people involved too to help ease them into the rules as well as make it seem interesting. Normal people! I often times game with people that I would normally not be associated with, not that I look down on these people by no means, its just that well sometimes 40k players can be a bit off the wall. But thats the beauty of the game, getting to know the odd balls it again part of the fun! They usually great players and people once you get pasted the geekiness. It's just that people don't want to be labeled nerd or geek unless they are secure in their nerdum (like me) so the easy going people help them come into the fold.

40k is an interesting game because at it's core it is a good and simple formula: move shoot assault, I really like the how simply it is broken down. The you go I go thing can be ruff but I still like it for what it is- a social game and a great hobby.

Some players don't seem to get this, it's a hobby not a competition. There is a difference between exercising tactics and just playing WAAC. Be should to enlist the hobbist play and not the WAAC player.

I actually got all 3 of my college roommates and a mutual friend into 40k. There wasn't much to it. They were into games anyway and when they saw me painting they started to ask questions. I let them look through the BBB and I started to hear "hey these guys look cool what are they like?"
A couple of months later there was a new ork player, a new eldar player and a witch hunter player. one of my room mates who was starting 'nids we later lost to video games (WoW) but the witch hunter player got his new wife into tau so it all works out.

When I was in New Zealand, I got bored and went to EB games to find something my computer would run. Picked up Dawn of War, and I decided to buy it purely for the fact that on the back was written:
'On the frontlines, there is but one commandment; THOU SHALT KILL!'
I like killing stuff ^^
So in the manual there was an ad for the novel. Went to wiki the novel, and got a link to 40K. Learned about it, then went and blew $150 AU on minis and rulebooks.

Phoenix wrote:Anyone else have interesting stories of how they roped their friends into playing (or perhaps how they were roped into the game)?

Drugs and torture, which are both ironically analogous with minatures and the 40K rules! HA!

BYE