Hi, all! Just thought I'd take a very informal, totally unscientific reading of this forum's temperature on something that's very close to my heart both personally and professionally. Who here plays tabletop role-playing games? And if you don't, what might make you start?

I'm talking about games such as Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), Pathfinder, and Shadowrun to name some high-selling, established ones, or Fiasco to name a recent, really different one that seems to be doing pretty well for itself. For anyone not familiar with these games, they're a lot like the Final Fantasy games in some respects (the original Final Fantasy, in fact, was a fairly obvious D&D pastiche). Physically, it's usually a group of friends sitting around a table (or some online equivalent like a G+ hangout). In most such games, one player acts as a narrator and referee (this player might be called the Gamemaster, Dungeon Master or various other things) and each other player takes the part of one of the main characters. Unlike in most games, you're not competing against each other, there's no definite endpoint, and you aren't limited to a specific set of possible moves - you can do anything real people could do in the situation you're in (and some things they couldn't, like cast spells). That's one reason there's a human referee - to decide what happens if you do something really weird that the rules don't cover, or could handle more than one way.

Anyway, having said all that, it seems to me that interest in Final Fantasy and interest in these games should overlap a fair bit. Heaven knows I love both to pieces. What are people's experience with these games? Love 'em? Tried 'em and it didn't work out? Might be interested, but haven't tried?

I'm especially interested in that last category, actually - if that sounds like you, what do you think it would take to make you an active tabletop gamer?