How do I convince my friends to play ttrpg's with me...

how do I convince my friends to play ttrpg's with me? and how do I find people to play with who that doesn't involve Roll20 or going to the local gameshop?

Just curious, what's wrong with Roll20? Never tried it myself.

be popular. people will tend to fall over to suck your dick in general. be unpopular and you can take the coolest thing in the world and people will be like 'meh'.

sorry, OP, but people suck

Not OP but playing Tabletop RPGS online will mix you up in the dregs of the community. The players you want to play with meet in person, they aren't disgusting unwashed troglodytes who refuse to leave their basements.

[spoiler[I know[/spoilers]

Nothing wrong with it for organizing campaigns you've already found a group for, it's an amazing tool.
For actually finding new players, though? It's the equivalent of posting "Free $100 Bill" on craigslist. You're going to get swamped with players who all want to play, and it's impossible to tell which are going to be shitlords and which are going to be golden eggs. Good players exist, but statistically you're going to get a bunch of problem players.

Have you tried asking them?

OP here.

this

yes. several times infact.

Become a cute trap and trade your moist willing holes in exchange for them playing RPGs.

hnng I wish artists still drew drow like that.

I did that too, still didnt work

Have you tried "Everyone is John"?

Post your butt you little hussy.

c;

No, but I want to.

Spam funny screencaps at them until they want to play.
Also consider that they might just dislike you. Are you socially akward? Cynical? Don't answer-- a rhetorical question.

...ok.
But what if I already game with my friends. Due to recent events we now live far away from one another.
We still want to game together.

Is Roll20 any good or not?

No.

That'll depend entirely on your group. Online play is a lot harder to wrangle.
First there's the technical difficulties. You have to make sure everyone knows how to use roll20, has a microphone (and a cam if you go for that), has a stable internet connection, etc
Then there's the social problems. When people are alone at home with their computer, it's a lot harder to get them to commit 100% to the game. Ease of internet access, food in their kitchen, roommates, pets etc. provide ample, easy distractions. Chances are the GM will spend half the game wrangling people who weren't paying attention because someone sent them a meme on facebook.
If you can get it to work it can be a lot of fun, and if you actually use the medium you can do some stuff you can't do irl, like send secret messages without anyone knowing, create fog if war, etc.
But as a GM, expect to do twice as much work.

Multistage process.

1. Consume a media with your friends that is related to your gaming system of interest.
2. Ride hype about media into hype about fantastical imagination and ttrpgs that you have offered to teach and run with friends.
3. ????
4. Profit.

Things that help:
Having not dipshit friends who are at least semi literate, interested in learning new things, etc. Being personable, thinking about how to teach people how to play a game, picking a game that suits your friends, probably starting with something rules light first to get them interested, talking about tone & themes first. Having at least one of the friends be really on board who is already a nerd so they can also build hype. Snacks.

I had a best friend who was nerdy intellectual. More than 10 years of friendship. Theaters and other fancy shit. He was snorting like hell, every time I told him about TTRPG, because "why would you play this, it has no graphics!". And he did not lack imagination, by the way, he was fascinated with fantasy, sci-fi and so on We parted ways because he's 16 INT with 5 WIS and he has troubles with self-appreciation, like, huge narcissistic troubles
On the other hand, illiterate bro who plays games and watches anime 90% his time, persistently read through clusterfuckery of Shadowrun rulebooks and roleplayed nice, became a fucking prophet of battle-planning for numerous campaigns. Meme-shitlord who came for funny situations stayed because he loved mindgames between GM and players, plot and reading.
So, it depends.
It requires a bit of learning, aside from that Roll20 is one of the best ways to play online. However, it has a built-in tutorial.
The most spectacularly useful feature ever is "compendium" which eases\fastens rummaging through most popular PDFs and rulebooks: you just write shit you need in special search engine and go read about that spell your lvl 20 mage knows.
Step 1: read funny stories or remember them.
Step 2: think about targeting. Imaginative friend gets coolstory about plotline and cunning traps, guy who loves humour gets net20\old man henderson type of things, munchkin\metabreaker gets stories about war domain priests with 25 AC on 3rd level and other dragonblooded koboldry. You see the way. Of course, imaginative friend should hear not only preserved type of stories, but that's what he should get mostly. Artwork and shit also.
Step 3: give your friends to sniff screencaps and memes, tell them some stories.
Step 4: proceed slowly growing their interest to the theme. Give this shit once a week or month, depends on friends.
There we have a fork. (cont.)

- Cont.
The fork is basically this: in any company we have guided people and those who guide. Not like there's only 10\10 leaders and slaves. It's theme guidance. Some friend may ask you for a music advice, and bombards you with new games. What's the fork?
1. Those who you supply with media, if they follow you, will surely try to play after right conditioning, if you ask them.
2. Those who supply you or equal in this trade, will need a little more time to become interested. They are a bit harder, but if interested, will dive deeper usually.
Try to think who will be annoyed with you proposals and stories and who won't. Annoying is a bit dangerous zone.
And yes. If you have doubt in friendship bonds, maturity or adequacy of converted, don't bring no mans hoe to the table. At least, be cautios with this.
And last but not least: first time you play with them, thoroughly prepare good module\campaign or pick one. Ask what they want and get balance between pandering and being That GM.

>Having not dipshit friends who are at least semi literate, interested in learning new things
That's still what I wrote.
1st guy sounds like a dipshit who wasn't interested in learning new things.
2nd sounds like not a dipshit, semi literate and was interested in learning new things.
Not sure what your point was.

are they really your friends if they don't want to play with you?

I mean I have a small case of Depression but that's about it really

Yes. I've known two (I have three friends) of them since elementary school and were now getting ready for college.

You are also bad at following orders

If you live near a collage campus - there tends to be gaming clubs and a sci-fi fantasy people meetings. Just be careful as the hipsters like to show up and pretend to be nerds. In IN at Purdue Univ. D.O.P. Dungeons of Purdue meet every week

don't listen to this guy ( )


Bring it up to your friends! If they are hesitant, ask them to just give it one try. I've had lots of friends who never played before play games I've DM'd and then become long term players. The older you get the easier it gets. When I was younger I was more embarrassed to ask people to play D&D because I was afraid to come off as super nerdy, but that fades with time. Now I basically brag about it.

>You have to make sure everyone [...] has a microphone
Ever hear of a text-only game?

This. I'd rather read in-character text than listen to Furfag Dave pretending to be a catboy.