D&D/Role-playing Games in Malaysia

All I Did Was Help Get A Few Friends Together

Those were the breezy words of one Tun Kai Poh, game designer, blogger, and the man who helped me start one of the biggest meetups for tabletop role-playing games in Malaysia.

For those of you who are wondering what A Good Day To Dice is, we’re a monthly D&D/RPG event where we get multiple Gamemasters together to run single, short role-playing game sessions for the general public. We’ve everything from fantasy adventures like Dungeons & Dragons to sci-fi romps like Star Trek, to anime games like Golden Sky Stories.

It has been more than a year since A Good Day To Dice started. And from a single table of 5 nerds who wanted to try role-playing games we’ve grown to more than 40 people across 6 tables. So as a new year starts, I figure it’s about time I sat down, looked at the numbers I had collected and did a quick post-mortem.

More Malaysians Are Interested in RPGs Than You Think

Roughly 50% of our signups come from people who have never played in A Good Day To Dice. 35% of signups for A Good Day To Dice were also women. If you had asked me to estimate those numbers a year back, I would have been waaaaay off. There’s more people interested in RPGs than we can see from our social medias or within our tables.

As nerd culture continues to seep into more mainstream entertainment more and more people are going to hear about RPGs. Shows like Stranger Things and streams like Critical Role continue to be one of the entry points when asking newbies where they heard of tabletop roleplaying.

You’d also be surprised how many friends who aren’t nerds might be interested in trying out RPGs! I’ve personally dragged a few non-gamer friends into the hobby who I would never have guessed would get so enthused by them.

Dungeons & Dragons Is Not the Only Game In Town

A common complaint I’ve heard within the Malaysian TTRPG community is that if it ain’t Dungeons & Dragons, nobody is going to show up. Now, I’m not going to say that there’s not a seed of truth to that or dispute that it’s a LOT harder to find players for games not named D&D. But that number isn’t zero.

A Good Day To Dice did not have D&D games for many months of our existence. So much so that I had started joking in our marketing posts that we had ACTUAL D&D when someone decided to run some Dungeons & Dragons.

Now, D&D games tend to fill up quick, get oversubscribed, and force me to compensate by putting out a call for more GMs, but it’s not as if non-D&D games don’t fill up. Based on our current stats, it’s about a 50/50 split on signups for D&D vs other games.

Malaysians ARE interested in other games, other settings and other genres. You just have to dig a bit deeper to get there. Reaching out to other communities and groups outside the usual suspects can help.

One of my favorite games to run is Firebrands, a game about conflicted mecha pilots embroiled in a civil war. And every time I run it, without fail, writers and editors show up for the game. I still have no clue how to reach more of them, but I do know they are out there.

(Most) People Are Nice

A few events in I had a small panic attack when one of the people who volunteered to GM came up to me and told me they would not like to run for one of the players they GM’d ever again. This was when I realised that I hadn’t set up any code of conduct or way for people to contact me if they had any complaints or issues.

This was rectified but since then, I still haven’t had to enforce that code because as a general rule, people have been super nice! Some people bring snacks to share unprompted and people who have never even played RPGs before manage to learn how to spotlight each other’s characters without prompting.

The wider RPG community has also been super supportive! Whenever I know we’re oversubscribed but none of our current GMs can make it, I just reach out to more peeps over Facebook and literally every person I spoke to said yes! There is a wealth of people in the community willing to give time and energy to grow our hobby that is really wonderful.

A Good Day To Dice Is Not Done Improving

There’s a lot more we could do better. Here’s a quick rundown of the stuff I have vague ideas about:

Reaching out to more communities! Whether it be providing non-English games or bringing in fan-bases of associated games.

Getting more women to run games with us! While the player percentage is 35% the GM percentage is significantly lower.

Providing games outside of Klang Valley via online games.

Ways to build community before and after the games take place like a pre-game lunch!

Finding ways of taking people from one-shots and getting those who want it involved in longer form campaigns.

More diversity in terms of the types of games we run! D&D has slowly been creeping forward as the game we run the most of, but I’d like to keep providing opportunities for players to try alternative systems and genres.

Now here’s the catch: I don’t think I’ll be able to do a lot of this alone. The time taken for organization and event marketing is getting close to the point I’m not sure I’m comfortable with sustaining.

So I’d like to steal a page from Kai and get a few friends together as well. If you’re interested in chipping in, whether it be by running a game or executing on some of your own ideas, drop me a line, cause the only way things get better is with people working together.