Re Normies vs Hardcores (? hobbists), it occurred to me that my most engaged players are also GMs in other games, regardless of system. Now I'm wondering what would happen if I asked one of my Normie players to GM a one-shot. Make it super easy and help them with the rules. Might it convert them?
No. You will give them a nervous breakdown.
This has been my experience MULTIPLE times.
When it happens I try to explain not to emulate me, just keep it simple - run a one-shot, and see where it goes. Do a module, a basic dungeoncrawl - use pre-gens. Don't even think of campaigning...
It has never worked longer than 3-to-5 sessions tops. And most of the time it's because they immediately bite off *way* more than they can chew because they've been playing in my campaigns. When I try to help - they get resentful about it. But I always tell them not to do what they think I'm doing.
And it's largely because when they see me GMing, I show up, turn on my laptop, organize my material - battle mats, screens when I feel sexy and mysterious, dice, notepad, pencil. Then it's on with the show.
What they don't see is the amount of time I spend in the evenings working on ideas for my own self-interest that I intend on using in the game longterm. Collating information from other sources and repurposing material. Working on gazeteers for locations we might one day visit if the game takes us there (usually they don't). Working on setpieces, statting up NPC's and making basic skeleton plot-point quests that could lead to larger things.
It's stuff I do because as a longtime GM it's important for me to know - even if it never comes up. But for Normies and new GM's most of this stuff would never cross their mind, because for them the game exists only as far as the module in front of them says so.
There is no box in the room that exists outside of what the flavor text says. There is no extemporaneous context to the world outside of the prescribed adventure. And thus, the Adventure Mindset is the training wheels for Normies and basic-level hobbyists to engage in TTRPG's.
This is why I'm a GM advocate - it takes a GM that *wants* to do this to raise the quality of the game beyond "running adventures". We need GMs. Adventures for my table are *always* happening even when nothing is apparently going on. There is ALWAYS something to do. You can have your PC walk around his room and I'll describe anything and everything they want to examine. They can open up every drawer in their room and I can tell you what's in it - and make it into a mystery that creates "adventure".
"Adventure" is making anything transcend the mundane and making the mundane interesting in context to the limit of your GMing bandwidth. That's the job of the GM to eke out the novelty of their setting in order to make it as real as it can be. To break out of the flavor-text box and let the world breathe.