I think it’s great to give new players a handle on something familiar, yeah. Like my 13yo niece in the game last night? Pretty much everything we suggested and everything I described was couched in stuff that’d be familiar to her.

If all I had was an entirely unique vocabulary, imagine the on-ramp! Actually I can imagine the on-ramp: that was AD&D, circa 1981. 

Honestly I have no idea if or how roleplaying would have hooked me if games had started from “let’s play a game that feels like an episode of X,” rather than wargaming.