Rapid deployment rpgs

[ffilz]

Something I wanted to toss in to this discussion is the position of a dumbed down version of a more advanced game. I think the various incarnations of "all you need to play D&D" in a box are valuable. I strongly suspect that the copy of Basic D&D that my friend got that introduced me to the hobby came from either his mother or his older brother. His older brother was playing some D&D in high school and my friend was into wargames (which was my connection to him). I can see his mother seeing his interest, and then finding the boxed set and purchasing that as a gift without having to worry if she was giving him everything he needed (the old "batteries included" consumer confidence trick for toys). Once we started playing, his mom showed me a copy of Chivalry and Sorcery and asked if I thought that would be a good Christmas present (I now own that copy of C&S - I got far more use out of it than my friend did).

So we were able to self start with Basic D&D and some vague ideas of what the game was supposed to be from the older brother and as noted in Are we as cool as Shakespeare? I point out that I was able to run a game based on reading the rules and watching my friends play once.

Of course I was already used to miniatures gaming. I also realized I was doing unstructured character based role play. Even in high school, I was using those little characters that were made of 2 1" puff balls glued together with felt details. Sheriff had a distinct personality, different from Bat, and different from the Fox Twins (in fact, after playing D&D a few times, I actually wrote up some quick combat rules for the toys).

So I think there is definitely a place for an all in one box introductory set for any game which has name recognition outside the hobby.

As to Everway as an introduction: it definitely is an interesting tool for bringing others in to your hobby. I'm not sure how well it would have worked for a non-gamer, but I guess it couldn't be any worse than Basic D&D and is probably better.

Wargames are also a good intermediary step. I didn't have any trouble self starting on war games, though along the line I did have some interjection of help from more experienced gamers. I'm not sure how old I was when I got a copy of Tactics II as a present, I was probably somewhere in the 8-10 range. I quickly soaked it up, and even started designing my own boards and writing my own games.

I have to admit that I have bypassed almost all the games from Ron's list though. I have read Universalis and FATE cover to cover (I also own Over the Edge, Dust Devils, and HeroQuest).

Frank

[inky]

For example, freeform character traits (OtE, Soap, MLWM) are in my opinion an impediment for newbies.  It's much easier to grasp to have a short, defined list of traits.

Interesting -- can you expand on this a little?

It seems to me that this is the sort of thing that depends on what sort of game and what sort of player you're talking about. If the pitch goes like "ok, you're all brave adventurers heading into a dungeon in search of treasure" the response might be "er .. ok .. I'll be .. uh .. a guy with a sword?", or it might be more like "great! I want to be like legolas, only with black hair, and I'm really brave, and I have a pony friend, and I'm looking for my lost true love who was kidnapped by orcs".

In the former case it's probably nice for the player to see rules like "ok, you have ten points to assign to your strength, dexterity, and constitution -- do you want to be stronger or nimbler?" and "you can cast spells, or you can be really good with your sword, which is it?". In the latter, though, you can either spend time trying to fit the player's idea into the system, or you can just underline a couple phrases in their description and you're good to go.

Nobilis is one of the systems with a nice compromise, since it's freeform-with-point-buy and has plenty of examples. The players I had tended to have a mix of "ok, I want this power, how much is it?" and "hmm, I have a few points left, I'll get, let's see .. flying."

[ffilz]

Freeform traits definitely have potential if an experienced gamer is introducing the game to newbies. I would tend to agree with John Kim that a newbie trying to pick up and play the game with his buddies is going to have a harder time. I guess it could wind up like cops and robbers with dice ("Gimli can beat Legolas any day of the week so I should get a +10, roll it and weep Fred").

Frank

[Walt Freitag]

Like everyone else, I have beliefs about factors that can make a game more or less accessible. Many of them, I expressed in a thread about a year ago called Popular and damaging. (A read/reread of that thread, with its diversity of opinions, might be worthwhile for anyone posting to this one.)

Quoting myself from that thread, re early D&D:

Sure, the [1978-80 core] books are long. But the books contain mostly lists of things. By picking things off these lists (either at random, or based on some idea in mind), you can create your own dungeon crawl adventure. You can do this without having to make up any plot. Ever. Not in preparation, not in play. Nobody has to author anything.

That certainly isn't everyone's ideal form of play, but it is a form of play. (And once you learn to do it, you can move onto other forms, if you want.)

In '77 I played OD&D for a year before any notion that play or preparation for play had anything to do with stories or storytelling crossed my mind.

Earlier in the thread, I also used character creation in Vampire: The Masquerade as an example of system conducive to accessibility. Interesting characters can be created, step by step, in which most steps consist of picking options off of lists. Some of the lists (like the Personality Archetypes for Nature and Demeanor) are supposed to be suggestions toward an open-ended choice, but there's nothing stopping anyone from picking from the specific choices listed. Other lists, like Clans and Disciplines, are presented as complete enumerations of all the available options.

Ever seen a newbie Vampire player get hung up on picking a character name? I have. There's no list to pick from for that item!

(The accessibility of the char gen would be more helpful to the overall game's accessibility if the actual play of the game consisted of thinking about the same sort of stuff that players are thinking about in character creation. But it doesn't; the actual play is supposed to emphasize what it calls storytelling (primarily, confict-charged situation), and unlike with early dunegon crawls, there's no similarly constrained fill-in-the-blanks option for creating the specifics of adventures. That leaves the GM with the usual uncomfortable choice between pre-planned plot and concomittant illusionism or railroadiness, causally-driven plot with is necessary extensive advance world-building or world-sourcebook collecting, or making the leap to no-myth play.)

So, my quest is to find better ways of using "prescriptive system" and pre-enumerated content (like the lists of stuff in Vampire char gen and early AD&D monster and treasure lists, or like the content of a module) during play itself rather than just in preparation, while still allowing players to express themselves in play. Player self-expression generally requires open-ended choices, so meshing the enumerated or "finite" choices with the open-ended aspects of game play is the design challenge. I also think of this as "reinventing the module" but only in the sense that a car is "reinventing the horse" -- I don't expect the results to look much like a traditional role playing module, but I expect the system to be able to do what modules were supposed to do (but never did very well) for play.

I agree only partially with those who point to game boards as a good visual representation of how to play. I see more potential in a tableau of cards, like in most CCGs (but even MORE like a solitaire game or a tarot spread, which present a lot more interconnected information than most CCG card layouts do). I see potential for such a layout representing not just the character's state in the character sheet sense, but also the current situation. If there's also a "board" or a central tableau of some sort, it would represent the shared or global aspects of the situation -- but not a spatial map. Many recent German board games such as Puerto Rico use a combination of individual status card arrays or mini-boards and a central common board or tile tableau. As does Monopoly.

This doesn't mean I don't dig Ron's new place beyond the door. It's just not where I'm going as a designer. Though I think where I'm trying to get may end up closer to that place than it appears right now.

- Walt

[komradebob]

Wow, surprising large response.

Note to self: Phrase posts as a quest for info and opinions on Forge...

Okay, lots of great stuff. Apologies to anyone I'm skipping. I do feel all posters had some interesting things to say.

John Kim wrote:

1) Define yourself and your terms.
The more specific you can be, the better. Not just what is an RPG in general, but what do PCs do in your game and how do they do it.

2) Include good sample characters / archetypes.
This one is pretty darn obvious. Even if they make their own characters, it is helpful to have the samples to go by.

Would you feel it is helpful to have fully premade characters available initially? Several of the games you mention later in your post were related to other media (comics, movies) and had completely premade characters. Of course, MSH and IJ died out, too. Can premade characters be helpful in easy intro? At what point should chargen be introduced, assuming it is appropriate to the game?

I recall some Masquerade (LARP) supplement that included premade, colorful, somewhat stereotyped, characters that all had connections to one another, with a bunch of in-built motivations. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be much advice on what to do with those characters...

3) Include a good sample adventure.
This is very difficult but IMO worth it, if you care about newbies.

Might it be beter to shoot for multiple intro adventures? This sort of ties in with both your fourth point below, and Callan's comments about Warhammer Quest. Should the game start with the sample adventure, rather than have it near the end of a rulesbook. I seem to recall a late '90s DnD boxed set that had the sample adventure very near the beginning. Did anyone have experience with that set? In terms of format, would it be better or worse to follow the example of Avalon Hill with many of their old hex-n-chip wargames: Introduce core rules->follow up with a scenario->introduce more complex rules->second scenario, utilizing more complex rules just introduced->repeat as necessary?

4) Include a simple formula for adventures.
For example, Basic Set D&D had a very simple template for how to write an adventure: i.e. draw your map and populate your rooms. James Bond 007 had some random table plot generators. etc. Expecting completely original plots and stories out of newbies is unrealistic and daunting.

Y'know, I hadn't thought of that.  I suspect, very important also. I'm curious how, say Callan ( who seems very fond of gamist design) would approach this, versus someone more interested in sim or narr design.

Noon (Callan) wrote:

Wow, I would have said make it as gamist as hell. Tell them their goal (get 100 gold, for example) and the basic steps of getting there. Give some hint of what might get in their way.

I've developed a much better appreciation for gamist designs after starting to visit the Forge regularly. Side question: Is there a way to work in character identification/representation into a gamist reward system?

As for rule light...have simple rules, but damn, rules light can really kill off gamist possiblity and instead make it hard core sim.

I can see where you're coming from generally on this. I would however point to Chris Engle's Matrix Game as a rules-lite, high player-on-player competition design.

Anyway, right in the first steps of play instructions have them slapping down a board (as contra said) and cool little tokens and stuff. The visuals this produces are a potent, instant reward. Get away from me if your going to say 'no, my imagination is far more beutiful and your contrivances only get in the way'. Well I'm cattering to newbies so I don't care about ya for the benefit of this exercise.

IMO that artwork and artifacts have an enormous amount to do with new player accessibilty. I can't imagine them being taken for granted and having the thing be successful. What particular form they take ( board, card layout, whatever), I'm flexible about.

Warhammer quest was like this. It was/is beutiful. It had three sections, one for very board game like play, one which was a super extended campaign board game play and then finally the roleplay like section, which fluidly attached itself to all that.

I think this is a really interesting concept, in terms of easing players into roleplay. Can anyone think of other rp games that take a similar approach?

Albert of Feh wrote:

Aside from the board game direction, you also have those "How to host a mystery" games. Each one was basically an extremely directed (almost Fateplay-like, now that I think about it) one-shot-larp-inna-box. Time delay from box-opening to people-playing was about ten minutes.

I bought a couple of MurderParty games for study purposes. I like the quick-to-start-play aspect. One complaint I've heard is that they are, indeed, one shots. As I peer over at my bookshelf, I can see a couple of Pagan Publishing CoC adventure anthologies. Any of them, especially if one were to create some premade characters and maybe get into some r-map stuff ( Murder Mysteries almost require relationships between the characters..), I could see some great gaming events. I wonder if folks are missing a great "chocolate+peanut butter=reeses peanubutter cups" ( as per the old commercials) opportunity...

Valamir (Ralph) wrote:

I think the defining key is that there is a list of options for the player to choose from. There then must be some ultimate goal to inform the player on what options to choose. The goal doesn't necessarily have to be how to win. But it generally should be "how to finish".

I think that some sort of solid "endgame" advice is an important and overlooked part of design, whether per adventure, or per game ( in the case of kickers, MLWM,etc). Many rules still treat extended/open-ended and/or campaign play as the norm. Is that style of play better considered an advanced, rather than introductory, play style?

Andy wrote:

Finally, as to komradebob's original query, I think that the a good "pick-up-and-play" RPG must be intuitive to new players, perhaps relying on basic mechanics familiar to everyone (ie. roll the dice, move your mice). If you keep the mechanic basic and intuitive (not my forte), entry-level players can jump right in.

I'm quilty of that, too.
What particular things can you think of that might be considered intuitive. A couple of people ave mentioned turns and play order. What about terminology, or story arc concepts?

John Kim, in response to Ron's post listing some game designs to consider, wrote:

For example, freeform character traits (OtE, Soap, MLWM) are in my opinion an impediment for newbies. It's much easier to grasp to have a short, defined list of traits.

Would you relate this to the concept of niche characters, that is, characters who have a certain set of abilities/qualities that allow them to shine and perform specific game functions? This seems to be a supporting argument for the initial use of premade characters. Anyone?

Walt Freitag wrote:

So, my quest is to find better ways of using "prescriptive system" and pre-enumerated content (like the lists of stuff in Vampire char gen and early AD&D monster and treasure lists, or like the content of a module) during play itself rather than just in preparation, while still allowing players to express themselves in play. Player self-expression generally requires open-ended choices, so meshing the enumerated or "finite" choices with the open-ended aspects of game play is the design challenge. I also think of this as "reinventing the module" but only in the sense that a car is "reinventing the horse" -- I don't expect the results to look much like a traditional role playing module, but I expect the system to be able to do what modules were supposed to do (but never did very well) for play.

I'm kinda-sorta-not quite thinking something similar about "module" design. What I've been thinking about might be described more like open-source adventures. It would sort of be like allowing all players to have access to all setting/adventure materials, rather than a player section and a seperate ( sneaky secrets) GM section. But, unlike a simple setting sourcebook, it would give a bit more focus to play. I find it hard to describe exactly what I'm thinking of, so I'll try a couple of examples, that I think might be close:

1) Grabbing an old Unspeakable Oath issue and picking one of their "Fragments of Terror" one page story seeds. All the players read it. Said players have some grounding in the HPL Mythos and stories. Play proceeds with players introducing CoC elements, but with the specific focus on the Fragment set up.

2) Taking Rage Across New York, letting everyone read it. Let them read whatever WW:tA material you have on hand. Skip individual character creation- players utilize the NPCs already in the book. Throw away the ST rules and use Universalis. Again, the focus is on the material in RANY, not Apocalypse generally.

Whew, that was lengthy.
Anybody else got thoughts to add?
Thanks,
Robert

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Actually, I should have included Everway in my early-influences list.

However, I think my whole list is being misinterpreted. These game texts are not examples of how to present role-playing information to newcomers. They are examples of attempts or partial attempts to do so which offer insight into what does and doesn't (apparently) work.

We are all still struggling in various ways about this issue. What excites me is that, at last, the issue is overtly in flux.

The door I mentioned is not really about how effective or perfect they are in this goal, but more about the author really saying, "Hey! I'm not writing to gamers! At all!" So far, I think Dogs in the Vineyard has managed to shake off more moss than anyone in this regard. I'm hoping my rewrite of Trollbabe will too, and also that if Matt revises and expands Dust Devils, that it will go even further.

Best,
Ron

[Callan S.]

Hi Robert,

I've developed a much better appreciation for gamist designs after starting to visit the Forge regularly. Side question: Is there a way to work in character identification/representation into a gamist reward system?

Easy. Reduce damage recieved if they grunt when their character gets hit. Give them a list of things to choose from in terms of what their character thinks is important (with one important option being 'Or make one up!'), then give a reward for something like bringing it into play this way 'For castle greyskull I smite thee ork'. Even give them a reward every time they say their characters name 'I, Ashbane, destroy you ork in the name of the forrests'. Make sure they can just keep getting these rewards every time they do it.

All sorts of things along these lines. It may sound kind of small and twee, but if your aiming for people who's last pawn was a top hat in monopoly, this is the way to get them thinking 'Hey, I said Ashbane was fighting for the forests so many times...it's starting to leave an impression of him on me'. That way your getting closer to the doorway Ron mentions above.

I can see where you're coming from generally on this. I would however point to Chris Engle's Matrix Game as a rules-lite, high player-on-player competition design.

I'll pay that. It's just hard, IMO, to do rules light that assists gamist.

IMO that artwork and artifacts have an enormous amount to do with new player accessibilty. I can't imagine them being taken for granted and having the thing be successful. What particular form they take ( board, card layout, whatever), I'm flexible about.

It doesn't really matter what it is, as long as it rewards the instant it falls out of the opened box. For example, c'mon, weve all fondled the monopoly money. Now, you don't need it to do a dungeon crawl. But imagine opening the box and getting a bag full of gold coins...and then playing and having a stack next to you!

Shiney widgets really start the reward process early. Despite what Ron says about not knowing what works right now...keep hitting them with any type of reward you can muster. Rewards work (to some degree, at least).

On warhammer quest, yeah, the three stage book was beutiful. Of course the game, although it had tons of great figures, cost $100 in Australia and was on a high shelf in one of the few minatures stores (in my city).

Great material to penetrate the market, not the right distribution method to give it a chance to, it's interesting to note.

Edit: I may have missinterpreted Ron's doorway reference. Anyway, I meant the point where someone goes from what they're used to, to a matrix like 'Whoa' as they see the more RP'ish potential.

[timfire]

I think a distinction needs to be made between games that are designed to be easily understood/learned, and games designed to attract non-gamers. I'm not sure those two have go together, or rather, I don't think a game has to be easy to learn to attract non-gamers.

As long the game is coherently designed - and I'm using 'coherence' in the non-GNS sense - I think a reasonably intelligent person will be able fumble their way through it, regardless of the 'complexity' of the game.

[Callan S.]

Yes, they can. But what is their reward for it? Remember, they're a newbie...they don't have an idea of what a session ends up feeling like.

What gets them through this task of reading?

I'm not saying it's impossible to reward them enough to get them to read it. It's just its easier to reward someone enough to pay off their reading a smaller set of rules Vs the bigger reward you need to give for a larger set. Unless your banking on the delayed gratification trait, which a recent post was about but everyone seemed to say there was no delayed grat involved.


Personally I'm reminded of a story a dragon magazine staff member gave a few years ago. He said that when they first started playing, they walked around behind the wizard of the party in a forest. They'd sneak up on bandits, he'd cast cloud kill, they'd loot the bodies. Repeat. They enjoyed it.

It was clear the dude running it had no idea how to run combat. He'd read a bit, but obviously hadn't found the rules engaging enough to learn them. Then had the balls to just wing a game.

I think the story is endearing and quite healthy. But if any designer thinks it's okay to design for that outcome, they deserve a sock full of doorknobs. The heros of that story were the gamers, not the author. I'd say he was the villain they beat, just about (unless the appeal here is to beat poor design, which I've started threads about before).

[tj333]

Three things that I think will help to make a game easy to get into are pre-made characters, a pre-made dungeon, and a sample of play that the character can read through.
Perhaps a small book that comes with the game like the one that the Vampire: The Requiem has. The little book has sample characters, basic rules, and some sample play designed to teach the players about the game and setting. All this can be done in a 3 or so hours before opening the big book.

A direction that I have been looking into is character generation that can be done during play. It is a point buy system where you spend at least 1/3 of the points off the start, just enough to keep you alive.
Then during play you can spend the remaining points as if you were still in character creation. The only requirement to spending the points is that you add something to the character's background that explains why the points were spent that way.
The idea is to let someone who doesn't know what he is up to make his character as he learns the game while developing his character.

[John Kim]

What gets them through this task of reading?

I'm not saying it's impossible to reward them enough to get them to read it. It's just its easier to reward someone enough to pay off their reading a smaller set of rules Vs the bigger reward you need to give for a larger set. Unless your banking on the delayed gratification trait, which a recent post was about but everyone seemed to say there was no delayed grat involved.  

Well, this presumes that reading is always a painful chore for people, who necessarily need to be paid off to engage in that hateful task.  

I don't think that's necessarily true.  Indeed, this was the consensus answer to the "delayed gratification" hypothesis as well -- it's based on a false assumption.  Plenty of people actually (gasp) enjoy reading, if the material is interesting to them and well-written.  These people can enjoy reading about fictional worlds and inventing characters to be in them.

I would say it is more important that your game be fun to read than it is to be short.  If it's not fun to read, no one's going to get through it no matter how short it is.  If it is fun to read, then the book can be part of the draw of play rather than a barrier.

[Callan S.]

if the material is interesting to them and well-written.

Arg! I just said what rewards will get them through reading it. The nebulous 'interesting' and more solid 'well-written' are both reward types.

Now, if someone can manage to write well and interestingly all through a thicker tome/keep that reward going, good on them. I think its easier to write well over a shorter space. And I think what is interesting is really is a bit vague...you mean content of interest to the demographic your aiming at, right?

Anyway, it's not delayed gratification if the reading is enjoyable/rewarding in its own right. But I do think rules are hard to 'sex up' enough to reward much as you read them. Especially gobs of them!

[Eric Provost]

Ever seen a newbie Vampire player get hung up on picking a character name? I have. There's no list to pick from for that item!

(The accessibility of the char gen would be more helpful to the overall game's accessibility if the actual play of the game consisted of thinking about the same sort of stuff that players are thinking about in character creation. But it doesn't; the actual play is supposed to emphasize what it calls storytelling (primarily, confict-charged situation), and unlike with early dunegon crawls, there's no similarly constrained fill-in-the-blanks option for creating the specifics of adventures. That leaves the GM with the usual uncomfortable choice between pre-planned plot and concomittant illusionism or railroadiness, causally-driven plot with is necessary extensive advance world-building or world-sourcebook collecting, or making the leap to no-myth play.)

So, my quest is to find better ways of using "prescriptive system" and pre-enumerated content (like the lists of stuff in Vampire char gen and early AD&D monster and treasure lists, or like the content of a module) during play itself rather than just in preparation, while still allowing players to express themselves in play. Player self-expression generally requires open-ended choices, so meshing the enumerated or "finite" choices with the open-ended aspects of game play is the design challenge. I also think of this as "reinventing the module" but only in the sense that a car is "reinventing the horse" -- I don't expect the results to look much like a traditional role playing module, but I expect the system to be able to do what modules were supposed to do (but never did very well) for play.

Hello everyone,

I usually just sit back & listen around here, but what Walt said here is so terribly inspiring I just had to share my thoughts on this subject.

My first thought is, to facilitate speedy play in a game where a GM will be present, the speedyness should be directed to the GM.  After all, when we go out and pick up a new game to play we don't hand it off to a friend to ask them to run it, we usually imagine ourselves running the new game, right?

Next, following that same train of thought, character generation might ought to be an 'advanced rule'.  I think there ought to be a plethora of fun pre-generated character choices just ready to go for the players to choose from.  While they aren't RPGs I point out BattleTech and HeavyGear as examples.  In both games there are wonderfully complex rules for creating your own custom giant-robots, but there are so many wonderful pre-created choices that almost everyone can find one that they find interesting.  I've never seen an RPG that had as many pre-generated character choices as even my old boxed-set BattleTech game.  Imagine finding an RPG rule book that had dozens of pages of characters to choose from, each having a nice little list of cliche names to choose from, bits of motivation to pick from.  

My next thought is that a quick-to-play game should have several simple short stories to play out.  They should speak directly to the GM, treating him as the noob that we would hope he is.  Each story would gradually take away the 'training wheels' of game mastering.  For example, the first story might give room or NPC descriptions that the GM would read verbatum to the players, while the second story might instead tell the GM to use a provided list of adjectives to describe the scene in a similar manner as the previous story.  That is, as the GM leads the players through the stories, the GM is being led through the 'lessions' of how to run the game.  And I mean that the GM should learn how to run THIS game, not RPGS in general.  

Finally, my last thought is similar to what Walt had to say.  In most games, players get a list of options to pick from & explicit instructions on how to create their characters.  Rarely do GMs get that same advice (at least in the games I've read).  Once the noob GM has 'graduated' from the lessons of the sample storylines he should feel comfortable in reading over a list of items, bits, scenes that may be selected to form a story-arc.  I imaging that if the selectable arc bits remain simple, yet entertaning for an extended period of time, and are prehaps followed with yet more vague ideas on further expanding the skills of the GM, then one may have taken someone who has never played an RPG in their life all the way to skilled and functional GMing in a single informative, inspirational text.

Well, that's all that's on my brain.  I hope I didn't ramble too much.

-Eric

[Edit P.S.]  I fully intend to take these thoughts into the game I've been working on.  Even though I have no intention of publishing my work for public consumption, I believe that these ideas will help my game be playable as a stand-alone text without me standing behind it to explain to my friends how to play.

[John Kim]

I've never seen an RPG that had as many pre-generated character choices as even my old boxed-set BattleTech game.  Imagine finding an RPG rule book that had dozens of pages of characters to choose from, each having a nice little list of cliche names to choose from, bits of motivation to pick from.  

Well, a typical game whill only provide sample characters -- which in practice are there to look at as a guide rather than to actually play.  I'd point to the Lord of the Rings RPG as an example, with it's six characters.    They are often lousy as a result of lack of attention.  A good template-based game will have one to two dozen.  For example, I think the Buffy RPG has 16 or 18 (though that's including the characters from the series).  I also haven't seen an RPG which provides more than that.  

My next thought is that a quick-to-play game should have several simple short stories to play out.  They should speak directly to the GM, treating him as the noob that we would hope he is.  Each story would gradually take away the 'training wheels' of game mastering.  

I completely agree that sample scenarios are very important.  Maybe this is just a disagreement in phrasing, but I don't like how that sounds.  Rather than thinking of them as "training wheels" for "the real thing", I think you should think of those quick-to-play games as "the real thing".  i.e. They should be fun for themselves.  Now, I know you're not suggesting that they should be un-fun, but I think the fun-ness should come before the training.  

Put another way, I consider the main problem to be motivational.  If the players have fun with the introductory scenario, then they will dive in and learn more.  If they didn't have fun, then it's likely that what they learned is irrelevant because they aren't going to keep playing.

[Russell Impagliazzo]

I don't know any groups of adults who learned role-playing with each other as non-gamers.  I know many adults who learned by joining role-playing groups with experienced players.  This seems the more typical way that non-players evolve into players.  (I think this is largely true for card and board games as well.  I've rarely played a game straight out of the box with no one that's played before.)  Most popular games can be played enjoyably  by a newbie if they have an experienced coach without  ever having to read a rule-book thoroughly.  

In my experience, newbies come in three varieties:

1.  ``Give me a short, simple list of options at each decision point, and a step-by-step procedure of how things get done.''  These people are drawing on board-game experience, I believe.

2.  ``Here's what I'm doing in story terms.  Help me translate that into your game mechanics''.  These new players draw from acting/pretending  game experience.

3.  ``This is neat.  Lend me your game books until next time, so that I can
memorize all the rules and optimize my character's strategies...''  This would be the player with computer game experience.  

Note that what appeals to one type of new player might well be a turn-off
for other types.  So my guess is that game designers should pick a type of new player they want to encourage, rather than trying to please all new gamers.

Also, if you really want to have new players play without any coaches, you probably need a very simplified game that won't also appeal to experienced players.    Such a game could sacrifice flexibility and replay enjoyment for simplicity and immediate access.  For example, a game where there are ONLY pregren characters and pregen scenarios might
be fine as a ``starter's kit''.  (By comparison, people are expected to play a ``murder mystery'' game only once.)