Newbie-friendly Indie Games

[John Kim]

Your RPG can be as complex as you like. If a purchaser can enjoy it at even a basic level straight like the video game above, and that's clear to potential purchasers, you can be complex and be ahead of the complex book next to it that'll take a week to get something out of it.  

Right.  I agree with that, and indeed that's what I meant to say.  That's why I've been emphasizing features like good template/sample characters and introductory adventure.  I was disagreeing with Mike's statement:

Ron's point has always been, and I agree, that the people who want complex roleplaying games, are already playing Rolemaster. Or whatever complex games exist.

That is, most "newbs" that remain out there (most, not all), are actually into simpler ways to spend their recreation time.  

So as far as I can tell, we're agreeing that this is not true.  i.e. There are many potential newbs who are into complex recreation, but are not playing Rolemaster.  There are other factors which turn them off from tabletop RPGs, but it is false to say that it is the complexity per se which is turning them off.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Mike,

I'm fascinated that the game presented as "typical" of Indie games trying to appeal to newbs is MLWM. When the designer admitted in the thread that it's not particularly newb friendly in an "off the shelf" manner.

To be clear, even though I wasn't trying to write it as an entry text to the hobby, I agree with folks who've suggested that it's quite newb accessible. And so maybe it's worth looking at how the game achieves accessibility despite itself...because I think its accessibility disputes the traditional notion that introductory text sections ("What is roleplaying?" and "How to use the dice") deliver accessibility. My Life with Master delivers accessible gameplay. And textually and graphically it suggests that play will be a dramatic and fun group activity. The game doesn't look like a college textbook or lab manual or technical reference, and it doesn't suggest that successful roleplay is mentally or creatively rigorous, or achieved through disciplined asceticism. So what I've seen is that folks are drawn to it, and then they leverage their social network. They ask someone familiar with roleplaying to run it. Or they ask questions about the terminology.

Paul

[eef]

Completely off on a tangent here but ...

Did _anybody_ here start playing RPGs by buying an RPG and looking through the 'What is an RPG" section in the books?

I started playing D&D by having some mathhead friends get into it, and they got into it via other mathheads.  It was social learning.

I think all games get taught by somebody.  I learned to play chess via by parents, and learned to play card games and board games the same way.  Once I knew what a board game was, I could pickup new ones pretty easily -- again, once I had gone through the social learning.

In other words, newcomers are going to learn the game via friends, not the game itself.

Let me make a strong statement here:
RPG games, like all games, need an initial social learning curve.  "Newbie friendly" is a game that  an experienced player can teach quickly with minimal coaching, with commonsense and intuitive rules and no more rules than are necessary.

In short, "newbie freindly" <=> well-written game.  No more, no less.

[Doctor Xero]

So, to be precise, you run a video game and can hit 'new game' without reading the instruction manual 99% of the time. And when you do read the instruction manual, you can skim it rather than commit it to memory. It usually starts you somewhere nice to look at and has atleast some super intuitive control so you can explore somewhat (push the joystick forward and you move forward, for example). Not to mention they usually start with a tutorial...learn to play and enjoy at the same time.

Your RPG can be as complex as you like. If a purchaser can enjoy it at even a basic level straight like the video game above, and that's clear to potential purchasers, you can be complex and be ahead of the complex book next to it that'll take a week to get something out of it.

I think this may be why many mainstream games have both a basic rules section and an addendum (or sidebars) of more complicated rules the players may incorporate once they wish to.  In such cases, a player can start with the basics, have fun, and move on to more complex gaming when he or she is ready for it!

I believe someone has already made reference to how templates (such as in the old West End Star Wars RPG) helped in this fashion as well?

Doctor Xero

[Marco]

Completely off on a tangent here but ...

Did _anybody_ here start playing RPGs by buying an RPG and looking through the 'What is an RPG" section in the books?

I started playing D&D by having some mathhead friends get into it, and they got into it via other mathheads.  It was social learning.

I did. I got the ... blue box ... Basic D&D set after my mother heard about some kids getting killed playing it ("ooh, that sounds interesting") and worked my way through it.

It was slow going and tough and I wouldn't say that it gave me a good explanation--and B1 wasn't really a good dungeon to start people with either, IMO.

But that's how I got into the game.

-Marco

[John Kim]

Did _anybody_ here start playing RPGs by buying an RPG and looking through the 'What is an RPG" section in the books?

I started playing D&D by having some mathhead friends get into it, and they got into it via other mathheads.  It was social learning.

I think all games get taught by somebody.

I had heard D&D because my friend Eric's older brother played it.  However, I never played with him and or even sat in on a session.  I think we would play games of make-believe vaguely influenced by this though, but I don't think we ever played a formal game of D&D with Eric.  We ended up going to different schools.  However, I did get the Basic Set, read it carefully, and thus learned to play with my friends.  

Let me make a strong statement here:
RPG games, like all games, need an initial social learning curve.  "Newbie friendly" is a game that  an experienced player can teach quickly with minimal coaching, with commonsense and intuitive rules and no more rules than are necessary.

In short, "newbie freindly" <=> well-written game.  No more, no less.

Well, I disagree based on personal experience.  I also worry that focus on how well an experienced player can teach covers up a host of problems in writing.  i.e. A really poorly-written game can be "taught" to play well because of lots of orally-transmitted information.

[Rob Carriere]

I think I see three kinds of complexity here.

1) How complex is the minimal information set (rules, etc) that you need to absorb in order to play at all?

2) How complex is the total information set?

3) How complex is actual play?

The argument that computer games are complex is about type 2 complexity. As Noon argued, most computer games have low to very low type 1 complexity. Worse yet, the medium is very good for hiding the type 2 complexity. To grab a wargame example, Star Fleet Battles has something called the Cadet's Game. You can get up and running with that in perhaps 30 minutes, but all the time the other 200 pages of the rule book--which threateningly only calls itself the "Basic Set"--are breathing down your neck. The type 2 complexity is very apparent and, to a lot of people, intimidating.

On the other hand, if you play Starfleet Command (the computer game version) you'll be doing the equivalent of the Cadet's Game in about 5 minutes and the entirety of the type 2 complexity will hide in the shadows until you start to actively seek it out. Moreover, much of that complexity you'll never have to learn. How do you calculate photon torpedo damage? How do you distribute that damage over the ship's systems? As a Starfleet Battles player, I have to know these things, or I cannot play. A Starfleet Command player doesn't have to know, the computer will do the computations for him. Of course, he'll be a better player if he can at least estimate photon damage output, but it's not a must-know requirement.

I don't think you can ever have a table top game achieve as low a type 1 complexity as a computer game can have, simply because the computer is an active agent that hold your hand and guide you, while a book is a passive agent where you have to look things up.

Additionally, a book cannot hide its page count, so hiding type 2 complexity is much harder than with a computer game. About the only trick I can think of is the old 2 volume basic/advanced rules division.

So I think paper-based systems that want to appeal to a big market need to be simple (both type 1 and type 2). But that doesn't mean the game needs to be "dumbed down". Go has much lower type 1 and 2 complexity than chess, but vastly higher type 3 complexity.

So that's where I believe the challenge lies. Simple rules, that create a game that can grow with you.

SR
--

[John Kim]

1) How complex is the minimal information set (rules, etc) that you need to absorb in order to play at all?

2) How complex is the total information set?

3) How complex is actual play?  

I don't think you can ever have a table top game achieve as low a type 1 complexity as a computer game can have, simply because the computer is an active agent that hold your hand and guide you, while a book is a passive agent where you have to look things up.

Additionally, a book cannot hide its page count, so hiding type 2 complexity is much harder than with a computer game. About the only trick I can think of is the old 2 volume basic/advanced rules division.  

That's a good point, but I think there are a lot more tricks.  Having good template and/or sample characters sidesteps the complexity of character creation.  Another is to include necessary rules for that character on the character sheet itself.  i.e. Rather than having the character sheet say "Quality: Natural Toughness" and force you to go to the index to look up what that means, a one-line summary of it can be included on the sheet itself.  Marvel Superheroes did this, for example.  

I think hiding the fact that a book has many pages isn't really necessary per se.  By parallel, people who play a game like Star Fleet Command or the Sims aren't actually fooled into thinking that it's really a simple game.  I think of it more as an issue of usability of those pages and necessity of those pages.  

Complexity can be hidden from use if it is in options which don't need to be used.  By parallel, new magic decks expand the game but don't complicate startup.  The trick is in organizing a role-playing book such that the unused options aren't crowded around the options that are used.  I think PDF publication has a potential advantage here.  This is the principle behind RPG expansion books, but they are often poorly done, in my opinion.

[Mike Holmes]

But we're agreeing, John. It's not complexity at all, it's learning curve. I said it before, people want complexity, sure, but they want it at as small a price as possible in terms of time and energy required to get to the fun stuff. This is where RPGs have problems, and where the built in tutor of the computer is hard to beat.

Not that it can't be competed with. I agree with lots of the tricky ideas that people are coming up with to emulate this sort of thing. That said, I've seen tutorial stuff actually make a game harder to learn. But that's a matter of doing it right, which is not at issue.

Again, what I posit is not really that the complexity loving people are playing Rolemaster already, but that those willing to overcome a large learning curve, and who like to do lots of chart lookups are already playing rolemaster. There aren't many out there left who would enjoy that learning curve who aren't playing.

The people who aren't playing aren't doing so because they haven't heard about RPGs by and large - they're doing so because rock climbing is easier to get into. Not because it isn't potentially complex, but because you can get engaged with it by just going to some rocks and starting up.

Mike

[Matt Wilson]

Did _anybody_ here start playing RPGs by buying an RPG and looking through the 'What is an RPG" section in the books?

I started playing D&D by having some mathhead friends get into it, and they got into it via other mathheads. It was social learning.

I got the 1980 or so boxed set of D&D (whatever comes right before the red books with Elmore art), and I was totally baffled by the text. I had no gamer friends and didn't have the slightest idea of how to play. So I owned that game for maybe a year before I met someone who'd played and could show me how. Boo hiss.

[M. J. Young]

Count me among those who learned from the D&D boxed set. It was 1980, and I had never heard of D&D. My wife and I enjoyed Tolkien and the existence of the Lord of the Rings bookcase game only disappointed us into thinking that there must be a way to get exciting fantasy adventures from game play (and this wasn't it). D&D was the subject of a psychology article, and we hunted it down and learned to play it.

Also, we always buy games based on that we've heard something good about them, or like the look of them, or are looking for something new and different, and we teach ourselves to play.

In the words of King Arthur, "Well, someone has to do it."

--M. J. Young

[Rob Carriere]

John,
This is a minor quibble, I think we mostly agree. But there is a difference between the people buying Starfleet Command and those buying Starfleet Battles: The former are buying a small box that has a single CD in it. They may know intellectually that what's inside can't be simple, but they aren't confronted with the fact. The Starfleet Battles people on the other hand cannot avoid confrontation; you can literally feel the complexity from the weight of the box. Compare with the people who wouldn't buy multi-CD games, because that was too complicated.

Mike,
If you heard the sound of a hand slapping a forehead, that was me. Thanks for summarizing my three paragraphs into two words :-) Learning curve is indeed what it is about. I guess that in that framework what I'm trying to argue is that the player should feel in control of the learning curve. The player should be able to start satisfying play "low" on the curve and should be able choose whether and when to advance along the curve. Most importantly, the potential player should be able to see those properties of the game while he's considering his purchase decision.

SR
--

[Rob Carriere]

On the "learn-from-the-book" query:

Almost, 1979, AD&D1.

I had seen (not participated in) a single session of AD&D. This, and the fact I was the only one with the books, made me the resident expert... I guess this means I don't quite qualify as "learned from the book only."

Keeping track of everything (and doing a lot of figuring it out on the spot) was immensely tiring the first half dozen sessions or so, but fortunately the rest of the crowd was both supportive and understanding of the hiccups.

SR
--

[jerry]

I tend to agree with Dr. Xero. It seems to me that role-playing games are difficult to describe to someone who hasn't played them, because the only people to describe them are people who've played them, and they're already in a different mindset. Play one game, and suddenly you're in the state of mind where you can understand them all.

When I wrote Gods & Monsters one of the things I did was write a story that paralleled what could happen in the initial adventure--and present it for potential players to read before going through the adventure. Of course, there are things in the adventure that the story adventurers never met. And there are things that the story adventurers do that the player adventurers will want to do differently--hopefully.

It seems to work fairly well with the few non-gamers I've tried it with, but it is definitely more reading than reading the rules. It may be that it works more as a weeding out process than anything else--anyone who doesn't want to read a fantasy story in order to play a game is more likely to be among the people who would not want to play a game that has more rules than Scattergories. (Or it could of course be that it just isn't that interesting of a fantasy story to them.)

But, that said, I do have this idea for a pre-game for Gods & Monsters. The idea is that the adventure comes first, and explains the rules as they're needed. No character creation--they have to use the pregenerated characters. Make it clear at the beginning that "the players may try something else; choose an ability and ask the player to roll d20 less than or equal to their character's number in that ability. And then present each scene along with one or two or three of the rules most likely to come into play during that scene.

"If Charlotte Korde tries to read the miniature pixies' minds, she will discover that they don't have any. If any character decides to attack the miniature pixies, to be successful the player will have to roll a d20 and be less than or equal to:

Charlotte: 8
Will: 12
Gralen: 7

Any successful attack will kill the miniature pixie that the character chose to attack."

That sort of stuff.

The goal is to guide new players into gaming without them having to find experienced gamers.

I don't know if the approach will work. It's certainly challenging to write.

Jerry

[xiombarg]

As an aside, I learned from the old red D&D boxed set, the one with the Erol Otis cover. It explained roleplaying well enough that I understood what the role of the GM and player was, though at first I didn't understand what the numbers meant, so it was like a freeform game: pick a class, describe what you do, and I (as DM) describe what happens.

This was when I was 10 years old, possibly younger. I later went back and came to understand the actual system mechanics, and from there I graduated to 1st Edition AD&D.

But then again, I was the kid who loved reading directions...