Mentoring

[Bill Cook]

In Newbie-friendly Indie Games

My start in gaming was in a near vaccum. We were introduced to the game by my friends older brother, but he only played with us once or twice. Later, I hooked up with some older gamers who gave some mentoring, but it wasn't until a store owner hooked me up with a real mentor that I really took off. Part of what made that mentorship valuable to me was the mentor playing in my games. But mentorship is definitely a topic for another thread.

I've noticed three categories of learning things: reading a book, attending a lecture and doing project work with a more experienced co-worker. Within the context of RPG's, these may be expressed as reading a manual or PDF, participating in a demo at a con and playing in a campaign with some seasoned gamers. As you progress through the categories, I see a trade-off of investment/accuracy for accessibility/subjectivity.

I think this range captures most common entries to the hobby and is also a good snapshot of the breadth in which a designer-as-promoter should involve himself.

[ffilz]

I forgot the lecture mode of learning. Watching people play a game could fall into lecture or it could fall into mentorship. Of course lecture in a way is between book reading and mentoring.

So one question would be, how would you write a game to facilitate mentoring? Do you write any differently than to facilitate book learning? What about lecturing?

Frank

[Bill Cook]

I don't know.  I think with the second and third, the demo guy or GM will prepare materials secondary to the game manual for their purpose (i.e. a demo, a campaign).

I've got a direction for this thread: How does mentoring facilitate your learning of new systems? How does your play reflect training provided by the GM vs. the group figuring out things as you go, manual unseen?

I'll start.

Earlier this year, my group decided to give TROS a try. Our Seneschal, Luke (Zazielsrephraim), had never been GM before. He read the book for weeks and did some informal testing of the combat system with one or two others.

During this time, I knew we were going to be playing. It was my suggestion to try something from that crazy Forge site. But I just couldn't bring myself to really digest the book. Why? A few reasons: I didn't like the artwork; I had been hoping to try out BW; I got hung up on my aesthetic discomfort with the attributes layer; similiarly, I was repulsed by the damage formula; I thought the requirement to declare attack location forced uninteresting detail; and after two hours of focusing on this one issue, I still couldn't figure out how a character dies.

So, the hell with it, I thought. Exciting reports from combat playtesting buoyed my spirits. They talked about D&D-strange things like destroyed ribcages and severed hands.

During play, Luke made several things clear to me: every score and layer ultimately becomes expressed as CP; the color of mutilation and dismemberment creates huge investment; combat is a beautiful double that features budgeting and actionable defense; and (with great relief and wonder, I learned) characters die by highest wound severity, which beomes increasingly likely as pain effects expense your defensive resources. Above TROS, the style of play that Luke led was like an indoctrination to drama resolution and deep immersion.

I definitely credit Luke's (first-time GM) mentorship with breaking (in a marketing context) TROS for me.