The Forge Archives

I've got the pieces for Ygg now, more or less. Time to set down the rules. But, doing so I have to weigh in other considerations. Stuff which up to now has been of little concern:

I want to make a game for beginners. Now what the heck does that mean?

I recently read the review on Everway in an issue of imazine (#37 go here to check it out) where the reviewer, Paul Manson wrote this:

Quote...there is a tremendous amount of cultural information to wade through before one is given any concrete information on how to play the game. My impression of beginners is that what they crave, more
than anything, is concrete information, specifics on how to play the game and what is expected of them. Like it or not, that means the game mechanics.

I share this view. Simple, well defined but most of all accessible mechanics is important to introduce someone to a game if one supposed to learn it on one's own.

The first games I came into contact with in the 80's were written like that. Mechanics, usually limited in scope (good example: D&D in it's basic "red box" set). They might not have been the finest the world had to offer in the ways of game mechanics, but damnit! they were comparably easy to learn.

I feel games with a lot of (indispensible) background especially creates problems for beginners:  background, background, background, ok but how do I play the game?

A line by Ron in his Hero Wars review about setting up a campaign also comes to mind: "...what I wonder is how a GM unfamiliar with Glorantha will get this going"

It's not that this means the games are bad, just that they are overwhelming at first for a total beginner.

In fact I feel that today RPG are all written for people who already are playing something. New players are more or less expected to be coached into the game by experienced ones.

No more: "Um, I wonder what this RPG thing is about. Let's buy one and try to play it". It's not a universal truth, but I feel it's the trend.

I'm still trying to figure out what a beginner's game means though. Here are some suggestions:

* Limited background (an A4 page or less of pure background) needed to play the game

* Quick introduction to creating characters. You should be able to create characters without knowing anything about the background.

* Well defined mechanics

* Little need for subjective interpretation of results

* As little background as possible squeezed into the mechanics (i.e. combat system is combat system, combat system isn't where the author practices his skills at writing novels)

* The total game mechanics, including skills with descriptions are relatively short. Definately less than 20 A4. Background and setting will fill out the rest.

Anything I've failed to mention?

I'll not-so-humbly suggest my own site's free games for study (especially Shadows): Harlekin-Maus.com. Shadows is great for beginners (and kids). And Hogshead's Pantheon, because it's rules (though tricky the first few rounds of play) are simple and the backgrounds are movie-inspired (and need no study).

+ Background - Instead of a short background, a well-known background, especially a popular film or video game.

+ I would argue against subjective results. Beginning roleplayers can often surprise when it comes to this. Playing Donjon (high narrative control) with an inexperienced roleplayer was a great experience.

+ Game mechanics - Don't feel limited to shortening a skill list. Why skills? With beginning gamers, you have the opportunity to try all sorts of new things without worry for gaming expectations. (i.e., they haven't seen or aren't convinced that Attribute leads to Attribute Modifier which modifies Skill rolls is the only way to play).

Hi Christoffer,

This is an excellent topic, because you're running into a fascinating assumption that most role-playing publishers fall into.

You wrote,
No more: "Um, I wonder what this RPG thing is about. Let's buy one and try to play it". It's not a universal truth, but I feel it's the trend.

Whoa, right there. Stop and think. No one has ever done what you describe - wonder what an RPG is, wander into the store, and buy one and try and play it. OK, maybe not "no one," but so few as to be utterly trivial, I think. Especially if you scrub any other gamer out of the picture, and apply this "buy it and check it out" model to an entire group.

This is the big myth of publishing RPGs - that anyone encounters the activity as a consumer first and a practitioner second. The overwhelming evidence (WotC's surveys) as well as any observations of anyone I've talked with suggests that it simply works the other way around. People join the hobby via knowing its practitioners, they become practitioners themselves, and they become customers after that.

Hence, the "what is an RPG" section in most rulebooks is a worthless exercise in terms of explaining the hobby to a newcomer. It seems in most cases to be a weird self-revealing essay that retroactively describes the authors' interpretation and experiences with (originally) D&D and (more recently) Rifts or Vampire, to an audience that's hard to fathom - probably the audience is the authors themselves and no one else.

Am I saying that an explanatory section is unnecessary? A lot of the time, yes. Who will buy Trollbabe? Someone who encounters it via this website or RPG.net, maybe from an ad in another RPG, maybe from a link on a webcomics page, or through a friend who encountered it in one of the previous ways. I suggest - horror! - that the very same concept applies to the most high-budget, most whoop-de-do produced game on the game store shelves.

What I do think is useful is a clear and consistent goal in social contract terms, GNS or other framework terms, and in system terms. It might be stated up front or it might not. It wouldn't be a "what is role-playing essay," but it would be a "what is this role-playing game like" essay.

Hell, it's largely the existing role-players who need to get this stuff clear in order to enjoy their hobby more, in my experience. The newcomers tend to have their shit together already. Given a game text which is clear and consistent in the terms I've described, then they're already all set.

Best,
Ron

Quote from: Ron EdwardsHence, the "what is an RPG" section in most rulebooks is a worthless exercise in terms of explaining the hobby to a newcomer. It seems in most cases to be a weird self-revealing essay that retroactively describes the authors' interpretation and experiences with (originally) D&D and (more recently) Rifts or Vampire, to an audience that's hard to fathom - probably the audience is the authors themselves and no one else.

OTOH, it is nice as a guide to what the authors think roleplaying is (and so gives you a context to look at the rest of the game in), and the occasional well-written one is a useful tool for current practitioners to show to non-practitioners.

Hi Art,

I'd count those well-written introductions among role-playing games in the single digits, possibly on the fingers of one hand. Even those do only the barest job of actually describing the activity to someone unfamiliar with it.

Best,
Ron

Actually, I know several people who had that "let's buy and check it out" introduction to RPGs. I could count myself in that category if you don't count a guy running me through the first solo adventure in basic D&D.

But there is another reason for these kind of games to appeal to me: they tend to be written with a lot more clarity than the games we're used to. And haven't we discussed the matter of overly restrictive settings?

I remember thinking how difficult it was to run MERP because the setting was so well known. Nowadays almost every game comes with a setting as rich, or aspiring to be so. In a beginner's game however, it's hard to impose a setting on the players because the game needs more clarity than that. Background can be added yes, but only after making sure that the players have grasped the mechanics.

Ron, I am not surprised that the survey shows most people are introduced to roleplaying by experienced players. That is my experience as well, of the current situation.

However, I think the reason might not only be that the number of roleplayers are bigger, but that today's rpgs are so HARD for the total novice that there is simply no other way to get into the hobby than through introduction by friends.

The survey doesn't tell us anything about whether people could have introduced themselves to rpgs if rpgs in general had been more accessible.

Look at Vampire for example. I feel it's kind of typical for the "non beginner" type of games which is what is common these days. Widely popular, but near if not completely impossible to pick up and learn to GM without having any prior experience.

Incidentally I feel the same is true of AD&D. Back in the old days, Basic D&D filled out the gap to AD&D, but it is gone now.

What the survey shows is simply the inaccesibility of the current average rpg to a total beginner. It doesn't prove that it is impossible or even hard to have rpgs to be learned by beginners.

Finally I want to address Zak. I was almost gonna say this in the original posting but it was getting long:

I think some of the indie-rpgs, most notably those produced by some of the people who are members here are excellent examples of what beginner games should look like. Many are streamlined into clean simple mechanics that could beat the old 80's games in beginner-accesibility.

(Zak, BTW I really liked Shadows, but I think I wrote that already when you released it - a long time ago now it seems)

On the other hand we have most of the Fantasy Heartbreakers who lie on the other side of the spectrum. They tend to be extremely difficult (and unrewarding) to get into. These, although indie-games in name, are definately not good examples of beginner games. :)

And I agree with Zak's other comments as well. :)

Well, it's impossible to get into RPG's by yourself anyway, it's a social activity. The best case would be a group of friends wander into a gaming store and say 'hmm, that's cool, lets try it.'  I know I got into RPG by first being interested in model trains, then wargames. I knew of the concept of RPG's and thought 'that sounds cool, and requires less painting' I also read a few of the books in stores so I searched out and joined  a local gaming group and joined them.  

I think a 'how to roleplay section' is useless, as a players idea of how to RP will be shaped by their initial group, rather than anything they read. This is because anyone who does not leave the hobby will have fit themselves into their group dynamic. (You could go off things like inate priorities and such, i.e. someone who wantsomething different from their group will probably give up on RPing.)

Setting: Honestly, I prefer games to have their own setting.  A game that is based on a book or movie can be very restrictive, depending on what it is.  MERP is probably an expreme example, in that the books don't give a lot of feel for how the world exists outside the charachters.  Also, all adventures in Middle Earth are world spanning adventures of hero's type stuff. Anything you try to fit in 'between' the big guys seems sorta week by comparison. Star Wars suffers from a similar problem, especially in the Empire Era. Another example would be Storm Bringer.

You can do like I did: RPGs sound cool. Buy an RPG. Read it. Try to get your friends to try it out.

Or like a friend of mine. His story is that his mother bought an RPG (back when the first Swedish RPG was published) which they together figured out. His first session was him and his kid brother with his mother as GM.

It can be done. But not with most of the games we have available today.

Quote from: Ron EdwardsI'd count those well-written introductions among role-playing games in the single digits, possibly on the fingers of one hand.

Yeah, on the hand of an especially incompetant Yakuza member to boot. ;)

It's probably more worth including a section on "This game's take on roleplaying" - explaining clearly what sort of thing the game is designed for, what sort of thing it's not designed for, and essentially laying out the design philosophy. ISTR that Sorcerer has something like this somewhere.

I think that both "approaches" are true. For me, I knew guys that LARPed and RPGed, and I wanted in, but I was too young, so I went and bought D&D, read it, and got my friends in on it.

Although I agree that "what is a rpg" is usually pretty unneccessary.

Jake

I did buy red box AD&D out of curiosity, more or less, but that was because I had just broken my arm and needed something indoors to do.  I did find it fairly hard to pick up simply from the text, but we figured it out.  What I like most is the side-by-side in-game and metagame descriptions in adjacent columns, I think thats one of the best presentations of the in-play dynamic.

However, I too think that most of the "what is RPG" essays are essentially worthless, and I'm in favour of ignoring them for any game that is NOT intended to be entry level.  I suspect that the system light, more narrative style games will probably serve best as beginners introductions.

Contra, I assume you mean D&D and not AD&D? I don't think AD&D ever was put in a red box, but Basic D&D certainly was.

Although even basic D&D was difficult for a beginner, I remember that it interestingly enough had some things specifically targeted at introducing beginners.

The first was the solo adventure. It came in two parts. The first part introduced 3 of the stats step by step and you had to roll a die once or so.

The second part was a little more complicated, but if you had completed it you had an idea what a game could work like.

I have the solo-adventure thing in an early Swedish RPG as well but they seemed to have been dropped when interest in introduction style rpgs started to wane.

QuoteHowever, I too think that most of the "what is RPG" essays are essentially worthless, and I'm in favour of ignoring them for any game that is NOT intended to be entry level.

Agreed.

QuoteI suspect that the system light, more narrative style games will probably serve best as beginners introductions.

Mmm.. It was long ago now, but I think that one of the harder things to bend my mind around was the quirky limitations. "I can't have a sword if I am sorcerer? How then can I make Gandalf?" :)

Incidentally: Anyone else remember what they had the most difficulties with when starting to game?

Quote from: Ron EdwardsHi Christoffer,...

You wrote,
No more: "Um, I wonder what this RPG thing is about. Let's buy one and try to play it". It's not a universal truth, but I feel it's the trend.

Whoa, right there. Stop and think. No one has ever done what you describe - wonder what an RPG is, wander into the store, and buy one and try and play it. OK, maybe not "no one," but so few as to be utterly trivial, I think. Especially if you scrub any other gamer out of the picture, and apply this "buy it and check it out" model to an entire group.

O.K., it may have been a long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away, but that describes our group.

We were four people--my wife and I, one of her childhood friends and her boyfriend Bob. We got together several times a month to play games--board games, card games, bookcase games, war games, parlor games, with the occasional bowling or miniature golf excursion thrown in the mix. We had never heard of role playing games. Having seen E.T., I must have heard of Dungeons & Dragons, but I didn't know it. Not one of us had a clue about it. We read about it in Psychology Today, in an article which focused on how the game could be used as a group therapy tool for teenagers, and saw in it the possibility of creating the kinds of adventures we enjoyed in Tolkien and elsewhere (the LotR Bookcase Game did not work; we tried it). So we tracked it down and bought it. It was 1980. In those days we didn't know where there were any gaming stores; we didn't even know gaming stores existed. We got our books and supplies at toy stores, book stores, and farmer's markets. It was at least half a decade before I found a real game store; it was 1990 before I was ever in any game with anyone who had ever played in someone else's game first. We couldn't affort the magazine subscriptions (I was in radio then--paid in prestige) and didn't see membership in the associations to be of any real benefit (sounded like a scam to get money even then).

I may have introduced a hundred people to role playing games in my games; but we started by buying the blue box BD&D1 and figuring it out, then adding Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, and Traveler, and expanding from BD&D1 to OAD&D, all by buying and reading the rules with no help from anyone else who had ever been involved in role playing.

Now, two of us were college graduates, and the other two college students, and I suspect that all of us were above average intelligence; but it never occurred to us that people did it any other way. That was the way we learned all our games.

But I don't think it's entirely unlikely now. Several times a month I get e-mail from people who want to know how to start their own D&D game, who don't even know what books to buy. My wife thinks it unconscionable that I recommend the D&D starter set (instead of telling them that they really want to play Multiverser), but I've heard good things about it and figure it will bring them into the hobby, and maybe in a year or so they'll remember that I pointed them in the right direction and look at what else I've got.

It happens.

--M. J. Young

Quote from: M. J. Young

Quote from: Ron EdwardsWhoa, right there. Stop and think. No one has ever done what you describe - wonder what an RPG is, wander into the store, and buy one and try and play it.

...It happens.

And I, for one, am a little tired of the myth that the only way to get people into the hobby is by initiation by the other hobbyists.

Okay, it's all fine and good that we all (me included) can trot out our little anecdotes about starting without any support (I was the first in my town with 'Blue Box' Dungeons & Dragons based on a review in Games Magazine), but ultimately it is just a bunch of exceptions.  (Even when you factor all the goths caught up by White Wolf's advertising.)

The fact of the matter is, as long as we cling to the notion that the only way people get into this stuff is by being introduced, our products will strangle the entry point.  Everytime I read the opposite of Ron's problem (an introduction that pretty much says 'since you already know how to play') I heave a deep sigh.

I don't think it must be like this.

I certainly hope it doesn't stay like this.

But I feel as long as people bury their heads in the sand saying 'no one can learn a role-playing game without experienced teachers,' we'll never find out will we?  Isn't it about time we gave both of these myths a rest?  So?  Don't assume everyone reading your book is a total newbie.  But then don't assume the opposite either; anecdotes or not, the only 'new blood' must come from outside the hobby.  You can bet more of them won't have the luxury of knowing a gamer than will.

I mean, it's important to not think that your game can 'convert' everyone, but it can teach, at least a part of gaming, to potential 'converts.'  Let's talk about vectors for a moment (and please remember, I'm only talking about people who ultimately will like gaming).  What about all the Magic: the Gathering (and other collectible card game) players?  Doesn't that market almost have a target painted on it?  (Yet, the most I've seen out of Wizards of the Coast is hoping for cross sales at their chain stores.)  Likewise, popular supernatural media series fans; shouldn't there theoretically be a section of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans who would take to gaming given the right offering (and I mean something more than an impenetrable gaming product that only coincidentally carries the license for that show).  Or Harry Potter?  Or (farther back) Goosebumps?

Where is the entry-level product for them?  For the 'gamers who don't know what they are yet' crowd?  Ron's right when he identifies the myth that most people picking up a game will be unaware of what role-playing games are, but I think going to the other extreme is about as bad (that no one who doesn't already game will touch them).

My personal opinion is that I am tired of all the publishing innovation from the 90s, basically targeting a small section of the ever-shrinking market for role-playing games.  I am equally tired of much of the on-line indie market for catering only to those who both already know how to game and surf the net.  (How big of an audience can that be?  Compared to all the 'could-bes' wandering around out there.)  I want to see games specifically geared for people who don't know any gamers, but think some tie-in is cool; I want entry-level products sitting next to the 'next big thing.'  That's what I wanna see.

So let's stop citing anecdotes and pull our heads out of the sand and look at what could be done as an entry-level product.  Hip enough to catch eyes outside of our 'regular customers,' easy enough for anyone's mother to run, and yet canny enough that it doesn't bore our 'regulars.'

How about that?

Fang Langford

Thanks for the story M.J.

Since you say you recommend the D&D startup kit to introduce newbies, you must also feel there is a definate difference between games suitable for beginners and those suitable for experienced players. What do you feel is important? What was important in helping you figure out basic D&D?