What's a good 'indie' game for beginners?

[Mudge]

And what do you like about it that made you suggest it?


Thanks.


Mudge

[b_bankhead]

I have ,at various times during my rpg career attempted to introduce non-rpg gamers to the hobby and lately I have been trying with Indie rpgs.  And I have found SOAP to be the best at this. I works with ANY genre, you can teach not only what they need to know about the game to play ,but literally all there IS to know about the game AND create characters in 15 min.  You can run a scenario (if what happens during a session of SOAP can be dignified by the term 'scenario') in half an hour.  You can have them roleplaying before they know what hit them. And its easy to cajole people into playing....after all all they have to risk is 45 minutes of their time.  Quite simply I have seen no better game for this purpose in 25 years of reading rpg material.

[Mike Holmes]

I'd second that. I'd also suggest The Pool, because it hovers near simple Collaborative Storytelling, which everyone gets intuitively, but then it adds just enough framework for people to hang their imaginative hats on. This means that, in practice, it's actually easier than CS.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Me three regarding Soap.

On the other hand, if we're talking about a GM who knows the system very well and player or players who don't, then I think Pocket Universe would be a superior game to start with from the Simulationist perspective.

And then, similarly otherwise, good High-Concept Sim games like Dread and Godlike offer sensible, interesting systems and settings with (a) strong grab factor and (b) no arbitrary constraints on player-character behavior.

Best,
Ron

[Clinton R. Nixon]

It really depends on what you mean by beginners, but using the definition "players and GM who have never played an RPG before, or have been playing RPGs for 6 months or less," I recommend, with a maximum of emphasis, Trollbabe.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: this game will teach you how to be an incredible GM and player. If The Riddle of Steel wasn't around, it'd be a no contest winner for my favorite RPG of last year, and even with TROS, they tie.