I was reading the WoD thread and the subject came up of new gamer accessibilty in game design.

My question is this:
What sorts of design elements might make a game
a) easily grasped by new gamers?
b) have a short time between opening the box/book and actually engaging in play?

Thoughts?
K-Bob

komradebob wrote: I was reading the WoD thread and the subject came up of new gamer accessibilty in game design.

My question is this:
What sorts of design elements might make a game
a) easily grasped by new gamers?
b) have a short time between opening the box/book and actually engaging in play?

komradebob wrote: I was reading the WoD thread and the subject came up of new gamer accessibilty in game design.

My question is this:
What sorts of design elements might make a game
a) easily grasped by new gamers?
b) have a short time between opening the box/book and actually engaging in play?

Thoughts?
K-Bob

IMO, visually and process-oriented structures. But the drum I have taken to beating in this regard is "bring back the board". Ideally, a game should teach itself just by the act of looking at it. I find text pretty poor for conveying ideas like sequence of events or nested decisions.

John Kim wrote: There was a trend in the 1980's of various rules-light games which followed many of these principles -- along with highly simplified rules. But they didn't seem to catch on. ...

1984: Adventures of Indiana Jones (TSR), Chill (Pacesetter), Marvel Superheroes (TSR), Paranoia (WEG), Toon (SJG)
1986: Ghostbusters (WEG)
1987: Teenagers from Outer Space (RTG)
1988: Macho Women With Guns (BTRC)
1989: Prince Valiant (Chaosium)
1993: Amazing Engine (TSR)

So I would take a grain of salt with this. I think it's easy to fall into the trap of just dumbing things down for newbies, which I don't think is successful.

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.

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

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.

Okay, so they have this reward sitting in front of them. It's kind of nifty just to look at and you know, if they look further into the rules they will get to do nifty stuff with it! It's a win/drawn further into the game then win again design. Rewards every step of the way.

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.

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.

Every player had a character, with certain pieces of information that were relevant to the mystery. For each segment of the game, you also had prompts as to lines of questioning to take up with the other players. At the end, of course, everyone tried to figure out whodunnit, before all was finally revealed.

I only played one, and it's been years, but I think it's a worthwhile alternative to the 'board game' approach that's been mentioned so far, if only because it places a higher emphasis on characterization than a game like Warhammer Quest. Of course, it also required more people (6-8, if I recall). A tradeoff, then.

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

IN every mainstream game I've ever read, right back to the ones where the rules were printed on the inside of the box cover, the very first thing articulated from the first is "The Object of the Game".

I think that is what traditional RPGs lack that contributes alot (the most?) to the inaccessibility of the format to the general populace. There's no clearly articulated point. People like games. Board games, card games, games with marbles, all kinds of games. But people also like to know what they're supposed to do.

This is often articulated as "How to Win", but I think the actual winning is seconary to the act of engaging in a social activity.

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".

My Life with Master has this about as bright line as I've seen in an RPG. The object is to kill the master and free yourself from his tyranny. Dust Devils has this. The object is to reach a point where the character either shoots or gives up the gun. Sorcerer has this, though not as hard a line. In Sorcerer the "object of play" is to resolve your character's kicker.

Universalis kind of has an object of play, but its not a strongly articulated one. The object is to "tell a story" and its "finished" in the same way as you know any story is finished. Its not spelled out, but at least its something familiar.

Having an object of play allows the player to filter the many options available to them by "which of these moves me closer to achieving the object of play, and which doesn't". It gives the player something to hang their hat on, so to speak. Instead of being overwhelmed with a ton of options with no idea what they're supposed to be doing (and RPGs have more options than any board game in history) having a defined object of play allows them to see how those options interact with it.

Hello,

We are watching the answers to the topic/inquiry of this thread appear right before our eyes, beginning in earnest about two years ago and still evolving, culturally.

These answers have not existed previously. To discuss "success" in the limited (and often laughable) sphere of role-playing commerce to date is irrelevant. There has never existed a role-playing object (by which I mean a saleable, concrete object) which one may acquire and play for maximum enjoyment, if one is inclined to try it out. TSR tried at one point, or rather a short-lived company using that name did, but I think they were off the beam from the start.

Lots of activities require buy-in and learning time. What is a reasonable expectation for a satisfying role-playing activity, for someone who has not played or has played minimally some time ago? No one knows. Should we accept the current standard of, say, two-three months? Should we strive to shorten it? Should we focus on some other element of design and permit a six-month to a year prep period to be required? Repeat: no one knows.

We are not talking about capturing the existing market-share of "gamers." Nor are we talking about becoming a mainstread fad (Jonathan Tweet on the cover of Newsweek! Everway movie from Miramax! Wahoo!). We are talking about something else - the appearance and sustained presence of a hobby. Cultural evolution.

I suggest that many titles and releases since 1974 provide a lot of insight about how to present material in a way which reinforces this process, but only in fits and starts. In my view, if you're interested, you should play the following games and in addition, think very carefully about how they're written and presented.

1. Prince Valiant, Over the Edge, Paranoia, Amber

2. Soap, InSpectres, The Pool, Elfs (and a few others, e.g. Ghost Light, Puppetland)

3. Universalis, Dust Devils, kill puppies for satan (HERE is the door)

4. My Life with Master; arguably FATE and HeroQuest (this is standing on the OTHER SIDE of the door, looking around in wonder)

5. The Mountain Witch, The Great Ork Gods, Primetime Adventures, Fastlane, Trollbabe (I hope), Dogs in the Vineyard, Pace, and hundreds more in preparation even as we speak. (BOOM - the universe opens wide)

You'll see (evolutionarily speaking) a synapomorphy, as well as a couple of direct-from-ancestor modifications. It's moving fast, fast, fast, right now. Too fast for any of us to see which direction, which approach, which phrasing, or which content actually works.

I'm only partly talking about rules/procedures. I'm talking about presentation audience, and instructions, in addition to rules/procedures. That's why Sorcerer is not included, nor is The Burning Wheel or The Riddle of Steel. These are "rumblings" games - you pick them up as a gamer and upon reading and playing, you feel something rev in your belly - you know that to play them to a fullest means you have to stop being a "gamer," culturally. But they are written toward the gamer, or to a subset of them.

I urge anyone who's interested in the topic of this thread to acquire, read, play, and re-read these games. I've done it, and so have many others ... and we all have a different "look" in our eyes, and in our business/design goals, from those who haven't.

Best,
Ron

When it comes to the "object" of RPGs, I have an extremely contrarian view-- I think that one of the strengths of good role playing games is the fact that the object(s) of the game are subjective and player-defined. In the fantasy context, while the wizard's player may want to aquire magic items, the fighter's player may want to build a keep and become Lord over the land (sorry for the tired cliches). The fact that all players can set their own objects and "win" in different ways is one of the things that sets RPGs apart from board games, even really good board games.

This being said, I'm certainly not dissing My Life With Master or any of the other slew of great fixed-object RPGs. They are a blast to play, but are necessarily finite in a hobby that could be infinite.

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'll shut up now.

Andy

Hi Andy,

Consider this:

Hearts is finite. Cribbage is finite. Go Fish is finite. Bridge, Poker, and all rules-sets of what to do with a deck of cards are each finite.

A deck of cards is not infinite, but its applications might as well be considered so.

Card playing = hobby

Particular game = particular game

The hobby is infinite (or as near as makes no difference to us), but the games are highly specified and fixed.

Role-playing design and publishing has always been hampered, and badly in my view, by confounding this game with the hobby.

I recommend reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. The first chapter does a very nice of job of clearing the air, specifically in terms of distinguishing among the thing, the particular medium of a given instance of the thing, and the thing's content in an even smaller-scale of a unit of enjoyment. (minor paraphrasing warning)

Best,
Ron

Another game to look at is the Buffy the Vampire Slayer boardgame. Like the Buffy RPG, it's aimed at people who are fans of the show. Like many RPGs, each player plays one character (Buffy, Willow, Xander, or Oz), except for one player, who plays all the antagonists. Each major character, both heroes and villains, have "life points"--when those point go down to zero because of a fight, the character is dead and out of the game. The game is crystal clear in how to play and what to do with it, but it's also easy to customize and hack (Gareth Hanrahan has written alternate rules and expanions for the game on his website).

I don't personally know what the designers intended with the game, but if they didn't plan on making a game to introduce newbies to the world of RPGs, they did it anyway. I think it would work really well for that.

Valamir wrote: IN every mainstream game I've ever read, right back to the ones where the rules were printed on the inside of the box cover, the very first thing articulated from the first is "The Object of the Game".
...
My Life with Master has this about as bright line as I've seen in an RPG. The object is to kill the master and free yourself from his tyranny. Dust Devils has this. The object is to reach a point where the character either shoots or gives up the gun. Sorcerer has this, though not as hard a line. In Sorcerer the "object of play" is to resolve your character's kicker.

Ron Edwards wrote: I suggest that many titles and releases since 1974 provide a lot of insight about how to present material in a way which reinforces this process, but only in fits and starts. In my view, if you're interested, you should play the following games and in addition, think very carefully about how they're written and presented.

Ron Edwards wrote: I urge anyone who's interested in the topic of this thread to acquire, read, play, and re-read these games. I've done it, and so have many others ... and we all have a different "look" in our eyes, and in our business/design goals, from those who haven't.

Ron,

Where would you place Everway in the list of titles you've named? I've been rereading the rules in preparation for running a game, and my sense is that Jonathan Tweet is writing for utter newbies. (In fact, many of the reviews of the game criticized his tone for being overly obvious and simplistic--reviews from long-established gamers, of course).

Obviously Everway has some problems when it comes to novice GMs handling the Fortune Deck and constructing Quests (although even here Tweet is careful to provide lots of examples).

But I do think that Tweet's text could be considered a model of how to introduce gaming to newbies. Not at the Prince Valiant level, but at a fairly high one nonetheless.

Best,

Rob

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

John Kim 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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".

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Noon wrote: 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.

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

Walt Freitag wrote:
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.

Technocrat13 wrote: 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.

Technocrat13 wrote: 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 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.)

Rusell, you're a genius.

What he said. That just crystallized the nagging reservations that have been in the back of my mind throughout the recent threads on this topic.

A lot of disagreement about what games, design techniques, and/or instructional styles do and don't "appeal to newbies" or "work for newbies" are really just differences of opinion about which of Russell's varieties of newbie one is likely to be dealing with the most. This is probably true even if that exact enumeration of newbie types is inaccurate or incomplete.

- Walt

Well, Russell may be a genius, and certainly his distinctions between types of newbies is excellent.

However, I must object to part of what he wrote: 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.)

John Kim wrote: 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.

M. J. Young wrote: Well, Russell may be a genius, and certainly his distinctions between types of newbies is excellent.

However, I must object to part of what he wrote: 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.)

Our gaming group was four adults who played mostly board and card games together, sometimes did bowling, pinball, and miniature golf, and had our eyes on the then-emerging world of video games. We read about D&D in Psychology Today, and tracked down the boxed Basic set somewhere (a Farmers' Market, I think), other books in book stores later. I played for five years with no more contact with other "experienced" gamers than a couple conversations with a guy I met at work.

I can't help but think that some newbs don't learn to operate an RPG so much, as they are capable of percieving (to some extent) the extra infrastructure needed to use this RP book.

That infrastructure consists of various skills and self discipline. But I'm not sure it's generally acknowledged that RP actually consists of quite a range of skills, and someone might come up and say "Nah, running a game is a doddle, I don't feel I'm using any skills at all. And after 10+ years I should know' which is kind of ironic to say when your talking a decade or whatever years of experience.

Quite frankly, if your on the forge I think your a person with a knack for RPG's and quite an interest in them. Note how there are plenty of roleplayers who aren't registered at the forge or not even registered at any RPG forum. So this whole 'Ah, I started with no help and look how well I've done' is kind of pointless. Look how far you've come...most don't get that far. So lets focus on that majority of newbs who don't come so far or even gave up at the starting post, rather than the minority who made it all the way to the forge.

Hi all...my first post on the forum. :)

I'll get to the point now. I got started in role-playing through (the other) Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone's Fighting Fantasy pick-a-path books. After having read through a pile of those, me and a friend found a D&D basic set and took it from there. The point being is that I think using a pick-a-path story as part of the rule book can be a good way to teach new players about role play and about the game. You can run them through how to handle some situations, give them a taste of role playing and at the same time entertain them (i.e. getting them interested in discovering the rest of the rules). It's not perfect, but at least it gets the player interacting with a story early on and making choices for his character. The only rule book that I can remember taking this approach was GURPS 3rd edition (maybe only early printings), and it worked fine there...even though GURPS is a rather complex set of rules covering 250 (now 500+) pages.

Personally, I think a rule lite system is preferable when introducing new players to role play, especially if that system has plenty of samples of play, ready made scenarios, sample adventures and usefull GM info. I believe complex rules can just confuse them or get them to focused on getting it right, rather than focusing on the creative part of role playing and on making an entertaining story for everyone. The fact that you haven't role played before, does not mean you're new to story telling...at least as an audience (films, books etc.). If you want to look for an element that everyone knows instinctively, than a good story would be it. This is of course entierly a personal preference based on the kind of role playing I like to do, and in the hope that new players will find their way to character and story based role playing from day one.

Ragnar