Matt Snyder wrote: Malcolm, I'm not sure who's claiming they don't need to do anything in designing a game to make it newbie friendly. I've seen the opposite approach in many, many Forge-related games.

(For example, my own game, Dust Devils, has already been highlighted as a game that approaches, but doesn't quite achieve, a superb level of newbie-friendliness in both writing and design. Good. That was one of my intentions; I sure as heck wasn't hoping "innate virtue" -- whatever that means -- would get me there.)
...
So, where are you seeing this claim? About which specific games? How might your observation constructively help those and other designers as they work on new games or revisions of older ones?

I guess I'd put PTA as the most newbie-friendly in my experience, but I certainly haven't read everything out there.

One thing that I think Ron really got right in that discussion (but nobody really paid attention to) is that White Wolf games and D&D and other "mainstream" 250-page tomes are aiming a different newbie audience than the people who pick up most indie games to start roleplaying. Mainstream games often appeal to the younger, upcoming group that has basically the same demographics as existing roleplayers: mostly male, overeducated, disposable income, possibly with below-average social contacts, likes comic books, video games, and scifi & fantasy, etc. They help continue to serve the existing traditions and often manage to bring in quite a few people from outside this narrow range, because of high exposure, but I don't think that's their main focus.

Many indie games, like Ron said, attract people like the spouses of ex-roleplayers, people who know something about roleplaying but wouldn't normally have given it a try because it wasn't something that they felt comfortable doing, especially in the existing roleplaying culture and the stereotypes thereof. In general, I think the indie games that exist now are mostly aimed at an older audience of people who realize that roleplaying exists, but haven't ever done it. Also, and I don't know if this counts as "gaining new players," a lot of indie games keep dissatisfied roleplayers from dropping the hobby completely (I know they did for me), probably because most indie designers are dissatisfied roleplayers themselves.

Going to specific examples, because that's what John says he wants to talk about, how about Vincent's Nighttime Animals Save the World? I mean, gee, if I wanted to introduce a total newbie to roleplaying and the whole idea of shared imagination, that would be the game to choose. It even incorperates simple mechanics and a traditional GM-player relationship, while remaining casual and super-accessible. Vincent plays it with his 7-year-old kid. It's like an out-of-body LARP too, where you imagine your character next to you, in the environment (so no huge game world full of details to keep in your head), but it's not "you," in the same way as a normal LARP or tabletop game.

Hey! I'm that guy! And I even bought your fscking game!

yrs--
--Ben

Hey John,

While I think that MLWM is a nifty game, I think it is not at all newbie-friendly. It launches into talking about GMs, characters, d4's, and so forth without any explanation. It doesn't have any filled-out character sheets, or a sample adventure....My suggestion here is to talk about specific indie games, how newbie-friendly they are, and what can be done to improve that.

I think conversation would be facilitated by decomposing "newbie-friendly" to the constituent parts of 1) accessibility, and 2) presentation. My Life with Master was not written to newbies. It was written to disillusioned, maybe lapsed and jaded gamers tired of all the lies (i.e. me in 1999). In consciously omitting a playable sample Master/minion/situation, and obfuscating the stats of the minions used in the examples of play, the game seeks to foist the thrill of its collaborative social dynamic onto otherwise dubious gamers. "Please, I insist."

So in being written to people like me, it fails newbie-friendly in its presentation, as you suggest, by referencing dice and GMs and whatnot without explaining. But system- and subject-wise, if presented to newbies by someone familiar with the terminology and ephemera, the way damn near all of us learned how to play RPGs anyway, there is no doubt in my mind that it succeeds in being eminently accessible.

Paul

I'm sort of fence-sitting here. In my experience, while there are exceptions, most indie games are written for experienced roleplayers. They skip over defining what the game is; they don't provide startup features like sample characters and an adventure; and in general they assume knowledge. Of course, this is also common in non-indie games but IMO slightly less so. While I think that MLWM is a nifty game, I think it is not at all newbie-friendly. It launches into talking about GMs, characters, d4's, and so forth without any explanation. It doesn't have any filled-out character sheets, or a sample adventure. PTA is much more newbie-friendly, but I'm still leary of handing it to a non-roleplayer.

Noon wrote:

Okay, imagine we have two tomes. Both of them contain the same sort of stuff you mention above, that requires skill ranks in knowledge: gamer (as does that in joke!).

Now, one is quite thin, perhaps twenty pages. The other is around 150 to 200 pages.(Just checking a my life with master review, I see its 64 pages. Not quite as lightweight as my example but you get the drift.)

Disclaimer: Serious question, no hooks intended, I just want to understand.

Do you want the one that tells you what a general RPG is, and how to play the whole genre of games?

Or are you just looking for one that tells you what this game is, and how to play it, without assuming that you already know key facets?

eyebeams wrote:
As a newbie, I choose the one that tells me what an RPG is and how to play them.

As a newbie, I choose the one that tells me what an RPG is and how to play them

Matt Wilson wrote: 1) the game should have some connection with games that they've already played or pastimes that they are familiar with. Primetime Adventures is about TV. Everyone except the elitist snob at your workplace who says oh, I don't watch TV* knows what the allure of a great show is. But what's GURPS similar to? How do you quickly explain what GURPS is about? No slight against GURPS, but it's not an elevator pitch kind of game. Dust Devils: westerns. zing.

Matt Wilson wrote: 2) There can't be big obstacles in the way of playing once they actually agree to check it out. That includes 300 pages of reading and 2 hours to make a character. Non gamers who like to play games don't want to read rules. People don't even want to read the 2-page pamphlet that comes with Scattergories. And imagine that we're sitting around at my place and you've never played a roleplaying game before, and you say, hey, what's D&D? Can we play that? And I say, sure, we just need you to fill out this character sheet first, with 8,000 things on it. That'll kill someone's interest.

I want to throw out some ideas I've got based on my experience with The Mountain Witch. I believe MW has non-gamer appeal. When I explain MW to non-gamers, it intrigues them. They often say it 'sounds cool.' More than one person said they thought it would make a good movie. And even if they're a little leery, most say that they would be willing to give it a try. (Interestingly, I feel I have to do more explaining to gamers before the light bulbs start going off, I guess because they have more pre-conceived notions.)

Now what's important to note about this, I communcate these things to my non-gamer friends without ever discussing rules.

The reason I believe MW has this effect is because MW has a clearly expressed premise (in the non-GNS sense) that people can relate to. People pick up on the implications of Trust pretty much right away. I feel people 'get' the spirit of the game.

I think that once you get a person to the point where they 'get it' and are interested in playing the game, the complexity and... err, learnability of the rules become a minor issue. If people want to play the game, I believe they will do whatever it takes. In other words, they will learn whatever rules they have to, no matter how complex (given that the rules are coherently designed and adequately explained).*

I think this is the same advantage that PTA and MLwM has.
_________

(*) I'm not saying that complexity doesn't matter or won't have an effect, but rather that I think it's a side issue.

[edit] Cross-posted with John. I think we are both trying to express simliar ideas. [/edit]

John Kim wrote: I disagree with the "rules lite" argument that game books have to be short and super-simple for non-gamers to play them. If you look at more "mainstream" games like Magic: The Gathering or many popular videogames, there is a lot of complexity to them.

Actually, Ralph, I've met lots and lots of people who benefitted from just that kind of cliched text. People can and do buy mainstream games in isolation from other gamers (it may happen with indie games, too but book trade encourages it more, I think). I know, because I'm one of 'em. I nicked money from my Mom's wallet and bought a copy of D&D (and r0xx0red at some video games) when I was wee, read it, got a vague idea of how to game and ran it for my non-gamer friends. This and Dragon Magazine articles were my sole source of gaming info for about the first two years.

I know lots of people who learned to roleplay from some variation of the descriptions in TMNT and Robotech. A while back, I met a woman who had only ever played Rifts because she grabbed a copy cheap and suckered non-gamer friends for a spin.

Hey John,

They can be played before learning most of that complexity,

I'm reminded of the old class trick, where you hand everyone in a class an envelope with a special horoscope written just for them. Everyone reads it and rates how well it applies to them and everyone rates them pretty highly.

You've probably heard of it before and how all the horoscopes contain the same text.

Most 'how to roleplay' sections are very open to having anything read into them. And as Ralph said, everyone already knows how to roleplay.

Noon wrote: I'm reminded of the old class trick, where you hand everyone in a class an envelope with a special horoscope written just for them. Everyone reads it and rates how well it applies to them and everyone rates them pretty highly.

You've probably heard of it before and how all the horoscopes contain the same text.

Most 'how to roleplay' sections are very open to having anything read into them. And as Ralph said, everyone already knows how to roleplay.

That's why I said the rules should include specific explanations for How to Play that particular game.

Roleplaying is universal. The specific subset of skills on how to apply that ability to the specific game you're holding in your hand right now is what needs to be taught in the rules.

What is the structure of game play.
Who gets to say what and when.
Do you have to speak in the first person when portraying your character.
How do you interrupt what someone else is saying if you disagree with it.
How do you decide who's version of events gets used.
How does the way you portray your character effect the actual rules.
How do the rules effect the way you portray your character.
What exactly is the responsibility of the player.

These are all things that are vital to lay out in the open for the benefit of people who aren't being introduced to the game by existing gamers.

Actual instructions on "How to Play".

Most RPG books do a good job of describing what the rules for the various subsystems are. Very few do a good job of describing how those subsystems work together in actual play and what the moment to moment events of the game are supposed to look like.

Teaching what the rules are, and teaching "How to Play" are two very different things. That's why I'm a big fan of (for accessibility purposes) modeling the game structure on more traditional game structure rather than traditional RPG structure. It makes teaching "How to Play" much easier.

Here's an axiom for consideration:

Any definition of roleplaying which is so broad as to assume it is a primarily innate ability is a destructive semantic position that makes it imposssible to talk about rolegaming as a distinct thing.

Valamir wrote:
What is the structure of game play.
Who gets to say what and when.
Do you have to speak in the first person when portraying your character.
How do you interrupt what someone else is saying if you disagree with it.
How do you decide who's version of events gets used.
How does the way you portray your character effect the actual rules.
How do the rules effect the way you portray your character.
What exactly is the responsibility of the player.

I think we gotta pin our definition of newbie down. In another thread Malcolm discounted spouses as not counting as neophytes.

That kinda implies that you are not a newbie if you have had a social relationship with someone who has already roleplayed and can act as a “gate keeper” to the hobby (or are only partners excluded?)

Personally I don’t think it’s valid to exlude these people from the definition – my own experience is that at least half of gamers I know started because someone else who gamed brought them into the hobby – rather than via the path of buying of D&D (or whatever) cold.

So what counts as newbie?

Alan.

I curious as to what you would say the answers to these are for Hero or GURPS. This isn't idle speculation, JAGS-2 will be out soon--and while not aimed at newbies, if you think that there are specific answers to these that would assist veteran roleplayers I'd like to hear them.

Perhaps even more usefully is to put that list, or something like it, into the "how to play" section and, if the rules don't specifically address these issues, say so.

That way, you make it explicit that these issues have to be addressed for functional play, but that the important thing is that the resolutoin of those issues works for the group you're playing in.

So, in the case of GURPS, the resolution of most of these is down to the group, not the rulebook, but these issues must be addressed satisfactorily for satisfactory play. But I'd have to have a look at my rulebook to be sure that they're not addressed there.

And I'm definitely with Ralph that it's the peculiar structure of the activity of role-playing that needs teaching, not the basic concept. It's also the thing that gets left out of most rpg rulebooks that use these conventions, and put into ones that don't, because knowledge of the structure of conventional rpg's is assumed in both cases.

Valamir wrote:

For games aimed at more veteran players like JAGS-2 I think you'd still benefit from taking an approach that very carefully outlines who gets to speak, what sort of things they get to speak about, how much authority they have to make things happen and how much what they say is merely asking permission.

For that matter, can anyone point to a simple, clear, "RPG's as they are played" that sets out some sort of acceptable version of the conventions?

I understand that's the theory. In practice, though, what do I write? Since there aren't any "right answers"

If I did have a copious work that described my way of handling pacing, suggestions (or even worse, rules) for talking about how to describe what is seen by a perception roll, or under what conditions a player may demand a roll as a "fair shake" all I can see that doing is limiting the number of people who'd like the game. I can't see that as expanding the audience (remember: if I'm being complete, newbies will not want to wade through my analysis).

Even a 100pg essay wouldn't cover everything I take into account when running a game. No newbie could benefit from that.

Yeah, ironing out the language is quite a task. Clarity and completeness are often at odds so getting it right can be tough. No question.

My basic thought though was that I've seen players not in a scene call functionally for a skill check.

Player A: "Hmm ... I dunno. I think maybe ... hmmm."
Player B: (not in scene) "Make a detective skill roll to see if your character knows what to do at the crime scene."
Player A: "I shall ... Get a Clue!" (rolls dice)

Now, I'm not saying that this has to be legit for any game--and I know that suggesting a player call for a skill check is different than telling the GM that I'm asking to make a check--and all that.

But I'm not sure that ... you know ... maybe this: one of the things (and I'm not the first person to say this here) that really made me 'get it' was the example of play in the DMG.

IIRC that even had a caller but we ditched that idea easily.

Maybe if each concept had an example call-out that has the gaming group in a situation calling for a skill check or making a perception roll or whatever.

The thing is, I'm dubious that a really concrete answer will be good--but I think that examples of play leave a lot open in a good and functional way. If you have Experienced-Ed say "I cross the street and buy a paper" and Newbie-Ned say "Does he have to roll for that?" and GM-George say "Well, no--there's no important hazardous conditions or, in my opinion any real chance of failure--and he has the money to buy the paper--so it's okay. But if he was dashing through heavy traffic or was known to be almost dead broke then the dice might come into play ..."

I think that might be a good way explain concepts without having to enumerate them (which, I think, creates its own problems).

-Marco

My basic thought though was that I've seen players not in a scene call functionally for a skill check.

Examples of play told from the perspective of the actual players and what they say and do are, for accessibility purposes, far superior to "in character" examples that blur the distinction between player and character.

I'm reminded of an exercise one of my elementary school teachers had us do. We had to write instructions for how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The teacher then carried them out as written.

when instructed to "spread the peanut butter on the bread" she took the jar, set it on top of the loaf and rolled it around. etc, etc.

The correct answer was to go step by step..."grab jar in the left hand, grab lid with the right hand, rotate lid clockwise to loosen, remove lid, set lid aside, grab knife in right hand, insert into open mouth of jar...etc."

Point being that all of those steps were being assumed in the answers we gave, but for a person who has never seen a jar of peanut butter before (or a computer which was what the excercise was about) you couldn't make those assumptions.


In other words, as game designers we need to be aware that there is a certain level of understanding that we assume our readers share. If you truly want to make an accessable game you have to be avoid assuming the reader knows more about the process than they do.

joshua neff wrote: There is complexity in the play of Magic, but not in the rules of Magic. I remember buying my first Magic decks, just before it got really big. I'd vaguely heard of it, but at the time, the only games I was playing were RPGs & the occasional mainstream boardgame. My friend & I bought Magic decks, went home, read the very short book of rules, and began to play.

joshua neff wrote: So, yeah, I think one definite approach to writing for newbies is to not write as if you're teaching people how to play all RPGs. Teach them how to play your own RPG, and that's it.

Valamir wrote:
What can the call for..."a Skill Check" isn't very helpful here. Can they call for ANY skill check? Can they make a Sky Diving skill check when driving a car?...or are they limited to making Skill Checks that apply to the current scene. Who decides if they apply...the GM? What advice do you give the GM on how to make this determination. Can the player "spend a hero point" to force a skill to apply? Can the GM rule that it only partially applies and ascribe a penalty to it? Rewrite as "Any player whose character is currently involved in the scene can call for a Skill Check, if that Skill is appropriate to the current circumstances. The GM has the final authority to decide if a skill applies (see Chapter 7 for GM advice on this topic) and may decide to allow the check at a penalty if the application is a stretch" oops...bad wording...who decides if the application is a stretch. Rewrite that part "...at a penalty if he judges the application to be a stretch".

When can it be called for...any time? Can the player interupt the GM while he's speaking to demand a check? Can they interrupt another player? Does the GM have to allow the check right then or does the GM have control over when the Check occurs. Are there specific Turn Order rules that apply if players want to each make checks at the same time. There usually is for combat (initiative) but what about other checks. Does the GM have the authority to determine what order the skill checks should occur in? Are there any restrictions on this authority.

I stop there, but I think you can see where I'm going.

I'm with Neel on this one. Ralph, if you look at your list, most of your questions (especially "who gets to say what, when / who's version of events happens") are convered by basic social interaction, which is really something that everyone (hopefully) knows how to do. The later of the two is basically the Lumpley Principle (system as building consensus on what occurs) and if you read Vincent's posts on improvizational system, you'll see that, if people know how to communicate with each other, you don't really need an external system or someone telling you when to roll the dice. You just decide things the same way you'd decide where to go to dinner or what movie to go see, through group negotiation and exploiting the power relations and sympathies of group members.

So, in my book, what you need to tell people is how to decide things that are outside the realm of normal social interaction.

Hmm, I'm not sure I totally agree. For one thing, I know that in such a simple thing as a conversation, not everyone is good at giving turns and interrupting or not interrupting.

An example from a recent Fudge game I played in:

Our party arrived at an inn. The NPCish leader (he was clearly an NPC, but played by the GMs brother) was seriously ill. The innkeeper was missing. The tension was building. The NPC had a heart attack (and eventually died). A couple PCs started searching the basement, arrows started flying. And my character never got a meaningfull turn in all of this. The GM never made sure I had a turn, and I'm not very good at breaking into a conversation. And things were compounded, the NPC death (which my character witnessed) got two of the other players suspicious of a third, and the NPC tried to assign leadership to me (and the other PCs were somewhat willing to look to me). I tried to get in a first aid roll to "diagnose" the heart attack (it was obvious to me as a player, and probably was to my character, I had a Fair First Aid skill). I actually made a roll that was pretty good (at least +2). But I didn't get the chance to communicate that to the GM in time, and thus lost a piece of ammunition I should have had. And then the session went down hill as the GM threw us into a situation with insufficient information to make decisions on, and let us stall. Breaking into rounds and making sure each player had a turn would have made the situation play so much better (I wasn't at a loss of things to do, I was just plainly never given a turn).

By being explicit with what a turn is, a game system can smooth these things out. In Monopoly, only rarely does a player's turn get skipped, and when it does, it's plain that a major rules breach (even if totally unintentional) has happened, and the player knows they can yell bloody murder (if necessary, usually you just have to firmly state "hey, it's my turn" and the player sheepishly hands the dice to you). Games with no structured turns are also upfront. Games (like Uno) where player B's turn doesn't always follow player B's turn have clear rules on what causes a change. D&D has an initiative system with "attacks of opportuniity". AOOs cause lots of arguments, but they also are pretty clearly stated out. Sure, an experienced GM could implement AOOs in a game system without having strict rules, but only after understanding turn flow (and he would be best to actually specify the rules).

Universalis is very clear on how much you can do in a turn, and who gets the first turn (bidding on the scenes, and when your first turn of setting the scene ends). In fact, basically Universalis is a set of rules that define exactly "who gets to say what, when / who's version of events happens" (no surprise then that Ralph made that statement). The rules of (American) football are also very clear on what a turn is, how it starts, who can do what during a turn, how you decide which team gets the next turn, etc.

One of the things that I think is hard to convey about RPGs is that they are more freeform than most other types of games. In that vein, I think it's best for an introductory game to be more structured, while explicitly calling out places where the game is less structured, and by doing so, inviting the new player to start to explore. Done well and the system can have plenty of complexity of expression to be enjoyed by long time gamers also.

Frank

That's my thinking exactly Frank. You nailed it completely.

One of the strengths of roleplaying as a game form is that there are so many options. Compared to most games you really can "do anything" (even in a very focused RPG). But this is a double edged sword. Too many options can lead to analysis paralysis especially for players who don't have a clear idea of what they are supposed to be doing.

Asking players with no background in roleplaying (or improv theater or the like) to just work things out amongst themselves in the same way that they'd decide where to go to dinner is asking quite a bit. But if you are going to go that route...it should still be stated clearly and upfront that that is what the players need to do.

New players need to know how to play the game...whether your rules are strict and carefully laid out like Universalis, or whether your rules are the Lumpley RPG.

joshua neff wrote: When you want to learn an instrument, you don't go to a music teacher and say, "Teach me to play guitar, piano, drums and saxophone." And when you learn guitar, what you learn on Day 1 isn't applicable for playing jazz guitar, metal guitar, blues guitar and classical guitar. Learning to play Poker doesn't mean you can pick up a deck of cards and start playing Bridge. Learning to play Monopoly doesn't mean you can look at a Risk board and intuit how to play.

So, yeah, I think one definite approach to writing for newbies is to not write as if you're teaching people how to play all RPGs. Teach them how to play your own RPG, and that's it.

This is a role playing game. I think it's a very good role playing game, and is everything a role playing game should be. A role playing game should be these things, and this is how you play them.

That is to say, we thought we were writing about all role playing games, but we were really writing about this role playing game, and about other games to the degree that they are like this one.

There's really nothing inherently wrong with that, either.

Sure, if I've never played a role playing game and don't know what it is, I'm going to think that whatever this says applies to all such games; but it doesn't matter, because all that matters is that I learn to play this one, and am thereafter willing to try others. When I read the description of role playing in another game, I'll probably recognize that it's different to the degree that that designer's vision and priorities are different, and then I'll begin to understand that role playing games vary as much as board games.

Of course, if I have played other role playing games, I'll recognize immediately if the description given here doesn't mesh with my experience. That's also good. If the discord causes me to perceive that I wouldn't like this game, I've saved myself a lot of trouble. If the discord intrigues me, it has prepared my mind for the possibility that things will be done rather differently in this game.

So I don't see the problem with them.

--M. J. Young

And I've seen groups have analysis paralysis trying to decide where to go eat (especially my church brunch group), which have even resulted in everyone going their own way, and often result in just a couple people weathering the storm and going to eat.

Many people do not have the skills (or at least haven't really practiced them) for group decision making. People who have really practiced consensus building, or or improv theater, or played RPGs really have a skill set that is incredibly necessary in this modern world, but sadly lacking in training.

Another failure mode for the "you really can do anything" is kitchen sinking. I just realized my church brunch group even has an analog for this. We often wind up going to the mall food court, where the food really isn't all that good, but there are enough choices for most people, and sometimes everyone takes so long to get their individual choice that we don't really get much chance to socialize as a group.

In addition to analysis paralysis, another response to too many choices is "Whatever everyone else decides." With the degenerate "And then I'm going to veto the choice." I see this failure mode all the time in deciding where to go eat, an in gaming in chosing which board game to play, but I've also seen it in RPGs.

So maybe handling the infinite choice is something introductory RPGs should address. They don't necessarily have to have "rules", but they could - football has a limit to the huddle time for example. Of course even if you write up a page or two giving suggestions on how to handle the infinite choice and don't think of them as rules, they still are rules. They are just of a different sort than the rule that says "To make an attack, roll 1d20 and add your skill." The social contract is just as important a rule (if not more important). It also pays to point out that players do need to make a social contract (and I think Universalis is clever for making developing the social contract part of play).

That made me think of another "rule" that I've learned about RPGs (which is ultimately part of the social contract) that isn't obvious to people when they first start playing (or even to some players who have played a long time). That's the "30 minutes or so of socialization and warm up time at the beginning of a session before we hunker down and start playing." It took me several months of running games at a club in high school before I figured that one out, but it's a pretty universal rule.

Frank

Okay, so this thread sparked me to take a look at Nighttime Animals Save the World. I think this is a perfect example of a newbie-friendly RPG. I explained the game to two coworkers with children and both "got it" from a 2-minute conversation, and want to try it with their kids. I also gave them the website if they wanted to refer back to it. One did, and she asked what "GM" meant. Not wanting to go into a whole lot of background, I told her it just meant the grown-up running the game for the kids. But then, hey, GM isn't defined in the text, so it could mean "grown-up moderator" for all I know. So anyway, apparently, the "GM" term was the only questionable part of the game, and this coming from someone who'd stare very blankly at me if I tried to explain what a roleplaying game is. On reflection, I probably shouldn't have given them the link to the game, because they might start exploring Vincent's website, which could lead to me getting some of Vincent's hate mail over kpfs (but in person, which is even worse than email).

Anyway, this is the most newbie-friendly game I've personally encountered. A close second would be Universalis. Other than Complications, that's another game that can be explained in a short conversation to just about anyone.

Okay, at the risk of giving a seemingly dadaesque answer, I would argue that there is one really good way for a newbie to be introduced to roleplaying :

by another roleplayer. In an actual game. Involving people who are patient but enthusiastic with newbies.

Ultimately, this is a social genre of hobby, about social and imaginational interactions involving human beings with human beings. You can't get that from a book.

Yes, I know that Ron and others point out that system counts, and once a person is a roleplayer, system does count, but when a person is a newbie, what counts is not the system or the campaign so much as the other players and game masters.

So thrusting a game book into a newbie's hands, reciting a game mechanics rulebook chapter-and-verse to a newbie, or filling a newbie's arms with sheathes of paper or filling a newbie's e-mailbox with gigabytes of text will not accomplish nearly so much as taking a newbie by the hand, smiling, welcoming him or her, and sitting down at a game with him or her. When the newbie wants to know how to do something, he or she will ask, and then you can answer, and instead of being abstract rules and data, the answer is relevant within context of interacting with the gaming group.

Personally, that is the perspective I prefer, for it reminds us that, ultimately, for all our skills and cleverness at writing systems, the human factor is what matters most in our genre of hobby.

Doctor Xero

In terms of 'analysis paralysis' I think it's an inability as a group to determine what choice amongst choices will be rewarding for the group.

Lets say you can skip that by making only one choice rewarding (in the food example, that's like all shops being shut bar one). Now it's a matter of individual choice as how to get to that reward (in the food example, they look at the menu and choose their dish. This is far easier.

The exciting bit is where people interact with each other as they get to their goal (food eg, one person doesn't know about a certain entree, but another says they'll go halves and that way they can both try it out).

Think of it as destinations you can reach. Make only one rewarding to go to and then everyone can just get on to figuring out how to make the journey there. And as we know, its the journey that's the interesting part.

One reason its interesting is because of the consensus on various issues that can happen but doesn't have to happen. While if everyone is to go to the same destination, you have to have concensus.

Required concensus is meaningless in terms of humans sharing something...if they were forced to choose it, you don't learn anything from the choice they made because they basically had to make it.

This sounds like a bad thing and I imagine that's why many recent posts have been promoting designs that are driftable are better than focused design (like MLWM). But the thing is, you always need to have a descision forced if you want to see unforced descisions. It all starts at the game table...you have to be at the table if you want to be part of the game/part of the journey. You wont learn anything from them by their coming to the table, but what they do at the table once there/on the journey will tell you something.

Basically, 'analysis paralysis' will exclude certain explorations of play. Just like people who wouldn't decide on what food to eat in case someone wasn't happy, the games users will naturally avoid going anywhere that would make anyone else unhappy. Think on that for a moment.

So how do you go there and not miss out? You make sure the only food shop that is open is that one/your design only accomidates play focused there.

But it still probably sounds terrible to remove choice. Meh.

Doctor Xero, I agree with you wholeheartedly that the best way to bring people into role play gaming is for friends to invite friends to play, and teach them the way the game works. Although my own gaming group started without this aid, most of the players with whom we played over the years learned from us.

I've said before that this is not so unusual. We've got stacks of board games and trivia games and parlor games and maybe we haven't lost all of our bookcase games, and we've got a copy or two of Hoyle around here somewhere for card games, and in almost every case one person reads the rules and tells everyone else how to play. That's how these things are done. I learned to play Risk and Stratego because my cousins owned the games and taught me how to play; I in turn took the opportunity to teach my kids years later. I don't remember who taught me checkers or chess, but I never read the rules anywhere. Even Knock Hockey, Shuffleboard, and Air Hockey play began with someone teaching me how to play.

And in designing Multiverser, we made the assumption that the referee would read the rules and tell the players what to do. We don't have a player's handbook, and we specifically suggest that the players not read the referee's rules.

However, this leads to a serious quandary. If this is the only way to bring new players, or even the best way to do so, it has serious implications for game design. What it means is that we need to design to the existing gamer population, to make games that they will want to play, because the success of a new game depends not on attracting new people to the hobby so much as on capturing market share of the existing hobbyists. I have to create a game that does what people like you want better than the games you already play, and better enough that you'll abandon the games you already play in favor of mine. Only after I've done that have I any real hope of reaching people who are not currently gamers, and that hope relies on you as a gamer using my game to introduce others to the hobby.

Yet (the other side of the quandary) if my designs are targeting people who already play, then I must be wary of innovation. I can't get too far from the beaten path, because I'll wind up alienating the target audience in my effort to make something different enough to appeal to people outside the current demographic. Thus if I don't capture the core gamer audience, I have no one; but if I target the core gamer audience, I wind up fighting for an ever more contested share of a small pie and fail to offer anything that will appeal beyond them.

The challenge really is to design a role playing game that someone truly would pick up, take home, read, teach to a group of friends, and start to play, without ever knowing anyone else who played it. I do that with board games all the time. I don't know when I've done it with a role playing game.

I remember years ago a friend of mine came to learn how to play D&D from me. Part of the impetus was that his mother had been in a book store and picked up a copy of one of the game books, and found it so engrossing that she stood there reading it for quite some time. I never knew which book it was, but I'd love to hear of that happening with some of the new games.

--M. J. Young

To go farther than what MJ has said, even if it's true that games are best taught this way, that still doesn't answer the question of the thread which is how to present a book for those occasions when someone does want to learn off the shelf.

Or is it your opinion that this should actively be discouraged? That is, should the "what is roleplaying section" say, "It's complicated. Find somebody who knows how to teach you."
?


To address the rest of the thread, John, I agree with you that there are people who want to play more complex games. You and Josh agree on the idea of elegance, and who could argue against it. The question is whether or not the "newb" market is into more or less complex games as a whole. 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. You don't have to compete with other RPGs to get these folks to play your game, you have to compete with Video Games like The Sims 2.

So there are really two things being discussed here. Are we talking newbs in terms of those people in your target market for complexity, genre, etc, that would play your game, or are we talking newbs in terms of all newbs available?

In other words, is your goal in making something newb friendly to make a game that will capture as much of the mainstream as possible, or is it to make the game that you've got in mind, that one about Cthuloid Conspiracy in the Old West that considers the hit points of your spleen as important data, is it to make that game as newbie friendly as possible?

The former goal needs to consider "playability" some, while the latter only has to concern itself with clarity and elegance. Personally, I'm not out to capture the mainstream market, but I think some people are. For me, it's enough to try to keep the game that I'm working on the best it can be considering it's target.

Do indie games do a better job at this? I think so, occasionally, if only because we don't have to mess the game up with conflicting goals. But, then, that's why Malcolm has said he's out on his own.

Interestingly, to me this is the only definition of "Indie" so I'm not sure what people are trying to associate with indie games. That they're all simplistic? Like TROS and Burning Wheel? No, not simple - clear and elegant. When all goes well.

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.

Mike

Even if experienced roleplayers are describing the game to new players... isn't the choice of which game they use to indoctrinate new people at least partially predicated on how easy/interesting it is to teach to new players?

If somebody put a copy of Nephilim (a game that I adore in concept) into my hands and said "This is the game you're playing go recruit some people who have never roleplayed before" I would laugh in their face. It's not that it can't be done, but it's certainly far more effort than I want to put in.

Put a copy of InSpectres or Teenagers From Outer Space (EDIT: First edition, way back when) into my hands, though, and that's a whole different matter. These games beg to be used to indoctrinate people who have never before roleplayed.

I had a TFOS campaign in college and I got people showing up to play who knew nobody in the room, but had heard about the activity second- and third-hand and wanted to participate based on that alone. Whereas I had a dear friend try to explain Nephilim to me for two straight hours before finally just putting the rulebook into my hands and saying "Read this and come back".

You're right : I have drifted from the initial query. Mea culpa, i.e. My bad.

All right, here is what I have noticed about newbies who simply pick up roleplaying games. This is anecdotal evidence, no scholar studies, based on newbies I have known who have eagerly asked me about RPGs as soon as they discovered that I am also involved in RPGs.

Newbies pick up games on genres or subjects which interest them.

The game which is the twelfth cunning variation this year on the low fantasy theme first popularized by AD-&-D is not going to excite them. If anything, having to choose among twelve low fantasy products which are easily differentiated by RPGers but look identical to the newbie only confuses and drives the newbie away.

A newbie who loves high fantasy in general will find his or her eyes attracted by the cover of the first high fantasy RPG he or she sees on the shelves of the bookstore next to the high fantasy novels.

A newbie who loves superhero comic books will find his or her eyes attracted by the cover of the first superhero RPG he or she sees on the shelves of the comic book store next to the superhero comic books.

A newbie who loves The Professor's epic work will be intrigued by the Lord of the Rings Official RPG -- and issues of complexity will not matter so much to him or her because even relatively simple rules will seem confusing and esoteric.

In other words, what attracts newbies is fidelity to a genre or subject with which the newbie is already fascinated and familiar.

Thus, the best game to which a newbie might be introduced by an experienced roleplayer would be a game in a genre or subject which the newbie loves so much that he or she is willing to learn a new genre of hobby just to indulge further in that love. The critical thing is that said game captures the feel of that genre or subject!

Thus, the best indie game to attract newbies would be one which provides gaming within a genre or subject which has remained unaddressed (or has only been badly addressed) by the mainstream gaming companies.

For example, I love the indie game The Drones because it captures so perfectly the flavor of the old British comic tales when no mainstream company would even consider said subgenre. Similarly, I love Pumpkin Town for its charming re-creation of the spooky-cute-spooky weirdness of films such as Nightmare Before Christmas. Et cetera.

Indie games in the old tried-and-true genres such as low fantasy, high fantasy, space opera, superhero, and gothic horror or pseudo-gothic fantasy need to have something particularly innovative about system or setting (or attitude!) to set them off from the often-impressive mainstream efforts in those subgenres.

Doctor Xero

Mike Holmes wrote: To address the rest of the thread, John, I agree with you that there are people who want to play more complex games. You and Josh agree on the idea of elegance, and who could argue against it. The question is whether or not the "newb" market is into more or less complex games as a whole. 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. You don't have to compete with other RPGs to get these folks to play your game, you have to compete with Video Games like The Sims 2.

Mike Holmes wrote: In other words, is your goal in making something newb friendly to make a game that will capture as much of the mainstream as possible, or is it to make the game that you've got in mind, that one about Cthuloid Conspiracy in the Old West that considers the hit points of your spleen as important data, is it to make that game as newbie friendly as possible?

The former goal needs to consider "playability" some, while the latter only has to concern itself with clarity and elegance.

Mike Holmes wrote: Do indie games do a better job at this? I think so, occasionally, if only because we don't have to mess the game up with conflicting goals. But, then, that's why Malcolm has said he's out on his own.

Interestingly, to me this is the only definition of "Indie" so I'm not sure what people are trying to associate with indie games. That they're all simplistic? Like TROS and Burning Wheel? No, not simple - clear and elegant. When all goes well.

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.

Not the 'video games are complex and they sell' arguement again.

Video games have eye candy. That have lots of nifty pictures, rich sounds, etc. You don't need to know all the complexities to enjoy this part of the game instantly.

What you want to do is emulate that/qualities like that in an RPG. If you only look at the complexity in each game and ignore the upfront enjoyment video games have, you'll be missing the issue.

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.

Noon wrote: 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.

Mike Holmes wrote: 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.

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

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.

Noon wrote: 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.

eef wrote: 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.

eef wrote: 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.

eef wrote: 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.

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
--

Rob Carriere wrote: 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?

Rob Carriere wrote: 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.

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

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.

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

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
--

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
--

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

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...