This is about the third D&D session I've run with this group.  The group consists of:

1.  Tammy, my wife.  Complete newcomer to RPGs.

2.  Kari, my wife's friend.  Almost a complete newcomer to RPGs.

3.  Mike, Kari's wife and also my friend.  Fairly experienced in old-school AD&D; no RPG experience outside of AD&D that I'm aware of.

4.  Roger, being me.  Started cutting my teeth on AD&D about twenty years ago.  The DM.

Before I get into the session itself, I should really provide some context.

About a year ago, Tammy and Kari came to me and said they really wanted to learn how to play that cool Dungeons and Dragons game.  They didn't really know what it was, but they knew they wanted to try it.

I'm still not entirely sure where this D&D cachet comes from or where they caught it.  It still drives the group to a large extent, even now.

I prepared an adventure for the group.  In the course of it, I finally realized something which had been lurking around the back of my head for some time:

Character hooks suck.

For the non-D&D folks, published adventures commonly have a section near the front called 'character hooks', which presumably serve as in-character motivation.  They're generally things like 'The dwarf grew up in the mining town now under attack' or 'The bard has heard legends of a sack of treasure buried under the great oak tree.'

In contrast, what I've realized is this:

Player hooks are solid gold.

By player hooks, what I mean is out-of-character motivation for the players.  The concrete example in this case was with my player Mike.  He's quite the beer aficionado.  Loves it, brews his own, has a real passion for it.

So I sent the party after the secrets of a dwarven master brewer.  And it worked great.  Mike eagerly led the group, and the others were happy enough to follow.

I'm chagrined that it took me so very long to realize something so self-evident.  But there it is.

In retrospect, D&D isn't particularly good in letting the players express their own interests within the system, especially compared to some other systems.  On the other hand, Mike's character sheet listed his character's religion as 'beer', so there were definitely some hints.  Still, it's a bit disappointing that I needed to sleuth it out.

So Mike, playing a straightforward dwarven fighter, was happy.  His wife, Kari, was playing a halfling rogue, and I think generally enjoyed herself.  My wife, Tammy, was also playing a halfling rogue.

Interestingly enough, there didn't seem to be any concerns about the well-known "niche protection" issue.  It just didn't come up.  Perhaps in time it would, but I still think it's kind of interesting.

Tammy is still wrapping her head around the game.  When a trap goes off and her character takes damage, she tends to take it very personally.  The other two players have been (more or less gently) admonishing her.

In the main, that's been my plan -- letting them discover on their own, as much as possible, what this whole role-playing thing is all about.  There are still times when they all say "Well, what do we do?" but they are getting fewer and farther between.

On the other hand, Tammy also has a much more intuitive grasp of the degree of narrative freedom that I'm giving them.  When she says, "alright, I walk into the woods and find the druids," I'm more than happy to let that happen.  There was initially a slight sense from the other players that this was "cheating" somehow, but I think they're starting to take the cue from me.

In general, I'm trying to play the game largely as written.  Unfortunately, I've run into exactly what Russell describes: it often feels like I'm just running rats through a maze.  At this point, however, the rats seem to be thoroughly enjoying it, so I don't want to deviate too terribly radically.  But I am planning on giving them a go with a few different systems, to give them an idea of what is out there these days.

As written, the game revolves largely around combat.  This has had a fairly significant deprotagonizing effect on Tammy and, to a lesser degree, Kari.  Their characters are not as combat effective as Mike's, and they're just not as interested, I believe, in the hacking and slashing. 

A couple of times I had the sense that they were getting frustrated in that they knew what they wanted to try to accomplish, but they didn't really know how to translate that into character actions.  I'm tempted to write that off as a classic failing of task-based resolution, though I should probably take some responsibility myself as well.

Although I'm complaining a fair bit, I think the players generally had fun and look forward to the next session.  I feel it's a bit of a case of "30 minutes of fun crammed into five hours of playing" but that may be an exaggeration.  I personally found the experience a bit dull, but as the experienced RPGer, that's something I need to work on myself.  After all, I've got the raw clay of players here, ready to be molded into whatever game we can all find enjoyable.  A rare and precious thing.

If anyone has any specific game suggestions that sound like they may fit with our group -- "like D&D, but better" -- I'd be happy to hear them.

Cheers,
Roger

Roger wrote:
About a year ago, Tammy and Kari came to me and said they really wanted to learn how to play that cool Dungeons and Dragons game.  They didn't really know what it was, but they knew they wanted to try it.

I'm still not entirely sure where this D&D cachet comes from or where they caught it.  It still drives the group to a large extent, even now.

Interestingly enough, there didn't seem to be any concerns about the well-known "niche protection" issue.  It just didn't come up.  Perhaps in time it would, but I still think it's kind of interesting.

Tammy is still wrapping her head around the game.  When a trap goes off and her character takes damage, she tends to take it very personally.  The other two players have been (more or less gently) admonishing her.

In the main, that's been my plan -- letting them discover on their own, as much as possible, what this whole role-playing thing is all about.  There are still times when they all say "Well, what do we do?" but they are getting fewer and farther between.

But I am planning on giving them a go with a few different systems, to give them an idea of what is out there these days.

A couple of times I had the sense that they were getting frustrated in that they knew what they wanted to try to accomplish, but they didn't really know how to translate that into character actions.  I'm tempted to write that off as a classic failing of task-based resolution, though I should probably take some responsibility myself as well.

Although I'm complaining a fair bit, I think the players generally had fun and look forward to the next session.  I feel it's a bit of a case of "30 minutes of fun crammed into five hours of playing" but that may be an exaggeration.

100% agreement with Mike. It's very rare that I'll advise someone, in Actual Play, to switch systems as opposed to people or behavior, but this is one of those cases. The Shadow of Yesterday.

Best,
Ron

This is really interesting, because my group just recently (well, like six months ago) switched from D&D to Burning Wheel for almost the same reasons.  Now, I'm not recommending Burning Wheel to people just starting out on RPing (my group definitely wasn't that), but how would you guys compare Burning Wheel and The Shadow of Yesterday in the context of switching to either because of the above-mentioned problems in D&D?

Very different switches. I wouldn't say that BW wouldn't work for a starting group, but I could see how it might not work for a group like the one in this case. That is, BW is still for people who want a lot of crunch in their play. I'm sensing that the group in this case will take to TSOY's lighter, and far more focused system. BW does a ton of things really well, and that's great if you want all of those things. TSOY does just a couple of things nigh perfectly. And those things are what I think the group above wants.

That said, who knows. If, in fact, they complain that there's not enough meat to bite into system-wise, it may turn out that BW is precisely what the doctor ordered. Might be right up Mike's alley (check out the Nog rules that play right to his dwarf character's religion).

For you, Andrew, TSOY might be good. But hard to say. What was it that didn't suit you about both D&D and TSOY? With systems that diverse, it should be pretty easy to determine your needs accurately from what you dislike about both.

Mike

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.  I'll give The Shadows of Yesterday another look -- I read over it when it was first published. 

I'm responding to Mike's points as they were the most extensive, but I appreciate everyone who responded.

Mike wrote:
[On the girls' interest in D&D]

<Boggled>

Uh, could you find out? This is the first time I've ever heard of two women approaching men to play D&D because they heard it was cool. My world is turned upside down. You must find out how they got this impression, and we have to give money to whomever it is that caused it!

Nope. "Niche Protection" is what you need to have when you use Character Hooks.

Huh. Why? Are they trying to create player-character separation? Or is it that Tammy is seeing traps as somehow arbitrary? I suspect the latter.

See, what's going on here is that you're getting Narrativism-Gamism incoherence.

Mike wrote:
For you, Andrew, TSOY might be good. But hard to say. What was it that didn't suit you about both D&D and TSOY? With systems that diverse, it should be pretty easy to determine your needs accurately from what you dislike about both.

Roger wrote:
It seems to have largely stemmed from that Dead Alewives' sketch on Dungeons & Dragons.  The "I'm attacking the darkness!" one.  That and the background noise of their husbands occasionally talking about it.

I think she might see her character taking damage as some sort of passive-aggressive attack against her as a player.

I'll let the gang know how my next session with the group using TSoY goes.