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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi Christoffer,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best,
Ron

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

Hi Art,

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

Best,
Ron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ron Edwards wrote: Hi Christoffer,...

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

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

M. J. Young wrote:

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

...It happens.

Thanks for the story M.J.

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

First, let me say that I have never actually seen the starter set, and I tell people that I haven't seen it but am working from what I've heard from people who have tried it.

That said, I think there are some things that make a game more user-friendly for new players.

The first thing is you have to make it quick and easy to get started. A seasoned gamer understands and even enjoys the idea of spending an entire game session crafting the perfect character for a campaign; the newbie doesn't even know what a campaign is, and probably expects they're going to play one game and see if they like it. That means you need to at least give them the possibility that they can get their charaters up and running very quickly.

Valdron is designing a game for introducing new players to the hobby. Our goal is to create a rules set that can be learned in the same time it takes to learn and set up a game of Monopoly. Yes, there are people in the hobby game world who are accustomed to heavy rules sets--wargamers and bookcase gamers (an overlapping group) (and is it any wonder that our hobby is so filled with battle-oriented play?). But outside that, people play games in which one guy reads the rules in about five minutes, then tells everyone else what they need to know to play the game.

For a game like Ygg, where you've got 20 classes, you probably want to put in a bit that says, in essence, "If this is the first time you've played a role playing game, don't go through all this information. One player should be an X, the second a Y, the third a Z, and any others should be W's, and after you've played it a couple of times and gotten the hang of it, you can branch out into the other possibilities."

Prepared scenario is a must, I expect. This means that the referee has to be able to present the game world without reading an entire sourcebook--preferably without reading more than a couple pages. One of the advantages of the dungeon crawl is that it provides a controlled and limited setting. You need to be able to limit your setting in a similar fashion, or the referee won't get it. I read the entire D&D blue book before we began play, but I was really into playing games and really thought this was going to be a great new sort of game. I can't imagine the typical video game playing kid today reading that much material; most of them don't read the instruction papers that come with the video games.

It's got to be quickly accessible and quickly constructed, so that they begin actual play in a very short time.

I'm not saying that there aren't people who would pick up and learn a more difficult game. I remember one guy coming to me to learn D&D. He said his mother picked up a book in a store and became completely fascinated by it--and it was one of the OAD&D rule books. But there aren't many people in that category. Most have to be sold on the idea that this sort of play is fun before they'll accept the idea that it's worth reading a more complicated book to get a more complex set of options.

Does that help?

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote: the newbie doesn't even know what a campaign is, and probably expects they're going to play one game and see if they like it. That means you need to at least give them the possibility that they can get their charaters up and running very quickly.

For a game like Ygg, where you've got 20 classes

"If this is the first time you've played a role playing game, don't go through all this information. One player should be an X, the second a Y, the third a Z, and any others should be W's, and after you've played it a couple of times and gotten the hang of it, you can branch out into the other possibilities."

Prepared scenario is a must, I expect.

Here's the article I was thinking about: http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/ruleslaw30aug01.html

And a note to Fang: All I can say is that I agree with you very much.

So Fang, you agree that most people today who get introduced to RPGs get into RPGs via other gamers. Right? And to clarify other's posts, I keep hearing these anecdotes about how people got into gaming after only one session with another. Or having been told about it by somebody. How is this not gamers getting people in?

Hey, if we want to go with annecdotal evidence, I'll post here that I was co-opted into RPGs by a coisin of mine in '78. That's right, at this point so early in the history of RPGs, people were being introduced to RPGs by people who played. The sudden burst of popularity of such games can only be attributed by them being spread by word of mouth (lord knows it wasn't advertising in the Dragon magazine that was pulling in non-gamers).

And how many of these stories about having learned RPGs on your own come from the early days? Lots, Ill bet. How many people are, today, actually unaware of the existence of RPGs. I mean if you said, hey, have you ever heard of D&D? how many people would actually say no. Almost everybody has heard of RPGs, and made the decision not to play because of the associations they have with nerdyness, occultism, or whatever. (OTOH, I am speaking from the American POV, here. I know it's different in other countries. That said, I believe that America makes up by far the lrgest RPG market.) My point here is that if people were going to just walk in off the street and pick up an RPG, for the most pat they would have don it by now. It's hardly a new phenomenon.

Ron is not saying that the "apprenticeship" need be long. I can give a person an idea of how to play RPGs in just ten minutes of discussion, and that counts as being introduced by a gamer. The point is that this ten minute discussion makes that half page "What are RPGs" obsolete. In fact, most gamers resort to quoting these paragraphs when asked what an RPG is. "Did you ever play 'Cops and Robbers' when you were a kid? Its like that, but you have rules so people can't just say 'you missed'". As do the articles written about RPGs. As does any description just about.

So what you're left with is those people who wander into a book store, and see a copy of D&D, buy it, and try to teach themselves what it's about. This is a truely small group. For those people, simply having a well designed game will suffice. If you must, refer them to one of the better descriptions of roleplaying on-line, or to some site where they can get help.

Because, do any of you have a problem with people getting into RPGs through other gamers? Seems to me that it's a great way to introduce somebody to a hobby. It's how everyone learns to play bridge for example. Being complex, don't people deserve the sort of support that a book just cannot provide?

And Fang, how is making a game "more accessible" actually going to get people to get into RPGs more? Seriously. Are people picking up copies of RPGs in stores, looking at them, then putting them back down and not buying because they find them to be "inaccessible"? And there's some magic paragraph that you can put into your game that will jump out at this mythical buyer and say, "hey, you can play me". I'd suggest that people are doing what they can to make this happen. By putting in those stupid paragraphs and writing to the best of their ability. Do you really think that one can do that much better a job?

The way you get people to buy a product is to advertise and market the product. And that has been attempted in the past. And you know what? Penetration of the products has gone about as far as it can. Just how large, do you estimate, is the crowd of people who really want to play RPGs but just don't know it yet? Remember, we have a skewed view from the inside. We assume that if we like it som much that others would too. But that's just not true. RPGs are not for everyone.

Again, I suggest directing potential newcomers to groups who can help them. In fact, if you were really interested in getting new people into gaming, I'd suggest that you have a system neutral site on the internet that did nothing but try to help new gamers get started. That's my solution for the potential problem. Of course it follows my other bias about everyone needing to be on the internet; given that they are not, a large percentage of gamers will be missed. You might need local chapters. But isn't that the purview of the RPGA? How well do they do it?

Anyhow, I'm rambling now. But the point is that, well, Ron has a point. Isn't it better to virally market to new gamers by making the rules accessible such that they can be taught easily? If you want new gamers, shouldn't that be your #1 priority?

And interestingly, to get back to an earlier point. The statement that "lots of mechanics" is what new gamers need, can be confusing. What new gamers need is a lot of easily accessed structure. They need frameworks in which to make simple decisions. This was, I believe Mearls' point when once said to make games with easy chargen decisions (as opposed to, say, skill lists), such as classes. This is exactly what makes a game more accessible. Not just a large pile of mechanics.

Mike

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your post. I was getting angry with people disagreeing and then providing examples of exactly what I was saying, which is why I was avoiding posting.

Mike has articulated the issues very clearly and straightforwardly, in my view, especially his points about structure ... which, as it happens, I think apply to all role-players, not to beginners exclusively. In other words, that necessary structure is wisely desired by beginners, and only the myths and fallacies of gamer culture, as well as the widespread presence of incoherent and broken structures, lead people to say otherwise.

Best,
Ron

At any rate, regardless of which came first the gamer or the egg; PF has a desire to make his game easily accessible to players (new or veteran) who don't want to have to read a tome of background and a treatise on mechanic sub-systems 3 times each before being able to start to play.

And there are games like that...at least for the GM.

Anecdotes, and tangents about new hobbiests aside; how to keep a game from being like that, is the true topic at hand.

So I'll throw in some thoughts.

First, I'm probably not part of that target audience who just wants to dive right in and start playing. I HATE it when my players insist on just starting to play and learning the rules as they go (mainly because they always blame me for not telling them about some crucial rule that I took advantage of but they didn't have the patience to hear about).

So...I'm not a big fan of programmed learning; meaning..."here's a little piece of the rules, now you're ready to play the basic game...there's a little piece of the rules, not you're ready to play the intermediate game".

I think that can be a HUGE tool for alot of people. But for others like me...HATE it. I always skip to the end where the advanced rules are.

Sooo...my piece of contributed advice is this. If you go with the programmed rules presentation. Include a complete set of the rules also so that those who want to learn a piece at a time can, and those who want to learn the complete game, don't have to keep referring back to different tutorials for the basics.

Mike Holmes wrote: So Fang, you agree that most people today who get introduced to RPGs get into RPGs via other gamers. Right? And to clarify other's posts, I keep hearing these anecdotes about how people got into gaming after only one session with another. Or having been told about it by somebody. How is this not gamers getting people in?

True words Mr Young, my friends and I taught ourselves, however we still didn't use that 'What is RP' crap.

Why do we persist with the assumption that we can define all roleplaying games? Why not just define this game? Most commonly, introductions consist of a 'What is RP' schtick, followed by some flavour text. The statement here is, 'this is how all roleplaying games are, this is the setting for this one, go play.' I think this leads to players carrying a lot of 'last game baggage' into the new game, thinking that the last game was the same as this one, but now with laser guns.

On the inside of the Monopoly box there isn't a 'What is a board game section', followed by a story of fictional events represented by a monopoly game. Boardgames are so dissimilar in actual play that an accurate mass description would be very and confusing. The same goes for RPGs.

More coming...

Perhaps rather than 'What is Roleplaying', use 'What is this game'. Such a chapter would define this game, a game seperate to all other games on the planet, and this game is to be played. Whatever gets the point to this game across.

Maybe this would be much more helpful to the newbie and veteran alike.

Jeremy

More coming...

I agree, Jeremy.

MJ, first, I'm betting that the online description of RPGs is doing a lot more good than the one in the book. People can read it withought having to buy the cow first. It's more important to get people to understand what RPGs are so that they will buy than to hope they buy not understanding what an RPG is. I'll also bet that yours is better written than most. So I'm not surprised that people have been helped by it. Still, I wonder how many have then gotten into RPGs. I still say there are better forms of advocacy.

Further, I would say that your other ideas for quick start are by far a better way of snaring such players. Your Monopoly point is well taken. That's accessibility. Looking at Story Engine, I see that Story Bones is postedd up front first. A player need only read...well, a Monopoly amount of rules, to get started. This will not annoy Ralph, as the entire set of rules is included thereafter.

As such I see starter sets as a cool way to go (as you describbed, MJ, with pregen characters, and a stock advanture to play). The question is whether or not to make them part of the standard game. The experienced gamer may not find them that interesting. If you could manage to make such a starter so that it was useful in making the game accessible, yet still of value to the experienced gamer; you'd really have something there.

Mike

Trying to add something here, although it has been mentioned a little already:

Don't underestimate the effects you get from trying to make something for the beginner. It makes you think of accesibility and clarity and such things which are important. I say this although I could mention quite a few books teaching physics and electronics I've come in contact with that despite trying to be beginners books are extremely inaccesible.

Incidentally, american authors are infamous for the amount of sheer talkative meaningless texts they put in between the facts. I had a book of about 600 pages on electronics that was neatly summed up by 4 pages of handwritten material handed out at the beginning of the course. I tried to read that book, that was a waste of time.

On the other hand I had an excellent book where the less than 100 page books where used for two long courses. Despite being so full of information it managed to communicate everything with perfect clarity.

The tendency today with many rpgs are of the former kind. It's not really inaccesible because it needs to be. It's inaccessible because the writter seem to be payed by the amount of words hes/she writes and not for the content.

And this might be all and well for the people who picks up RPGs for reading and not for playing (there is a market for it, I know a lot of people who does that).

That aside, let's get back to the subject of making a game approachable.

I'm arguing that this actually helps people start playing the game (as opposed to simply reading it). I don't know about you, but if rules are too complicated or confusing I simply ignore them. When I started GMing Shadowrun I didn't have patience to read the rules for magic and netrunning. They were too complicated. Eventually people started to read up on the magic because it seemed cool to have. But we never ever played any netrunning. Who wanted to do that? And it was too much effort to read the rules. So if the group needed a decker to break in I simply made sure they had an NPC who did it. That way there was no need for anyone, neither me nor my players, to read the rules. Great!

But what does it really mean? If our group is anywhere near representative for their audience they shouldn't have included the decker rules at all. And preferably making the magic a lot simpler.

Incidentally SR character creation is simple enough. It's the actual mechanics where the big trouble starts. However, this is different for every game. It's not very strange though that after a while we had a lot of characters we had created for fun but never played with.

Anyway, I have a few old games that were truly aimed at beginners, and even now, despite their obviously aged mechanic, they stand out as really good designs. There's an ease and flow to them which you can't get from say Shadowrun or Vampire.

Another thing is the question of "how easy is it to internalize". Again we have the advantage of a simple beginner's game because they are usually rather limited in scope as far as mechanics go (to allow the players to quickly go in and play) which makes the process a whole lot easier.

As internalized play is something which I guess we all can agree is A Good Thing (tm), there is a very solid worth to making games with this in mind, not only to get more beginner players, but to allow fun play for experienced players as well.

So, to boil down your post, write succinctly, as if for beginners, and make the game accessible, so that people can play. Do I have that right?

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: So, to boil down your post, write succinctly, as if for beginners, and make the game accessible, so that people can play. Do I have that right?