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View Full Version : Totall N00Bs to roleplaying, what system



lisiecki
2009-07-01, 05:07 PM
To use?

The people have requested D&D.
For me like many of us this defaults to 3.5.
However the players are 100% new players. Hipsters who want to try something new, and i respect them for that.

I want to suggest they go with Mutants and Masterminds, as it is, IMHO a much easier system to work with, and much easier to get what you want.

"I want to be a really bad ass wizard"
"take a lot of powers and alternate powers"

"I want to be a badass barbarian"
"take Rage, Strike, and Regeneration"

But, part of me also knows, If i asked for a ham sandwich, and some one offered me the most amazing turkey sandwich EVER, I still wouldn't be getting what i asked for.
So i ask you, members of the playground. the ones who have gamed with n00bs specifically.

Is DnD good for the noobs?
IS it wrong to "make" them play something else
is it better to give them what they want, and let the chips fall where they may

PS (the main choices here are NWoD M&M and DnDth 3.5, if 4th is amazingly spectacularly better I may go for it, but, hey I already have the 3.5 books, and i think the SRD would be REALLY good for them)

SurlySeraph
2009-07-01, 05:10 PM
4E is considerably easier to learn than 3E. I don't have MnM, so I can't say for sure, but my understanding is that it would be easier than 3E but harder than 4E.
Personally, I'd show them the size of the 3E PHB and tell them what sections they have to know to actually play effectively. If that doesn't scare them off, have them play 3E. If not, go with one of the others.

TheEmerged
2009-07-01, 05:10 PM
Personally? I use an old copy of TOON I have. Most people are aware of the source material, and the experience gives them a frame of reference for getting used to the idea of using dice & rules to play pretend.

lisiecki
2009-07-01, 05:19 PM
Personally? I use an old copy of TOON I have. Most people are aware of the source material, and the experience gives them a frame of reference for getting used to the idea of using dice & rules to play pretend.

Toon is the cools.
But I do know they want a sword and sorcery DandD setting if nothing else.
Im not sure if I would beable to do that with toon. (other people can im sure, but there also better DM's than I)

alchemyprime
2009-07-01, 05:31 PM
I'd say

if they are all new, either go with 4e, or if you're stuck on 3.5...

You can

go with the Basic Classes from Unearthed Arcana (and also here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/genericClasses.htm)).
Or you can make their options easier to grasp: I find the easiest way to do this is simply suggest 3.5 race class combinations, but let them say what they want to be.

"I want to be a samurai!" I find the Oriental Adventures samurai (especially Lion school) fits the mental image of a samurai well.
Badass barbarian? Half-Orc barbarian. Bad ass wizard? Human mage or evoker does well for n00bs IMO.



There are options. You just got to find what you wanna try.

AslanCross
2009-07-01, 05:43 PM
My group consisted of 12-15 year olds back when we started 3 years ago. They learned 3.5 pretty easily from the SRD. I don't think it's that difficult to learn. I didn't even start core only. I threw them right into a Lv 5 onwards campaign set in Forgotten Realms. They were fine with it.

I do agree that 4E is simpler, though.

lisiecki
2009-07-01, 06:05 PM
My group consisted of 12-15 year olds back when we started 3 years ago. They learned 3.5 pretty easily from the SRD. I don't think it's that difficult to learn. I didn't even start core only. I threw them right into a Lv 5 onwards campaign set in Forgotten Realms. They were fine with it.

I do agree that 4E is simpler, though.

alchemyprime: Good ideas my friend, good ideas.

Aslan: All the players are going to be in there mid to late 20 with masters degrees abound. Im not really worried about there smarts, as much as keeping it all inmind, it is alot of information to keep in ones head and recall within a few days.

I know they will get it quickly, but they also have short attentionspans, so the question is quickly enough

Theolotus
2009-07-01, 06:23 PM
I'm more a fan of the Pathfinder RPG. I also bought many of the 3.5 books, and having something that is mostly backwards compatible with the OGL appeals to my lack of funds.

That being said, as a DM/GM a little prep work could go along way with your players. If you know what they want, design a sample(quickly played) set of encounters for each system. If you can let them "test drive" each, they can give you the feedback you need. Also, if you did pre-generated characters they could jump into the action sooner because it's easier to explain ablities on the fly than roll up char. from scratch.

I cannot speak on the pros/cons of 4e. WotC milked me for plenty of money. The announcement of 4e made me mad and I've been willfully uninformed ever since.

Hawriel
2009-07-01, 06:47 PM
Honestly D&D is a very good game to get newbies into rollplaying.

The biggest reason is every one knows about D&D in some form or another. If your friends have seen the movies or read books based on; Lord of The Rings/The hobbet, Conan the Barbarian, King Arther, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Norse or Greek myth, so on and so on. They will understand the spirit of D&D rather quickly.

I see alot of peaple say 'make them read the book so they know the rules'. No dont. Explane the rules as they encounter them. When they make their character tell them the difference between a fighter, a rogue, and a wizard. What stats are for what how they empact the character. When they get into a fight walk them through combat. You dont have to push all of it onto new players at once.

To get their feet wet make up a simple story. Somthing generic. Problems on old man McCree's farm. A goblin stole my baby. The old tower on the hill is haunted. Remember the best part of playing with newbies is that they dont know whats coming. A simple zombie is a discovery. Do not meta game for them at all. Lastly there are no NPCs. The players are making peaple they will enounter peaple.

Goodmen Games makes great adventures. They have 52 adventures written for 3.5 ed. Some of them are for beggining characters. I recomend checking them out.

warrl
2009-07-01, 06:55 PM
D&D is just fine for newbies.

And I'll recommend 4th edition not because I think it's better (different, but not better) or easier to learn (not really, except that once you know the basics of playing any character class you know the basics of all of them), but because I think it will be more available.

erikun
2009-07-01, 07:31 PM
I strongly dislike 3.5e. :smallannoyed: That said, if your entire party if full of newbies, it isn't as bad.

The worst part of 3.5e is when one person starts trying to abuse the rules, making one character considerably stronger than the rest of the party. You then end up with a situation where the rest of the party needs to optimize to catch up, or all the encounters will involve the overpowered character butchering everything. (or the encounter is too strong, and only the overpowered guy survives) Players unfamiliar with the rules, especially limited to the base classes, are less likely to accidentally break the system.

Plus, there is a lot to learn about 3.5e, meaning a lot to get excited over. I will admit, the best part of D&D is finding the perfect feat or prestige class, which fits the exact concept of your character. Just keep them away from the Initiative of the Sevenfold Veil, please. :smallamused:

Some things you'll want to watch out for:

Let everyone shine. Give various quests/plothooks that deal with different PCs in the group. If all your adventures involve killing orcs or searching old mage towers, your cleric will feel like a healbot, and your rogue like a trapmonkey.

Be careful with Damage Reduction on monsters, especially ones which require unusual materials. An unoptimized party can run into problems with something as weak as DR 5/magic, if they don't have magic weapons yet. The same goes with regeneration, if they can't bypass it.

Try to avoid cheap combos, like Fly/Wind Wall, unless your players can overcome it. Then again, such tricks might be worthy of the rare BBEG.

Beware ye dragons, for they are stronger than their CR indicates. They can also tear parties to pieces with flying + breath weapon, if you don't put them into melee.

Panda-s1
2009-07-01, 09:22 PM
In my experience new players will roleplay so long as they understand it's a roleplaying game. Which means... well here, just read this little story from PvP: this strip and the next one (http://www.pvponline.com/2009/06/29/advisory-roll/). Basically if someone gets excited about doing something, try and facilitate it, don't try and say no unless it's absolutely ridiculous, or just doesn't make sense.

As far as system is concerned, I would recommend 4E. However there is no equivalent to the SRD, this is true. But... Ta-da! (http://www.playdnd.com) You can try it out for free! Hell even the character builder works up to third level, so if you're really feeling adventurous you can make your own characters instead of using the premade ones. The only bad thing would be if you guys really like playing 4e, well that means buying books (oh darn, buying stuff to play something you like).

But if you just want them to get the gist of roleplaying, then Risus (http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm) is the way to go. No stats, just clichés, which are kinda like skills but meant to represent a really broad subject, i.e. Astronaut, or Biker, or Hairstylist.

lisiecki
2009-07-01, 10:27 PM
Lots of cool ideas and advice :)
before i get around to commenting on each one individually I'm wondering is there a "sweet spot" level wise?

I know that fighters and such age the best at low levels, and magic users dominate the game at higher levels, is there a nice place where all the PHB classes are "balanced"?

Lert, A.
2009-07-01, 10:33 PM
I would probably go with M&M. Eventually you will have to switch campaigns a filler night, etc. and it would be good to have a system that can handle multiple genres without having to make a book of houserules/homebrew.

BraveSirKevin
2009-07-01, 11:06 PM
In my experience the hard part is actually getting the new people interested. If you have that part sorted then getting them to grasp the mechanics isn't that tricky. For the most part they would have played WoW or some other computer based RPG game and it's just a matter of helping them make the connection between the dice based mechanics and the mouse driven actions they're used to. I think most people would get the gist of 4e in a single session... It's pretty much a pen and paper version of industry standard computer RPGs and MMORPGs anyway.

You may want to provide prerolled characters for the first game though. The character creation process is a little advanced and the endless options available can be a little overwhelming to someone who doesn't know what's good and why. :smallsmile:

AslanCross
2009-07-01, 11:24 PM
alchemyprime: Good ideas my friend, good ideas.

Aslan: All the players are going to be in there mid to late 20 with masters degrees abound. Im not really worried about there smarts, as much as keeping it all inmind, it is alot of information to keep in ones head and recall within a few days.

I know they will get it quickly, but they also have short attentionspans, so the question is quickly enough

Well, I started talking to interested students during summer and had them browse the material at their leisure during the break, in time for us to finish their characters by the start of the school year. Most of them still have short attention spans up to now (and about half of the older ones are in college already).

In my experience, a lot of the rules are pretty situational anyway. As long as the players know what they can do (action rules), and what the numbers on their sheets mean, I think they will do fine. If the DM is prepared, he can easily answer questions as the session goes along.

<Player> "Can I use Sense Motive to read his mind?"
<DM> Nope, that's not what it does. You could try to tell when he's lying, though.

<Player> I want to sneak attack this orc.
<DM> You're going to have to either be unseen (use the Hide Skill) or flank the orc with the fighter.

And the like. DM guidance makes it much easier for the players to learn. Our first few sessions were slow as molasses, but now we get to finish epic battles pretty quickly.



The worst part of 3.5e is when one person starts trying to abuse the rules, making one character considerably stronger than the rest of the party. You then end up with a situation where the rest of the party needs to optimize to catch up, or all the encounters will involve the overpowered character butchering everything. (or the encounter is too strong, and only the overpowered guy survives) Players unfamiliar with the rules, especially limited to the base classes, are less likely to accidentally break the system.


This can easily be dealt with by either Rule 0 or banning certain things outright, and only really comes in after the players develop the habit of actually looking for broken combos online. Even then it takes a special kind of jerk to actually take it to the table, ruin everyone else's fun and expect the DM to nod approvingly.

It never came up in my first campaign. It mostly helps when I optimize more than my players. :P

Doc Roc
2009-07-01, 11:31 PM
Hail the glory that is Savage Worlds!
Understand the beauty that is 5 encounters in 5 hours!

Seriously, whatever setting you're wanting to use probably has an excellent savage worlds conversion, either fan-made or official. I'm switching all my new and upcoming campaigns over. Yes, I am leaving 3.5 soon as a GM, barring invitations to play.

bosssmiley
2009-07-02, 05:43 AM
Risus (http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm) is a far superior n00b game than modern D&D (3E-4E).

D&D tends to follow some pretty tasteless gaming practises and teaches a whole mess of bad habits. Add to that the simple fact that any game that requires hundreds of pages of rules to play (and ideally spreadsheet software to help the DM) is NOT a good n00b game. A learning curve like the path of a fighter jet scrambling to 40,000ft doesn't make for fun IMO.

Risus, by contrast, has a simple mechanical system (8 pages long IIRC) and you can play literally anything in any genre. Heck, you can hold the character sheet in your head with a little practise.


"I want to be a really bad ass wizard"
"take a lot of powers and alternate powers"

Take shtick "Bad-Ass Wizard" at 4


"I want to be a badass barbarian"

As above, minus Wizard, plus Barbarian. :smallwink:

If not Risus, then retro (http://jrients.blogspot.com/2008/02/jeffs-incomplete-guide-to-new-retro.html). *waves copy of Labyrinth Lord*

The Rose Dragon
2009-07-02, 05:58 AM
Risus, by contrast, has a simple mechanical system (8 pages long IIRC) and you can play literally anything in any genre.

6, actually. There was this one system that had its entire ruleset on one sheet (that is, two pages), which would be pretty handy to carry around. You could fold it and keep it in your wallet, even.

Gaiyamato
2009-07-02, 06:07 AM
I would use DnD 3.5 Core only to start with and let players gradually explore any other resources as they also explore the basics of the system and their characters.

Otherwise you could wind up in all sorts of a complicated mess.

3.5 is perhaps the better system over all out of all the editions of D&D but it suffers from over done fluff (as opposed to 4.0), power creep (as opposed to 1.0) and a lot of strange and contradictory rules (just like 2.0 and 4.0. :P) released in a bunch of strange source books.
To keep things as simple as possible use just the DMG, Players Handbook I and if you wish you may allow Players Handbook II and DMG II resources for any more advanced players or later character options. (like say feats at level 6 or something).

Start the campaign at level 1 and quickly get them into a really simple, almost pathetic encounter to get into how the combat rules work.

Dhavaer
2009-07-02, 06:17 AM
I'd say 4e D&D. M&M is possibly a bit too open-ended for newbies, and 4e is easier to learn than 3.5.

Kurald Galain
2009-07-02, 07:01 AM
Honestly D&D is a very good game to get newbies into rollplaying.

I actually disagree, primarily because it is too rules-heavy. To get people into roleplaying, I find this works best if they don't have to worry about rules and instead focus on what they want to play. Obviously this works better without thick rulebooks.

I also don't think 4E is particularly easier (or harder) to learn than 3E, considering the amount of subtly-different powers you have to wade through, and the idiosyncracies in the system. More importantly, if you have players who want to play a non-standard character concept, it may turn out that none of the 4E classes fits this concept.

The Rose Dragon
2009-07-02, 07:03 AM
I actually disagree, primarily because it is too rules-heavy.

Well, he did say rollplaying.

misterk
2009-07-02, 07:33 AM
WFRP is a great system for this, I think, as long as the players are ok with random generation- if necessary you could let them choose their starting careers, but one of joys of random generation for me is it forces you to think about you character. The rules are also nice and simple, and work very well.

Doc Roc
2009-07-02, 08:37 AM
Well, he did say rollplaying.

:: Snapping sound ::

I've run enough systems over the years to be able to say this.

D&D 3.5 is, as things go, quite lovely. It may not be what you want, and it may have some excesses, but it's not the demon you make it out to be. D&D 3.5 isn't popular or well-loved because the lot of us are zombies. It's popular and well-loved because it does a very large number of things well and supports a wide-ranging player experience. It's particularly good for people who want to run things out of the box. Your continued implications of absolute inferiority do a great shame to me and mine, which I do not much enjoy.


If you want to start in 3.5, you might consider snagging the tome of battle and adding it to your SRD pot. Because it's cool, and it helps balance melee against casters at least a little bit. Not tremendously. But a little bit. I'm really fond of it. You may want to ban fighter if you do that, but you lose nothing by doing so.

Gaiyamato
2009-07-02, 08:39 AM
Really do you expect a newbie campaign to go much beyond level 3?

I'd say just play Core.
Solves a lot of the real issues for 3.5.

Other than that, yeah D&D is actually one of the simplest systems to follow. 3.5 is very intuitive. It only becomes horrid when you add in a thousand source books and books from varying editions/stages of editions, errata sheets and a rules lawyer or two.

BraveSirKevin
2009-07-02, 09:29 AM
Not strictly roleplaying, but Games Workshop's Mordheim might be a good way to bridge the gap. The mechanics are fairly simple (at least compared to D&D). It's a skirmish level version of Warhammer dealing with small bands of mercenaries. It shares a lot of the elements found in RPGs like experience, advancement, and character customisation. The only downside is that you need miniatures and scenery to play, but if you already have that then you're good to go. The entire rulebook is available as a free download at the GW specialist games site.

Lapak
2009-07-02, 10:39 AM
If you want to give them D&D flavor but keep things as rules-light as possible, go back rather than forward. Pull one of the retro-clones of OD&D that are floating around these days, like Swords & Wizardry. (http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/)

It doesn't give you a whole lot of options for character building mechanically - this is a game from the era when Elf was a class as well as a race - but for exposing people to RPGs in general and D&D in particular it's not a bad way to go!