Introduction for new Players

[hobbitkniver]

Well I'd rather not go into specifics, but long story short, I have to DM a game for a group of people who have never played DnD before. Some of them have played Dungeons and Dragons online though. I've never DM'ed before, but I've played a lot so I know the rules pretty well. I imagine character generation will be a long and grueling process, but it shouldn't be too hard. What I'm more concerned with is getting a good story going since I've never had to DM before. My first thought was kobolds, but I feel like every low level game starts with them. Can anyone give me DMing tips, tips for helping new players, or a good story arc that's simple enough to understand, but complex enough to be entertaining.

[eggs]

However much time you're thinking about dedicating to character creation, double it. Even if you aimed high.

Don't worry about cliches at first. If they've never played a game, they won't care how many games you've played centered around goblins or lizardfolk or whatever.

I wouldn't try to bait a complex plot at the first session or two. I'd give a really basic nudge toward a short dungeon ("Something's been eating the livestock to the east!" "Bandits rode into town, looting and ruckusing!" etc.), let them fumble around in it. The goal here is just to get the players to figure out how the game works before trying to tell a story about any particular characters. The players will probably lose a character or two apiece, but that's fine - they'll come out with an idea of how to play the game, how the rules work, and probably some broad-strokes characterization for whoever walks out of the dungeon alive.

That's usually when you can either set a campaign hook and expect them to know how to chase after it, or let them chase after their own goals for what to do in the game.

[Hanuman]

Tucker's Kobolds, anyone who dies has to leave the house.
Joking, of course.

If you have no idea what you're doing, do a playthrough on your own, roll up some mooks and pretend you are DMing and play out an entire session or two (always assume the mooks to be like herding cats as a worst case scenario), learn lessons from the playtest to have notes ready for things you want to look up, such as skill DCs and how combat works and such. Probably a good idea to do some studying and run a module you look through well if you are really lost.

The first session is ALWAYS character creation, just have a nice relaxed hangout with the guys and gals and give em a good 4 hours for their characters (and another week to work on their backstories, promise bonuses for good ones when they leave), next session play em. Don't try and do everything at once or seem unsure of the process. Seem knowing, it'll assure them.

The most important thing to make sure the players understand before making their characters or playing them is that they are MORTAL in this game. Once a player dies it's a big deal. There's no respawn points or game saves. You are there to make sure the world is represented fairly, and that they are main characters in the story.

As for actual playthough, I really like to throw big events at the players and let them scramble in shock. Last campaign went like this:

--
World
Large Geographic Map: http://i.imgur.com/j1sKQ.jpg
Full Map Options: http://donjon.bin.sh/world/
1159385192 Seed
5300 Iteration
Any Height
Any Map Projection
90 Rotation
Standard/Alternate Map Palette
73 Water
22 Ice

Setting-
Med/Low Magic, Low Psi
Mixed tech, depending on area/plane
Low infrastructure/globalization
Expanded pantheon, standard alignment scheme

Initial setting-
ECL2, 900g, 30 Pointbuy
Players start off as a drafted soldier to fight at the front lines of a war they know nothing/little about, supposedly for the kingdom in which they came from.
Players might have been willing participants, they may have been called upon from thier homes and families, they may have been grabbed out of back alleys or off the streets-- how the player is in the situation is determined by the player upon character creation.
--

I let em shoot the breeze, in a large fortified stagecoach filled with a few soldier NPCs in it, after they were done I slammed a strength advanced psuedo-creature template griffon into the size of their stagecoach flipping it off the road and down a steep slope of scree, battering them all up and leaving them about 150' away. Over the top of the hill from the road 3 of them were flying in and scooping horses up, the soldiers had guns and large weapons but they had little to no effect, and the soldiers in the convoy were getting picked off.

The players got two of the soldiers from the convoy and snuck away into the unknown wilds of a dry bog. Surviving in the wilderness, together, as one.



Unification of the players party is important, make that unification very clear pre-session if you don't think you can bind them during play.

[Piggy Knowles]

I did this to start a campaign once. Took two decently long sessions to complete, not including introductions of characters (which were mostly done online before our first session).

It's a little different from the standard session or dungeon romp, different enough to be fairly memorable, and while it will probably take a couple of sessions to complete, it's a self-contained story that lets you go in whatever direction you'd like.

...........

The PCs began in a small village on the foothills of a mountain range, where they had heard rumors of a haunted glen about a six hour ride northeast, further into the mountains.

How this plays out depends on what the PCs do, so I'm going to go ahead and just describe everything. Here is the basic scenario of the glen:

It's a long, U-shaped valley between two mountains. A stream (glacial run off) runs through it, and at this time of year it is at its largest, about six feet across. Most of the ground is loose shale, but near the stream there is mud and grass. There are clear signs of war there, although it appears to have occurred close to a century ago. On the west side of the glen, there are what appear to be former goblin encampments, and on the east side there are dwarven encampments. Approaching from the southwest, the players will probably see the the goblin encampments first. Again, though, these are quite old, and while they might find some rusted weapons or armor, none of it is of any use.

Once the sun goes down, two things happen:

1. Right at dusk, a pale dwarf with a red beard streaked with white near the center of the glen appears, wearing fine plate mail, and he hitches a mule and rides hard to the east.

2. As the night progresses, a battle that was fought there between a goblin and dwarven army re-enacts itself. The figures that fight the battle are ghostly and somewhat translucent, and though the players can see and hear and even smell them, they can't interact with them.

Though the dwarf appears more solid than most of the ghostly figures, he too is actually insubstantial, as is his mule.

Various dwarven and goblin zombies, not insubstantial at all but quite real, rise from the mud each night and wander the battlefield. They wield old rusted weapons and will approach any living enemies.

Following the dwarf leads to the old dwarven encampment on the east side of the glen. During the night, this encampment appears to be whole, with perhaps forty camp followers that are not part of the main dwarven army. (During the day, there are just bare remnants of the camp left over, signs that once a small army stayed there long ago.) The dwarf is clearly in great distress, muttering about having lost something, and he goes to the largest tent (again, this only exists at night) and tears through it looking for something, which he cannot find.

Again, the night progresses, and this battle turns out to be a decisive one for the goblin army, who overwhelm the dwarves. Anyone with a knowledge of military history will notice that the dwarves appear oddly disorganized. The ghostly goblins destroy the dwarves, and only a small rag-tag bunch survive and return to the camp. The dwarf with the red and white beard does not himself return to the battle until it is already mostly over, and the goblins immediately kill him. If they stay there long enough, the PCs can witness all of this happening.

By dawn, everything is back to normal, and there is no sign that a ghostly battle took place there the night before. But at dusk it starts up again, exactly as it did the night before, with the same dwarf hitching a mule and riding east to his camp.

Searching the goblin camp doesn't yield much. Searching the dwarven camp yields a bit more, though. There are some minor trinkets that neither the goblins nor time destroyed too thoroughly, nothing of value but things that help tell the story of the camp. If they search during the day, the PCs eventually find a mound of earth in an area that, at night, is a small tent adjacent to the odd dwarf's large one. Digging it up finds a small chest and inside is a journal, still fairly well preserved.

The journal belongs to a cook who traveled with the dwarven army. Though they are a relatively small army, he speaks great things about their general, a great dwarf with a red beard streaked with white, who leads them brilliantly and inspires his troops to do great things and claim victories that other armies twice their size would balk at. He talks about the general's desperate last stand against a goblin army six times their size, how he maneuvered them to this glen where he believed they would be able to hold their own. He talks about the two weeks that they hold the goblins off, each time killing dozens while losing at most one or two of their own number.

It also mentions, in a couple of places, about the general's great devotion to his deceased wife, and how at each battle he wears a garnet necklace that once belonged to her wrapped about his wrist in her memory, and frequently speaks of her.

The last entry, however, is quite different. He says he cannot believe it, that a mere fraction of their army returned from their fighting, and that those who did returned with tales of abandonment, stating that their general left them before the battle, simply ran back to the camp with barely a word. Without him they were disheartened and disorganized, and the goblins' greater number was enough to spell their doom. The cook talks about the dejection in the camp, mentions that their retreat is cut off, and they know that come nightfall, the goblins will return and burn their camp.

If after reading this the PCs follow the dwarf again, they will notice he is not wearing a garnet necklace wrapped around his wrist, and he keeps touching his wrist as he tears apart his tent looking for something.

Every now and then, with a successful Spot check and only during the day, the PCs notice a strange figure near the outskirts of the dwarven camp. It is an odd, grey-skinned creature covered in mottled green markings, with several arms around a central body. It only ever appears for a moment, and then disappears altogether. A successful knowledge (dungeoneering) check tells them that this is an ethereal filcher (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/etherealFilcher.htm).

If they try to approach the ethereal filcher, it immediately disappears, turning ethereal and disappearing inside the wall of the mountain.

If they explore the area where the filcher is sometimes seen, they can find a place against the rock face that appears as though at one point it was a cave, although a natural rockslide appears to have long since blocked it in, so long that grass and small trees grow out of the dirt that has filled in the rock's edges. Clearing out the dirt, they can eventually get to the rocks underneath, which can be moved with great effort (various strength checks, the group I was working with actually managed to come up with a pulley system that I ruled was able to lower the DCs by 5).

Inside about fifty feet is the lair of the ethereal filcher that they have seen. More knowledge (dungeoneering) checks seems to show that a family of ethereal filchers once lived here, although the one remaining is probably the last one left.

Though the ethereal filcher prefers to retreat, it will attack to defend its lair. It mostly uses hit and run tactics. The cavern is also almost completely dark, and if the characters try to bring in torches or similar items, the ethereal filcher will target these first. It will use its sleight of hand to steal away torches, potions, spell component pouches, etc. It appears, bites, disappears. It's a CR 3 challenge, meaning this should be tough for a party of level 1s. They'll have a cakewalk if it stands and fights, but if you play to its advantages, you can make a pretty memorable battle.

If they defeat the ethereal filcher and search its lair, they can find a "hoard" where it keeps all of the items it has stolen. Most of these are mundane items of various usefulness, although there's the occasional minor magical trinket there. The filchers that have lived there clearly coveted the magical items above all else, because they are all highly polished and cared for. Near the bottom is a garnet necklace.

If the party returns the garnet necklace to the area around the general's tent for him to find, then at the next evening he will find it, sigh in relief, and rush back out to battle. The dwarves make a heroic stand against the goblin horde and win a decisive victory. Then there is a terrific sighing noise, all of the ghostly figures seem to freeze in place and look up, and a strong gust of wind rushes through the glen. As it does, all of the figures, goblin or dwarf alike, seem to disappear in the wind as though they were made of dust. The garnet necklace remains on the ground, where ever the dwarven general was last seen....

(TL;DR VERSION: Ghostly army re-enacts a terrible and bloody battle every night, one which turned into a rout because the general on one side lost his dead wife's necklace and failed to appear. Necklace was stolen, it turns out, by an ethereal filcher, and until the necklace is returned, the battle continues to play out each night. Several encounters within, mostly against dwarven or goblin zombies that occasionally arise in the glen, and a climactic one against an ethereal filcher in a dark cave. Treasure includes the ethereal filcher's hoard, including the garnet necklace that belonged to the long-dead dwarf.)

[Karoht]

Well I'd rather not go into specifics, but long story short, I have to DM a game for a group of people who have never played DnD before. Some of them have played Dungeons and Dragons online though. I've never DM'ed before, but I've played a lot so I know the rules pretty well. I imagine character generation will be a long and grueling process, but it shouldn't be too hard. What I'm more concerned with is getting a good story going since I've never had to DM before. My first thought was kobolds, but I feel like every low level game starts with them. Can anyone give me DMing tips, tips for helping new players, or a good story arc that's simple enough to understand, but complex enough to be entertaining.

One trick I used was I upfront told the players that all of the events of the Introductory session are a dream. However, it is a dream that their real characters (which they make after the session is over) will remember.

I then assigned pre-made characters based on what I thought the players would like to play as. When they upfront knew that they would have creative control over their real characters (the ones that would matter) they were more willing to accept pre-made characters. They also weren't afraid to lose these characters, so they experimented a bit more, which meant that all the players learned quite a bit. Including how character death or dropping below 0 HP can occur and how it is typically resolved.
Fights were generic but tailored directly to the party rather than being random encounters. Most often the party would fight for a bit, retreat, follow and observe and identify their attackers, and then ambush them.

I then had the players create their own characters from scratch, and allowed them to use any of the pre-made characters for reference. When the characters were complete, everyone leveled instantly to level 3, and the next session, the actual story began.

It worked out pretty well. My only difficulty was that I wanted to integrate the 'Dream' into the actual story, and sadly I shoehorned something in rather poorly, but it was also my first ever DM'ing experience so I don't feel to bad about that.

[BowStreetRunner]

The last time I ran a campaign for a bunch of players who had never used the game system (it was actually Cyberpunk, but the principle applies here as well), I first ran a Prologue game the first day. I handed out a bunch of pre-made characters (I made more than there were players and used the extras as NPCs, so they could choose) and ran through a single encounter that ended with most of the pre-made characters dying and the few survivors witnessing the start of events that actually took place 10 years prior to the start of the actual campaign.

We started character creation the second session. By this time they all had at least some feel for the rules and a better idea of how they wanted to make their characters. They also knew a little something about the history of the world they were entering. I even tied the pre-mades into the later story.

[Oxydeur]

Story and first session :
You may be inspired by the first session described by MrEdwardNigma in his Campaign Log :
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174189 (take a look at the first spoiler)
He managed to create a little dungeon that allow him to introduce his new player to the D&D system, one rule at a time. Make the introduction session adding game rule step by step and your players will not be lost in the information flow.

Character creation :
I don't think pre-made characters are indispensable, in all cases they will rely on you to help them create their characters. Just ask them what they like to do (smashing thing, sneaking, bend reality,...) and guide them to a build that answer their whishes (respectively : barbarian, rogue, wizard,...).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

For their first mission... I'm a big fan of the Goblin Caves scenario.

Basically, you've got a town. It's a nice little ranching town. The weather is pleasant. The animals... slightly less so. The only problem are the pests. Some places have mosquitos or cockroaches. We have... goblins.

Basically, the village is set out in the backbeyond of civilization, scrubby plains that slowly turn into foothills that turn into mountains. And in those mountains... are goblins. Lots of 'em. And they keep raiding the town. So the Mayor got tired of hearing everyone's complaints and decided to throw money at the problem. Bounty on goblin ears!

Now then, the first few battle will likely be 'tutorial sessions'. Introduce them to things like reach weapons, AoO, 5' steps... that kind of thing. Show them the mechanics and make sure they've got 'em down pat. Shouldn't be too hard, wandering bands of goblins can be scary, but not too dangerous.

Okay, so we've cut our eyeteeth on the combat system, great. Now we find a cave to explore. Now we get into Line of Sight and lighting rules. Also introduce them to traps at this point. Probably poisons as well. You have your mix of kobolds and goblins, maybe a Bugbear as a miniboss.

So we level a couple of times, and feel like we've got a handle on the system.

That's where you start running into skilled goblins, with character levels. Kobold Rogues who snipe from concealment aren't lethal, but they are a painful reminder of why you want to scan your flanks. And they start working together. Start introducing them to party tactics by using it on them. Point out how useful it was for that goblin to flank you like that, because not only did they grant each other bonuses, but it re-enabled that kobold's sneak attack. *hint hint*.

Then they get to run into their first opponent caster, probably a kobold sorcerer. Don't give him a WTFPWN Save or Lose spell list, give him maybe one AE spell like Grease, and maybe Magic Missile as some blastomancy. Watch as they suddenly realize 'kill the casters' is going to be their mantra.

Then, they hit their first Boss Battle. Cue the extra special background music.

Make it something they're going to have to work together to face, but not so WTFPWN that they don't have a chance. Give them an opportunity to either know in advance what it is, or give them some way to make the fight easier if they figure it out, and don't make it too difficult either. Also, if there's a 'trick move' they enjoy pulling a lot, make it immune. So if the 'trick move' is 'have the TWF rogue tumble into flanking position and shiv while the tank flanks for him', then make it a Barbarian with Improved Uncanny Dodge. Just to shake things up a bit.

Okay, with the loot from the haul, plus the bounty on the ears, they're ready for their next plot hook.

[Hanuman]

Kobolds who snipe from concealment don't even need rogue levels to be leathal.


Tucker’s kobolds

This month’s editorial is about Tucker’s kobolds. We get letters on occasion asking for advice on creating high-level AD&D® game adventures, and Tucker’s kobolds seem to fit the bill.

Many high-level characters have little to do because they’re not challenged. They yawn at tarrasques and must be forcibly kept awake when a lich appears. The DMs involved don’t know what to do, so they stop dealing with the problem and the characters go into Character Limbo. Getting to high level is hard, but doing anything once you get there is worse.

One of the key problems in adventure design lies in creating opponents who can challenge powerful characters. Singular monsters like tarrasques and liches are easy to gang up on; the party can concentrate its firepower on the target until the target falls down dead and wiggles its little feet in the air. Designing monsters more powerful than a tarrasque is self-defeating; if the group kills your super-monster, what will you do next—send in its mother? That didn’t work on Beowulf, and it probably won’t work here.

Worse yet, singular supermonsters rarely have to think. They just use their trusty, predictable claw/claw/bite. This shouldn’t be the measure of a campaign. These games fall apart because there’s no challenge to them, no mental stimulation – no danger.

In all the games that I’ve seen, the worst, most horrible, most awful beyond-comparison opponents ever seen were often weaker than the characters who fought them. They were simply well-armed and intelligent beings who were played by the DM to be utterly ruthless and clever. Tucker’s kobolds were like that.

Tucker ran an incredibly dangerous dungeon in the days I was stationed at Ft. Bragg, N.C. This dungeon had corridors that changed all of your donkeys into huge flaming demons or dropped the whole party into acid baths, but the demons were wienies compared to the kobolds on Level One. These kobolds were just regular kobolds, with 1-4 hp and all that, but they were mean. When I say they were mean, I mean they were bad, Jim. They graduated magna *** laude from the Sauron Institute for the Criminally Vicious.

When I joined the gaming group, some of the PCs had already met Tucker’s kobolds, and they were not eager to repeat the experience. The party leader went over the penciled map of the dungeon and tried to find ways to avoid the little critters, but it was not possible. The group resigned itself to making a run for it through Level One to get to the elevators, where we could go down to Level Ten and fight “okay” monsters like huge flaming demons.

It didn’t work. The kobolds caught us about 60′ into the dungeon and locked the door behind us and barred it. Then they set the corridor on fire, while we were still in it.

“NOOOOOO!!!” screamed the party leader. “It’s THEM! Run!!!”

Thus encouraged, our party scrambled down a side passage, only to be ambushed by more kobolds firing with light crossbows through murder holes in the walls and ceilings. Kobolds with metal armor and shields flung Molotov cocktails at us from the other sides of huge piles of flaming debris, which other kobolds pushed ahead of their formation using long metal poles like broomsticks. There was no mistake about it. These kobolds were bad.

We turned to our group leader for advice.

“AAAAAAGH!!!” he cried, hands clasped over his face to shut out the tactical situation.

We abandoned most of our carried items and donkeys to speed our flight toward the elevators, but we were cut off by kobold snipers who could split-move and fire, ducking back behind stones and corners after launching steel-tipped bolts and arrows, javelins, hand axes, and more flaming oil bottles. We ran into an unexplored section of Level One, taking damage all the time. It was then we discovered that these kobolds had honeycombed the first level with small tunnels to speed their movements. Kobold commandos were everywhere. All of our hirelings died. Most of our henchmen followed. We were next.

I recall we had a 12th-level magic user with us, and we asked him to throw a spell or something. “Blast ‘em!” we yelled as we ran. “Fireball ‘em! Get those little @#+$%*&!!”

“What, in these narrow corridors? ” he yelled back. “You want I should burn us all up instead of them?”

Our panicked flight suddenly took us to a dead-end corridor, where a giant air shaft dropped straight down into unspeakable darkness, far past Level Ten. Here we hastily pounded spikes into the floors and walls, flung ropes over the ledge, and climbed straight down into that unspeakable darkness, because anything we met down there was sure to be better than those kobolds.

We escaped, met some huge flaming demons on Level Ten, and even managed to kill one after about an hour of combat and the lives of half the group. We felt pretty good — but the group leader could not be cheered up.

“We still have to go out the way we came in,” he said as he gloomily prepared to divide up the treasure.

Tucker’s kobolds were the worst things we could imagine. They ate all our donkeys and took our treasure and did everything they could to make us miserable, but they had style and brains and tenacity and courage. We respected them and loved them, sort of, because they were never boring.

If kobolds could do this to a group of PCs from 6th to 12th level, picture what a few orcs and some low level NPCs could do to a 12th-16th level group, or a gang of mid-level NPCs and monsters to groups of up to 20th level. Then give it a try. Sometimes, it’s the little things—used well—that count.

Roger E. Moore

[Ranting Fool]

I'm giving a mate of mine an introduction into D&D (who would like to join our main game but didn't want to dive in at the deep end) so I stuck with a classic "Tell me what your character was doing and going..." ect.
"Right, you wake up in the dark with no idea how you got there" :smallbiggrin:
A bit cheesy but if you've never played any tabletop RPG then it's all new and fresh :smallbiggrin:

I've always found the my aim when teaching new players is to make sure they have a blast (like most games:smalltongue:) but skim over a lot of the rules as that can be learned as you go.

[pyromanser244]

if you don't want to use kobolds, the goblins or undead can work just fine. more importantly, mix it up on the players. let them out number some enemies but be outnumbered by others. let them meet smart enemies and stupid ones. let them meet things that can wipe them out, or things that can be reasoned with rather than fought.

one thing I find invaluable is to differentiate the attacks. that goblin isn't ever going to hit the guy with a tower shield so use something that targets a save from time to time. and above all use traps. few things will get the players interested in learning about the world like a bit of healthy paranoia. :smallamused:

[Ranting Fool]

if you don't want to use kobolds, the goblins or undead can work just fine. more importantly, mix it up on the players. let them out number some enemies but be outnumbered by others. let them meet smart enemies and stupid ones. let them meet things that can wipe them out, or things that can be reasoned with rather than fought.

one thing I find invaluable is to differentiate the attacks. that goblin isn't ever going to hit the guy with a tower shield so use something that targets a save from time to time. and above all use traps. few things will get the players interested in learning about the world like a bit of healthy paranoia. :smallamused:

"In the center of the room you see a small stone that seems out of place, upon inspection you find it is perfectly smooth marble that feels warm to the touch" - Does nothing what so ever :smallbiggrin:

Also had a room with a Donkey it it, was a normal Donkey and the Players where CONVINCED it couldn't be normal "I DISBELIEVE it! later they did find another Donkey which turned out to be a Druid. :smallbiggrin:

[Alienist]

3.5 has lots of little oddities and nooks and crannies that make it inappropriate as an intro to the hobby.

4th edition, especially if you severely restrict the rulebooks (an above poster makes a good point about character creation, you *must* limit choices for people's first characters as much as you can) makes a good "D&D lite".

Just use the 4th ed PHB or the Redbook.


3rd ed allows (in general) a much greater variety of concepts. So if your players (later on) want to make some really whacky characters, that's when you might dangle 3.5 in front of them. That problem with whacky characters in 3.5 is that a great deal of system mastery is required to not make them suck.

But early on, you should stick to the cliches, because they are cliches for a reason. Nobody is going to understand how cool playing a beholder really is until they know what a beholder really is...

[Deathkeeper]

Undead are a common choice for an intro mission, as are things like kobolds and goblins. My first GM was found of the zombies since they introduced DR to the party. Although since the entire dungeon was undead it got a bit aggravating for the party, since the only person packing a blunt weapon capable of easily damaging skeletons was our 8 Str cleric (not his best idea), who refused to give up his weapon because he couldn't wield anything else the party was holding.

[hobbitkniver]

3.5 has lots of little oddities and nooks and crannies that make it inappropriate as an intro to the hobby.

4th edition, especially if you severely restrict the rulebooks (an above poster makes a good point about character creation, you *must* limit choices for people's first characters as much as you can) makes a good "D&D lite".

Just use the 4th ed PHB or the Redbook.


3rd ed allows (in general) a much greater variety of concepts. So if your players (later on) want to make some really whacky characters, that's when you might dangle 3.5 in front of them. That problem with whacky characters in 3.5 is that a great deal of system mastery is required to not make them suck.

But early on, you should stick to the cliches, because they are cliches for a reason. Nobody is going to understand how cool playing a beholder really is until they know what a beholder really is...

Well, I thought about starting with version four, but I've never even played it myself.

[Hanuman]

3.5 is complicated for new players with new DMs, agreed
4.0 isn't a substitution, it's an alternative

It's kind of like getting together with your friends and making a smoothie instead of a full meal.

[rweird]

I'm not sure how well this will work but if you have them look over the SRD before the first session and come to you with questions, it might give them a bit of previous experience, though they very well would be confused about some things. From my experience of introducing new players however, you really have to play to learn it.