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View Full Version : DM Help Introducing New Players to Homebrew Baggage



Vortalism
2014-04-30, 06:52 AM
Greetings fellow Playground peeps,

I've recently been playing around with a lot of my homebrew stuff, just tweaking it here and there, and I realised that if I were going to try and teach a new set of players the rules of D&D it'd be complicated enough without all this hogwash intended for game balance get in the way of learning the game.

So I have a question for you all: what would you (DM's of the world out there) do in such a case?

Traditionally I would have just taught them the game wholesale, which is usually 3.5 but I have played 4E with some newbies here and there. However it seems that I'm finding less and less dedicated players who also know the game and probably going to have to introduce new players or play with some of my friends who don't happen to be very familiar with the rules.

Should I simply stick to the vanilla approach and reintroduce it later or instead teach D&D 3.X with houserules galore (most designed for simplicity ironically)?

JeminiZero
2014-04-30, 07:14 AM
Presumably, if you do find veteran players, they should be able to tell which parts are the houserules. Therefore, this is a concern only for new players (who may confuse your houserules with the actual rules).

As I see it, there are 3 eventualities:
1) The new players you find, think D&D is not their cup of tea, and stop playing after this attempt. Happens sometimes, not everybody enjoys this hobby.
2) The new players you find only every play D&D with you, because they stick with you for life (very unlikely)
3) The new players you find will move on to play D&D with other people

(1) is not a real long term concern, since they will have quit the hobby. (2) is definitely possible, but very unlikely. Therefore, in the long term, you likely have to plan for (3). And if they are going to move on to other gaming tables, it would be probably best if they learn the original rules first, (and then the houserules after that) to ease the transition to other places.

Airk
2014-04-30, 08:28 AM
My standard position on this is that you should never try to introduce people to roleplaying with D&D 3+ unless you are some sort of idiot savant who can only comprehend one of those systems (so, never, really. :P).

So I suggest if you are trying to recruit people into the hobby, using a simpler game - either a streamlined "Retroclone" or Dungeon World.

If you MUST teach 3.5, for the love of Bob, don't add in all your homebrew stuff. Teach them how it's "supposed to" work before worrying about explaining how you "fixed" it. Heck, if you want, you can offer your homebrew rules if and only if they bump into something you've "fixed" and say "Wait, that's dumb, why does it work like that?" Otherwise, I'm with JeminiZero - you're doing them a disservice if you teach them a nonstandard game first.