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View Full Version : Roleplaying How to Introduce a group of entirely new players to Roleplaying and Mechanics?



Coidzor
2014-12-06, 05:21 PM
So, my best friend is getting a few friends to play some D&D (3.5 with some homebrew modifications he wants to test out for the setting he's working on and some stuff drawn from Pathfinder, depending on how things shake out) with him as the DM. I'll probably be able to join and help out so he won't be flying solo with teaching them and directing them towards resources and materials and all that jazz, but we're outnumbered somewhere between 3:2 and 4:1.

I know y'all have some good resources on the subject, I've even gathered some from here, but, alas, between harddrives and computers biting the dust, I have since lost those. Really should've familiarized myself better with chrome and sharing/storing bookmarks in the cloud.

So far we think we'll start with the core mechanic (see d20, see d20 roll, simple math, ho!) and then discuss races and classes and then discuss things as they become pertinent to their characters and what they want to do or they come up in game. Anything you'd add to that or suggestions on how to modify it or specifically address particular portions of the introduction/crash course/Pen and Paper RPGs 101?

After his last time with newbie players at a pickup game with the university group that formed recently, he's definitely going to veer away from combat-heavy stuff, and probably go with more of an intrigue/spec ops sort of slant rather than dungeoncrawling through masses of gobbos and hobbos as murderhobos.

Vitruviansquid
2014-12-06, 06:42 PM
The most important thing to understand about roleplaying for an outsider is that you are playing pretend, except that instead of arguing over who should win any time you have uncertainty, you are rolling dice.

Haruki-kun
2014-12-06, 10:59 PM
Honestly I'd just throw the players right into the setting, no paddle. Do a few things, like maybe have NPCs ask the players "What would you like to do next?", but other than that, just throw them in there.

But then, that's how I learned, and I was used to Freeform Roleplaying and kinda vaguely knew how D&D worked.

NichG
2014-12-06, 11:22 PM
Just very general things:

- "Why" is more important than "What". For example, "If you want to attack him, we need to see if you hit or not, and so we use your attack bonus and a d20 roll to figure that out" is better than "When you attack, roll a d20 and add your attack bonus". Give the players a set of tools to think sensibly about the game with rather than a stack of things to memorize.

- For a complex game like D&D, there's too much for a new player to remember and keep track of immediately. I suggest pre-gens for a first game, so that the players aren't being presented with choices they aren't qualified to make yet (e.g. 'pick a Feat, here's a list of 30' is awful for a new player when they don't even know how to answer things like 'are saving throws important?' or 'how good is +1 AC?'). With pre-gens, its a lot more natural to explain the system piecemeal as it comes up in game (whereas with character creation you sort of have to explain everything at once).

Coidzor
2014-12-06, 11:59 PM
The most important thing to understand about roleplaying for an outsider is that you are playing pretend, except that instead of arguing over who should win any time you have uncertainty, you are rolling dice.

As a basic, foundational principle, I agree. Hopefully that'll be relatively straightforward without having to invest too much work into establishing that.


Honestly I'd just throw the players right into the setting, no paddle. Do a few things, like maybe have NPCs ask the players "What would you like to do next?", but other than that, just throw them in there.

But then, that's how I learned, and I was used to Freeform Roleplaying and kinda vaguely knew how D&D worked.

So, they just gave you a prebuilt character then, or what?

Haruki-kun
2014-12-07, 12:43 AM
As a basic, foundational principle, I agree. Hopefully that'll be relatively straightforward without having to invest too much work into establishing that.



So, they just gave you a prebuilt character then, or what?

I knew roughly what the classes were, so I rolled a Fighter with some really heavy guidance. They ask me to come in like two hours earlier than the start of the session.

Yora
2014-12-07, 05:36 AM
I would say play a game with very simple rules and make the adventure about something else but fighting.

If you absolutely have to play D&D (3rd or 4th) or Pathfinder, I would recommend using only content from a single book and nothing else. I might even go so far and only let them play human, elf, halfing, or dwarf and fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric.

If you want to introduce players to RPGs, it's much more important that they learn fast than having them create a highly customized character that exactly reflects their completely special and unique character concept. For the start a dwarf fighter and halfling rogue are completely sufficient.