|
|
Post by finarvyn on Nov 19, 2015 6:26:50 GMT -5
I think there are two potential audiences for a doc of this type.
(1) A person who wants to play but doesn't know anyone who has done it before.
(2) A GM who wants to move from newer editions (e.g. 3/4/5) to older editions.
Otherwise, I wonder if we're beating a dead horse. Explaining how to play isn't as fun as actually playing, and as others have noted the best way to experience OD&D is simply to have someone run a game. I've run many OD&D games for total non-gamers and they seem to understand the basics very quickly. They may ask me which type of dice to roll for every situation, but the idea of playing a character seems to come naturally. Probably an offshoot of the computer console game industry.
Anyway, the person who has never heard of an RPG requires a certain style of presentation while the person who wants to roll back time to an earlier epoch requires totally different information. One is a "what is it?" primer and the other a "how to adapt what you know" kind of thing. (A neat example of the "how to adapt what you know" is the page in the DCC RPG core rulebook that basically says "if you have played 3E, here's what is different...")
|
|
|
|
Post by dicebro on Feb 13, 2020 8:33:00 GMT -5
This is a very interesting series of posts. I have learned to ask new players to my game if they’ve ever played D&D before. Then I ask them to “forget everything they know about D&D”. That seems to help when I ref an Original game. I can also refer to it if a new player struggles with some of my rulings. But it doesn’t always work. For example, in my last game, a new player rolled up a PC with 3 HP. Character creation was less than five minutes. He claimed to be experienced in another edition, I.e. not a brand new rpg-er. Unfortunately, his pc succumbed to a phantasmal forces spell cast by a monster. He failed his save and took 4 damage. Then he started complaining that he’d never had a “character killed by an illusion in other editions”. I doubt he’ll return to the game. Sometimes nothing seems to work.
|
|
|
|
Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Feb 14, 2020 13:57:30 GMT -5
I tell them about my experiences the first time I played, about how much fun I had and how I could not wait to play again. Oh btw I went through 6 characters that first night, it was awesome!  |
|
|
|
Post by dicebro on May 2, 2020 11:57:04 GMT -5
I tell them about my experiences the first time I played, about how much fun I had and how I could not wait to play again. Oh btw I went through 6 characters that first night, it was awesome! That’s how it’s done! |
|
ampleframework
Prospector
Searching for the portal to Blackmoor
Posts: 72
|
Post by ampleframework on May 9, 2020 8:28:20 GMT -5
In the past, in my hometown, I had some success putting out home-made fliers. Here's an example from my little stockpile. (That FB group is ancient and probably no longer there. I would have to re-calibrate these for future use.) Thedieiscast.rtf (54.88 KB) |
|
|
|
Post by hengest on Mar 2, 2021 17:59:39 GMT -5
I tell them about my experiences the first time I played, about how much fun I had and how I could not wait to play again. Oh btw I went through 6 characters that first night, it was awesome! This is exactly what I would like to sit down at a table and do (as a player). I would love to see character after character go out the window. However, I doubt many people new to the hobby would be inclined to see it that way. I'm guessing that with the wargaming roots, people at first weren't so worried about characters. You're basically playing a soldier, and they die all the time in an abstract way in any wargame. Now, it seems that the hook into the game for many would be the character, and so then there's a bunch of tension around dying from the start. Which you need to make it all feel risky and real. Of course, I haven't been introducing people to the same since this thread was started over five years ago, so what do I know. |
|
|
|
Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Mar 2, 2021 22:39:25 GMT -5
I tell them about my experiences the first time I played, about how much fun I had and how I could not wait to play again. Oh btw I went through 6 characters that first night, it was awesome! This is exactly what I would like to sit down at a table and do (as a player). I would love to see character after character go out the window. However, I doubt many people new to the hobby would be inclined to see it that way. I'm guessing that with the wargaming roots, people at first weren't so worried about characters. You're basically playing a soldier, and they die all the time in an abstract way in any wargame. Now, it seems that the hook into the game for many would be the character, and so then there's a bunch of tension around dying from the start. Which you need to make it all feel risky and real. Of course, I haven't been introducing people to the same since this thread was started over five years ago, so what do I know. *I did not come from wargames, well I did play Risk, Battleship and things like that, but not any sand table stuff with miniatures. For me the hook was not characters, it was the promise of being able to explore a unique never before explored world and the character, the treasure and everything else was secondary to that for me. A lot of the other college kids that I gamed with bitd, got (as time went by and a character survived) very attached to their characters. But while I enjoyed my characters especially as they got to higher levels, I never got attached to my characters like everyone else did. Of course, that may be because 1. I refereed more than I played and 2. because refereeing gives you a difference mindset form those who play, but never referee. *Many of us did not even play Risk, Battleship or other games of type. Half of our players were women and none of them had played any of these games and only about half of the guys had. |
|
|
|
Post by hengest on Mar 31, 2021 22:59:56 GMT -5
I am sure I have said it before, but this what is most attractive to me as a player. I only even think about / make plans for reffing and getting players so that I can play at all and not have it be 3E. Who knows, maybe I would do okay with it, but if I could just sit down and play, I would probably do that. I do like the idea of reffing and having the players make the world real, I am not knocking it and am getting into the idea ever more, but if five years ago I could have sat down at the table of one of the refs on here and just played, I would probably never have gotten into the idea at all. To keep this somewhat on-topic, I'll say that I hope my incipient practical guide (for myself, at least) of making a simple but engaging plan for a first game with new players will allow something for everyone, for people more inclined to "inhabit" the character and for those more inclined to explore the world through this avatar. |
|
