I've recently talked about RPGs to a few friends of mine, and they, being vaguely aware of D&D in particular (through its featuring on Community, and being referenced in general geek culture) expressed interest in playing. So I sat down to write an email inviting them to a game, and found myself trying to explain in a nutshell what roleplaying is. I know we've all read these "what is an RPG?" sections at the start of innumerable rulebooks, and now skip them blithely, but I found actually writing one myself to be interesting and oddly pleasing.

How to to describe the games I love to people who have simply never played at all, not at great length, but enough to pique their interest? So I thought I'd share here what I came up with, and ask what people think, maybe see what YOU would say, or have said, to people you'd like to introduce to the hobby. There's a sort of corollary question too, but I'll put that in a second post.

The basic question is: how do you get people who know nothing about it to be interested, without scaring them off with too much detail? Here's my attempt:

so the basic idea of the game is that you have a group of players, and one Dungeon Master (or Game Master, DM or GM). each of the players invents a character which they will pretend to be, and that character is given a set of statistics measuring how good they are at stuff, how strong, how smart, etc, what equipment they have, and we come up with some interesting quirks, strengths and weaknesses, and things about their background. the setting can be anything, but the classic game is set in a fantasy world influenced by things like Tolkien and many other writers, and that's what i propose introducing you to. each character is good at certain things, like they might be a mighty warrior, a sneaky rogue, or a mysterious magician.

then the GM starts telling you what is going on in the world around you (it could be as simple as: "You're in a high mountain pass, the last light of sunset reflecting off the peaks far above, and in the cliff face before you is a dark cave entrance - there could be treasure or danger ahead, what do you do?"). and then you say what your character does, speak to each other as that character and to other people you encounter (the GM pretends to be them), and head off for adventure! any time you try to do something difficult, like climb a rope across a yawning chasm, sail a ship through a storm, or clock a goblin on the head with a club, you roll dice to see if you succeed. usually there is some sort of mission or mystery to solve, and the GM presents the world around you, and controls the other characters you meet. often there is danger in the form of traps and pits, monsters or other bad guys to fight, wicked sorcerers, greedy bandits, puzzles to solve ... and then there are rewards, like treasure, magic swords, saving the prince from a dragon's lair, or freeing the village from the cruel tyrant's rule ...

all of this together makes a cross between the best board game you ever played (but with the board in your imagination, and the ability to go anywhere or do anything you can come up with!), and a sort of improvised play or novel that you create together as you go along! some people love the rolling of dice, the elements of game and chance, some love the exploration of mysterious places and discovery of weird things, some are into facing dangerous monsters and defeating them, or assuming the role of a heroic character, taking on being someone else for a few hours, but most enjoy all of these things at once, and there's usually a little something for everyone in the best games, regardless of what their favourite part is.

in short, this is one of the most fun things you can do with your pants on (although Strip D&D may exist somewhere out there ...), and i highly recommend it.

There's a corollary question to all of this which is slightly bothering me, and I'd really like to hear what people think about it. I'm tempted (and I'm still not sure whether or not to do it) to say to my prospective players, if they do decide to play, that there are two sorts of games we could start off by playing.

One would be the classic dungeon crawl that I started off with myself, and that most of us did start off with. For this, I'd go with pretty old school 3d6 in order for stats, choose class (from a reduced archetypes list, maybe 5E Basic's Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Mage), choose race, etc, buy equipment, and pretty much start at the dungeon door, with maybe a very brief set-up to give some kind of objective (but mostly just exploration, danger-facing, and loot getting). This would be most excellent fun, I'm sure.

The other kind of game I could see starting off with is one that I would probably run using the little life-path minigame from Beyond the Wall, where characters are created along with their backgrounds, which are tied together to those of the other characters, and then the "home village" is established, and a more mystery oriented, roleplaying focused adventure is set up, which would more nearly capture the feel of certain fantasy literature rather than the genre of D&D which the dungeon crawl does. In this game, character backgrounds and ties to each other and interacting with NPCs and the world would be foregrounded.

Is it true that these are two types of D&D I could go with?

Is it better to start people off with one or the other?

My own preferences these days tend towards the more roleplaying/interacting with a world in motion type of game, rather than the more linear, exploration of dangerous places dungeon type game. Am I making a false dichotomy? Can these two be done at the same time?

What do y'all think?

Personally with new players I run them through as broad a gamut of examples as I can so they get a feel of how the play flows when I am DMing.

I usually explain during chargen some od my DMing style, levels of lethality, and stress that the players need to think things through as early on and even later there is no guarantee of raise dead and that reincarnation is an option but a very iffy thing in my campaigns.

I like to use Keep on the Borderlands if its a totally new group as its a really solid module for showing various aspects of play from NPC interaction to shopping, to overland travel to dungeoncrawling.

Other times I just play it on the fly. A start town, some plot hooks to see what the players are interested in today, and roll with it from there.

A toned down BX style D&D is a good approach really as that way the new player isnt overwhelmed right off with too much extraneous info.

I don't explain much up front. Learn by doing is my mantra. Last time I had a large number of new players was like a third of a century ago. That was Runequest which had random rolls and fast character generation. Which I thnk is actually beneficial for new players since it doesn't require system mastery or lots of explanation.

"You are playing a character who is a young person in a wandering tribe of hunter gathers. Your character has abilities that are represented by numbers. Your abilities are Strength, Constitution, Size, Dexterity, Intelligence, Power, and Charisma. You roll some dice to find out how good you are at these things. Here use 4 of these six-sided dice. Roll them and add up the three highest numbers. Write that down. That is your STR. Now do that again for each of the other stats." Continue on in this mode. Tell them to decide on the limited selection of which weapons they are best at, second best at, and third best at. "Ok. You have those weapons."

Everyone started as young members of a neolithic hunter gatherer clan. (This was set in Balazar from the Griffon Mountain supplement.) First adventure was the coming of age rite for the characters which required them to negotiate an obstacle course. This gave the players a chance to jump, climb, run, swim, sneak, hide, hunt, and use missile and melee weapons. It allowed me to show them how the system worked at the same time they were playing the game.

It took maybe 15 minutes for a whole room full of new players to roll up their characters and get their equipment. Then play.

Key points are give them some choices but not many. Then get them actually playing as soon as possible. The people that like mastering rules will naturally ask more rules questions and eventually want to read the rules. The ones that don't like mastering rules don't get hassled with "Here read these 40 pages." The people who don't like roleplaying don't waste much time finding out they don't like it and the ones that do like roleplaying get start roleplaying and learning by doing right away.

I just tell them to watch "Mazes & Monsters" to understand what it's all about.

Quote from: Matt;776639I just tell them to watch "Mazes & Monsters" to understand what it's all about.

Nah, thats for when you are selling them on LARPing... :cool:

I leave all the meta discussion for later.  Get them in the world, get them doing things their character would do, get the world responding, and give them some options and direction, but also freedom.

Most of the time, the rest takes care of itself.

My current canned response is

Dungeons & Dragons like Star Trek's Holodeck, a virtual reality handled with pen, paper, dice, and your imagination. Instead of a computer, a person, called the Dungeon Master, runs things. You will be playing a character and acting as if you are really in a situation that is hopefully fun, interesting, and challenging.

Quote from: estar;776651My current canned response is

Dungeons & Dragons like Star Trek's Holodeck, a virtual reality handled with pen, paper, dice, and your imagination. Instead of a computer, a person, called the Dungeon Master, runs things. You will be playing a character and acting as if you are really in a situation that is hopefully fun, interesting, and challenging.

That's a pretty cool way of putting it.

It's a game. One person - the gamesmaster - creates a world, and put stuff in it. The rest of the group are players, and they each have a character, who goes in and interacts with the stuff, at which point the GM tells them what happens, and that's the game. We talk, and we work through whatever's there, then the GM makes up some more stuff. Sometimes it's science fiction, or fantasy, or spies.

It's fun, and if you're interested, we meet at this pub, every week...

These days when bringing new folks in I just tell them that it is like playing an elder scrolls game. Except that I play the "world" and they play a character, I also throw in the fact that there are no limitations, anything they want to try that is within reason I am game to let them. I explain that they die and the rules and what not are there for arbitration but it is really about what they can imagine. I have found that a sandbox approach works with newbies, I throw a small obvious "quest" out there so they get their feet wet but after that they can go nuts. I always try to have opportunities for adventuring, politicking, crime, or whatever but more often than not their actions create hooks of their own.

I have had quite a bit of success in the past two years bringing people in this way.

Quote from: Omega;776640Nah, thats for when you are selling them on LARPing... :cool:

Darn, I stand corrected.

But I still say if you're not trespassing into caverns or sewers, it's not really D&D.