This has been reposted in a few places, but originally appeared on the Knights & Knaves Alehouse (http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=4645) forum. It was written by Matt (Mythmere), author of the new-retro RPG Swords & Wizardry (http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/).
QuoteQuick Primer for Old School Gaming
This booklet is an introduction to "old school" gaming, designed especially for anyone who started playing fantasy role-playing games after, say, the year 2000 – but it's also for longer-time players who have become adjusted to modern styles of role-playing over the years.
If you want to try a one-shot session of 0e using the free Swords & Wizardry rules, just printing the rules and starting to play as you normally do will produce a fairly pathetic gaming session – you'll decide that 0e is just missing all kinds of important rules. You will have played a game where no situations had any sort of guidance, and you just imported rules from your normal game to fill in the gaps. This booklet is intended to fill the role of an experienced referee who's actually played 0e – someone who can explain how the rules are put to use, not just what they are.
For the Players and the Referee:
Playing an old school game is very different from modern games where there are rules covering many specific situations. Read these rules as if they are the rules of a completely new role-playing game you've never seen before; keep in mind what you think is "missing" isn't there on purpose; and remember that the GM has no obligation to be "fair," just relatively impartial.
First Zen Moment: Rulings, not Rules
The biggest key to understanding "old school" gaming is like a Zen moment: much of the time, you don't use a rule, you just use a ruling. It's easy to understand that sentence, but it takes a flash of insight to really "get it." I'm not saying that you're going to have a flash of liking it. You might hate it. What I'm saying is that it's a big intuitive leap from modern games to understand how this works. The players can describe any action, without needing to look at a character sheet to see if they "can" do it. The GM uses common sense or makes an ad-hoc ruling, and then the game moves on. This is why characters have so few numbers on the character sheet, and why they have so few specified abilities. Many of the things that are "die roll" challenges in modern gaming (disarming a trap, for example) are handled by observation, thinking, and experimentation in old-style games. Getting through obstacles is more "hands-on" than you're probably used to.
A simple example: by tradition, many pit traps in 0e are treated as follows. They can be detected easily, by probing ahead with a 10ft pole. If you step onto one, there is a 1 in 6 chance that the pit trap will open. And that's all there is to it. Thieves – if the game even uses thieves as a character class – don't spot them unless specifically checking, and they don't disarm.
Or say for instance you want your fighter to leap from a high ledge to the ground, both hands gripped tightly around the hilt of his sword to drive it deep into the back of the goblin below, who's about to club the party's cleric from behind. What do you do? You simply tell the referee what you want to do. Then the referee will probably ask you to roll to hit. If you hit, you do damage. You might even do extra damage because of your weight behind the blow. That will be for the DM to determine. If you are a ways off the ground you might have to check to see if you get hurt yourself – and maybe not, if you roll to hit well enough. On the other hand, the referee might decide that you automatically hit the goblin since you're attacking from behind and from above, but not give you extra damage. However the referee decides the exact die rolls and numbers, it's obvious that you're going to have some sort of powerful attack here, even though you don't have a specific "feat" or "skill" for this kind of maneuver written on your character sheet.
Second Zen Moment: Forget "Fair."
A good GM is impartial, neither trying to favor the party nor the opposition. Beyond that, the party has no right to always encounter monsters they can defeat, no right to always encounter traps they can disarm, no right to invoke a particular rule from the books, and no right to a die roll in every particular circumstance. It is the GM's game, and he calls the shots. It's much less like a game of chess, and much more like a game of storytelling with dice. The only right the players have – and it's a big one – the GM should never, ever, tell a player what the player's character does. That's the player's decision. Unless the character is under a charm, or whatever, the player makes the decisions. With all the powers an old-style GM has, it is even more important not to "railroad" the game than it is in modern games.
Third Zen Moment: Heroic, not Superhero
Old School games have a human-sized scale, not a super-powered scale. At first level, adventurers are barely more capable than a regular person. They live by their wits. By the way, characters with low intelligence are still expected to be played intelligently as a matter of player skill. The player's skill is the character's guardian angel – call it the character's luck or intuitions, or whatever makes sense to you, but you don't cut back on your skill as a player just because the character has a low intelligence. It's a game of skill. But back to the Zen moment. Even as characters rise to the heights of power, they aren't picking up super-abilities or high ability scores. Truly high-level characters have precious items accumulated over a career of adventuring; they usually have some measure of political power, at least a stronghold. They are deadly when facing normal opponents ... but they aren't invincible. Old school gaming (and again, this is a matter of taste) is the fantasy of taking a guy without tremendous powers – a guy much like yourself but somewhat stronger, or with slight magic powers – and becoming a king or a feared sorcerer over time. It's not about a guy who can, at the start of the game, take on ten club-wielding peasants at once. It's got a real-world, gritty starting point. And your character isn't personally ever going to become stronger than a dragon. At higher levels, he may be able to kill a dragon with his sword or with spells, but never by grabbing its throat and strangling it in a one-on-one test of strength. To make a comic-book analogy, characters don't become Superman; they become Batman. And they don't start as Batman – Batman is the pinnacle. He's a bit faster than normal, a bit stronger than normal, he's got a lot of cash, a Bat Cave, a butler, a henchman (Robin) and cool gadgets. But he can't leap tall buildings in a single bound. If you don't get a feeling of achievement with Batman instead of Superman as the goal, the old school gaming style probably isn't right for your vision of what makes good and exciting fantasy. Old school gaming is about the triumph of the little guy into an epic hero, not the development of an epic hero into a superhuman being. There's nothing wrong with the latter, it's just that old-style fantasy matches up with the former.
Fourth Zen Moment: Game balance a minor factor
Game Balance is not the all-important measure of all things in old-style gaming. At any given time, one character may very well be more powerful than the rest (the experience tables cause some character classes to level up earlier than others). A few adventures later, the tables will turn as other characters level up – a different character often takes the limelight for a while.
This is a co-operative game played among friends, not a competition to have the most powerful character. The competition is against the fantasy world, not against the other players and not against the referee. Focusing heavily on "Game balance" is a method for highly exact, competitive games. It's okay to be inexact and approximate with game balance, as long as the boat's not in danger of completely capsizing.
For the Game Master
As the Game Master, you've got to wrap your head around those Zen moments – at least a little bit – before refereeing a game using the 0e rules, or Swords & Wizardry, or whatever game you've chosen to try out. You're the most important factor in making sure the game is actually the old-style game you want to try out: if you don't at least get a basic grasp of those four ideas then what you run will just be a modern-style game without enough rules.
Remember: You are the rulebook. There is no other rulebook.
Make it fast, make it colorful, and make it full of decisions for the players.
Resource management: It's important to realize that old-style gaming is a game that involves a lot of "resource management." Your party has a finite number of spells, a finite amount of food, a finite amount of torches, and a finite amount of damage that it can absorb. Light sources and food become less important at higher levels, but spells and hit points are always vital commodities that you've got to keep an eye upon. Some modern-style gamers don't like this part of a role-playing game, thinking that it's not adventurous to be worrying about how long the torches will burn, and that it's silly for a magic-user to use one spell and then be "useless" for the rest of the adventure. Just take it on faith for a moment that this is an important and exciting part of old-style gaming. It's one of those things that if it's done right adds lots of tension and excitement. It might still not be your cup of tea – there are many different ways to enjoy fantasy gaming – but to really experience the "old-style" manner of play, this is pretty important. It comes back to that earlier Zen Moment about how old-style gaming is built on a human scale, not on a superhuman scale. Having to worry about things like whether the torches are going to run out emphasizes the experience of being a "regular person" exploring a very dark and very dangerous place where people really don't belong. Gaining the ability to use magical light and to create food supplies is an achievement – an achievement too low to register on the modern-style, superhuman scale of things perhaps, but for a "regular guy" type of adventurer it's a milestone.
So, here's how you run a game where resource management is a significant factor. The challenge to the players is to get where they want to go (places with piles of gold, they hope) without having to retreat. There's a cost to retreating: perhaps they can barely afford their upkeep at the local inn; perhaps their reward from the local baron is reduced if they can't achieve the mission within a certain number of days; perhaps there's a risk that a hostage will be killed; perhaps there's another adventuring party that's trying to reach the same treasure. In other words, there's also got to be a race against time. It might not be a fast race, and it might not have an overwhelming sense of urgency to it, but there's got to be a race against time. Otherwise, yes, managing resources isn't particularly fun – it's unnecessary bookkeeping. The combination of race against time against depleting resources is a very powerful source of drama and tension. It's one of the driving forces of old-style gaming. At low level, the race against time is often just to have enough money to scrape by: as the GM, you set some amount of money that they're spending per day or per week. If they want to scrimp and save let them, but constantly describe the rats in their foul lodgings, the bland porridge they're eating, the condescending attitude of villagers who see the characters failing to succeed – they'll speed up their efforts. At higher levels, creating the race against time requires a bit more creativity on your part – especially because you don't want to make it into something that forces the players into any particular adventure. The players should always have control over what their characters can do, so you've got to avoid overusing the whole "the king will have you executed if you don't rescue the princess" sort of adventure hook.
Combat is abstract. One criticism that's often leveled against old-style gaming is that it's boring to just have a series of: "I roll a d20. Miss. I roll a d20. Hit. I roll a d20. Miss. I roll a d20. Miss." It's true that from time to time the "tape" of an old-style combat is exactly like this. Some combats are unimportant enough that no one bothers to try anything particularly unusual, and if there's not a fumble or a critical hit, and the party doesn't get into hot water then this kind of combat won't use much tactical thinking on anyone's part. So why even have it? Because every quick, less-significant combat uses up resources. And when I say quick, I mean very, very quick. In modern games, where combat contains special moves and lots of rules, combat takes up lots of time. An "insignificant" combat is a complete waste of gaming time. In older rules, a small combat can take five minutes or less. So small combats work very well as a way of depleting those precious resources in a race against time. The players will actually seek to avoid minor combats when there's not much treasure involved. They're looking for the lairs and the treasure troves, not seeking to kill everything that crosses their path. The classic old-style adventure contains "wandering monsters" that can randomly run into and attack the party, and some modern gamers see this as arbitrary. It's not. It's another instance of running a race against time – if the characters aren't smart and fast in getting to the lairs and troves, if they shilly-shally and wander, they're going to lose hit points and spells fighting wandering monsters who carry virtually no treasure. This is also, by the way, why older-style games award experience points for gaining treasure as well as for killing monsters. If killing monsters is the only way to gain experience points, then one monster's pretty much the same as another – the players don't have much of an incentive to avoid combat. When treasure is the best source of experience points and there's a race against time, the players have every incentive to use all their skill and creativity to avoid encounters that drain their resources. They've got to press on to the mission before they become too weak to keep going.
So that's why combat is abstract, or at least it's one reason. Also, of course, fast combat mimics the pace of combat – in more complex games, players may have to sit for a while, contemplating the next "move" like a chess game. I've heard of egg timers being used to limit thinking time. With old-style, abstract combat, this just doesn't happen (not often, anyway). Abstract combat also opens the door for one of the things that's most important about old-style gaming – the freewheeling feel of "anything goes."
In old-style combat, a player can describe and attempt virtually anything he can think of. He doesn't need to have any sort of game-defined ability to do it. He can try to slide on the ground between opponents, swing from a chandelier and chop at a distant foe, taunt an opponent into running over a pit trap ... whatever he wants to try. That doesn't, of course, mean that he'll succeed. It's your job to handle these attempts colorfully and fairly, choosing whatever probability you think is the right one and rolling some dice. Sometimes you'll enforce common sense and roll that one in 10,000 chance. When the players truly understand that their characters' actions aren't constrained by the lack of a specific ability, you'll find that combat becomes quite interesting. It's also your job to inject events that wouldn't occur within the format of a specific set of rules for what happens during combat. "You rolled a 1. Your sword goes flying." "You rolled a 1. You trip and fall." "You rolled a 1. Your sword sticks into a crack in the floor." "Hey, you rolled a 20. You spin around and gain an extra attack." Hey, you rolled a 20. You slay the orc, kick his body off your sword, and blood spatters into the eyes of one of the orcs behind him." "Hey, you rolled a 20. You knock his sword out of his hand even though he's not killed." That's just a set of examples for the various ways you could handle natural rolls of 1 or 20 without the constraint of specific rules. Even when the rolls aren't unusual, you keep up a running picture of what's happening. Not all the time – the players have their own mental picture of what's happening, and you don't want to step on their imaginations. But you're also able to have monsters doing unexpected things – throwing a bench in the attempt to knock down two characters at once, monsters that try to swing by chandeliers, and other such challenges that don't often surface in games with tighter rules. Try to put some "toys" into the combat areas some of the time: benches, places where you can fight from the high ground, slippery patches, etc. Because of the speed of the abstract combat system, unusual tricks by the players and monsters don't cause delays while the rules are consulted. It's all you – you are the rulebook.
For the most part, I agree with the author that this is exactly how old school games, particularly OD&D, AD&D and Basic D&D work. No real quibbles.
I miss the exploration part of the game. I miss not rolling for traps, which I think is a far more creative and intellectually engaging way of doing a dungeon crawl. I'm so sick of "I take 20 on a Search check." It's bland and dull.
But I don't miss old school combat either. Maybe it was just bad luck, but I remember a lot of fights turning into "I try to hit him. roll I hit/miss." because it was the only safe way to play: too many DMs viewed any attempt to do something cool as an attempt to "game the system" and "break the rules" to gain "unfair advantages."
That example he gives of jumping down on a goblin? 9 out of 10 DMs I know would use that as an opportunity to screw you over, and have you end up prone at the goblins feet with a broken sword and falling damage. Almost every character death I can think of was a result of me trying to do something cool (usually from a movie) and the DM slapping down the reality hammer hard and using my action to fuck me over. Or coming up with a clever idea and having the DM not reward it at all.
I remember this one time in 2E I was part of a party of four, all first level. We encountered 5 hippogriffs on a road. Sort of wandered into the middle of them on accident. One round later half the party (fighter and cleric) were dead. I cast an illusion of a griffon circling over the area. The hippogriffs scattered. Then my illusion ended, and the hippogriffs immediately came back.
And I remember thinking "Oh, so basically we're all just supposed to die." Because you know, I was out of spells, couldn't outrun the things, and had 3 hit points and no armor. The rogue wasn't much better off. We were dead a round later.
I can think of so many adventures where the party all died because the DM caused every attempt to escape, flee, distract or otherwise avoid an overpowered encounter to fail.
Quote from: Jackalope;221902I remember this one time in 2E I was part of a party of four, all first level. We encountered 5 hippogriffs on a road. Sort of wandered into the middle of them on accident. One round later half the party (fighter and cleric) were dead. I cast an illusion of a griffon circling over the area. The hippogriffs scattered. Then my illusion ended, and the hippogriffs immediately came back.
That's not old school... that's just crap. :-/
I am wracked with anguish over the thought that I agree with someone who posts and Knights & Knaves.
The only quibble I have is with "Game balance a minor factor". Game balance is/was/should be a moderate factor. It's not (or shouldn't) be chucked out the window. Adhering to it religiously cuts off a lot of fun options, but having a vast disparity in options between different players can be a real problem in the overall enjoyment of the game. Old school supplements that violated this egregiously tend to be looked at ruefully by old schoolers, including myself.
QuoteIt is the GM's game, and he calls the shots. It's much less like a game of chess, and much more like a game of storytelling with dice. The only right the players have – and it's a big one – the GM should never, ever, tell a player what the player's character does. That's the player's decision. Unless the character is under a charm, or whatever, the player makes the decisions.
I sort of disagree with this part. It's not the GM's game - everyone is playing a game together, and responsible for making it a fun activity for themselves and the other people at the table. It's everyone's game.
If the GM is doing something that is truly destroying the fun for the other people at the table (feel free to recall any gamer horror story you'd like) then the other players can and should say something. Likewise if a player is choosing actions for their character that will take the fun away from the other people at the table (again there are lots of gamer horror stories as examples), that shouldn't be allowed to proceed.
Now, in general I agree that the GM is responsible for the game world and Monsters / NPCs, while the players are responsible for their characters... but there is a social contract there that people are going to work towards making a fun game together. As soon as someone breaks that contract, then the other people at the table aren't obliged to continue the game.
It doesn't matter if it's old school or new school gaming -- this is true of all games.
It's a fine style guide, but I rather object to using the term "old school" as if this was the old school style. It's just as bad as someone claiming to be the "new way" of gaming. People played in a variety of ways even in the seventies.
It's funny... I've been hankering after a little resource management heavy gaming lately. Not precisely the dungeon crawl, but having a group of traveling sellswords scrounging up money for food and lodgings. This advice seems like it would be useful, with the depleting resources and the race against time and all.
Quote from: Stuart;221885This has been reposted in a few places, but originally appeared on the Knights & Knaves Alehouse (http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=4645) forum. It was written by Matt (Mythmere), author of the new-retro RPG Swords & Wizardry (http://www.swordsandwizardry.com/).
Matt's already hard at work on a revised version based on comments he has received. I'll be hosting a copy at RetroRoleplaying, and including in in my personal house-rules printing of Swords & Wizardry.
Jackalope said:
QuoteBut I don't miss old school combat either. Maybe it was just bad luck, but I remember a lot of fights turning into "I try to hit him. roll I hit/miss." because it was the only safe way to play: too many DMs viewed any attempt to do something cool as an attempt to "game the system" and "break the rules" to gain "unfair advantages."
Like DMs who were just trying to kill the players to show how powerful they were as DM, I just avoided them -- as did most people I knew back in the 70s. I much prefer "old school" combat because it was abstract and very fast. As a DM, I love cool player stuff because if successful, it usually makes the combat faster, or at least more interesting. And if it fails, it often does so in a memorable way.
Very good essay.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;221943Very good essay.
RPGPundit
Indeed.
I do think the strong role of player knowledge and skill does get in the way of immersion. Not that that's a bad thing. I'm running a very sandboxy, "gonzo" style of game in Traveller right with two computer programmers and a girl who took economics in university as players, and it really adds a lot of richness to their overall choices. They have a spreadsheet and detailed book-keeping for every aspect of their ship and their business, just like a modern store or company would for their goods.
Isn't this more about 'rules-light' gaming than 'old-school' gaming?
QuoteFourth Zen Moment: Game balance a minor factor
Game Balance is not the all-important measure of all things in old-style gaming. At any given time, one character may very well be more powerful than the rest (the experience tables cause some character classes to level up earlier than others). A few adventures later, the tables will turn as other characters level up – a different character often takes the limelight for a while.
This is a co-operative game played among friends, not a competition to have the most powerful character. The competition is against the fantasy world, not against the other players and not against the referee. Focusing heavily on "Game balance" is a method for highly exact, competitive games. It's okay to be inexact and approximate with game balance, as long as the boat's not in danger of completely capsizing.
I think that old editions do have a way of "balance". I would call it "conceptual balance" vs. "mathematical balance (4E)".
In OD&D for example, the Fighting-men is the best at... fighting. And a class able to endure long periods of action.
The M-U is the best at magic and can do all kinds of tricks (invisibility, fly, passwall, etc) and also BOOM spells of high damage. But is not durable and when caught in melee his is in dire trouble. When he runs out of spells he is also quite worthless.
The cleric is the best at support. He can heal and restore (neutralize poison, cure disease, etc.). No one can do that stuff but him.
Now... a successful party is not a 3 M-U party (the class often regarded as the most powerful). I can bet that if you go with 1 fighter and 2 mages, that will be a more succesful party. And if you go with 1 fighter, 1 cleric and 1 magic user, the party will even be better.
So I see balance in "everyone has an important contribution to the party". Balance today is seen as: "everyone must be able to contribute at ALL times" vs. the old "everyone will contribute to THE WHOLE OF THE ADVENTURE". At different moments, with different things. But in the whole of the adventure, everyone has his special, different, not mathematical but conceptual contribution.
FM: endurance, backbone of defense of the party, and constant combatant.
MU: tricks and boom spells.
C: support and recovery.
So I don't think that balance was not considered in the early days. It was just a different concept. People today say there was "no balance" because its not today's concept of balance.
Quote from: Age of Fable;222031Isn't this more about 'rules-light' gaming than 'old-school' gaming?
The essay advocates:
- rules-light
- being okay with DM fiat
- challenging players as much as challenging characters
- starting at low power-levels
I can't think of any modern games that hit all those marks, so 'old-school' gaming is correct.
These were part of my gaming experience from the "old school" days, and I think they still exist in modern games -- although there are some notable examples of popular RPGs that have drifted towards the opposite in all 3 areas.
- rules-light
- challenging players as much as challenging characters
- starting at low power-levels
I think the next point isn't so much about "old school" gaming as it is about a particular style of GMing that some people associate with their own "old school" experience.
I don't think there was ever a cut-off for DM fiat that would match up with any real sense of "old school" vs "new school". There are lots of games and groups that continue to play this way.
I like some older RPGs like B/X D&D, but the DM = God style of DM fiat isn't part of that. I agree with James Raggi's comments on this (http://lotfp.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-is-old-school-who-cares.html).
Quote from: LOTFPReferee" or "Dungeon Master" or "Game Master" shouldn't equal "dick," it doesn't equal "god," and the best defense against that is the "rule of law," if you will... the damn game rules. That's also why I make my rolls out in the open. As far as I'm concerned, the rules we agree on when play begins are THE LAW, more than anyone at the table. My judgement for situations not covered by the rules shouldn't be based on "making shit up," it should be based on reasonable extrapolation of the rules already present. This allows players to also offer their input, which is always a good thing. "Hmmm, that's not covered here, but I think this rule is analogous. What do you think?" Of course, as referee, I have the final say... but it's just being a dick to insist on having the first, last, and every say on rulings.
Maybe it comes down to what people mean by "being okay with DM fiat". All the "I wear the Viking Hat!" stuff seems like a separate issue from old / new styles of games.
This could call for it's own thread, and I might start one for this, but I thought I would check here first:
Has anyone had success bringing gamers who haven't been exposed to old-school gaming before into it? I'm wondering because I'm a fan of old-school gaming, but the people I game with (early 30's to mid 20's in age) were never really exposed to it -- they began with AD&D 2nd and oWoD, with some Shadowrun and other games mixed in for good measure. The ones who are currently big D&D players are pretty enamored with 4th Edition, too. I'd like to do more old-school gaming, but short of starting a new game group I'm not sure I'd have much luck with my friends.
It depends on your definition of 'bring in'. Mostly since Gary's passing I've been in a few Basic D&D redbox and RC games. With folks new to em, or players that hadn't played em in a long time. I dunno if they continued to play, but in most of those games it seemed like everybody had fun.
Quote from: Rezendevous;222099This could call for it's own thread, and I might start one for this, but I thought I would check here first:
Has anyone had success bringing gamers who haven't been exposed to old-school gaming before into it? I'm wondering because I'm a fan of old-school gaming, but the people I game with (early 30's to mid 20's in age) were never really exposed to it -- they began with AD&D 2nd and oWoD, with some Shadowrun and other games mixed in for good measure. The ones who are currently big D&D players are pretty enamored with 4th Edition, too. I'd like to do more old-school gaming, but short of starting a new game group I'm not sure I'd have much luck with my friends.
My group has, mostly though by just pitching a game and playing it.
It's much the same advice I'd give to someone wanting to try indie gaming with their group actually, you don't say "hey, let's play old school/indie/whatever", you say "hey, I want to run x, fancy a go?" and run it.
Old school games are fun, run one and folk will have fun and there you are. Trust the games, pitch them to your group, run them and have fun.
Like any other game really.
Quote from: Rezendevous;222099Has anyone had success bringing gamers who haven't been exposed to old-school gaming before into it?
Absolutely, though mostly through Hackmaster. But I have brought new players into the fold with AD&D 1e as well. Almost all of them loved it, and I'd say about half of them stuck with loving it while the others went back to 3e or other newer games.
But I have done it.
-=Grim=-
Quote from: Haffrung;222075The essay advocates:
- rules-light
- being okay with DM fiat
- challenging players as much as challenging characters
- starting at low power-levels
I can't think of any modern games that hit all those marks, so 'old-school' gaming is correct.
Dungeon Squad and Microlite20? Although they're both non-commercial.
Quote from: Age of Fable;222127Dungeon Squad and Microlite20? Although they're both non-commercial.
My (not yet quite finished) Microlite20 variant, Microlite74, is even designed to feel and play like that 1974 first fantasy rpg. I even removed skills from M20. :)
Thanks for the feedback. That's definitely encouraging.
Quote from: Rezendevous;222099...
Has anyone had success bringing gamers who haven't been exposed to old-school gaming before into it? ...
I recently introduced three thirty-something non-gamers to RPGs via the Moldvay Basic D&D set.
I play OD&D almost exclusively with my non-English speaking students and have found it's very easy to explain and get started playing. The rather generic nature of the rules also means it's easier for the players to speak about the game without learning a slew of new words first. Oh...and they love the dice!