4e / GSL D&D 4e + new players = PURE WIN!!!

[Gothmog]

This is pretty long, so you've been warned.

This last weekend, I started a new 4e campaign with five people who had never played a tabletop RPG before (two guys who I had in my Neuropharmacology class and their wives, and another guy who was one of their friends), and one guy who was a self-avowed 3e lover/4e hater. All of them had played Neverwinter Nights, but no WoW or MMOs, and all of them enjoy fantasy, sci-fi, and horror movies and novels. One of the guys had tried to play 3.5 in high school, but only got as far as character creation before he felt overwhelmed, and one of the other girls had sat and watched a previous boyfriend play 3e, but had no real interest after that session. The 4e hater gave the typical reasons for hating 4e (can't roleplay, too videogamey, blah blah), but agreed to play because his other friends were playing.

Our character creation session was last Thursday. I knew things were looking good when the young lady who had watched a 3e session came to the character creation session with a fully made PC (shadar-kai rogue) who was built very well, and had a great backstory. She had gotten online and downloaded the free Character Generator from WotC, read what it had said about her options, and made a character a 4e veteran might have made. We used the CharGen to finish up the other five characters (human wizard, elf ranger, elf cleric, dwarf paladin, and shifter warden) and I explained how skill checks, healing surges, etc worked in about two hours total! Everyone was chomping at the bit to play (even the 4e hater seemed interested), and I had them select some minis I painted up for them for Saturday.

Our first game session was on Saturday night. We got a good 7 hours of gaming in, from roughly 5 pm to midnight, with a short break for dinner. It was one of those sessions where everything clicked perfectly. All the players had great backstories that I managed to hook together into the initial plotline, and had developed their characters down to peronality strengths and flaws, as well as goals, motivations, and fears. The players roleplayed out their meeting under unusual circumstances at a roadside inn and survived a strange series of events that will become important later in the campaign (evil fey were after another traveler in the inn, eventually abducting him and carried him back to the Feywild). During the RPing, the characters realized they were headed to the same destination, and becasue the hills surrounding the town were fairly dangerous, they decided to travel together for mutual protection.

On the way, they had a short encounter with some roaming goblins bearing tumors and growths on their bodies (related to the caves near some standing stones- see below), but managed to dispatch them without too much trouble. I encouraged the players to describe to me and each other what they were doing each round, and "write their own story". I had thought that having new players describe using their powers in a narrative sense might make it seem less like "mashing button X", and they didn't disappoint. They had a great time trying crazy stuff, doing stunts (thanks p. 42!!!), and the fight kept moving at a quick rate, and seemed like a dangerous situation to them. The 3e guy took a bit longer to get the hang of it than the others, but once he did, he had some fun with his shifter warden.

Once they got to the small town, they began to investigate strange lights in the hills, disappearances of local farmers/shepherds, an area of forest where the trees had been turned to glass, and the cleric began looking for his missing priest friend who lived in town. What followed was three hours of some of the best, in-character roleplaying I've seen in years. All of them like mysteries and suspense, so I made the townsfolk rather sullen, with a feeling of underlying menace in the town. There were a few skill checks, a short skill challenge to befriend the town elder (with in-character roleplaying the primary focus, and the skill rolls as a secondary concern), falsifying credentials saying they were investigating on behalf of the Road Wardens, lots of interviewing townsfolk, and investigation of the chapel where the missing priest had last been seen. After searching the chapel, they realized the priest was terrified of something, and had put up wards (not any sort of ritual, just symobls that would deter such creatures marginally- pure RP and for-effect stuff) near the doors and windows of the chapel against all sorts of entities (spirits, demons, undead, shapechangers), and chained the door shut with himself inside, but despite these efforts, he had vanished. The group started to realize something was seriously wrong when the cleric said this wasn't like his friend at all, and they found his journal (which I typed up for them) describing his slow descent into paranoia and madness caused by strange dreams and visions he was having.

We ended the session there, and everyone had a great time. Next time, they'll be exploring the section of the forest turned to glass, looking into the strange lights in the hills, and exploring the caves beneath an ancient site with standing stones (and discovering the horror that was trapped there in ancient times). The two guys I had in my class went and bought PHBs, Arcane Power, and Martial Power, and the guy who had hated 4e went and bought a PHB and PHB2 the next day! He told me this isn't anything like what he thought 4e would be, and this was the most fun he'd had gaming in a long time. Our next session is tomorrow night, and everyone is stoked about getting back to the game!

Anyway, I wanted to post this because this was a really positive experience I had with 4e, and there just aren't enough positive thread around here about great experiences people have had while gaming. This was the first time I had tried to play 4e with a group of people who (mostly) had never gamed before. It went really smoothly, and there was NO fuss about the rules or people understanding them. It sure looks like WotC hit the bullseye with making a game that people new to the hobby can pick up and play easily! I think I've also finally hit my stride and gotten really comfortable with 4e now, and I'm running games that feel to me a lot like the games I ran in 1e and 2e AD&D. So thank you WotC for giving us this incredible game, and supporting it with so many incredible books, the DDI, and options!

[Rechan]

This sounds awesome! Glad you had buckets of fun. Post about tomorrow's session!

[catsclaw227]

Awesome!

I have been getting a total AD&D vibe from my games lately too. And because I prefer the 4e mechanics, I am able to really enjoy DMing again. I was burning out a few times near the end of the 3.x run, and prepping for games was feeling more chore than challenge.

Let's hear about the next session!

[mach1.9pants]

Great stuff! Sounds like an awesome session, great when the DM and players click on the same wavelength... especially on the first go.

"Neuropharmacology" sounds like something an evil wizard might practice...

[Somebloke]

I won't bore anyone with my campaign notes of a young priestess leading a small band of mercenaries on a continent-spanning pilgrimage in a desperate attempt to end an eons-old battle between opposing nations before the two are both swallowed and forgotten by rising empires...

...I will merely say that regardless of the similarities between 4th and WOW (and there are a few) the medium- paper and pencils roleplaying, with it's warmth, ability for improvisation and roleplaying, and its dynamics, will always create a huge gulf between the two games.

[Scott_Rouse]

Gothmog,

Thanks for a great post, you put a smile on a couple WOTC faces. Your campaign sounds like lot's of fun and I hope this game group becomes a longtime play group.

XP for you.

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

LOL- the group I play 4E with came to the same conclusion a while back, it really feels a great deal closer to 1E AD&D than 3.0/3.5 ever did.

[beldar1215]

Thank you for posting this. I get so sick of all the hate threads. I'm running and playing 4e and I have to say it has been a blast. I'm even running for one of my groups that I said I would never run for again because of bad 3.5 experiences. We are having a great time!!

Beldar

[Verys Arkon]

Sounds like a great game, and thanks for sharing.

My 4e group has 2 people new-to-table top gaming, and two experienced players, and we are all having a lot of fun (including myself as DM). Even the one that despised what they had done to 'her cleric' admits it is a good time, and looks forward to the next session.

One of my new players has really gotten into it, and has started his own table on alternate weekends with 2 more new-to-table top gaming friends (well, one was an old 2e veteran, but has come back now with 4e). He has been playing for less than a year, and now runs his own LFR events with 'second generation' new players.

I'd call that a success.

[Doug McCrae]

It occurs to me (as I'm currently running M&M) that 4e and Mutants & Masterminds both add an element of rules-based open-endedness to d20 combat that was lacking in 3e. In 4e it's page 42, in M&M it's hero points.

[Ethalias]

Sounds like awesome fun. I'm going to be running a game for some first-timers in a couple of weeks, so it's a great relief to hear an account of people picking up the rules easily. I had suspected that to be the case but the few people I've played with before have more of a background of rpgs/wargames, so it's hard to tell..

Do you have any advice as regards teaching the rudiments to new gamers e.g. what to explain up front and what to cover during play.. I'm planning on creating some pre-gens to save on time as at the moment it's planned as a one-shot.. That is unless I do a good enough job of convincing them to come back for more..

[Gothmog]

Originally Posted by mach1.9pants

Great stuff! Sounds like an awesome session, great when the DM and players click on the same wavelength... especially on the first go.

"Neuropharmacology" sounds like something an evil wizard might practice...

Yeah, everyone was on the same wavelength, which is what surprised me so much. This is a system-independent feature, but I do think it might have a lot to do with many of the players being first-timers. Experienced gamers tend to come in with a lot of preconceptions about the "right" or "best" way to play, and all too often hold personal likes and opinions as absolute facts. Oddly enough, in a game all about creativity and choice, they tend to artificially restrict their own options by playing with a ruleset in mind first, and roleplaying second. I know I've been guilty of this a few times, but I find if I try to remember this and look at the game as a newbie, I have a lot more fun with a game and tend to have a better fit with a group.

The other thing I think the group picked up on was my enthusiasm for 4e, and how much I enjoy running and playing it. Having a GM who truly loves what they are doing and can't wait to see how their players respond makes a huge difference. Personally, I could never get this motivated or excited about the 3e games I ran- as others have pointed out, it felt more like a chore than fun to prep games. But hey, as long as the GM enjoys whatever system he's running, both his players and the GM win, and it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks.

As for me teaching Neuropharmacology, well... maybe I'm not an evil wizard, but I'm definitely a mad scientist.

[Gothmog]

Originally Posted by Scott_Rouse

Gothmog,

Thanks for a great post, you put a smile on a couple WOTC faces. Your campaign sounds like lot's of fun and I hope this game group becomes a longtime play group.

XP for you.

Hey Scott,

Glad I could give you guys the warm fuzzies. You all deserve it for giving us D&D 4e. I know you guys get some nasty flak about 4e, but those of us who do play 4e appreciate WotC's efforts and know it is a labor of love on the part of you guys (as every version of D&D has been). Thanks man.

I do have a question though that I've been curious about for a while. Both here and in other threads, I've seen a lot of people saying 4e is giving them an AD&D vibe during play. The POL thing strikes me as very AD&D, as does the emphasis on cooperative play, and the different design parameters for PCs and monsters- and I may be missing other things you guys considered during the design. Is this something you guys intentionally tried to incorporate into the design of 4e, is it a happy coincidence, or is my brain just playing tricks on me?

Anyway, I'll post more on Thursday after the session tomorrow night since a lot of folks are asking for a followup.

[Gothmog]

Originally Posted by Ethalias

Do you have any advice as regards teaching the rudiments to new gamers e.g. what to explain up front and what to cover during play.. I'm planning on creating some pre-gens to save on time as at the moment it's planned as a one-shot.. That is unless I do a good enough job of convincing them to come back for more..

Well, in the initial session for character generation and campaign planning, we went over some of the terminology (AC, HP, defenses, etc), and I explained the core mechanic of the game (d20 + mods to beat a DC). I briefly talked about actions a PC could take in a round, and made a little cheat sheet for each of them explaining actions. The rest of the time we spent making characters, and me answering random questions from various players (how do rituals differ from powers, how do I know which kind of die to roll, etc).

We didn't do any sample combats before the first fight, and when we had that fight with the goblins, it went a little slower than normal due to questions. However, I think with 4e the mechanics are easy enough to understand and grasp during play that immersion in the game might be the best way to teach someone. Once they saw how skill checks worked in game, they got the idea really quickly, and after 3 rounds of combat, there were no more questions. Obviously, each group of people will be different, but I don't think there will be that much difference in how easily people will get the idea of 4e. My suggestion is just start playing and explain concepts as they come up, and don't worry about a lengthy explanation of game mechanics beforehand. Thats just going to curb the enthusiasm of new players for the game.

[CubeKnight]

Originally Posted by mach1.9pants

Great stuff! Sounds like an awesome session, great when the DM and players click on the same wavelength... especially on the first go.

"Neuropharmacology" sounds like something an evil wizard might practice...

....you mean it's not? Excuse me while I go fix my DM notes

[Blizzardb]

Great tale! Have some XP

[CharlesRyan]

Sounds awesome.

This has been my experience too. Both of the D&D campaigns I play in include one or two people new to the game (or long-lapsed players); all have really gotten into it.

[Henry]

Originally Posted by Gothmog

Is this something you guys intentionally tried to incorporate into the design of 4e, is it a happy coincidence, or is my brain just playing tricks on me?

I've gotten that, too - more of a Basic D&D thing, to me, but AD&D1, too. My speculation? Happy accident. Some basic concepts of how to do things from some of the older versions really worked well, and when they were experimenting with how to make things "funner, faster, stronger," these core ideas came back to the surface. An exact match it sure ain't, but the core ideas on things -- keeping combat relatively streamlined, having the mathematics support the rules (kind of an accident in AD&D in my opinion but it was there), reinforcing archetypes, reinforcing cooperation, giving the DM easy but powerful rules and structures to work with, and a host of other things that I'm forgetting right now -- those ideas are kind of timeless.

Gothmog, I'm really happy to hear a good old-fashioned "new group has a blast" story. Remember: If the players have never done the "you all meet in a bar/tavern" story before, it's new to them.

[Thanee]

'page 42' sounds like some kind of secret organization.



Bye
Thanee

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Originally Posted by Thanee

'page 42' sounds like some kind of secret organization.

All claims on the existence of a C4bal or a Page 42 conspiracy are hoaxes. This has been proven time and time again. I recommend you to not spread more of such rumors, Bürger.