Verys Arkon
First Post
Its hard for us on ENWorld to have the perspective of a new player - we are probably the hardcore gamers of the hobby; a lot (most?) of us are probably DMs.
Here is an analogy though:
A month ago I bought the board game 'Arkham Horror'. It sat unopened on my shelf for weeks because I knew it was going to take some time to learn the rules, and friends were too busy to play immediatley. The other day I broke it open, pushed out the hundred or so tokens, and started reading the rulebook. I thought to myself "Whew, this game has a lot of rules!"....then I glanced at my four feet of D&D books on the shelf and 'face-palmed' myself.
For people like us here on ENWorld, we don't think twice about books with hundreds of pages of rules. But for someone new, especially someone young, even a few dozen pages can seem like a lot, just like the piddly Arkham Horrors rules seemed to me, and I'm a post-graduate!
Until a person moves from "D&D is a game" to "D&D is a hobby", it is probably wise to keep the rules light and streemlined. The motivated 1 in 10 kid is likely the first one to make the leap.
Here is an analogy though:
A month ago I bought the board game 'Arkham Horror'. It sat unopened on my shelf for weeks because I knew it was going to take some time to learn the rules, and friends were too busy to play immediatley. The other day I broke it open, pushed out the hundred or so tokens, and started reading the rulebook. I thought to myself "Whew, this game has a lot of rules!"....then I glanced at my four feet of D&D books on the shelf and 'face-palmed' myself.
For people like us here on ENWorld, we don't think twice about books with hundreds of pages of rules. But for someone new, especially someone young, even a few dozen pages can seem like a lot, just like the piddly Arkham Horrors rules seemed to me, and I'm a post-graduate!
Until a person moves from "D&D is a game" to "D&D is a hobby", it is probably wise to keep the rules light and streemlined. The motivated 1 in 10 kid is likely the first one to make the leap.