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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 4990921" data-attributes="member: 22424">Sure, I know that, and you know that, but they didn't know that. As I said, I literally saw their enthusiasm die as soon as they saw the core rulebooks (3e, as it happened, but as it was the size of the books, the reaction would have been the same with 3.5e, 4e or Pathfinder). Once I explained that I would handle the rules, and so they didn't need to read even one word, the enthusiasm came back somewhat, but it was never quite the same.It was a really instructive experience. It was also the moment when I shifted from my position of &quot;the game isn't really all that hard&quot; to &quot;the game is hurting itself with core rulebooks this big&quot;.A really good starter set can mitigate this, of course. However, too often starter sets use a &quot;dumbed down&quot; version of the rules, or rely exclusively on using pregen characters. Or, perhaps worst, they lose all value when you 'graduate' to the real rules - meaning that if you don't like the game then you've wasted the money on the starter set, and if you do like the game... then you've wasted the money on the starter set. (My ideal would be something like a lot of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles/40,000 starters, where the box includes quick-start guides and adventure material, the same core rulebook as everyone else uses, miniatures, spell effect templates, and so on. Still, this would require a much reduced core, would probably require some significant rules simplifications, and would probably cost a lot more to produce - perhaps too much more.)All true. And, as I said, I have no desire to start an edition war. Still, it is something that annoyed me, and still annoys me - I'll agree that that isn't entirely rational (especially in light of my first comment) <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> .</blockquote>

[QUOTE="delericho, post: 4990921, member: 22424"] Sure, I know that, and you know that, but [i]they[/i] didn't know that. As I said, I [i]literally saw[/i] their enthusiasm die as soon as they saw the core rulebooks (3e, as it happened, but as it was the size of the books, the reaction would have been the same with 3.5e, 4e or Pathfinder). Once I explained that I would handle the rules, and so they didn't need to read even one word, the enthusiasm came back somewhat, but it was never quite the same. It was a really instructive experience. It was also the moment when I shifted from my position of "the game isn't [i]really[/i] all that hard" to "the game is hurting itself with core rulebooks this big". A really good starter set can mitigate this, of course. However, too often starter sets use a "dumbed down" version of the rules, or rely exclusively on using pregen characters. Or, perhaps worst, they lose all value when you 'graduate' to the real rules - meaning that if you don't like the game then you've wasted the money on the starter set, and if you [i]do[/i] like the game... then you've wasted the money on the starter set. (My ideal would be something like a lot of the Warhammer Fantasy Battles/40,000 starters, where the box includes quick-start guides and adventure material, the [i]same[/i] core rulebook as everyone else uses, miniatures, spell effect templates, and so on. Still, this would require a much reduced core, would probably require some significant rules simplifications, and would probably cost a lot more to produce - perhaps too much more.) All true. And, as I said, I have no desire to start an edition war. Still, it is something that annoyed me, and still annoys me - I'll agree that that isn't entirely rational (especially in light of my first comment) :) . [/QUOTE]

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