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D&D 5E Animated How to Play D&D 5e tutorial

Rollforpotato

Villager
Hi all. I hope it's all right for me to promote my D&D 5e tutorial video here. It's targeted towards complete beginners and new players. Feel free to share it if you find it useful.

This is the latest video of the series (episode 2):
[video]https://youtu.be/yzFqbj8cIZY[/video]

This is the first episode (Intro)
[video]https://youtu.be/OoW2CDgztKY[/video]

While I'm here, I'll also ask a question to all you veteran players. I am sure that some of you have taught many more new players than I have. What do you think is the hardest concept for new players to grasp?
 

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Chaosmancer

Legend
Hey man, always happy to see people willing to teach the game. I'll look over stuff and comment.

1st video: Perhaps too late for critiques, but woo boy. You threw a lot at someone who has never heard of the game before, and really talked about a lot of things I don't think you needed to to make the game make sense.

In my experience teaching new players, a lot of the flow of the game is incredibly confusing to them, until they see it in action. Once they rolled a few attacks they generally (though not always) figure it out. So talking about rolling the dice in combat, or Save DCs, even as briefly as you do, might be too much for people.

Good segue into the things I have found the hardest to deal with when teaching new people.

Character creation is a nightmare for new players. Figuring out their modifiers, understanding their choices, choosing anything. It really comes down to "analysis paralysis". 5e is much better than some of the older editions, but there is still a lot for people to go through without understanding the rules yet. Unlike in your video series, Character Creation is generally the first thing most new players end up doing, so they don't have context for the craziness of the system.

As a corollary of that, the bonuses to the rolls and which dice to roll seem to confuse people for a while. I've had people combine all sorts of numbers in all sorts of ways, and rarely are they correct for the first few sessions.

Other than that, it is generally a struggle to get people to take actions in the game. New people are generally (but not always) shy about speaking up and doing things, and they will often make silly decisions because they are copying something a different player did. The idea of being capable of doing anything, of interacting with an imaginary world that responds to what you do, it's incredibly hard to wrap your head around.

The problem with these things, is that they can't be taught effectively. They have to be seen or experienced. Players generally pick it up fairly quickly, but it's a rough learning curve to get over.

Don't have time for the second video right this moment, but hopefully I was somewhat useful and not an entire downer.
 

Rollforpotato

Villager
A lot of the basic concepts are explained in the second video, which is the first episode of the series.

As for character creation, I placed it closer to the bottom because I think it is immensely difficult for players to start building a character when they don't know what all the numbers do. Once I have laid out all the basics and some of the advanced concepts like the features and spellcasting, they would have something to refer to when they need more explanation when building their character.

I usually start off new players with a pre-generated character because they would have less emotional attachment to it and they wouldn't mind taking more risk with their character even to the extend of having it killed.

I think the struggle with new people to speak up is because they either don't know what they are allowed to do as players, or because they haven't completely gelled with the group yet. It's more a social issue, I think.
 

wedgeski

Adventurer
Hi all. I hope it's all right for me to promote my D&D 5e tutorial video here. It's targeted towards complete beginners and new players. Feel free to share it if you find it useful.

This is the latest video of the series (episode 2):
[video]https://youtu.be/yzFqbj8cIZY[/video]

This is the first episode (Intro)
[video]https://youtu.be/OoW2CDgztKY[/video]
Excellent and well-executed! I have watched the first half of the opening episode and enjoyed it immensely. Great work.

I would echo some of your YouTube comments in that the commentary would benefit from a slightly slower delivery.
 

I definitely agree that new players should be started out with pre-gen characters. Let them get a feel for the game first, and then when they start wanting to make their own character you'll know they're ready to process it.
 


Rollforpotato

Villager
Hi all. I have released the third episode of the How to Play Dungeons and Dragons 5e series.

Youtube link here: https://youtu.be/yzFqbj8cIZY

It took me longer than expected to finish this episode because combat is such a large topic in D&D. I couldn't cover everything because the video will be too long, but I think I covered all the essentials.
 




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