Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5658823" data-attributes="member: 54877">I've introduced new gamers to Fantasy Hero, which is much tougher than 4E or any version of D&D to grasp, and got them going in not much more than 15 minutes. (Less than that, per person, when you consider it was multiple people being introduced at the same time. But efficiencies in scale always skew such analysis.) The key thing is, "everything you need to know," is different for every game. I could get someone going in 4E just as fast as 3E, because I know both systems well enough, and I've got lots of experience introducing new people.  A system you don't know as well? Oh yeah, it takes a lot longer. You've got to convey what you know and let them fit it in to what they know, but you don't have the insights yet to get right to the heart of the matter. You don't know to say, "Ignore that section of the character sheet. We'll discuss it later when it matters." Or, "Pick something here that looks good. If you change your mind, I'll let you change it later after you understand better,"--even outside any changes allowed by the rules as written.  However, I do think that some games do a better job than others of teaching you how to get to that point. 3E and 4E are both equally lousy, in that regard, as far as I'm concerned. Mouseguard is an example that is handled far better, but it is a simpler game. The latest edition of BW seems to have improved quite a bit in this area, though I haven't got it yet. (Burning Wheel is very good in that you are told quite firmly to stick to the first 70 pages before you do anything else, and this is important and good advice. It's bad in that the editorial comments are embedded in the text, including that first 70 pages. Supposedly, they are removed or toned down in the new edition.) D&D really could use one book that dedicated the first N pages, relatively short compared to the rest, where you did that and got started playing. There is such a strong tendency to put this in a separate book, and then to make that book a separate product, that things get confused.</blockquote>

Verification