D&Detox

[S'mon]

The player who took to it most readily in my group was the one who had the least amount of gaming experience.

This is so common it seems to be a general rule!

 

[GMMichael]

I don’t think it helps that there’s a narrative out there that it’s hard work. Sure, some games might be. But a lot of games are very simple, and people being told repeatedly that it’s hard work feeds the belief that it is.

I blame GURPS.

D&D might seem less intimidating with a full game in one book, versus three. Three books is an investment. Does that create a resistance to learning new games in players, that they might somehow lose their time invested in learning/reading D&D/GURPS/dense game?

The player who took to it most readily in my group was the one who had the least amount of gaming experience. Only a few years to the decades of the others.

Was there a trick that helped them grasp Blades, or did you just use sustained bludgeoning?

 

[prabe]

Was there a trick that helped them grasp Blades, or did you just use sustained bludgeoning?

I've learned from my time in kitchens never to grasp the blade, unless you want to season your cooking with blood (not that there's anything wrong with that ...).

 

[hawkeyefan]

Was there a trick that helped them grasp Blades, or did you just use sustained bludgeoning?

Not really a trick, no, and probably a bit softer than bludgeoning. I’d just nudge them here and there. I’d offer suggestions occasionally. I’d remind them of the options available to them.

I also eased into the game’s other mechancs a little at a time so that they could absorb each part and then start to grasp how they all interact and so on.

But it became a huge hit with my group, so i think those first few sessions being kind of light made things much easier in the grand scheme of things.

 

[aramis erak]

Can‘t say ive seen much of that. I mean, I know of players who might grouse that an RPG handles things differently than D&D, but none have been tripped up by those differences in any major way. The closest I’ve seen was continued dissatisfaction with the way M&M handled iterative attacks from one player using automatic firearms and a super speedster.

You've been lucky.

I've been having problems with that in almost every non-D&D game I've run. Not always big issues.

Dragon Warriors. Players keep forgetting that 1's are Crit Success
Pendragon, cheering when rolling a 1... the worst possible level of success... (KAP is High-but-not-over)
FFG Star Wars "Hey, that's my slot"...

MANY systems: Action economy in conbats and conflicts.

 

[Wolfram stout]

I get the problems. I didn't back Deadlands this week because as awesome as it looks getting my group to learn/play/enjoy it would be an effort. Instead, I will just hack new World of Darkness for a Western setting if I want to play Weird West. We are older players that over the decades played dozens of systems, but now play so infrequently that it is D&D or World of Darkness.

 

[slobster]

I still don’t understand people who look at learning how to play a game like it’s work.

To share my perspective, learning a new rules set is a lot like work because the rules arent what I enjoy about gaming. The rules are necessary, but what I enjoy are the stories, the characters, the fun of triumph and the frustration of getting set back, and all the goofing off that happens in between.

So for me if i have to learn a new set of rules, at best that is a necessary evil standing between me and what i actually came to enjoy with my very limited available time to game. At worst with a system I dont jive with, it actively sabotages me from having a food time because I'm too busy wrestling with the mechanics of whatever is going on to be able to catch the flow of the fiction.

My 2 cp!

 

[pemerton]

Is Dungeon World the game you're running? I can see people having some issues adapting to a PtbA style game. It's very different, and there is a lot more responsibility in the player, at least compared to a more passive D&D style player. They just arent used to playing to find out what happens.

I can see what @hawkeyefan is talking about in relation to BitD. But that's not really applicable to DW or Apocalypse World, both of which allocate narrative responsibility in pretty traditional ways (in another recent thread I posted the less than 10% of AW moves that allow a player to take "narrative control").

A PbtA game requires the players to play proactively and follow the fiction, but there is nothing about D&D that has to get in the way of that. I was GMing D&D along those sorts of lines in the late 1980s!

 

[Fenris-77]

I can see what @hawkeyefan is talking about in relation to BitD. But that's not really applicable to DW or Apocalypse World, both of which allocate narrative responsibility in pretty traditional ways (in another recent thread I posted the less than 10% of AW moves that allow a player to take "narrative control").

A PbtA game requires the players to play proactively and follow the fiction, but there is nothing about D&D that has to get in the way of that. I was GMing D&D along those sorts of lines in the late 1980s!

You'll notice I said more passive players. PbtA has some built in mechanics that change the expectations of the players around what they should be doing, and what to expect as far as framing goes. Also, success with consequences is baked in. You certainly can play D&D in a similar fashion, you do and I do for example, but it's not baked in in quite the same way. So while it's true that "there is nothing about D&D that has to get in the way of that", I would also submit that there is very little that actively encourages it either.

I'm also not strictly talking about moves when I'm talking about the allocation of narrative responsibility either. Right in the original AW game rules the suggestion is made that the players should be regularly responsible for the description of things, and that the specifically that GM use the players as a resource in this way. That is really not the case for D&D. It certainly is narrative control though, as those descriptions are what suggests action.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

If you've GMed other bloodlines of games, like Fate or Dungeon World (or Amber?), how did you help players break out of the D&D mindset?

Actually, can't say I've ever seen this problem, but if I were running such a game I'd tell them to buy the player rules for the game in question and read them. If they agree to play non-D&D games then I fully expect them to come to grips pretty quickly with how that game differs from D&D, mechanically, thematically, grammatically...

Maybe reading some FICTION that inspired the game (or was inspired by it)?

If you've learned a non-d20-style game as a PC while coming from a D&D background, did you have trouble avoiding old habits? What did you do to overcome them?

...
I read the manual.

I have had one or two players who, once upon a time, apparently couldn't be bothered to learn/remember which dice to roll for D&D even when it was explained to them EVERY combat round for session after session. Playing other RPGs? Just not something I've ever seen.