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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9439263" data-attributes="member: 75787">I've introduced a ton of people to roleplaying games, having started a club in my church and run in non-RPG conventions a few times. I've run a number of systems and usually get people started with just two main points:WHAT YOU AREThis is where you say "I'm a warrior" or "an elf who likes to drink fine wines" or whatever. Some systems, especially ones similar to Fate, model that  directly and so it's pretty clear to new players. Others, like D&D, model it indirectly. Being a "ranger" is not expressed directly in the game -- there are very few rules that directly reference being a ranger. Instead it is shorthand for a package of different modifiers to WHAT YOU DO. That takes much longer for new players to understand and it's been very common that people will say things like "since I'm a ranger I can shoot a bow" or make assumptions that are not necessarily true.WHAT YOU DOI find the simple statement "GM sets a target number and tells you which skill/attribute/etc you can add to a dice roll to try and hit that number" works well. D&D, with binary results, is very easy to understand. Fate, with degrees of success, is a little harder, but not by much. Dice pool systems are usually not too hard so long as they are just "count the successes and hit the required number". If the required number is always one, even easier.This video does not help at all with the WHAT YOU ARE part. The translation of a person's internal concept of a character into D&D rules is very complex and expressed in terms of how well they do things rather than what they are, so it's not easy at all. It takes a fair amount of time to do this, which is why no-one typically rolls up D&D characters for one shots. It's an acquired skill that takes hours to get a basic idea of, and much longer to learn the basic templates and patterns.This video teaches WHAT YOU DO well. However, I'd argue that that would be true in any system I run (except maybe GODLIKE or THE ONE RING).I've run 13th Age (a version of D&D that is "the good bits" of 3E and 4E combined) and generally allow 10 minutes to explain WHAT YOU ARE based on all the numbers on your character sheet -- of which 5 minutes is the special cases. WHAT YOU DO takes about 5 minutes, as I like to be a bit more explicit about how combat and hit points work. Who I run Fate, it's 5-7 minutes total.</blockquote>

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