Do we coddle new Players?

[Dareoon Dalandrove]

The thing with new players is most of the time you have an experienced group and a new person. The rest of the group may have had characters that have been around for a few adventures and the players can all swap "war stories" about things that they have doen together. This new person doesn't have any of this. They're the outsider. To have a character killed in the first session of play could be devistationg to some. I think that in some ways it's like subliminal social rejection. "They killed my character so they don't like me". Also for some "experience gamers", by that I mean have played not played for years, they might have invested too much time thinking about what their character is going to do. So when their character gets turned into a puddle of goop, in a way, their dreams are shattered. Part of this is has to do with most of the game happening in our imaginations. We experience things through our characters. So for some a mishape happens because they failed not that the dungeon is made to kill you. Some people are better equipt to deal with this than I others I think and with experience getting flame broiled isn't so much of a problem the second time around.

 

[Lamoni]

I think that a DM should coddle all their players. Coddling them doesn't necessarily mean keeping them from dying. It just means providing what is fun for them. Some people love to have lots of role-playing situations with no fighting. The DM should coddle them by providing their PC's those opportunities. Others love to get more wealth and fun magic items. The DM should coddle them by not running a low magic campaign. Of course, there will always be some groups that have players that want completely different things, but I'm choosing to ignore those cases for now.

When you coddle someone, that doesn't mean you never run anything else. If your players like role-playing more than combat that doesn't mean you should never have any fighting. If your players like having easy encounters where they aren't always threatened with death, that doesn't mean you should never place an extra difficult fight at the end of a dungeon (although you should probably give some early warnings).

Finally, there are those people that enjoy just about everything and can enjoy any style of playing. The DM doesn't have to do anything extra for them. I feel that there are several of this type of player that are on these boards. Just because a DM never had to do anything special for you to enjoy the game doesn't mean that the DM shouldn't have that responsibility. The DM has the most responsibility to make the game fun for everyone, including him or herself. The players share some responsibility, but they don't have the DM's power.

 

[KnowTheToe]

Yep, give new players an extra yard if they need it. If you are playing football with your kid, you don't level tham as hard as you can. New players do not always understand the dynamics of the game or the extent of their characters abilities. Making PC's in 3.5 is very time consuming and dieing too often not only gets bothersome, but can destroy and fragment story lines. So instead of killing a new PC, you knock them down to -1 and tell them they were a dumbarse. It does not take long to pick up the game and once they do, let the dice fall as they may.

 

[KB9JMQ]

I kinda go out of my way not to kill off a new players character until at least third level. Then their fate is in their own hands.

I don't kill off 1st Levels for anyone cause they have too much time recently invested to take them out and do it again. Plus it means I have to redo my notes for the new character.

 

[Starman]

Uh, as long as everyone is having fun, does it matter how the game is played?

Starman

 

[shilsen]

Uh, as long as everyone is having fun, does it matter how the game is played?

Starman

Dammit, man! Why did you have to go and start being reasonable when we were on the verge of developing a great "your game style sucks and you're a poopyhead!" thread?

 

[Psychic Warrior]

Uh, as long as everyone is having fun, does it matter how the game is played?

Starman

Yes as long as peopel are indeed having fun there is no wrong way to play. but I think this discussion isn't so much about 'right' or 'wrong' styles of play but whether it is a good idea to kill off a new player's character early. So they 'get used to it' from what I gather by others' posts.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Uh, as long as everyone is having fun, does it matter how the game is played?

Well, yes.

Just in the same way books and movies can start out well and then go craptastic, so can a D&D game. The question "do we coddle new players" also asks the question about how to make the game fun for someone who has never played before and is forming their first impression.

 

[der_kluge]

From my perspective, the only thing that has changed since 1974 is that the DM has to do less guess work while adjudicating. There isn't any less roleplaying, in fact there seems to be more by individual players as they play longer. I've seen no such shift.

I see a difference in mentalities, and in the amount of fluff versus crunch in the rules. 2nd edition brought us things like Faiths and Avatars, and the Legends and Lore - which differed mightily from 1st ed.'s D&Dg which had stats for gods for crying out loud. 2nd editions L&L had no stats for gods, yes stats for avatars, true, but 2nd edition got away from the idea that everything was there to be killed. NPCs in modules had backgrounds, and skills, and personality. NPCs in 1st ed. modules had stat blocks. Sometimes they didn't even have names.

I think you are generalizing your own experiences, though I'm not saying that they are invalid nor am I saying that others may not have shared your experience. However, I am saying that my own experience does not mirror yours. Dying is part of the rules of the game, has always been part of the rules of the game, and if it were removed or downplayed so as to make it negligible would fundementally change the game to the extreme.

Well yea, I can only generalize. There aren't any government funded studies on this kind of stuff to back up my claims, only observations. And yea, they might be invalid. There was a module that I played at GenCon in '02 (I think) which was part of some anniversary boxed set which included a never-before published module. The thing was brutal. We played for 4 hours, and about an hour we spent waiting for the GM to show up, explain the fundamentals, and divvy up characters. So, we only really played for 3 hours. The guy ran it as written, and when we were done, I think half of us survived. And though the ones that died didn't particularly make any bad choices, they died. The module was just written that way. I think even Gygax pointed out once that the early modules were kind of designed with the idea that you were going to go into the dungeon with a dozen or so "red shirts" in order to survive the thing. They (at least WoTC) doesn't really make games like that anymore. So yes, I would say that there has been a shift over time.

I think you need to define "willy-nilly" because I get the feeling that your investment in your characters prompts you to use that term more broadly than I would use it.

See above.

 

[der_kluge]

Uh, as long as everyone is having fun, does it matter how the game is played?

Starman

guys, don't listen to Starman. He's just trying to derail us from what could otherwise be a great flamewar.