Do you consider learning a new game to be unpleasant work?

[Blue]

For me it's strongly fun. But there are ways to reduce the fun and make it work.

Having the reading be overly reference-y, with different parts needed to understand the whole not presented up front but instead with some in later parts so I am missing context to make sense of the first part.

Having it be written in an overly dry, technical writing sort of way. An RPG I enjoyed reading was 13th Age, with it's regular sidebars from the two authors delving into why they made such and such a rule, or ways to tweak it, or even where they disagreed and why.

Having it present the "same old". If the game retreads things I already know, or worse stuff very close but nitpickingly different than what I know, I dislike it. The first is boring, the second is boring but necessary - a chore. A friend was going to run SW5e (Star Wars 5e), and some of it was fun to read, but the tech section which was basically 5e spells but with tweaks was a labor to get through. I needed to see what whas there, see what changed so it required a close reading, and also sort of mentally categorize what wasn't there that I expected, which since they updated names for the flavor was not easy.

A subcategory of that is reading some old RPGs are cringeworthy, as I see ideas that I know but have been supplanted by time and advances in the state of the art.

But baring that, getting a new RPG and going through and seeing all the new ways of doing things and the elegant mechanics and resolution systems (because who publishes in this mature day and age with an outdated system) is great fun. I've got the new Cortex Prime book from the KS sitting a few feet from me and I'm looking for a good uninterrupted block of time to dive in.

EDIT: Most people were talking about learning from reading the book, so that's how I replied. But really my learning continues into play. (And I have done simulated play with systems just to grasp it better.) And that's where the fun can really come home to roost. When I see the piees and they come together in my head can be a real joy. When I start to build up system mastery and comb through again with a deeper understanding of how it fits together - that's a great feel.

 

[Stormonu]

Work.

I've got some 30-odd years and dozens of game systems rolling around in my head. Attempting to add new ones are a pain. Most recent additions have been Equestrian Tales, 5E, Aliens, Forgotten Lands, Kids on Bikes, Luminal and Tales from the Loop. I gave up on Pathfinder 2E, and I'm struggling through Wrath & Glory and Starfinder.

What have I played of the above? Equestrian Tales, 5E & Aliens. A little bit of solo Forgotten Lands. The rest were for "Enjoyment" and consideration of games I'd like to run when the 5E campaign is complete. This list doesn't include other systems I've pored over (or run) in the past - from Alternity, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Savage Worlds, Shadowrun, Twilight 2000, WEG Star Wars, various Star Trek, etc.

Too many systems, too little time, so many options to choose from for how to handle a game.

 

[GMMichael]

That really depends on how excited I am about the game. The more excited I am the less like work it seems.

Yup. Since it depends on the game, or more specifically, the writing of the game, I can't choose Fun! or Work!

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Generally, I view it as work. Now, it can be fun, but generally I approach having to learn a new system as a task. I approach that reading differently from reading about lore or a campaign setting. The same goes for adventures. If I'm reading them just for the fun of it, that's one thing. But if it's something I plan on running, that requires a lot more diligence.

 

[Crusadius]

It depends.

Complicated but familiar rules can be fun. Complicated and unfamiliar rules can be work.

Poor presentation of simple rules can be work. Well presented rules, with clear examples and pieces of fiction can be fun.

So I choose,,,, Fork!

 

[Ace]

I honestly believe a lot of the splat books produced in the 90s were designed were intended to be read for entertainment purposes rather than used directly for gaming.

I think most supplemental game books are never used in any large measure. Everyone has a few favorites and the rest are just for reading and daydreaming about. This may have changed a bit with much of it being on-line though. I'm not exactly looped out of that but I game kind of old school with books, pencil and paper and as little computer as possible.

On a personal note back when I reviewed D20 games as regular side thing, I probably had well over a hundred plus PDF's along with anything open source. I don't think much of it ever hit my table and nor did anyone else in our D20 world use much of it. Heck we rarely used anything from official supplemental stuff.

Now if you aren't seeing much variety and want more stuff to be used, going adventurers guild legal style is a great way to do that. Core + One Book . If you have house rules count those as core too and viola, you'll see quiet a bit more options in play. Stick to offical plus whatever you have vetted and balance should be just fine.

 

[Voadam]

A couple years ago my group decided to do a Shadowrun 4e game, with the GM saying he would be running it with the setting being 1e era Seattle so no hacking cyberware. I had played 1e and 2e Shadowrun more than a decade before but was not familiar with Seattle outside of the corebooks and I had never really gotten the system down as I was playing. I had never gotten the books myself and just went off of borrowing at the table and asking what does 4S2 mean every time I shot my Ares Predator. I loved the concepts of Shadowrun and had a blast, but not a lot of rule understanding beyond how to spend Karma as xp and general outlines of stuff.

So for this game I got the 4e PDF and borrowed the 1e Seattle sourcebook from the GM. Thats over 500 pages to dive into.

Rules had changed so I focused on the character generation ones and the specific city setting lore for character hooks. It was fun in some aspects but it was a lot of work.

With a time deadline to get a character together for the game the work aspect was more central and I focused more on getting a mechanical character created than a roleplay aspect one. This was spotlighted for me in the first game session when one of my friends did a really great Russian accent and characterization for her Russian mob character and my goblin rights political activist Scandinavian Troll mage was just sort of me in characterization.

 

[Maxperson]

When I was younger I loved to learn new games, so fun. However, now I have VERY limited gaming time and I really don't want to spend a chunk of it learning a new game, so work.

 

[macd21]

Work. Learning a new system is a chore that has to be performed before I can get to actually playing the game.

 

[ART!]

I chose "Work", but really my answer is "Yes!", because I both love it and dread it.

I guess I'm saying that from the standpoint of having often been a GM trying to teach a new system to my players, which is some fun but mostly work, on top of all the usual GM work.

As a player, i generally have fun learning a new system.