Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 8120934" data-attributes="member: 6785785">It seems to me that there are a couple of assumptions implied by many of the responses here. Or perhaps I'm just inferring these assumptions....that's totally possible. The first is that a game needs to be complex. I don't think this needs to be the case, at all. And when I say this, I'm not saying that a game needs to be absolutely simple.....but I think that the most common RPGs that people have the most familiarity with are generally fairly complex, and so many people are assuming that a new game will take just as much time and effort to learn. I don't think that's the case.The second seems to be that all learning needs to take place prior to the start of play. I would think that in most cases, actually playing the game is a big part of learning how to play.....and playing games is generally going to be fun, I think most people would agree. Sure, the game may stink, but as Morrus said in his OP, let's assume it's a quality game. Playing it is going to be fun. Finally, I think many people have achieved a level of proficiency with their games of choice that has typically come with years (or decades, in some cases) of experience with those games, and so they're used to games running without interruptions to check rules and so forth. That such things will slow down play and make it less fun. But is that really the case? Most games I see still need to make pauses to reference the rules and exactly how things work. This relates to the first point because the more complex the game, the more likely this will be. But I think just about every game should expect some of this...and so, I don't know if it's really an obstacle so much as a perceived one. My group recently played the Alien RPG. These are all experienced players, but like 95% of that experience is with one form of D&D or another. It took them one session to be comfortable enough with the rules and flow of play. It took me a few hours of reading ahead of the game to grasp the basics, and to print up a few reference pages. We still had to pause and reference rules here and there, and there were one or two areas that we just kind of handwaved (I'm looking at you, Supply) but the sessions we had were a lot of fun, and ran very smoothly overall. And it got better and smoother with each successive session.Again, maybe these concerns aren't as common as I'm perceiving, but I don't think they're really all that significant as obstacles to learning and playing a new game.</blockquote>

Verification