Help Me, Teach Newly Recruited Girl Gamer Learn DnD

[Leopold]

Of course if she is a techie and into computers, introduce her to PCGen. This app will literally walk her though the creation of a PC and show her step by step how to build/manage/create a pc. Granted you will have to help her out as the learning curve is not as steep as it once it (the loading of sources is the big thing now, really a matter of double clicking the sources and it will autoload) so that will give you an excuse to look over her shoulder breaking said golden rule but otherwise escaping scott Free!!


pcgen can be found here:

http://pcgen.sourceforge.net/

email me offline if you need anyhelp configuring it on the PC

 

[CRGreathouse]

Of course if she is a techie and into computers, introduce her to PCGen. This app will literally walk her though the creation of a PC and show her step by step how to build/manage/create a pc.

Please tell me you're kidding.

 

[Leopold]

Please tell me you're kidding.

dead serious. Once she grasps the basics of the PHB this is the easiest way to create a character without penciling in all the numbers. Its a step by step way to build her pc. He can load all the sources that he wants her to use or just load the PHB, she can see all her feats and skills laid out for her, she can see how many she has, what skill points available and it will tell her when she has run out. It will guide her from: picking her race, to assigning scores, to picking a class, to taking feats and skills, to picking equipment then spit out a Character sheet for her.


Or you could do it the hard way and just pencil everything in on a Character sheet, fumble through all the ways to get skills and feats, calculate all the points, erase, scribble, redraw, flip between pages, etc.


Your call, but it's another way to integrate chix who dig computers with DND. If they are already comfortable with the PC then using an application to build the pc and watching it build along the way would be a nice progression..

 

[Zerovoid]

I agree that pcgen is not very user friendly. Powerful, yes, but easy to use, no. I can scratch out a character in 5 minutes on a piece of paper, but can't do the same with PC gen. I spend forever fishing around for the right way to do lots of things, trying to get equipment out of that stupid tree, etc... and I still don't know how to do monster PC's properly. pcgen seems very powerful, but for a new user would be better off using the character creation cd that came with the phb. It has a lot fewer options, but most of what you need for a new character.

 

[Leopold]

I agree that pcgen is not very user friendly. Powerful, yes, but easy to use, no. I can scratch out a character in 5 minutes on a piece of paper, but can't do the same with PC gen. I spend forever fishing around for the right way to do lots of things, trying to get equipment out of that stupid tree, etc... and I still don't know how to do monster PC's properly. pcgen seems very powerful, but for a new user would be better off using the character creation cd that came with the phb. It has a lot fewer options, but most of what you need for a new character.

either or, but you must sill guide her though the process hence lookiing over her shoulder while doing it breaking said golden rule.

True pcgen is not THAT user friendly but it has gotten 10X better with the new GUI rewrite we finished. Take a gander at it, it's rather simple and intuitive now.

win/win either way.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I apologize in advance, 'cuz I may open up a big huge can of purple worms here...

Why does her gender have any relevance to the topic? Why doesn't the subject line say "Help me teach a newly recruited gamer to learn Dnd"?

I'm sorry, when it comes to learning how to roleplay--or the rules of a particular RPG--I've seen new gamers of both genders too many times to believe there's any difference. You want to choose your tactic based on her personality, her interests, her mental strengths. But gender shouldn't have any bearing on it at all.

JMHO, of course.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If you want to make it REALLY rules - light on her, write up her character sheet for her.

Since you have time, ask her what she wants. Otherwise, just make a selections. Before the game, tell her to pick the character whose personality seems interesting, that she'd like to play as.

So, you could whip up, say, Human Fighter or Half-Orc Cleric or whatever you think the party could use and she would enjoy. Then create a few different personalities for her to try and play. Emphasize that she can change the personality if she'd like, etc.

Either way, when game day comes, you can guide her through it as she's doing it. You can say "Make a melee attack roll. That's going to be one twenty-sided dice rolled, plus the number in the box that says "total melee attack bonus" in the corner. If the roll of the dice, plus that number, beats their armor, you hit and can roll damage."

Deal with things on a case-by-case basis. Emphasize that it's not important to know what everything means just yet.

Heck, I did that to introduce three new people, all women, to gaming. Now they enjoy it a lot, and me and my friend are the only guys in the group.

It's good to be outnumbered. ^_^

But, to recap:
*Write out her character sheet. Giver her a choice of characters to choose from.
*During the game, tell her where on her character sheet to find things.
*Remind her that it can all be changed, and that the game's point is to have fun, and some people just don't have fun playing it, and that's okay. Even though you think she'll have a blast (no sense in letting a potential dislike of D&D get in the way of a friendship, eh? )

 

[kamosa]

Do you have a player in the group that you can trust to help her through the first game? After talking them through character creation, I often turn over new players to one of my strong players to help them through the session. This does two things, first it allows you to do more running of the game and less explaining of the game, which will make the session more fun and encourage them to return. Two, it forces them to interact with someone else other then you and gets them into the "party".

Also, as others have suggested, don't start her out as a spell caster. When your learning the game, theives and fighters are the best options.

You'll also need to be more suggestive and explanitory then you usually are during the game. Don't just say combat has started what do you do?

Say, "Ok we are now switching to combat time, which is more structured. We are going to establish an order for taking turns. When its your turn you'll need to tell me what your character is doing. You have several options, you could run over and fight the hobgoblin that was taunting you, or you could go over and help the mage get untangled from that net.... Ok you want to fight the hoblgoblin, you can move up to 30 feet, thats 6 squares on the map..." etc, you get the point.

Is this the point where we mention not looking down her shirt?

 

[DM_Matt]

I apologize in advance, 'cuz I may open up a big huge can of purple worms here...

Why does her gender have any relevance to the topic? Why doesn't the subject line say "Help me teach a newly recruited gamer to learn Dnd"?

I'm sorry, when it comes to learning how to roleplay--or the rules of a particular RPG--I've seen new gamers of both genders too many times to believe there's any difference. You want to choose your tactic based on her personality, her interests, her mental strengths. But gender shouldn't have any bearing on it at all.

JMHO, of course.

Members of Western societies intuitively accept the concept that diversity of gender is desirable in any given situation unless some mitigating circumstance dictates otherwise (i.e. women are on average less suited for front-line army jobs).

Gaming is not a very diverse hobby gender-wise. Thus, the fact that this new recruit is female makes it more important for the attempt to succeed.

That, and, as the constant admonitions against inappropriate looks indicate, gamers seem not to even SEE enough women...

 

[evileeyore]

I noticed no one mention not looking up the dress/skirt.

Take my advice, doing so can cause concussions, black eyes, and general bleeding from the face region. Unless your really slick, or she is into that...


As a side note, unless a group is really comfortable around girls, adding one to the group can become difficult.

For the Female gamers that haven't encountered this. Men when grouped together without females present can become completely different animals (see Teflon Billy for examples...). And after a while they become used to being able "to be themselves". We make crude commentary, scratch in public, expel various gases, etc. Thus adding a Female can cause uncomfortableness amongst the whole, as the Men have to hold their guts in (for hours-gasp), and generally act civilized.

Now we have a Female in our group, however as she has been seen scratching, belching, and "letting her gut out" (wearing midriffs ), we have become used to her, and treat her as "one of the guys". No longer do we act like [COLOR=sky blue]gentlemen[/COLOR], or put on airs of [COLOR=sky blue]evolution[/COLOR].

Editted to go color-crazy.