Hawke
Explorer
I have 2 six-month-veteran Star Wars Saga players and we picked up 3 other friends to start a 4E game. I ran into the problem of trying to get them on board considering they had no rpg or tabletop gaming (miniature gaming, heroclix, mageknight, magic, ccgs) experience.
I began by playing "0 level combat" - they each played the Fighter character but only knew about the basic melee, ranged, movement and AC. I explained the order of a turn and tried to keep the terminology compared to other board games - things like taking turns, rolling dice to see how well you did, etc. WE had a natural 20 come up and I explained that, and then we had a near-dead goblin try and run away and that's when I explained opportunity attacks.
Overall they had their mind wrapped around the game they were going to be playing most before they knew about ability scores, classes, races, magic, etc.
Next step I took them through each race, trying to find movie examples (mostly lord of the rings) to help them get the differences between the unfamiliar ones... followed by going through each class and heavily connecting them to examples. It was at this point I went over roles and added in the idea of more defenses than AC.
Back to the Fighter (I used several copies of the KotS dwarf fighter) I explained how the overall fighter character worked with the at-will powers, defenses, etc. I avoided non-combat stuff too much as I think that's easier to get and easier to be directed for now. Once they had it down they looked through other characters from KotS and we finished our night with some random comments about various powers "Hey, look, this guy can..." "What does blinded mean?" etc.
I know it sounded long and maybe mechanical - it wasn't boring by any means. Overall I think the basic combat first, race/class backgrounds, advanced combat, non-combat stuff worked best for this group.
I think this would work just as well with 3.5 and we definitely end up playing a more non-combat game than this would indicate... I just think it's the biggest hangup to the game for people who aren't gamers but something they can quickly feel comfortable with as a foundation.
I did really like the three race "builds" they had in the races section that gave the background for members of that race. Hitting that put a dimension to character building with several examples as templates to use.
I began by playing "0 level combat" - they each played the Fighter character but only knew about the basic melee, ranged, movement and AC. I explained the order of a turn and tried to keep the terminology compared to other board games - things like taking turns, rolling dice to see how well you did, etc. WE had a natural 20 come up and I explained that, and then we had a near-dead goblin try and run away and that's when I explained opportunity attacks.
Overall they had their mind wrapped around the game they were going to be playing most before they knew about ability scores, classes, races, magic, etc.
Next step I took them through each race, trying to find movie examples (mostly lord of the rings) to help them get the differences between the unfamiliar ones... followed by going through each class and heavily connecting them to examples. It was at this point I went over roles and added in the idea of more defenses than AC.
Back to the Fighter (I used several copies of the KotS dwarf fighter) I explained how the overall fighter character worked with the at-will powers, defenses, etc. I avoided non-combat stuff too much as I think that's easier to get and easier to be directed for now. Once they had it down they looked through other characters from KotS and we finished our night with some random comments about various powers "Hey, look, this guy can..." "What does blinded mean?" etc.
I know it sounded long and maybe mechanical - it wasn't boring by any means. Overall I think the basic combat first, race/class backgrounds, advanced combat, non-combat stuff worked best for this group.
I think this would work just as well with 3.5 and we definitely end up playing a more non-combat game than this would indicate... I just think it's the biggest hangup to the game for people who aren't gamers but something they can quickly feel comfortable with as a foundation.
I did really like the three race "builds" they had in the races section that gave the background for members of that race. Hitting that put a dimension to character building with several examples as templates to use.
