NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bawylie" data-source="post: 7596635" data-attributes="member: 6776133">The problem with reading the rules and imagining the game play, de novo, is the same problem with reading sheet music and imagining the song in your head. Very few people can really do that. So it’s natural that people reach for the nearest possible experience to inform their current doings. That said, I’m chalking this up to a longstanding disagreement on whether system matters. It kind of does, but not in the way people typically assume. Anyway that leads me to my advice for new people on trying out D&D. Which is to pretend like you did when you were a kid. Don’t worry about the rules of the game and just put yourself in the imaginary situation and say what you want to do and I will use the rules to help you make that happen, sometimes with dice and sometimes not. Kids always get this. I’ve never run a table with kids who couldn’t do this within 5 minutes of play. They dive in and out of imaginary spaces like water. But adults fixate on procedure - and IMO that’s because they reach to their nearest experiences, that is Board Games or sports with stratified turns, phases, and rules. You rolled 4 so you move 4 spaces. On doubles, this thing happens. It’s this many points for crossing this line. And (again IMO) it’s always adults who get confused over “how” you’re supposed to do something. Even to the point of confusing the doing of the thing (the task) with the process or model that determines the outcome of that task. Put simpler - play is play; game mechanics facilitate play but are not themselves play. Kids play. Adults get confused about what to do. This is plain as day when you do a mixed group. I point it out to show how sometimes we lose sight of play as we get older. Anecdote - a friend of mine recently advised me, while I was in a rough spot: “we don’t stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing.” That sticks with me.</blockquote>

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