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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JLant" data-source="post: 5430567" data-attributes="member: 72219">Hi Folks, I've got a couple of young (ages 8 & 12) trainees in my house and have been diligently working to get them into the hobby with decent success so far. We actually started with the Sunless Citadel a couple of years ago but that petered out due to RL getting in the way. When the new Red Box came out I snapped it up and immediately ran them (and their long suffering mother) through character creation and about halfway through the introductory adventure. Along the way, one of the older kid's friends joined us and he showed moderate interest. Again RL intervened and the game got shelved for a couple of weeks. The next time the other kid came by but this time wanted a more "finishable" experience so I got Talisman out (FFG, 4th Ed revised). The whole crew *loved* it. Not only that, but the friend immediately purchased the game and taught his family to play (apparently his mom is deadly with the assassin). He subsequently bought the reaper and Highlands expansion which he and my son are messing with as I type this. Mind you this wins out over Halo Reach and Modern Warfare for a good half the time the boys spend together. Now my kids are seriously enjoying the RP thing (I backed it off a bit to the new Gamma World which strips the mechanics down a bit more than Essentials) *but* they've got me constantly reinforcing RPGs. My son tried to get his freind into GW but there were too many rules to go through and the friend lost interest. So to (finally) get to the point: in my experience, the Red Box and Gamma World, despite their relative simplicity, are still not engaging enough to get newbies into the hobby in this day and age where the "competition" includes: 1. FPS (w/ or w/o PvP) like Halo and Close Combat2. MMORGs like WoW and CoH3. Handhelds like the DS and iPod Touch/iPhone Nevertheless, Talisman was able to effectively compete (even more of my son's classmates have picked this game up). Why? Some things I can think of: 1. It is pretty (nice, high quality board and unpainted but nicely sculpted minis).2. It is fairly contained (the rules are pretty short and the options are on each discrete character card)3. There is a clear winner in the end.4. It is finite - usually a "base" game finishes within two hours. What do the rest of you think? Also, it seems MtG is also able to effectively compete in the "modern" world. How can the features of these successful systems be incorprated into an introductory RPG product that ultimately will bridge those new to the hobby into more complex systems like M&M, D&D, Pathfinder, SW, Dark Heresy, Eclipse Phase and all the other great stuff out there? Jim</blockquote>

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