I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
So I talked an unsuspecting person into giving the game a spin. They're totally new to D&D -- not even a big LotR fan! -- but a little dorky, so probably within "conversion distance" for D&D. 
The flexibility that 5e offers was key for getting her to participate. I wasn't able to persuade her to do so while I was playing and DMing 4e because the prospect of spending three hours inside around a table pushing around little plastic toys was really unappealing. But I mentioned that we could do this new game in a really short burst, even at a park if she wanted, and so she was willing to give it a try. There was some apprehension in not knowing "how to play," but I figured a playtest was the perfect place to test those.
She picked the Moradin cleric, and so I had the dwarf fighter as a "DMPC," mostly because I was a little nervous about her getting into a big fight with no way out. Crushing the newbie is bad DMing. Later, she swapped out the fighter for the Elf Wizard. Turns out my fear was rather unwarranted: her cautious play and high AC made her a pretty safe character -- I didn't manage to hit her at all. This is where 5e's different focus really helped out. A solo (or twosome!) character in 4e would not fare quite the same.
The big thing I noticed going through the game with her was that she lacked for a lot of options for Interaction or Exploration-style play. She leaned a lot on the knight's Diplomacy bonus, which was useful, but the Caves aren't set up to deliver a lot of interaction-style challenges, and the results were pretty binary. In part because she was approaching the game in such an Interaction-based fashion, I was inclined to make the challenges for that a bit more likely to give her the results she was trying to get. She managed to make an alliance with the Medusa in the caves (I used the plot thread where the Medusa was the queen of the monsters here, held captive by the cultists), though she's planning on double-crossing her. The medusa implemented a plan to overthrow the dark priest by bringing all her former factions together under her command, and then attacking the cult. The player also managed to talk the kobolds into fleeing into the hills, so that only "the strongest one" (their chief) is there to help.
We hit all three "pillars" of gameplay pretty nicely. In the short game, there was a good mix of interaction, exploration, and combat (she fought a few cultists and a few kobolds). Clearly some elements are better supported for single-player play than others, though. She was not an adept explorer, since stealth was not her strong suit. I have a feeling if she was playing a low-CHA character (or one without a Diplomacy bonus), that this would've flipped to the Interaction pillar. She didn't lack for combat expertise, though, and managed to handily deal with any threats she felt compelled to fight, but she mostly didn't want to fight. It was something we talked about quite a bit afterwards: the alliance options were minimal.
I didn't specifically point out the divine favor option to make her or her ally's rolls a little less bland, but TBH, my eyes sort of glazed over at the bonuses in the spell. A less "fiddly" version with a more dramatic effect might help out a lot.
Now, I think this is something of an "extreme version" of D&D5e -- testing it at its most casual and noncomittal, with a complete newbie, who doesn't even know that dwarves are supposed to be good with stonework, or understand what value there is those three gems sitting on that throne. And it was positive! Her main problem with the game continues to be the time required for it, but she's potentially down with going to a park and playing for a few hours, as long as she doesn't need to be cooped up inside (though part of that could have been playing in the afternoon on a beautiful day! ). So it seems that there's a version of D&D she'd like playing. It could even be 5e, potentially.
So, quick summary:
HIGH POINTS
FUNFACTS
Positive. I hope to convince her to do a little bit more, and maybe rope her into a bigger group, maybe with a day at the park or something. If D&D can be quick and portable and easy to understand and responds well to different playstyles, she could be on board.
The flexibility that 5e offers was key for getting her to participate. I wasn't able to persuade her to do so while I was playing and DMing 4e because the prospect of spending three hours inside around a table pushing around little plastic toys was really unappealing. But I mentioned that we could do this new game in a really short burst, even at a park if she wanted, and so she was willing to give it a try. There was some apprehension in not knowing "how to play," but I figured a playtest was the perfect place to test those.
She picked the Moradin cleric, and so I had the dwarf fighter as a "DMPC," mostly because I was a little nervous about her getting into a big fight with no way out. Crushing the newbie is bad DMing.
Later, she swapped out the fighter for the Elf Wizard. Turns out my fear was rather unwarranted: her cautious play and high AC made her a pretty safe character -- I didn't manage to hit her at all. This is where 5e's different focus really helped out. A solo (or twosome!) character in 4e would not fare quite the same. The big thing I noticed going through the game with her was that she lacked for a lot of options for Interaction or Exploration-style play. She leaned a lot on the knight's Diplomacy bonus, which was useful, but the Caves aren't set up to deliver a lot of interaction-style challenges, and the results were pretty binary. In part because she was approaching the game in such an Interaction-based fashion, I was inclined to make the challenges for that a bit more likely to give her the results she was trying to get. She managed to make an alliance with the Medusa in the caves (I used the plot thread where the Medusa was the queen of the monsters here, held captive by the cultists), though she's planning on double-crossing her. The medusa implemented a plan to overthrow the dark priest by bringing all her former factions together under her command, and then attacking the cult. The player also managed to talk the kobolds into fleeing into the hills, so that only "the strongest one" (their chief) is there to help.
We hit all three "pillars" of gameplay pretty nicely. In the short game, there was a good mix of interaction, exploration, and combat (she fought a few cultists and a few kobolds). Clearly some elements are better supported for single-player play than others, though. She was not an adept explorer, since stealth was not her strong suit. I have a feeling if she was playing a low-CHA character (or one without a Diplomacy bonus), that this would've flipped to the Interaction pillar. She didn't lack for combat expertise, though, and managed to handily deal with any threats she felt compelled to fight, but she mostly didn't want to fight. It was something we talked about quite a bit afterwards: the alliance options were minimal.
I didn't specifically point out the divine favor option to make her or her ally's rolls a little less bland, but TBH, my eyes sort of glazed over at the bonuses in the spell. A less "fiddly" version with a more dramatic effect might help out a lot.
Now, I think this is something of an "extreme version" of D&D5e -- testing it at its most casual and noncomittal, with a complete newbie, who doesn't even know that dwarves are supposed to be good with stonework, or understand what value there is those three gems sitting on that throne.
And it was positive! Her main problem with the game continues to be the time required for it, but she's potentially down with going to a park and playing for a few hours, as long as she doesn't need to be cooped up inside (though part of that could have been playing in the afternoon on a beautiful day! ). So it seems that there's a version of D&D she'd like playing. It could even be 5e, potentially.So, quick summary:
HIGH POINTS
- The Background really helped her identify her character and her RP opportunities. In fact, the "Class + Race + Theme + Background" set up gave her a pretty good idea of the kind of character she was playing. She really liked the knight part of it.
- The parts of D&D she wasn't too into got out of the way pretty fast. Combat was fast and furious (GO GO THEATER OF THE MIND! -- that is a prerequisite for this playing), and having only two characters didn't change the calculus all that much. She still pulled awesome stunts (like barging into the kobold caves and basically clearing a path so that the elf wizard could charm the kobold chief and thus avoid fighting).
- Advantage and Disadvantage are lots of fun. One of her big fears was that rolling would make her suck and/or die, and when she got to apply advantage or disadvantage, she was much happier.
- The Caves of Chaos that she got to explore didn't have much in the way of interaction. I sort of made the medusa a little less maniacally hostile, and used the idea of her being the Queen of the Caves to great effect, but that's "optional bits" that I applied, not part of the module itself.
- She also wasn't very good at exploration, she didn't personally get to participate in that part of the game very often. She listened at doors and looked for signs as to which way to go (high Wisdom, stonecunning), but it didn't seem to give her much useful info. She WAS good at avoiding traps, much to the kobold's annoyance.
- Measurement became superfluous. 25 feet, 100 feet, 30 feet, 5 feet...these terms are functionally meaningless. The numbers lost her attention instantly. It was much easier to give her relative distances and measurements. I literally paid zero attention to speed, very little attention to distance, and space and reach and suchlikeasandtheIraq were superfluous. When the wizard started casting spells, I winged the quantity of critters she could affect (usually at "everything currently in the room"), and it was just fine. When her priest wanted to protect an ally with her shield (something I needed to remind her about, but she liked) I mostly just assumed she could do it all the time, that she generally tried to protect her friends. It's possible that because the battles weren't very setpiece-y, that this could become more important later, but I bet if it every became TOO important, we'd loose her attention in a hurry. It's also possible that due to my glossing over of the ranges for things like spells, I made some stuff a little too easy, but with only one PC I also wasn't worried about that overly much. The fight with the kobold chief had some danger, still -- perhaps not enough, but I'm not too concerned with steamrolling kobolds. That's part of what kobolds are there for.
FUNFACTS
- Play was fast enough that, DMPCing the dwarf fighter and the elf wizard, I never felt at a loss for things to do, or overwhelmed by the rolls I needed to make. The fighter got some not-horrible stealthing done over the course of the adventure, and the elf helped her avoid a room she wasn't too interested in
- Total Number of Dead Monsters: 2. The dark cultists she initially encountered.
- Best Part: When she and her elf wizard friend careened into the kobold caves, hoping to secure an alliance for the medusa queen. The tension was to hold off the rest of the tribe long enough to whittle the kobold chief down to <10 hp, so that the Charm could be effective. The idea that the rest of the kobolds could be here tryin' to kill 'em at any moment added some awesome tension, and she picked up a stool to hide behind it for cover (which I ruled just gave the kobolds who attacked her disadvantage).
- The game was too short to bother using the healing rules, and she wouldn't've had to use them anyway, so I'm not sure about the "challenge level." I imagine that's a feature of not having well-judged numbers for anything yet. That said, auto-killing kobolds is a LOT of fun.
- She didn't use Turn Undead at all. Though she did use her Religious Lore to avoid a fight with skeletons in the first place. I'm thinking Channel Divinity needs a bit of kicking around the tires of, but even just swapping it to the CHA bonus instead of the WIS bonus might help avoid the feeling of there being this vast pool of power she never friggin' touched.
Positive. I hope to convince her to do a little bit more, and maybe rope her into a bigger group, maybe with a day at the park or something. If D&D can be quick and portable and easy to understand and responds well to different playstyles, she could be on board.
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