D&D General New Players?

[Zardnaar]

Recently I've sort of become aware that I've never really had to deal with a group of new players. I've always had a core of 2-3 experienced players to rebuild around.

Players come and go for a variety of real life reasons.

I started a new group sorta last year at a gamestore but had 2 of my old players and one of their friends to anchor the group. I also lucked out and the newer players were a good bunch and not completely inexperienced.

I kept most of the group togather from August to March before Covid lockdown killed it. Lost a couple of players but have that core of 4 to rebuild around.

All the other groups in that time frame self destructed although on DM only ran 10 week games with new players. She enjoys training them.

Post Covid though I new gamestore has opened and next week is the first games night where one shots are going to be run.

IDK if I can run with my March group. I've never really had to run with more than 1-2 new players since 1994. That year I wasn't the DM.

I don't plan for long campaigns wrapping it up around level 8-12. Turns out my games are longer than most of the local games.

In effect I've probably been a gatekeeper. But I've also kept out what's now called toxic players and I've thinned out the CN Kender types as well.

So what do you do? Gamestore games are new for me, I've never played AL and don't want to. Still more used to long term stuff. Any advice?

 

[Umbran]

Now, in the time of covid... starting with all new players and not able to be physically present with them? That's a challenge.

 

[Zardnaar]

Now, in the time of covid... starting with all new players and not able to be physically present with them? That's a challenge.

We can be physically present. No Covid here. I've volunteered to DM IDK if I get a choice of who I run with.

 

[TheSword]

A lot will depend on their frame of reference and how easily you can adapt to that.

I recently brought on two new groups one with a board game and computer game background. Then another group with lots of LARPing experience but no d&d experience.

Both groups approach the game from completely different angles. Definitely worth finding out what made them interested in d&d and tailoring you expectations accordingly.

 

[Zardnaar]

A lot will depend on their frame of reference and how easily you can adapt to that.

I recently brought on two new groups one with a board game and computer game background. Then another group with lots of LARPing experience but no d&d experience.

Both groups approach the game from completely different angles. Definitely worth finding out what made them interested in d&d and tailoring you expectations accordingly.

Yes I do a session 0 these days.

Probably won't have the time for that. I'll just use a small dungeon like the necromancer lair in LMoP.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

My game store group worked out surprisingly well, though COVID killed it (for now). Instead of one-shots we went with a couple long but very episodic campaigns where people could join or quit with a fairly loose sense of the overarching plot. Basically some people had long elaborate character arcs and a commitment to the underlying plot, but if anyone wanted to drop in and help kill the monster of the week then the more the merrier. Both had a couple troll players filter through, but they were definitely outliers and really became a basis for group bonding among everyone else.

 

[jasper]

Grab some Tier 1 modules from DM's Guild. Make your new people create multiple pcs. Run them through Tier 1 modules until they get at least 5 pcs at level 5.

 

[ArwensDaughter]

I’ve mostly DM’d new players. A few suggestions:

-provide a dice cheat sheet for each player. Sorting out the dice is often a stumbling block. I like this one: RPG Dice Cheat Sheet - Matthew Perkins | Dungeon Masters Guild

-bring a batch of different colored highlighters. With the players permission, color code their sheet: AC is green, skills are yellow, etc. Actual color assignments don’t matter as long as you are consistent. Then you can guide them to the right part of their sheet without having to be close enough to it to point. NOTE: This doesn’t work if the DM or the player(s) are colorblind. In that case, you would need to use symbols of some kind.

-Bring pregenerated characters for those who haven’t made a character before. I have a sub to DnDBeyond and keep a stable of pregens in my account for that purpose.

-The last time I had a brand spanking new set of players, I took a couple minutes with each one to go over their key features and attack options.

-Plan for modules/adventures to take longer. Before COVID and a family move, I DM’d AL games at area store a few times. In theory we had 4 hours start to finish; but I intentionally chose to run 2 hour modules. Part of this was because it was a set of modules I’d run before, and i never new if I was playing or DMing until I got there. But it also meant I never felt rushed; my tables there always included jr high boys new to the game. The extra time was helpful for us all. (One of the regular DMs didn’t feel confident running a table with kids, and while normally I find jr. High kids challenging and feel out of my element, at a D&D table I have discovered to my amazement that I do quite well. So that became my role there.)

Side note for those outside the US “jr high”(or middle school) is roughly ages 12-14.

 

[touc]

So what do you do? Gamestore games are new for me, I've never played AL and don't want to. Still more used to long term stuff. Any advice?

This happened to me last year. Moved to a new state for work, found there's an active community through Meetup and Discord in my area and a strong demand for DMs. I found many people were wandering from 1-shot to 1-shot, finding a hodge-podge of good and bad DMs, good and bad players.

So, my first step was to screen players. It didn't take much. I simply asked for players ages 30+ that could make Sunday afternoons. Experience didn't matter. If it worked out, these people might be invited into my home and we'd run actual campaigns. So, I'm screening out kids, teens, and college students. I wanted to increase the chances people would click. That's generally not happening when you put a 50yo at a table with a 15yo. There were some DMs that simply ran 1-shots for strangers over and over, no desire for a campaign or the same players each week. Not my bag, but glad they're introducing people to the game.

I got a ton of responses. I winnowed those people down to a schedule I could make (Sunday afternoons). Then, I ran some 1-shots. I struck gold early in that one group of 4 immediately clicked. Until Covid, we have had a pretty consistent campaign going. And, having heard their stories about going table to table in 1-shots with problem players and bad DMs, feel even more fortunate we all met when we did.

So, depending on your community size, I'd recommend Meetup (ours linked to their Discord), then an ad to shrink the pool to similarly situated people. From there, just a matter of finding people that click and talking about forming a longer-term group. I used non AL one-shots with pre-gen characters and plenty of time for humor and role play for this.

 

[Blue]

I've DMed two groups of nothing but new players - both to D&D but also to RPGs as a while. It was a challenge. I specifically tailored my content to introduce concepts bit by bit, and also focused first on roleplay because the books spend so many pages on mechanics that it needed some unequal air-time in order to get back into balance. That said, doing it with younger people recently who have had a lot of exposure via actual play videos or youtube or whatever was a good kickstart, and they hadn't really developed bad habits from them because they hadn't put anything into practice yet.

But I find it much easier to introduce new players when I have some "seed" veteran players that they can use as examples or even role models. Roleplaygame models. (Heh.)

I don't go seeking out new people to introduce to the hobby (well, outside my kids and nieces/nephews, but that's a special case). More recently I've the interesting experience of roleplayers who have never played D&D (or D&D-like games). So they had some concepts just fine, but not D&D's overt focus on everyone-participates-in-every-combat, plus they needed support mechanically. That's pretty straightforward.