Starter Set Survey (Academic Paper)

[7paddy]

Hi everyoneI'm a big TTRPG enthusiast and I'm currently writing an academic paper about starter sets. I'm investigating both what aspects are most helpful for learning new systems and also what aspects people most want from a starter set.

If you have time, I'd really appreciate if you could fill out this survey

The Ideal TTRPG Starter Set - What do you Think?

Thank you for taking the time to participate in this survey! I am researching which aspects of TTRPG starter sets are most effective for learning a new TTRPG system and which aspects players find most desirable in a starter set. Your responses will help identify trends in how people engage with...

forms.gle

It should take about 10-15 minutes to complete.

Thanks in advance and let me know if you have any questions!

 

[aco175]

@7paddy welcome to the site. Being a Google form you may get some people that respond, but generally we are a suspicious of about clicking on links. If I did not overthink it takes 6-7 minutes.

A little confused on a couple sections and found I needed to read the whole group of answers before choosing. You will find a lot of people here have been playing for 30-40+ years and will debate having to make only one choice and how everything could be extremely important.

The questions on how many scenarios had me a bit. How many should be included in a box set. Ideally it should present an introduction to the game and let the PCs advance some in power and gear to get hooked on the game. Using D&D for example, I liked the first box sets for the 5e game over the last shipwrecked on. Part of this was the last one presented 3 levels of play over 5 and only let people explore 4-5 places. The older ones had several places and events happening. I took the idea of scenario to be distinct parts of the adventure that mostly could be one night of play.

 

[7paddy]

Hi aco175

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I hate sharing links (especially as a newcomer to the site!), but I was thinking hopefully Google forms is one of the most trustworthy ones.

Thank you for also posting your time! I sampled the survey with a few people and they all fell in around 10-12 minutes (but a lot of them have analysis paralysis in games!)

Your insight into the number of scenarios is also great and detailed. That's an aspect I hadn't considered, but I will definitely include in my findings. I've looked at 23 different Starter sets currently in print, and most of them take place in a very contained setting. A lot of them also don't include any character advancement or different tiers of play. I also found it quite interesting that The One Ring Starter set took place completely in The Shire, and had a noticeably different tone from the core rulebook. That could be quite misleading as an introduction to the game!

I really appreciate your time to answer the survey and to clarify more here. Apologies for any places where the survey was unclear!

 

[aramis erak]

Many of the starter sets I've seen have limited subsets of the setting. L5R sets them up as magistrates in training; that is a common campaign conceit, but it's far from the only viable one.

The Sentinel Comics one is not so much limited in place, but very limited in characters. On the other hand, the rules within are a large part of the core rules of play.

There's also a difference between a quickplay module and a starter set. The former is usually aimed at converting players from other games, while a starter set usually is aimed at novices. FFG did a bang up job of their Star Wars starter sets being good enough for converting existing players to the unique mechanisms of the NDS dice... while being written specifically for being total novice GM with total novice players.

Meanwhile, ALIEN's Chariot of the Gods, which was the backer preview adventure/quickplay adventure, is a solid ALIEN adventure, and it's got decent GM advice, but it was CLEARLY for experienced players with a GM who's at least played an RPG. It's a quickplay in the preview version; I've not read the boxed set. But I've used two other boxed adventures, and will note that any of them will be decent choices for an experienced GM converting to ALIEN, but none of them will be great for a novice GM with total newbie players.

The thing is there are about 4 different goals amonst starters
1) Total novice player learning to RPG and to play System ___
2) Total novice GM learning to run an RPG in System ___
3) Converting GM and/or players from another System
4) acquiring public rep

What's good for one of those isn't always good for the other goals. Sentinel Comics was goals 3 & 4. 3, because it expected experienced players and GMs. And 4, because it was to build enough rep to have a successful KS launch. And the nice hardcover on the shelf a few m away shows that, at least for me, it was plenty good to get me to buy in on the KS.

 

[7paddy]

Hi Aramis erak

Thank you for the insightful feedback. You're absolutely right that these different goals for starter sets should really adopt different approaches. In some ways they certainly do, like Chariot of the Gods as you mentioned not being for novice GMs. However it seems that a lot of starter sets may be trying to take a mixed approach and ending up not being very satisfying for anyone! What I mean is that some starter sets have dedicated sections presumably aimed at people who have never played TTRPGs before (What is roleplaying? Dice notation - e.g. a 6-sided die is read as d6, and if you have 3 of them it's read 3d6, and very basic examples of play (sometimes just with roleplaying, without any mechanics). However, they then might provide a scenario that is not aimed at those same people.

In fact, (I just checked now that you mentioned it), in the starter set rules for Alien, the "What is a role-playing game?" section comes on page 21 of the rules booklet and points out "if you have made your way here without knowing what a role-playing game is, congratulations!"

Thank you again for explaining your point very concisely. I'll definitely be talking about that in the final paper, and maybe it will help companies rethink the target of their starter sets.

I also understand from a commercial point of view, RPGs are still a niche hobby, and smaller systems probably can't support multiple different starter sets targeted at different demographics. If only more people would start the amazing hobby!