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<blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 9510560" data-attributes="member: 9053">Some good thoughts here. I am a big fan of John Harper/Vincent Baker, and I have to admit that I bring in elements of his design when playing other games, which is where my idea of &quot;universal&quot; advice takes place. Of course there are different RPG styles but there's a big group of games that are quite similar. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here.I remember so many good ideas to teach about the game. The games that had &quot;choose your own adventure&quot; style opening sections for instance, those were fantastic. I'm just not sure I want to devote that many pages to something people will use once, if at all.What I am doing at this point is to have that section that refers to real first-time players elsewhere. That may need to be revised if: &quot;something else&quot; doesn't truly exist elsewhere. I then have a section called &quot;What would you say you do here,&quot; where I talk about the game's goals and what you do when you play. I then go into a &quot;Here are my influences&quot; section to reinforce that. Next is what the roles of the players and GM look like. Then I do a very high-level summary of what the mechanics are. That's the end of the introductory section and something I would intend to have as a summary product you can download apart from the rules. Oh, and to add a final thing: I provide a glossary for defined terms so that if you wonder what something means,&nbsp; you can look it up here.Edited to add: I was just reading a new game that I had recommended to me. I don't want to say what it was because the authors are super nice and I'm going to be critical. The &quot;start of the game book&quot; is on my mind because I have read some games recently that all begin with &quot;here's how you make a character.&quot; I can't say strongly enough how much I don't like that. I end up having to process a bunch of stuff that isn't defined and look at making decisions when I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="SteveC, post: 9510560, member: 9053"] Some good thoughts here. I am a big fan of John Harper/Vincent Baker, and I have to admit that I bring in elements of his design when playing other games, which is where my idea of "universal" advice takes place. Of course there are different RPG styles but there's a big group of games that are quite similar. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here. I remember so many good ideas to teach about the game. The games that had "choose your own adventure" style opening sections for instance, those were fantastic. I'm just not sure I want to devote that many pages to something people will use once, if at all. What I am doing at this point is to have that section that refers to real first-time players elsewhere. That may need to be revised if: "something else" doesn't truly exist elsewhere. I then have a section called "What would you say you do here," where I talk about the game's goals and what you do when you play. I then go into a "Here are my influences" section to reinforce that. Next is what the roles of the players and GM look like. Then I do a very high-level summary of what the mechanics are. That's the end of the introductory section and something I would intend to have as a summary product you can download apart from the rules. Oh, and to add a final thing: I provide a glossary for defined terms so that if you wonder what something means, you can look it up here. Edited to add: I was just reading a new game that I had recommended to me. I don't want to say what it was because the authors are super nice and I'm going to be critical. The "start of the game book" is on my mind because I have read some games recently that all begin with "here's how you make a character." I can't say strongly enough how much I don't like that. I end up having to process a bunch of stuff that isn't defined and look at making decisions when I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. [/QUOTE]

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