This mentality needs to die

[Lanefan]

Really? Honestly? When you first started playing RPG's. I mean, at your VERY FIRST SESSION, how much "thinking outside the box" did you do? How much did you go beyond the mechanics?

A rather frightening amount, truth be told.

What first attracted me to the game was the fact you *could* go outside the box...if there was even a box at all. And once I started playing I ignored rules left right and center; if I could dream it up, I tried it. Rules were the DM's job; fortunately I had a rational DM who knew when something off the wall might work and also knew when to just say 'no'.

Judging the game based on the fact that these are completely new players is a bit unfair don't you think?

Judging the entire game system based on that, yes. Judging the one individual game in question, maybe not. Set aside that it's a 4e game and substitute any other RPG, it'd still be the same players, the same DM, and the same essential interactions...and from those, it's possible to get a pretty good idea of what kind of game it's going to be even only a few sessions in.

Lanefan

 

[fuzzlewump]

I agree that thinking outside of the box is probably most common during the first sessions.

The game creates a 'box' and with each rule, it becomes a smaller/more rigid/more boxey box. Learning the rules of the game will direct you into particular modes of thought, or, into the box. Once you realize the box, you can then get outside of it, but the box is warm, fuzzy, and generally comfortable, if slightly boring. With no knowledge of the box, i.e. the first sessions, those playing are have a greater tendency to be outside of it.

 

[bagger245]

I've been DMing mostly new players for years and never had a stable group of experienced gamers. I could say that most of them don't care about mechanics of the game and just want to "roleplay" which was the main thing that attracted them to the table in the first place. They don't want to bother reading up rules and such. Chris's way of DMing newbies is really good, but personally I would use a more rules-lighter game since I am fudging miost of the rules for the newbies in the first place.

 

[Jhaelen]

Assuming that there's an experienced GM, I have found exactly the opposite to be true: New players tend to learn the core mechanics of a game and then really latch onto the concept of "pretend to be your character". The experienced GM can take "I want to do X", translate it into game mechanics, and then tell them how to resolve it.

New players naturally tend towards immersive roleplaying.

That's my experience as well. New players are the ones with the most creative ideas because they've not yet been influenced by knowing the rules.

They'll just try anything that makes intuitive sense to them.

 

[Mark Chance]

Really? Honestly? When you first started playing RPG's. I mean, at your VERY FIRST SESSION, how much "thinking outside the box" did you do? How much did you go beyond the mechanics?

Now, keeping in my mind VERY FIRST SESSION was circa 1978, which means I don't have too many concrete examples, I can honestly say we did go outside the box. We had to. The only book we had was the basic D&D blue book, and I'm not certain that was complete since we found it in a desk at school. I do remember my first character, a dwarf named Korbok, had several WWI-era potato masher grenades.

Pretty sure there weren't any rules for those.

My experiences with my son (Giant Boy here on the boards) is that rules come secondary to cool ideas. Of course, this is hardly a representative sample and is certainly skewed since his playstyle is undoubtedly influenced by watching me game.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Really? Honestly? When you first started playing RPG's. I mean, at your VERY FIRST SESSION, how much "thinking outside the box" did you do? How much did you go beyond the mechanics? Judging the game based on the fact that these are completely new players is a bit unfair don't you think?

I hadn't even gotten a chance to peruse the rulebook in my earliest games. My friend gave instructions on how to roll up a character, I had a sheet with some numbers on it that supposedly represented a big strong guy with a sword, shield, and chainmail armor and off he went.

I had no idea about what I could or couldn't do by the rules. Being a warrior, I was spoiling for a fight. Ten minutes later I had gained valuable information. Picking a fight in a tavern with two city guards is not a wise move. My knowledge of the game at that point consisted of: 1)roll a d6 when you feel the urge to hit something, 2)roll a d20 to try and get a shot at your opponent and 3) die in an orderly proficient military manner.

My first trip into a dungeon was completely out of the box. All of my decisions were made in character because I had nothing else to go on.
It was a very fun experience as a player to not have to deal with mechanics. I didn't have to worry about whether or not I was "playing right".

My first 6 months of gaming was pretty much as player learning the game through discovery. I got my own basic & expert sets and read through them. I finally understood the reasoning behind what had been happening at the games and immediately started wanting to DM.

I still enjoy trying new games as a player without any knowledge of the mechanics. The freedom of making all choices in character without the nagging concerns that come with metagame knowledge is a rare treat these days.

 

[Hussar]

All I can say is wow. My experiences were pretty much the polar opposite. Regardless of edition.

IME, new players in a system, the first question they ask is, "I want to do X, how do I do that?" And they get told, roll this die, or spend that whatever. Most people are used to playing games. Games have rules. You don't suddenly start skipping squares in Monopoly because you feel like it - that would be cheating.

And, IME, most people come from that position. The rules of the game define what you can do. Different strokes I guess.

 

[Ourph]

Ourph - having played recently a session with players who are not adept at adopting rules, and being forced to spend three hours fighting a single ogre and a pair of goblins, I can honestly say that SPEED is the most important thing.

I agree, which is why I would have the players use powers, which usually do more damage and/or have a better chance of hitting than basic attacks. A fight against an Ogre and two goblins would be a tedious, grind-fest if the players relied on nothing but basic attacks the whole fight.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

Way back when I first played D&D, I was 11 and 2nd edition had just come out. The internet didn't exist, the only people I knew with any interest in D&D were me and my friends, and none of us had ever seen the game played before. We had NO idea what we were doing, we just thought the books looked cool.

I'm pretty sure we got like 95% of the rules completely wrong. The players just created characters using the character creation chapter in the PHB, and from there on out I (the DM) just sort of winged everything/pulled what I thought looked cool out of the books. I think at one point we invented a mechanic to use saving throws as a resolution mechanism in noncombat encounters (e.g. okay...so you're trying to talk this dude into helping you out, and he just failed his save vs. charm, so you succeeded! he's gonna help you).

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

IME, new players in a system, the first question they ask is, "I want to do X, how do I do that?"

I think that's the point others are trying to make. A new player just tells you what he wants to do. He doesn't know if it's possible, how difficult it is, what the risks are. He just thinks it is something his character would do. Some more experienced players get trapped in the rules, thinking that the things defined by the rules are the only thing their character can do.