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<blockquote data-quote="Eirikrautha" data-source="post: 7747848" data-attributes="member: 6777843"><p>Well, I certainly agree that making players feel welcome is an important part of the game. But this particular topic is not as cut and dried as some posters here would like to make it.</p><p></p><p>As someone who frequently has new players at my table (including one now who has only a few sessions in), I think it is important to remember that the job of the DM is to make sure ALL of the players have a good time. I've noticed in many discussions I've seen/read lately that there is a fetishization of new players nowadays, often at the expense of the old. I notice this a lot with folks who are themselves transitioning from newer players into veteran ones.</p><p></p><p>Now, I haven't directly seen anyone say "Screw the six people you've been playing with for three decades, make the new guy feel happy!" but some of the responses so far definitely have an element of privileging the new over the old. In fact, I would say that, were the question put directly to the respondents on this thread, "Who bears the greatest responsibility to compromise in order to please the rest of the table?" many of you would respond with the veterans as opposed to the newbie.</p><p></p><p>From WotC's perspective, this makes perfect sense... they already have my money, so each new player is more for them. From the perspective of my gaming group, however, I don't think that answer is anywhere near fair. I'll try to give two specific examples that might illustrate my point.</p><p></p><p>One of the biggest issues my new players have is differentiating between flavor text and rules text. If a description say that a spell "harnesses mystical energy to pierce the surrounding darkness, giving the character advantage on Perception checks in total darkness," my newer players frequently focus in on the concept of piercing the darkness, rather than on the mechanics of the spell as stated. For tables with a high level of fluency in the game, this can often lead to frustration by both the new and old players. If the older players have a high degree of system mastery and enjoy encounters (both combat and non-combat) with a thin margin for error and a high degree of difficulty, they can become frustrated with a character that does not have a single skill/spell/ability chosen to help in these circumstances (this happened recently with my newest player, who chose most of her high level spells based on flavor and as a result did not cast a single one in two straight sessions, as none would mechanically accomplish what she desired in those circumstances). The new player feels weak or useless, and the experienced players begin to resent them. This also creates problems for the DM, who must either dial back the expectations at the table (which is insulting in its own way when you prepare a challenging encounter for five players, when there are six at the table, because everyone knows the newbie won't really contribute), or bend long established conventions to make the newbie's misreads more viable.</p><p></p><p>The second example directly addresses a point in the OP's article: the influence of web series like Critical Role. Several of my veteran players have been in this group since the mid-eighties, and have never played at a table like what you might see on Critical Role. In fact, most of us would not come back after the first session. The style, focus, and tenor of those games are not anything like what we enjoy. To a new player, who knows only what they have seen on the Internet, our table would feel very different from what they might expect based on Critical Role. Should we change our table for them? Should the expectations of the new player outweight the table culture of the old?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Eirikrautha, post: 7747848, member: 6777843"] Well, I certainly agree that making players feel welcome is an important part of the game. But this particular topic is not as cut and dried as some posters here would like to make it. As someone who frequently has new players at my table (including one now who has only a few sessions in), I think it is important to remember that the job of the DM is to make sure ALL of the players have a good time. I've noticed in many discussions I've seen/read lately that there is a fetishization of new players nowadays, often at the expense of the old. I notice this a lot with folks who are themselves transitioning from newer players into veteran ones. Now, I haven't directly seen anyone say "Screw the six people you've been playing with for three decades, make the new guy feel happy!" but some of the responses so far definitely have an element of privileging the new over the old. In fact, I would say that, were the question put directly to the respondents on this thread, "Who bears the greatest responsibility to compromise in order to please the rest of the table?" many of you would respond with the veterans as opposed to the newbie. From WotC's perspective, this makes perfect sense... they already have my money, so each new player is more for them. From the perspective of my gaming group, however, I don't think that answer is anywhere near fair. I'll try to give two specific examples that might illustrate my point. One of the biggest issues my new players have is differentiating between flavor text and rules text. If a description say that a spell "harnesses mystical energy to pierce the surrounding darkness, giving the character advantage on Perception checks in total darkness," my newer players frequently focus in on the concept of piercing the darkness, rather than on the mechanics of the spell as stated. For tables with a high level of fluency in the game, this can often lead to frustration by both the new and old players. If the older players have a high degree of system mastery and enjoy encounters (both combat and non-combat) with a thin margin for error and a high degree of difficulty, they can become frustrated with a character that does not have a single skill/spell/ability chosen to help in these circumstances (this happened recently with my newest player, who chose most of her high level spells based on flavor and as a result did not cast a single one in two straight sessions, as none would mechanically accomplish what she desired in those circumstances). The new player feels weak or useless, and the experienced players begin to resent them. This also creates problems for the DM, who must either dial back the expectations at the table (which is insulting in its own way when you prepare a challenging encounter for five players, when there are six at the table, because everyone knows the newbie won't really contribute), or bend long established conventions to make the newbie's misreads more viable. The second example directly addresses a point in the OP's article: the influence of web series like Critical Role. Several of my veteran players have been in this group since the mid-eighties, and have never played at a table like what you might see on Critical Role. In fact, most of us would not come back after the first session. The style, focus, and tenor of those games are not anything like what we enjoy. To a new player, who knows only what they have seen on the Internet, our table would feel very different from what they might expect based on Critical Role. Should we change our table for them? Should the expectations of the new player outweight the table culture of the old? [/QUOTE]
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