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On Teaching Roleplaying
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to run a game for someone who’s never roleplayed before. It’s been a long time since I ran for a brand-new player, let alone any sort of one-on-one game. I was a bit nervous, because I didn’t have any other players to back me up and it was entirely up to me to make a solid first impression of our hobby.
To keep things as simple as possible, I decided to run Tunnels & Trolls. My player was a non-geek but geek-curious, and had asked about Dungeons & Dragons, but the only iteration of that game that I had available to me was Pathfinder. As cool as that game is, I was afraid that plopping that massive core rulebook down on the table would permanently frighten her off. T&T is easy to learn, easy to teach, and best of all for me, easy to run so I could focus more on the storytelling and less on the crunchy rules bits.
I started by describing the basic concept — the world is full of monsters, and there are people who go out and kill monsters for a living. You keep the world safe, and you can make good money and acquire magical treasures along the way. This led into a version of my “why” technique: why would your character go hunting monsters? Why would your character take (possibly fatal) the risks? Why would your character want the money? We ended up with a good idea of who her character was, and some story hooks I could work with. We decided her character would be human, to keep things simple.
Only after we had an idea what the character was about did I introduce the crunchy bits. I decided that while pregenerated characters are good for experienced gamers, it would be easier to explain concepts by walking her through character creation. I didn’t hand her a blank character sheet, but had her hand-write things down on a 3×5 card (again, I love the simplicity of T&T!). I named each attribute and explained it, Then I had her roll numbers, explaining the ranges of good, bad, and average, and let her assign them where she wanted. Working with her character concept, she used the numbers to flesh out her character a little more, coming up with reasons why she was better at this and not so good at that. She caught on really well.
Then we went over character classes. Rather than going over all of them, I picked a couple that suited the concept and background she had, and explained those. By talking through character ideas, she’d already filtered out options, which made it easier to focus in. Then we went over Traits, and she was excited that she got to make up her own (T&T is very story-game in this area).
We started out having her working a non-adventuring job, and dreaming of finding work as a monster killer. This gave me the chance to teach her the system with some non-combat challenges. She was trying to make money to buy weapons and equipment, while at the same time looking for a sponsor or patron who would set her up with gear. Yes, I made most of an adventure out of gearing up. She heard that a merchant was having trouble with a monster hijacking his caravans (hey, it’s cliche to us but new stuff to her) and was going to hire some other well-known adventurer to deal with it. She had to find a way to get in to see the merchant, then negotiate with him to give her a shot because she’s do it for less money.
I build up tension around fighting one monster. This entailed gathering some information about the monster, talking to survivors, asking a wizard about its powers and weaknesses, so she could properly equip with the paltry budget she was given. When she finally tracked it to its lair and killed it, it had become the most epic quest a 1st-level character had every undertaken. Tremendous fun.
This approach worked because in the conversations that led up to her agreeing to play she was interested in story and characters. Yes, I roped her in by telling her about my paladin. By staying with the story, and showing how the rules support the story, I kept her interest and drew her in further. Had she initially expressed interest in tactics and crunchy bits, I would have gone a different route, probably with a pregenerated Pathfinder character and an explanation of each of the character’s abilities.
We’ll be playing again on an occasional basis, because she wants to see what happens to her character next. I think I have her hooked. I’ve offered to try to get her into a group with me, but she doesn’t think she’s ready to go public yet and game with other people. For my part, I’m happy to have helped create a new gamer, or at the least to have given a non-gamer a good time and left her with a positive impression of what this quirky hobby of ours is all about.
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Very cool. Glad to hear that things went well, sounds like a fun session and always nice to hear about new people being introduced to gaming. Well done.
October 26th, 2009 at 6:42 amSean Holland´s last blog ..New Monster – Darter Falcon
Ladies and gentlemen, THIS is how you teach roleplaying.
Good job, Sir Bear.
October 26th, 2009 at 7:41 amI believe that one of the precepts of teaching is that a teacher must be a student of students. You study who you’re going to teach to, then tailor the lesson to them. You take what they know already and build toward what you want them to know by the end.
You certainly did that here, and it sounds like it paid off. Nice job!
October 26th, 2009 at 8:15 amCameron Goble´s last blog ..Game-Central Podcast #64 — Do Video Games Cause Violence?
Excellent post. I am personally looking into how to teach players better. Personally I use Savage Worlds to teach players about roleplaying and table top games. I love D&D but it can get really complicated mess.
Hopefully you’ve converted someone else to join in on our fun!
October 26th, 2009 at 9:19 amGreat post. It’s always a lot of fun introducing someone new to the hobby.
October 26th, 2009 at 11:26 amJohn L. Williams´s last blog ..Have your PC’s suffered enough?