Best RPG introductory system for new players
When I was growing up and tabletop role-playing games were a super-niche hobby, the question of what roleplaying game to use to introduce new players was easily answered. Dungeons and Dragons. Oh sure, there were other games out there, but DnD was the one that everybody played.
The Ubiquitous Dungeons and Dragons
It’s still the most common game, and for many people Dungeons and Dragons is synonymous with role playing, either in its native incarnation or in the Paizo’s Pathfinder spin-off. It’s accessible, and its marketing is the most pervasive.
Just by virtue of popularity, if someone taught you how to play, they were probably teaching you how to play Dungeons and Dragons.
Unfortunately, no matter how much many people love the system, it’s not the ideal way to introduce new players. In any of its incarnations D&D is a heavy system with many specialized rules that will slip past the head of new gamers, loaded with decades of traditions and conventions that only really make sense given the proper historical concept.
What makes a good introduction?
The biggest leap to make for new players isn’t the mechanics. Chances are they’re familiar with the concept of hit points and statistics from video games. And they’re not strangers to the idea of rolling dice.
What new players need to get a grip on is the back-and-forth nature of the conversation between players and the game-master. They need to understand the basics of roleplaying, of what they actually sit there and do at the character, of having a character. The playing. The pretending.
What do new players need?
The rest of a game’s rules are detail that they can pick up as they go along, but to play the game and participate, you need to be comfortable speaking up and interacting with the group. It’s easiest to learn that if you’re not trying to focus on long lists of abstract numbers and trying to remember what dice to roll in what situation.
What this adds up to is that an ideal system for new players is one where the roleplaying takes the stage and the mechanics of the system hide in the background. A rules-light game – and, preferably, one that will institute the right attitudes you want them to carry on for the rest of their gaming career.
Now what those attitudes are up to you, but you have this great opportunity to teach players with a system that shapes them into the people you want to play with.
Systems that make good teaching tools
Here are the systems I would recommend for initiating new gamers into the fold.
Fate
Apocalypse World – or really, any of its hacks. I believe Dungeon World might be least suited to this task as it’s intended to reproduce fairly specific tropes and artifacts of DnD style gaming.
PDQ. Really, you don’t get much more rules-light.
Gumshoe
Beyond the System
There are a lot of things you can do to make learning a new game easy on new players beyond the choice of system. Try and create a situation or scenario that isn’t too alien to them, so they have a frame of reference. Games set in the real world or in one of their favorite genres will go a long way to getting them past that initial awkwardness.
Have you introduced new players into role-playing games? Have any additional system recommendations or tips?
Questions? You are invited to either leave a comment below, or ask directly through the comment form.
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