GM's Tip of the Week

We have a lot of odd conversations in the car, Andi and I; some of them random, and then there are the days one of us stumbles over a thing with gaming, and has to mention it to the other. This time, it was Andi, shaking his head over an article about why it’s so hard to bring new players into a game. We’ve never had any of the problems cited, and I realized, as we were discussing it, that you guys might like to know that, and, more importantly, you might like to know why we’ve never had any of those problems.

And, maybe when you’ve all finished reading, you’ll share some of your tips, or a hilarious story about that one player.

Bringing in a new player, teaching them the system, getting them involved. A lot of people claim this is difficult for some systems, citing piles of optional rules, stacks of books, and reams of errata or house rules. Honestly, it can be; you can easily overwhelm someone who is inexperienced and new to the game, or just new to the system you use. However, you don’t have to do that.

You can simplify, and you should. At our table, we just throw them in the deep end with a pre-generated character, some dice and all the explanations they might need ready when they ask. This lets a new player get involved without worrying about piles of books and a hundred pages of errata, or getting overwhelmed with character choices.

We also freely recommend using resources like SRDs and Hero Labs, by Lone Wolf. If your system is not implemented on Hero Labs, and/or has no SRD, it will take a little longer to set up, but a few good pre-made sheets are worth the time that goes into them for letting new players jump in with nothing but some dice and a pencil. Doubly so if your new player is new to the system, or a rank beginner with no gaming experience at all.

Now, if your newbie player wants to build their own character, that’s also fine; you don’t /need/ the splat books, extras and all, after all. Get your group optimizer to provide advice; this is something they can, and should, help with. A new player will want to be effective, whatever sort of character they elect to play.

Start by narrowing it down to simple terms; do they want to play a front-line melee expert? A ranged combatant? A support character, who heals/buffs their friends and frustrates their foes? A sneaky conniver as likely to stab something in the kidneys from the back as slash their throats from the front? A wandering font of random knowledge? Boil it down to basic terms, then find a class that fits the desired role. Simple!

We’ve done this a few times; myself, I’ve taught my mother how to play, very late in her life, when she was hampered both by inexperience and faulty memory banks. She did very well, and we enjoyed the experience, for as long as she was able to play, which wasn’t nearly as long as any of us really wanted. But we used that basic layout; figure out what kind of character she wanted to play, then build from there; and explain dice and rules and all as we went.

We’ve thrown a near-beginner into the deep end with a high-level pre-gen, and watched him learn from his mistakes; these days, he’s still playing and even GMing.

When doing this yourself, remember to keep two things in mind. Firstly, everyone starts somewhere; we were all beginners ourselves, once. Secondly, the goal is to have fun; if someone isn’t having fun, you’re not doing it right.

And, as usual… we’re not affiliated with Lone Wolf, we just really, /really/ like their software. For this math-challenged gamer/GM, it makes my life so much easier.