Michael's RPG Shelf: Tips For New and Novice Roleplaying Gamers, Part One - The Rules
I've been involved in roleplaying games for about thirty years now, on both sides of the GM screen. While I'm the furthest thing from an expert in the field, I do feel long-term exposure has taught me a few things along the way, and I enjoy passing those on to others. There are tons of topics and options to explore, but I feel that perhaps the most important is remembering that mixture of excitement and fear when playing a game for the first time, when I was still unfamiliar with most of the rules and trying to find my place in the world as a player. With that in mind, I'd like to offer up a few tips for new and novice players that will help you navigate those twists and turns and hurdles you won't realize are in your way until they're almost smacking you in the face. Since D&D is the game I'm most familiar with, the examples I'll use will all come from this particular system, but many of them are applicable across a wide variety of products and systems.
If there's one piece of information I could impart to every new gamer who enters the fold, it would be this right here. In fact, it's so important that it's the sole focus of this first entry. Are you ready to learn the ways of the d20, Grasshopper?
Very well. Here it is:
You Don't Need To Know All The Rules!
It's no exaggeration to say that what keeps many people from starting a game in the first place is the rulebook. The Player's Handbook pictured up there forms one of the three basic, or "Core", books for Dungeons & Dragons. It's the only one you need if you're going to be a player, but the Dungeon Master will also need to invest in the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual, especially if they want to create their own worlds and campaigns. One rulebook doesn't seem like much, but Wizards of the Coast makes that sucker look both serious and intimidating at the same time, with its $50 cover price, glossy cover artwork, and 320-page thickness.
If you've never played a game of D&D before, one quick look at that thing may be all it takes to decide it's not for you. After all, how on earth could you possibly be expected to study so much stuff? That's all well and good for the nerdlings on The Big Bang Theory, but you're a busy person with real, grown-up responsibilities. You barely have time to eat breakfast before dragging yourself into work--when on earth are you supposed to find the time to memorize this...this...textbook?
If you've thought this, or something similar, then I have some good news. The answer to your question is, "You aren't." While that three-hundred page tome may look impenetrable and dense, you will only need to know a bare fraction of the information contained in order to actually begin playing. All you need to start with are the bare essentials, and the book walks you through those step by step. The trick isn't to memorize the whole thing in preparation for play, the trick is to focus on exactly what you will need to know when it comes to your specific character. You can absorb literally everything else via osmosis through the course of gameplay by watching how other players handle their characters and with the help of the DM who can explain new rules and terms as they come up during the course of a game.
Confused? I'll try and make this simple.
Something got you interested in trying the game in the first place, right? Maybe your friend wouldn't shut up about Critical Role, so you watched the first couple of episodes and saw how much fun everybody was having and you'd like to try it yourself. Maybe your partner goes to game night and tries to explain what they do, or invited you to come along and it wound up being a lot more interesting than you thought. Maybe you read The Lord of the Rings, or saw the films, or watch Game of Thrones and wondered what your life in Westros or Middle Earth would have been like. Maybe you really connected with Gimli's gruffness, or Aragorn's heroism, or Drogo's barbarism. You fantasized about being an elf: tall, beautiful, dignified; or a soldier stationed at The Wall guarding against intrusion from the North; or a woman who can walk through fire and train dragons. RPGs let you live out that fantasy in a setting shared with other like-minded people, all captivated by different things and ideals.
If you want to live the life of a Barbarian, living off the land and leading those under your command into battle for honor and glory; if you want to be an archer, dropping goblins by the dozens as they swarm the walls; if you want to make the earth (and whole armies) tremble before your arcane might; if you want to channel the power to heal another via sheer force of will and divine assistance...D&D is written to allow you to evolve a personality, a character, who can do just that. Find your desire, find your focus, and worry about nothing else. If you want to play a rogue who skulks through shadows, scales sheer cliff faces, and makes off with priceless treasures without the alarm being raised, then look through the different races to see what they offer, focus on the Rogue character class and the rules for creating one, and don't bother with anything else. First-level Rogues don't cast spells, so you can safely ignore the nearly 100 pages devoted to magic. You won't be playing a Monk, a Paladin, a Wizard, or any other class--pretend like they don't exist. In fact, you're only going to be a first-level character to begin with, so you don't even need to worry about anything more than the bare basics of your class! Don't weigh yourself down with information about the skills and powers you earn at tenth level--you're thousands and thousands of experience points away from that! Don't bother memorizing the equipment list, just familiarize yourself with the gear you get at the start! The charts and tables and listings are in the book so they can be referred to, not memorized. Get yourself some little Post-It notes or sticky flags, mark the pages pertaining to the stuff you'll need to know to play your first-level character, and pretend the rest don't exist.
I'm not joking when I say you can start playing D&D on as little as two or three pages out of that 320-page tome. You'll refer to many, many more of them, especially during character creation or when you're reading to decide what speaks to you, but as far as actual knowledge it will be advantageous to memorize, 2-3 pages is it, even if you've selected a profession that involves spellcasting. You don't need to know all the rules, just which ones pertain to the specific race and class you're playing. Best of all, you'll note everything down on your character sheet and have a personalized piece of paper pertaining to just what you need to know! Everything else, from saving throws and initiative to critical hits and advantage/disadvantage, you can learn on the fly with the help of the DM and other players.
It really is that easy!
I'm hoping to make this an ongoing series, with new entries every couple of days. If you like this and want to see more, if there's a specific topic you'd like me to cover, or if I've made any mistakes, I invite you to chime in down in the comments section! Of course upvotes and resteems are great too, but I've noticed a fall-off in personal interaction in the last few weeks, and I'd like to see more. We all help one another grow, after all! Even if you aren't sure what to say, or your opinion is contrary to mine, let it out!
Then go visit @blewitt and harass him for a while. He may wind up selling you comics or giving away shares of Steem Basic Income or responding with a seemingly endless variety of GIF animations, but it'll all be worth it in the end.
For a new character I sometimes make myself a "personalized rulebook'. I put all the things that are important in it, information about the class, all the spells and feats etc. the char has and how they work. No more hundreds of pages but a nice little PDF - everything I need without the ballast :)
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I love this idea! Condense the info into small, bite-size segments, then add to it as your character grows. Brilliant! :)
My buddy Bill is a big D&D Guy. Keep trying to get him on here but he’s lazy. He’s a great writer as well so he would do great.
Nice write up brother. Was gonna just post gifs...lol
Yes! I think a lot of people are intimidated by the size of the books. I think the best thing for a newbie (in addition to the articles you're going to write) is to have another player along who can show you the ropes.
I'm hoping I've got a game starting soon that will include a first time DM (but experienced player), me as a player (I've played on and off for 25 years), and 4 new players. Hopefully we can keep it together. 😊
D&D is absolutely best learned in a group setting, with experienced players helping the novices to understand the ins and outs of things!
You should consider some kind of a campaign journal kept here on Steemit. Not only can it make you a bit of crypto, but it provides a nice, central repository you can link your players to that is essentially a permanent record of your exploits! DMs sometimes offer little bonuses to players who keep the notes of what happened in each session...and if they don't, you could always suggest such a thing. ;)
In my last campaign, I kept a journal and it really was useful for keeping track of events. And maybe people would be interested in reading it too.
I love it when players keep campaign notes. In fact, Matthew Coville in his "Running the Game" YouTube series from a couple of years ago suggests that instead of the DM recapping events from the previous session for the players, have one or more of the players recap events from the previous session for the DM...and if the players get something wrong, the DM should resist the urge to correct them at all costs.
This is phenomenal, because it lets the DM learn how he or she is doing with the campaign, whether the players are picking up on the important information, and even how they perceived the events. You as the DM might think you ran them really hard last time, but if your players think otherwise, you now know you can adjust difficulty up or down and they'll never know.
I usually offer a bonus incentive for whoever serves as record keeper for the session if I'm the DM. In previous editions, this normally amounted to a small XP award, or a circumstance bonus on the first saving throw or attack roll of the session. In 5E, I think I'd give a point of Inspiration, thus letting the player decide when and how to spend that bonus. The idea of someone averting death by trap, or landing a critical hit to a tough enemy because they were keeping good records feels nice to me. :)
Also, I'd say campaign journals/memories are great fodder for Steemit. We need to boost the power of the #gaming tag on here...it's been flagging with the drop in STEEM prices. :)
Know which die is the d20. Know where your info is on your character sheet. A good DM and playgroup will help you learn the rest as you immerse yourself in the story.
"Know which die is the d20."
You aren't kidding. I once, as a joke, played a trick on one of my players when we got together for a session on April 1st, by handing him a d20 that had only the numbers 1-10 printed on its faces twice. Poor guy went for an hour unable to hit a single thing in combat (we were playing 2nd Edition, so THAC0 was a thing) before I couldn't hold back my laughter any longer and revealed the prank.
Thankfully he took it well, but let that be a lesson to everyone out there: never borrow another gamer's dice. :)
Ay, yes, the old-school d10. But really, modern d20 systems are just a recalculation of THAC0 that removes most of the player's number crunching, are they not?