Introducing new players to RP


Gamer Life General Discussion


...and I want to give them the feeling I had when I started playing. Advice?


Kinda vague there on the request, especially since we have no idea what your experiences were, at all. If you want to give them a good time, and they know absolutely nothing about Role Playing, simply start with a correlation between Video Games, LotR, Stage Acting, an Epic Fantasy, and Medieval Europe. Give them the chance to realize what they want to play and start simple, use just the core rules, use all the tropes (start in a tavern, etc), so they become familiar with them (and they're tropes for a reason, they're good!) and maybe use a prebuilt world like Faerûn or Dragonlance, that they might be able to become more familiar with via literature and online sources.

Make sure they understand the way the game works, and that it's a lot different than MMOs and such that they've played in the past. Try and get them into the acting portion of their characters before they get into the mathematics of their characters, this will guarantee good role players and avoid roll players, And we all like that! =D

Get them fighting goblins and brigands, use pregenerated campaign modules if you want to make sure it's streamlined for your first time. Have them go dungeon delving, explore mountains and forests, jump them with cloakers and roapers so they know nothing is sacred and nothing should be just immediately trusted. A paranoid PC is a living PC!

Most of all, have fun. It's not gonna work without that!


I think the best advice I can give is this.

Make sure every character has a history.

They need to understand that their character did not just fall out of the sky, land in a tavern, and then begin adventuring. They had a childhood, a family, they made enemies. Anything that makes their character exist before they started playing it. Then all you have to do is bring that story thread back into play somehow. That long lost brother they thought was dead? Maybe he committed some heinous crime, and is on the run from the law. Maybe he comes knocking on your player's door, and needs a place to hideout. This sorta stuff forces your players to think about that character, not just as a series of numbers, but something that has its own narrative. Something that has an actual, lasting impact on the world around them.


Try to focus in the RP part of the game not the mechanics, if posibly only use the core books you do not want your players to get lost with innumerable options.


In addition to the other excelent advice given so fay I would suggest leading by example, showing a new player by how to role play could be more effective than explaining role play IMO.

Dark Archive

Any advice for saving a campaign? I am a player in a year-long Savage Tide campaign (currently 14th lvl) that is loosing steam. At 10th lvl we lost our 4E DM and one player so we converted the campaign over to Pathfinder and took on a new player (who is new to paper an pencil RPGs). The new DM is a crusty AD&D style DM who does not pander to players, is not fussed about killing characters, and tends to treat the bad guys as his own characters (everything 4E and our old DM were not about).

The change to PF has been a challenge for all of us since we are beginner PF players and novice RPG players now facing tough bits of a very challenging campaign. Also, our party did not convert well from 4E to PF for various reasons, i.e., no cleric / healer in the party, no correlating core character class, etc. Not to mention that the players haven't played together very long.

The more veteran players seem fed up with the harsh DM style and our new player seems to have lost interest. The veteran players would probably come around if the DM was more in tune with setting them up for success and making them feel more heroic. I am not so sure about the new player.

The new player doesn't seem to catch onto things like: learning the rules (including the abilities of his character), tactical combat, or playing along with the plot line of the campaign. I understand some of what the newbie is saying but also feel he should realize that he'll only get as much out of RPGs as he puts into them himself. After all this is not an MMO with code and a CPU running the game for his amusement. Although, we role play less than most groups and that is probably what attracted him to explore table top RPGs in the first place. Frankly, I have been surprised at how he has struggled to catch onto PF given his exposure to video / MMO fantasy gaming and fiction. If in the end he turnedout to dislike table top RPGs due to our poor introduction I would feel bad however.

Any advice welcome . . .


edmud wrote:

Any advice for saving a campaign? I am a player in a year-long Savage Tide campaign (currently 14th lvl) that is loosing steam. At 10th lvl we lost our 4E DM and one player so we converted the campaign over to Pathfinder and took on a new player (who is new to paper an pencil RPGs). The new DM is a crusty AD&D style DM who does not pander to players, is not fussed about killing characters, and tends to treat the bad guys as his own characters (everything 4E and our old DM were not about).

The change to PF has been a challenge for all of us since we are beginner PF players and novice RPG players now facing tough bits of a very challenging campaign. Also, our party did not convert well from 4E to PF for various reasons, i.e., no cleric / healer in the party, no correlating core character class, etc. Not to mention that the players haven't played together very long.

The more veteran players seem fed up with the harsh DM style and our new player seems to have lost interest. The veteran players would probably come around if the DM was more in tune with setting them up for success and making them feel more heroic. I am not so sure about the new player.

The new player doesn't seem to catch onto things like: learning the rules (including the abilities of his character), tactical combat, or playing along with the plot line of the campaign. I understand some of what the newbie is saying but also feel he should realize that he'll only get as much out of RPGs as he puts into them himself. After all this is not an MMO with code and a CPU running the game for his amusement. Although, we role play less than most groups and that is probably what attracted him to explore table top RPGs in the first place. Frankly, I have been surprised at how he has struggled to catch onto PF given his exposure to video / MMO fantasy gaming and fiction. If in the end he turnedout to dislike table top RPGs due to our poor introduction I would feel bad however.

Any advice welcome . . .

...

Perhaps this should've been its own thread? No offense, but this is a very different problem to what MEEA faces, and is a bit a derailing of the topic.


Akeaka wrote:
Kinda vague there on the request, especially since we have no idea what your experiences were, at all.

I started playing ad&d mostly in the Realms, Planescape, Dragon Lance in the early 90's with mostly older players who took RPing and their characters seriously. Characters were thought out, not power focused, and developed slowly. Moved to 3e with same group had similar experiances then moved/got out of the game, some years later(last year) got back into it and have had trouble finding a good group bla, bla. Now I'm moving to a new state where I have a group of 5 players all mature and cool people who have little to no XP with RPing and/or video games(a good thing in that they are fresh. My hope is to convey the awe of a good story. I'm running my world i've been working on the last year and it's solid.

Thanks i'm new to posting.


Shiftybob wrote:

I think the best advice I can give is this.

Make sure every character has a history.

I want to do this right from the start so I'm meeting with all players individualy to create characters and run them to where the party will meet. I plan to work in some RPing and an encounter that's tailored to the character. My hope is to really get them invested from the start.

From there I want to run through some really bacic stuff as Akeaka and Shifty have suggested.

What about slow XP progression? Too slow for new players?


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber
MEEA wrote:
Shiftybob wrote:

I think the best advice I can give is this.

Make sure every character has a history.
What about slow XP progression? Too slow for new players?

I don't think personal history is so important for decent immersion and rp fun. Sometimes quite on the contrary, if a player feels force to come up with some elaborate backstory you might achieve the opposite result. What I find much more important is to encourage you player to think of some basic questions to answer for his character. There was a CRPG once, I think Vampire:TM, that started with a couple of situational questions and generated your character according to your answers. Something like that, just the other way around :)

About XP progression: Of course it depends strongly on your players' tastes but I'd say go medium. The "ding" effect can be very motivational (just ask WoW players...) and medium progression still gives enough time between levels to learn how to handle the new abilities.


This may not be possible for you, but I would make sure to include an already experienced role player. They'll likely become party leader and be able to role play in those times when the other players might be too nervous to. By watching the experienced player role play, it might make them more comfortable with it, and the story can continue when they get stuck in a situation that they need to role play through.

I've had trouble looking for a group forever because the level of role play I enjoy is far beyond what a new player is comfortable with. Finally, I decided to invite my girlfriend to a game session to help with things. She had never played a tabletop game before but used to do free form role playing on internet forums in high school. She ended up being terrible with numbers and combat, but didn't hesitate to use ghost-sound to spread rumors through a high class tavern. Her role playing ability helped break the ice and now all of my players are into it, although they regret choosing charisma as a dump stat.

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