First game night tips.

[stormtrigger]

So tomorrow I'm having friends over to play Pathfinder for the first time. I plan to start with rotr. These are all my close friends but we've never done anything like this, normally our get togethers consist of video games or watching football and drinking. While some of them seem excited and honestly interested in the game there are one or two who I feel could be a detriment to the experience the others have.
So my question is what can I do to make their experience the best possible?

[GM_Beernorg]

Play to the strengths of the players, avoid rules beat downs, and for those who are more iffy on the game, make sure their characters get to shine, nothing alleviates reluctance or possible lack of interest like getting to be awesome.

[Eliandra Giltessan]

I recommend playing open-handed so everyone can see each other's cards and help each other. This helps a LOT with new players. I would pick their starting decks for them, or just go with the recommended decks. Consider starting with AD 1 so they can see their characters getting more powerful right away. It helps to explain every step you're doing and why, and give an overview of the game and how locations work, but explain what to do with different kinds of encounters as you experience them.

That is my sum of advice after teaching the game a number of times. Good luck!

[skizzerz]

Try not to be too overbearing on them; if they ask you for advice feel free to dispense it, but you should make sure that you aren't playing their turns for them.

[GM_Beernorg]

Sage advice from skizzerz. Help is good, overbearing kills games.

[ferris.valyn]

A few items

1) Have the first game basically ready to go (in terms of the location decks and the like). The game can take a little while to setup, particularly if you've never done it before

2) Try and have them pick out their characters before they come. You can have them download the character sheets, or provide descriptions (I had a lot of fun with that when we started - I referred to Seelah and Imrijak as the "female buddy cop team"), which will get them interested in who the can play

3) As a general rule, which is important to understand - some characters deck cycle, and some do not. That will change your play style dramatically. Everyone should get that. Usually it's spellcasters that deck cycle, and fighter that don't (although not always). Later on, deck cycling becomes much more prevelant in other characters.

4) If RotR is like S&S or WotR, on the back cover of the rules book is a quick turn description/easilyl forgetable rules. If you can print off a copy for each player, that is helpful for them to look at. If you can use the character sheets instead of the cards, that also is helpful.

5) If you have access to some sort of rotating table or turntable - use that to hold your locations. Then, you aren't getting up and moving around - makes gameplay much easier. If you dont' have one, don't worry about it. But if they like the game, and want to continue, you can find cheap ones witout too much difficulty.

[ferris.valyn]

One other item - dont' be afraid to embrace the roleplaying aspect, don't feel the need to go overboard either. A couple of examples

- We always read the adventure and scenario flavor texts before beginning
- Dice roles and cards always present opportunities. There is the time where you can only fail if you roll all ones, and then you do - the discussion becomes whether he was drunk, or distracted or what. Or when we had the card Barroom brawl come up, it becomes a discussion of who got drunk and started the fight.
- One of our players has embraced her character to the point that you need to call her by character name, or she might forget you are talking to her.

You don't have to do this all the time, by any stretch. But it can be a lot of fun, particularly when you've actually beat the villian, to imagine how you squashed him (and in great detail.... :D )

[cosined]

I'd say keep the drinking aspect from your other hang-outs. My group contains some (formerly) reluctant players and having a laid back friendly environment got a pair of people to go from "I'll sit with you guys while you play" to "I use my greatsword and bury a card for the additional 1d10."

Definitely try to avoid being overbearing. I have trouble with this since I play PACG 10x more often than any of my group does. This results in me seeing how people should proceed as obvious when they might take their time. Don't play anyone else's turn for them, and don't let other players do that to each other either. Just voice your possession of blessings or other aid boons and let things play out. You can always use a blessing on them anyways when they assemble their dice ;-).

I think the #1 thing I'd suggest is to involve everyone in the inter-scenario breakdown/setup. If everyone grabs a pile and sorts, then everyone shuffles the card types, then gives the right number of cards from that deck to the new locations; setup time is reduced to a few minutes. Idle hands are bored hands!

Read the room too. If the role playing aspect isn't grabbing anyone's attention just let t

[Hawkmoon269]

No matter where I play, or who I play with, I never tell another player how the rules work unless it is something majorly out of whack or they ask. I'm talking "I can just bury any weapon to defeat any villain, right?" kind of out of whack. If they are having fun, and I'm having fun, I don't care that they think Lini should get to recharge her animal allies at the Farm. If they ask, I'll explain why she can't. But if they don't, I won't. I'm there to play with people I enjoy being with, what is a great game. If I what I cared more about the game then the people, I'd play by myself. But I care about having fun with people.

Now, if they are making all kinds of mistakes and then say "This is the easiest game in the world" then I might say, "Well, I think we are getting some rules wrong that are making it too easy."

I will add, while learning the game, having some of the rules more readily available is really helpful. I've made these which include little "rules cards" that have the various sequences. I've found that giving them to new players to have handy is really helpful, as is the turn sequence chart.

Good luck, to your whole group, on tonight's adventure.

[stormtrigger]

Hey thought I'd let you all know your advice was great. We got together and played through the the first three scenarios. The first one was rocky and we only beat it on the very last blessing. After that invigorating and emotional win everyone was hooked. There was lots of fun moments. We all enjoyed a moderate amount of role playing and they were excited to meet up again. The best quote "I'm gonna come in your dungeon" was hilariously interpreted as a threat rather than the intended declaration of movement.
Thanks for everything!