I met with my ex-girlfriend for some tea last night and tried to explain D&D to her. I've tried explaining it to my father recently. They both gave me friendly, supportive looks, nodding their heads as if I was telling them that aliens were teaching me the violin.
I suppose many people these days will have encountered video games and to explain roleplaying you could say it's like a game with no limits, but these people I'm talking about have no conception of video games either. (This is why I value the OSR community, you sort of know what I'm about)
I meet tomorrow with 3 players who don't know what a roleplaying game is. Because of that I've been trying to distill down only what I need to get them going, but without just throwing them in the game. I shared some of my thinking behind it here and my progress to that end here.
So, to be clear, this isn't me re-writing the rules because I'm dissatisfied with the writing or the organization in Swords & Wizardry book-- I actually think they are pretty well done. And I'm not trying to make a Quick Start-- Chgowiz has done great work on one already. Think of this as more like player handouts, things an experienced DM can pass out to inexperienced players to help while explaining the rules and especially move them through the process of character creation. If you can find uses for them other than that I would be thrilled, but that's the aim I have in mind.
So, here I have the explanation of the six abilities and how to roll them. I made some house rule tweaks in here that might make them less universally useful, but I added some text to the three "mental" stats that I think could have been helpful to have in the Core rules.
After that players will most likely want to see the classes. Here is the list of
I had to make some decisions about what to cut and what not (standing toe-to-toe with a dragon probably isn't the best image to put in a newbie's head). I wanted this on one page so I tried to keep what was essential about each class, what distinguishes the archetypes. For example, I don't think you need to know how many experience points it takes to get a cleric to 20th when you're first choosing a character, so the charts are right out. If you'ld like to use this handout, there is room for one more class of your choice on the page: thief, druid, or a dragon borne homewrecker, whatever suits your fancy. Also if you'd like the editable open office files just let me know.
What I like about these streamlined resources is that when they are trying to decide on their class a player may want to see the spells a wizard can cast or what weapons are available, BOOM-- you've got those on separate, single pages right there.
I decided not to put a NPC/Hireling generator on the backburner; I'm still digesting all the wonderful ones I've found on your blogs and trying to decide what I think is essential. I'm also thinking that maybe the best way for these newbies to realize the value of hirelings is to have a little taste of old school adventuring without them.
As for the adventure, I still don't have a map, arrrrgh. How's that for procrastinating? But I have the location in my mind and could probably run it from that if I had to. It is an abandoned convent. The convent has seen several waves of occupiers: the original Sisters of Penitence, humanoids, bandits, and now a nice big hill of giant ants. I'm going to put several hermit cottages on adjacent hillsides and multiple methods of ingress for the players to have to choose fromm. Oh, and also there's going to be a bantling in a well . . . buwhaahahaha!
Showing posts with label Start of Play. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Start of Play. Show all posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Streamlined Swords & Wizardry
Here is what I have so far towards streamlining the novice Swords & Wizardry experience. I offered these as Open Office files before, but realize now, people may find them more convenient as pdfs. So, here they are newly minted as pdfs and titled more specifically so you won't lose them in your many computer folders:
Telecanter's:
Update: I added an acknowledgement to the Streamlined Equipment list because it wasn't my great idea, I just edited it down and tried to simplify it for novices. So thanks to Thoth Amon from the Swords & Wizardry forums for the idea and to Lord Kilgore for bringing it to my attention.
Telecanter's:
- Streamlined Starting Equipment
- Streamlined Weapons List
- One Page Beginning Spell List-Magic-User
- One Page Beginning Spell List-Cleric
- So, what else do I need?I have been digesting ~five different NPC/Hireling generators and may need to finally boil that down.
- I still plan on producing a one page summary of the three primary character classes.
- Still trying to decide how much, if anything players need to know about my world (gods, governments, languages, etc.) in order to situate themselves for play.
- Introductory Dungeon, and I mean for novices-- a kind of preview version of the Dungeon Alphabet to give them some of that Old School Flavor!
Update: I added an acknowledgement to the Streamlined Equipment list because it wasn't my great idea, I just edited it down and tried to simplify it for novices. So thanks to Thoth Amon from the Swords & Wizardry forums for the idea and to Lord Kilgore for bringing it to my attention.
Introducing Novices To Swords & Wizardry
Game's Afoot! It looks like I've got all systems go for my first Swords & Wizardry Session next Tuesday! Three players so far: one, my 4e DM who has no experience of D&D before 3.x and, two others with no roleplaying experience whatsoever.
I've been trying to streamline the rules for a complete novice, especially adult novices, who I think will have much less time and need to have a good first impression to decide to devote their time to playing more in the future.
Today I re-read Ed Greenwood's Article "Keep Em Guessing" from Dragon #49. It's about this very subject, introducing complete novices to D&D. He suggests having the DM handling everything and just narrate what the results of die rolls are, even to the point of not letting the player see their stats.
I agree that this could work, but . . . I have some big reservations here. First, by introducing new characters to the game this way, you aren't really introducing them to the game, but shielding them from it. I think the reason I'm so nervous about DMing novices is that my last DMing experience, about 3 1/2 years ago involved novices and I handled it all wrong. One of the things I did was give the novices pre-rolled characters. This might be the first thing that comes to peoples' minds as a logical way to start newcomers: "Cut to the chase," "Jump right in to play." But what it did was put inert pieces of paper into their hands that they didn't really understand.
Novice players will understand better what is going on by rolling up their own characters. This is an introduction to a lot of subtle things about the game. First of all, that it is a game; we won't just be playing pretend, their are baselines and boundaries. Just seeing stats will, for example let you know you have limits on your strength and how many hits you can take in combat.
Even something as simple as rolling the dice can give a novice a preview of the unpleasant possibilities of dice outcomes "I rolled a 5 for intelligence!" I've read elsewhere that an important part of game design is letting players know their chances of success so they can make informed choices. It seems small, but getting a feel for the randomness of the dice may help them to understand that they won't be hitting every time they swing their sword and all the implications that follow from that.
I think character creation also gives players the first sense of the power they have to shape the game in ways they will enjoy. They have to start thinking about whether they would enjoy playing a sword swinging Saxon, or whether the idea of magic intrigues them. And with this, is the implication that there are more ways than one to approach the game, and that they will be able to try another approach later if they like.
Character creation can also be a subtle foreshadowing of the challenges that lie ahead in the fact that players have to decide: "Will I need missile weapons?," "Having torches, implies we might end up in darkness. . . right?" "What spells should I memorize?"
So I guess after all that, my conclusion isn't profound, it's just if you want to introduce players to a game, you need to introduce them to it. And Ed's article was more sophisticated than just hiding the game from newbies; he actually suggests slowly introducing them to the rules over many sessions and touches on some other issues. But for me, I think time spent creating characters is time well spent, at least with something as simple and clean as Swords & Wizardry.
That being said, I think there is wisdom in streamlining the novice experience. That's the reason for my work at boiling down equipment and weapon lists in previous posts. Along those lines I think I will avoid demihumans for now. I'd like the players to get a sense of what humans can do first and I envision demihumans uncommon in my campaign world anyway. I'm thinking for the same reason to leave my Choose Your-Own rogues out of the mix for now. But we'll see.
I've been trying to streamline the rules for a complete novice, especially adult novices, who I think will have much less time and need to have a good first impression to decide to devote their time to playing more in the future.
Today I re-read Ed Greenwood's Article "Keep Em Guessing" from Dragon #49. It's about this very subject, introducing complete novices to D&D. He suggests having the DM handling everything and just narrate what the results of die rolls are, even to the point of not letting the player see their stats.
I agree that this could work, but . . . I have some big reservations here. First, by introducing new characters to the game this way, you aren't really introducing them to the game, but shielding them from it. I think the reason I'm so nervous about DMing novices is that my last DMing experience, about 3 1/2 years ago involved novices and I handled it all wrong. One of the things I did was give the novices pre-rolled characters. This might be the first thing that comes to peoples' minds as a logical way to start newcomers: "Cut to the chase," "Jump right in to play." But what it did was put inert pieces of paper into their hands that they didn't really understand.
Novice players will understand better what is going on by rolling up their own characters. This is an introduction to a lot of subtle things about the game. First of all, that it is a game; we won't just be playing pretend, their are baselines and boundaries. Just seeing stats will, for example let you know you have limits on your strength and how many hits you can take in combat.
Even something as simple as rolling the dice can give a novice a preview of the unpleasant possibilities of dice outcomes "I rolled a 5 for intelligence!" I've read elsewhere that an important part of game design is letting players know their chances of success so they can make informed choices. It seems small, but getting a feel for the randomness of the dice may help them to understand that they won't be hitting every time they swing their sword and all the implications that follow from that.
I think character creation also gives players the first sense of the power they have to shape the game in ways they will enjoy. They have to start thinking about whether they would enjoy playing a sword swinging Saxon, or whether the idea of magic intrigues them. And with this, is the implication that there are more ways than one to approach the game, and that they will be able to try another approach later if they like.
Character creation can also be a subtle foreshadowing of the challenges that lie ahead in the fact that players have to decide: "Will I need missile weapons?," "Having torches, implies we might end up in darkness. . . right?" "What spells should I memorize?"
So I guess after all that, my conclusion isn't profound, it's just if you want to introduce players to a game, you need to introduce them to it. And Ed's article was more sophisticated than just hiding the game from newbies; he actually suggests slowly introducing them to the rules over many sessions and touches on some other issues. But for me, I think time spent creating characters is time well spent, at least with something as simple and clean as Swords & Wizardry.
That being said, I think there is wisdom in streamlining the novice experience. That's the reason for my work at boiling down equipment and weapon lists in previous posts. Along those lines I think I will avoid demihumans for now. I'd like the players to get a sense of what humans can do first and I envision demihumans uncommon in my campaign world anyway. I'm thinking for the same reason to leave my Choose Your-Own rogues out of the mix for now. But we'll see.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Start of Play
I have been working on recruiting players for a campaign. Several of these have no experience with roleplaying whatever. When I asked one if he'd ever played roleplaying games he said "You mean like "Settlers of Catan?"
Because of this, and probably because I'm nervous and obsessing the details to try to compensate, I have been putting much effort into what I'll actually show new players when we start. (On writing this, it seems very teacherly-- preparing for class-- which I suppose is fitting, since I've done that and super prepare because I'm nervous).
I've mentioned before how I worked on a streamlined equipment list you can get here. But even that seemed more than a beginner needs to know, and could be streamlined. So, the result of my post on starting equipment is this much slimmer document.
This assumes players will pack up and head out and already takes into account encumbrance. What I realized was there is still the choice of weapons for my players. So I looked at the weapon list in Swords & Wizardry core. As clean as it is, I don't like the way weapons are listed. Why are arrows always listed separately? You can only use them with a bow. Also, no need to list lance, as my starting characters will be heading underground.
Another thing I was doing by looking closely over the list, was getting a feel for the parts of this sweet vehicle. More and more with Swords & Wizardry it feels like the briefness of some rule sections and the open invitation to customize has lead me to take it apart and put it back together exactly how I like. This seems different than just pasting on a homebrew bandage, this is like a review and revision and I really like it. The system is sparse enough where it is still possible!
So, for example, I notice the weapon, warhammer. Why would anyone pick this weapon? It does the same damage as a light mace, but is heavier. Why would I ever pick it over a light mace? I think there must be a rule of game design that says if the only way something will be used in your system is if players roleplay a disadvantage to their characters, you need to go back to the drawing board.
So, I cut warhammer and added flail, which I think can be distinguished by an ability to ignore an opponent's shield. I think it adds some period flavor, with a reason to use it without being to crunchy.
I also rearranged the listing of the weapons more by family. Except the top are all blunts. If the player asks which are blunts it's very easy to say: "The first four."
I like what I ended up with, but, backing up I realized that after rolling stats there is a decision of what class to take. For me that decision would be partially determined by the differences between the classes. And if you told me "These guys can cast spells", I'd be thinking "what kind?" So, I fit first level Magic-user spells on one page. I think the only difference here from core is I left out read magic, which I don't plan to use (reading and understanding a spell are two different things. In my campaign anyone can learn to read the arcane languages spells are written in, and even get the gist of what they do, but that doesn't mean they can cast them).
I've included second level spells on both, so a player will have an idea of what this class can do, but for Clerics I'm also planning to allow first level characters a small chance to successfully petition for higher level spells. Thus the need to really let them see the second level spells.
I hope to gather these documents into a pdf to ease players into Swords & Wizardry. So far I have:
What else will I need?
Update 6/20/09: I added a missing link to my streamlined weapons list mentioned in the text.
Because of this, and probably because I'm nervous and obsessing the details to try to compensate, I have been putting much effort into what I'll actually show new players when we start. (On writing this, it seems very teacherly-- preparing for class-- which I suppose is fitting, since I've done that and super prepare because I'm nervous).
I've mentioned before how I worked on a streamlined equipment list you can get here. But even that seemed more than a beginner needs to know, and could be streamlined. So, the result of my post on starting equipment is this much slimmer document.
This assumes players will pack up and head out and already takes into account encumbrance. What I realized was there is still the choice of weapons for my players. So I looked at the weapon list in Swords & Wizardry core. As clean as it is, I don't like the way weapons are listed. Why are arrows always listed separately? You can only use them with a bow. Also, no need to list lance, as my starting characters will be heading underground.
Another thing I was doing by looking closely over the list, was getting a feel for the parts of this sweet vehicle. More and more with Swords & Wizardry it feels like the briefness of some rule sections and the open invitation to customize has lead me to take it apart and put it back together exactly how I like. This seems different than just pasting on a homebrew bandage, this is like a review and revision and I really like it. The system is sparse enough where it is still possible!
So, for example, I notice the weapon, warhammer. Why would anyone pick this weapon? It does the same damage as a light mace, but is heavier. Why would I ever pick it over a light mace? I think there must be a rule of game design that says if the only way something will be used in your system is if players roleplay a disadvantage to their characters, you need to go back to the drawing board.
So, I cut warhammer and added flail, which I think can be distinguished by an ability to ignore an opponent's shield. I think it adds some period flavor, with a reason to use it without being to crunchy.
I also rearranged the listing of the weapons more by family. Except the top are all blunts. If the player asks which are blunts it's very easy to say: "The first four."
I like what I ended up with, but, backing up I realized that after rolling stats there is a decision of what class to take. For me that decision would be partially determined by the differences between the classes. And if you told me "These guys can cast spells", I'd be thinking "what kind?" So, I fit first level Magic-user spells on one page. I think the only difference here from core is I left out read magic, which I don't plan to use (reading and understanding a spell are two different things. In my campaign anyone can learn to read the arcane languages spells are written in, and even get the gist of what they do, but that doesn't mean they can cast them).
I've included second level spells on both, so a player will have an idea of what this class can do, but for Clerics I'm also planning to allow first level characters a small chance to successfully petition for higher level spells. Thus the need to really let them see the second level spells.
I hope to gather these documents into a pdf to ease players into Swords & Wizardry. So far I have:
What else will I need?
- I'm still deciding on thieves, if I'll have them, and if so, what form they'll take.
- I'm trying to decide how much, if any, I need to say about my campaign world. Maybe just a paragraph to set the flavor.
- I'm thinking of excerpting the class explanation from Swords & Wizardry (cut the charts).
- Maybe a brief note on mapping (keep it simple, like a flow chart)
Update 6/20/09: I added a missing link to my streamlined weapons list mentioned in the text.
Friday, June 12, 2009
House Rules - Starting Equipment
Since getting Swords & Wizardy I've been trying to recruit a few friends with no roleplaying experience. Because of this I've been thinking very carefully about how to streamline the process of playing, how to simplify.
After deciding on an encumbrance system, I wanted a streamlined equipment list. I read through many forums and looked at all the various equipment lists in game books I have. I've mentioned before how important I think the equipment list is. I wanted to capture that flavor I remember as a kid, the mystery and real world detail (this isn't a board game!) of all the items in the list. But I didn't want to overwhelm my friends who will also have to maneuver the new concepts of character class, weapons, and possibly spells. I decided to limit the equipment list to one page. I started with the list from Swords & Wizardry, revised from there, and added encumbrance information. That list can be found here as an open office file in case you want to do anything with it.
Vedron has a nice summary of real world detail on torches, lamp oil, rations, and rope I found useful.
But, even while making that list I was getting the feeling it was still too much. I needed something simpler. I saw several implementations of "Fast Packs" but I don't even like the term, it sounds like something designed for tournaments, and those that offered 2 or 3 numbered options remind me too much of ordering at McDonalds. Where is that old mystique I valued?
One solution that seems to offer the simplicity of the fast pack with some of the flavor and detail I value I found on Lord Kilgore's blog here. In a nutshell, his solution is all players start with standard equipment and then choose a few more items from a small list.
Below, I tweak Lord Kilgore's list to my taste. This allows me to choose a small core of equipment any sane adventurer would want, tally the encumbrance, and make a small list for my beginning players to choose from that captures some of that old time dungeoneering flavor.
- Backpack
- Bedroll
- Tinderbox (with flint & steel)
- Rations, Dried (1 week)
- Waterskin
- 3 torches
- Leather Armor
- Dagger or Hatchet
- Weapon of choice
- 2d6 gold pieces
Choose four:
- 50' Rope
- Grapnel
- 5 Iron Spikes & a Small Hammer
- 10' pole
- Upgrade from Torches to Lantern & 3 pints of oil
- Second Weapon
- Shield
I didn't list thieves' tools, holy symbols or spell books, because the classes that use them are kind of pointless without those things. If you feel this is unfair to the fighter you could grant them a shield as one of the core items.
Beyond the Black Gate gives an NPC and backstory for the selling of equipment packs, but again, it isn't quite to my taste. It reminds me of hearing about the early megadungeon with a turnstile installed, makes the dungeon more mundane if so many people are going there it merits selling standardized packs to them.
But the idea of backstory is great. And the idea of how valuable this gear is, is a factor that should probably be dealt with. I think my solution to both will be to have these on loan from a patron. I'm thinking a patron might be important in getting these beginners even headed into the sand box. After they realize what they are capable of and what their options are, the patron can ask for reimbursement for his gear and slip away, leaving them to decide if they want to go back into the dungeon or not.
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