Plans For Onboarding New Players
Designing at the experience of a new player sitting down for the first time...
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Introduction
Two personal projects I keep coming back to right now are designing a big crazy two-table, 20-person one-shot, and a regular introductory campaign for my kids. You wouldn't think there's a lot of overlap in these two scenarios, but as I've been preparing for both of these instances to occur this year, I've been seeing similarities in around both of these very different situations. The angle of approach I think works best in all cases, is to cater to the experience of the new player sitting down at the table for the first time.
The Thing
I don't usually make a big deal of my birthday, but this year I am turning forty and one of the things that feel largely missing in modern society are rituals around milestone markers. My wife was nice enough to ask me what ridiculous thing I'd like to do and I have for a long time pined after "D&D in a castle". While that would be super cool, in addition to being rather expensive, it would be difficult to get most of the people I would want involved in an experience like that. We’ve all got jobs and kids and I’m pretty sure you have to go to Europe to get into a real castle. Instead, we looked around for a big rental property where we could host our own thing and we made plans to fill a weekend that I am stoked about. One really cool aspect of this weekend is getting many friends from across the country in the same room playing a TTRPG together.
I tend to start my thought process at the rules and how I can teach them to the newest players, as I've run large games now (10+ players) multiple times and I feel I have a grip on what promotes a good time and what is fluff that will never see the light of day.
I want that OSR vibe of the players inhabiting the characters and focusing on the story and inhabiting the characters over the mechanical tidbits. It has the added benefit of being much easier to prepare for. As you will doubtless already know, dear reader, my tabletop roleplay game of choice is Shadowdark so I'll be using that as the basis of what we'll be playing that night. If you are someone that enjoys 5E, and you want to run game for a large group, just try Shadowdark - you'll have a better time.
There will be people invited to play in this game that have never played any TTRPGs mixed in with people I've played multi-year campaigns with, and there’s a wrinkle of having two 10 person tables with two different GMs exploring two different dungeons while physically in the same space. Thus, I'll be stripping the ruleset down to minimalism and mixing in some OD&D concepts like using X in 6 probability concepts to bridge any gaps in world simulation.
The idea here is to get players both new and veteran at the same table focused on what I think is the most fun parts of these games - playing to see what happens and improvising characters in a fantastical setting - then having the two threads end in a culminating large group effort to determine either the world is saved by the intrepid adventurers or everything is ruined.
Thinking about what I want to do for the ruleset for this big game has overlap with my thinking for preparing the game for my younger kids to introduce them to the wonderful world of fantasy role playing. In many ways the criteria for preparation is the same. We need an easily digestible and minimalist ruleset that can act as the backbone of the game while keeping the focus on players getting into the story. So what does one truly need to get the minimum viable TTRPG experience? How do we maximize the chances they will take take this on and have a great time doing it?
What We’ll Do
Firstly, dice! I love the modern standard polyhedral dice. Shadowdark uses all of them, but not in large quantities, meaning if each player has a single set - we can get through a one-shot without issue. Part of my planning for both the big game and the kids game is to provide each player with the materials they need to play sitting at the table before they sit down.
Next, rules of the resolution system. For whatever reason, I am partial to roll-over D20. I guess I got it stuck into my grey matter that the natural 20 just feels good to see. This induces the need for modifiers, which was one of the hurdles I remember for myself when I first started playing these games, but I am confident I can explain it simply enough to make it work for anyone. Keeping the modifier to a single small number and not having to deal with the modern traditional "proficiency" modifier should go a long way in keeping that from being a barrier to understanding. (no skill system.) One of the many reasons I love Shadowdark is it uses the modern system with low modifier numbers - we're talking +-4 to +4 and DC 18 max. I know there are plenty of games with just D6s that would simplify further to allow the dice to not even be a small blip, but in my presentation to the new players I'm looking to give them that little weird excitement of using a polyhedral die set in a full tabletop game for the first time.
So how can we take a game that really isn't bad to learn if you've played other TTRPGs before and get it in front of people who've NEVER played TTRPGs before? My favorite tool is simple rules reference guides that maximize information transfer in simple language and symbols. Now, most games will suggest to give a player pre-made character sheets. Shadowdark has a good A5 sized player character sheet AND finding or creating pre-made characters is not a problem …BUT I think if you can create someone's character with them - without making them feel like everything is just too much - the investment pays off large dividends in the player's interest in that character.
On more than one occasion, I've fully fleshed out every 5E character being brought to a table of 12+ players so they didn't have to think about anything other than an archetype and I would provide them the character sheets and what they needed. There were people that love this, but there's also people that this work doesn't do anything for. In other instances, I've had an entire table of people make characters on the spot before a 2-3 hour game and everyone seems to at least like character on the sheet In front of them. Either way, it’s miserable for GM prep to focus on the player characters rather than making an awesome playground for them. I also think the process of character creation may have some overhead at first, but if you can streamline it and make it transparent and put interesting decisions in front of a player immediately, it's worth the overhead for the player any time they're making a character for ever after.
For my situation, this is great for teaching the kids how to make characters, and for the big adult game - I plan to make character generation as fast as possible and make it so if their character dies they just hop back in - the only thing keeping them from getting back in is how long it takes them to generate a new character (Or they can at that time grab a pre-gen character). In any case, I think pre-gens tend to keep some arms length between the player's heart and the character.
Choosing to walk through generating characters, and session zero style expectations, preluding a one-shot provides an interesting design dilemma. How do we transmit this information to all the players with as little overhead as possible AND avoid just reprinting rulebook materials en-masse? (Which I've also done before). My thought to answer this question is player "Character Portfolios" - basically small printed 8.5 x 11 stapled booklets that consists of:
2-page spread for everything related to character generation
2-page spread character sheet (times four?)
2-page spread of vital rules reference (and tenets of good play)
Back page reference for absolutely new players (What's a D4? What's CON?)
The Shadowdark character sheet lends itself well to a 2 page spread across an 8.5x11. So having a booklet with a number of those is no problem. I plan to lay everything out in Affinity Publisher, and give it some adornments to make it my own. I am confident I can boil character generation down far enough to still be creating a Shadowdark character with pen and paper without stripping off necessary basic elements.
I think the trick is writing out a procedure that will be simple for anyone to consume and execute.
The character portfolio idea works in both situations here. I'll just modify them for the two game styles and obviously the one for the kids well be the absolute minimum of information included because theoretically they'll be playing a campaign and won't need the character generation information outside the first session.
Want the Character Folio for yourself?
Once I make a final version of the character portfolio, I plan to release it here for you wonderful subscribers to enjoy - without any copywritten material of course - just whatever is of my own making within a format that prints easily on the 8.5x11 to make the booklet
So to bring it back, the focus of all of this is to give the player an exciting moment when they sit down at the table they will have waiting for them:
A set of polyhedral dice
A 3d printed 1inch x 1inch player token painted to match the dice (stackable, my own little design)
Writing utensil
Character portfolio booklet (rules refence / character sheets / good play tenets / lore reference)
The small 1 inch piece to represent the player on a dry erase dungeon exploration map is an easily overlooked necessity. I've used some tokens that were the size and shape of poker chips but they are bigger than the typical one inch. They stack satisfyingly until someone bumps the table, so the tokens I've design to be 3d printed are meant to stack. I haven't used them in practice yet so we'll get to see how the theory pans out. When I put together a post with a printable version of the character portfolio, I'll also provide the STL (it’s just an octogon, don’t be impressed) for these tokens for any intrepid multi-hobby personalities such as myself.
A large piece of the puzzle that is still bouncing around in my head is the story and dungeons needed for the big game. Since I am using JP Coovert's Dragontown for the kids game, I don't need to come up with much for arguably the first couple sessions of that game, but the big game will be a custom story I pull out of my ass, which I do so enjoy coming up with.
My loose idea so far is there's a war on and the two groups of adventurers must retrieve important items from two different locations at the same time to prevent absolute destruction of their home turf. I'll likely have the room of players pick red or black cards from a fanned out pile of standard playing cards and use the color selected to break them into two tables. Everyone will be involved in the introduction, then each table goes to a different location in search of their important item. Each table will go delving into their respective locations and assuming they bring back their important item, we have a conclusion scene that is a big finale battle with both tables together. Will it work? I think it can and I am excited to try it out. It's not often you can get a room full of people in the same place at the same time ready to play a TTRPG for a couple hours. The coolest thing would be if it's memorable to the players and we get some converts that want to see more.
Conclusion
Overall I’m very stoked for both of these situations and I feel lucky to be able to make them happen. I plan to fill you in on how it goes and use these instances as excuse to generate more content to put out into the world.
Till next time!
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