Comments on: Introducing RPGs to New Players, Part 1

By: T Bone's Games Diner

T Bone's Games Diner — Sun, 20 May 2007 15:15:08 +0000

Good advice for GMs with new players

Ben Finney (author of GURPS Metric) has a great pair of posts at Treasure Tables on his successful session with some GURPS newbies. Check it out for a detailed look at the special prep he made to accommodate the new players (including a nifty “here’s…

By: Lisandro

Lisandro — Fri, 18 May 2007 09:24:52 +0000

Very interesting. I really would like to see this “One Page GURPS”. It seems to be very useful.

By: Introducing RPGs to New Players, Part 2 - Treasure Tables

Introducing RPGs to New Players, Part 2 - Treasure Tables — Sun, 13 May 2007 19:55:39 +0000

[...] This is Part 2 of a guest post by TT reader bignose (Ben Finney). In Part 1, Ben covered prep and what happened during the game; now it’s on to what he’d do differently, what worked well and the resources he used. Thanks, Ben! – - – - – Things I’d do differently next time I need to introduce GURPS and/or role-playing to a new group: [...]

By: bignose

bignose — Sun, 13 May 2007 07:14:15 +0000

The _One-Page GURPS_ handout was based on a previous work I found in a Livejournal entry. I massaged it some, made it into a PDF and printed a copy for each player to accompany their character sheet.

Text version:
http://bignose.whitetree.org/projects/gurps/one-page/one-page-gurps.txt

OpenOffice document:
http://bignose.whitetree.org/projects/gurps/one-page/one-page-gurps.odt

Resulting PDF (A4 page):
http://bignose.whitetree.org/projects/gurps/one-page/one-page-gurps.pdf

It’s hanging off the slow end of a home ADSL connection, so please persist if you can’t get it at first.

By: VV_GM

VV_GM — Sat, 12 May 2007 20:01:48 +0000

Ben – I like this approach a lot, and as Millsy already commented many of these steps can be applied to your regular game as well. Great stuff!

I wrote a wiki article for TT about a similar experience – Tips for Running a Horror One-shot for New Players. The reason I mention it here is because your article struck me as having some of the same or similar advice and I think it compliments your piece nicely.

When you have new players (i.e. – non-gamers) there are some things you can do to make their first game a lot more comfortable and easiser to enjoy. Make the characters for them and choose an easy to understand system. Focus on the tactics that help to immerse a person in the game. These and more add up quickly to create a great game.

By: Millsy

Millsy — Sat, 12 May 2007 16:12:15 +0000

This sounds like a pretty good grounding for game prep to run ANY game. Time permitting, your prep is what I’d like to do whenever I run games – I often don’t get time, though. I’m also interested that you chose GURPS – I ran GURPS a few months ago to a group of 2 kids and 1 adult (experienced roleplayer), none of whom had ever played GURPS, and found it a really straightforward system to run. It’s not easy to generate characters / vehicles / planets / anything else, but I found it really quick in gameplay – quicker than, say, d20. I’d be interested in your 1-page GURPS sheet, too, as that might be useful for a lot of GMs.