The Blog of Harald

“WISH 59: Games for Non-Gamers”:http://www.whiterose.org/pam/archives/004018.html asks the question:

bq. Name three games you might use to get someone who has never roleplayed before into roleplaying.

My experience with dragging non players into games so far has been consistent. It doesn’t matter what game system you use; what matters is insulating the new player from all of the complicated stuff. We have always done this by having the GM manage all of the game mechanics for the new player, giving the person only a high-level description of the character. The player describes to the GM what they _want_ to accomplish, and the GM handles the details of die rolls, spell casting, etc.

It has worked very well for us in the past. It is a lot of extra work for the GM, but it makes the player’s early exposure to roleplaying fun and positive. As they come back for more, you can then introduce more game mechanics.

Since we’re supposed to mention games, I’ll say that we’ve done this in the past with original Traveller, AD&D, and 2300AD. What makes this work is having an imaginative player and a creative GM, not the specific rules or genre of the game.