Introducing TOR to New Players

[jamesrbrown]

I was very excited last night to introduce The One Ring to one of my daughter's friends. Like many teenagers, his only experience with roleplaying games has been in video-game format. He said that he had always been curious what it would be like to play using dice and a character sheet.

Well, I am happy to report that he rather enjoyed it! Building a character (an Elf of Mirkwood of noble blood carrying a Woodland Bow) was fun and he thought the game mechanics were clever. I am looking forward to the next time he comes over so that we can play a full adventure.

Has anyone else introduced the game to someone new lately?

[Rich H]

Unfortunately not. My gaming group are all late 30s to mid-40 somethings. Its great in one way because we have so much experience of RPGing and have played together for so long but we do miss out on the excitement of new players joining the group. I'm always very jealous (in a good way, if that's possible) of someone just getting into RPing. I remember when I first started; to call it a magical experience full of excitement is no exaggeration, so knowing what a buzz that is makes me yearn to experience that again!

[Hermes Serpent]

I've started running a TOR game at our local RP group meeting. I have one experienced player (he's in my outside the club game), one player who was in the play test group and four newbies to the system. The ages range from late teens to 50'ish in the group. The people who are new to the game are all experienced RP'ers but this is their first exposure to TOR.

I went with Blood in the Water as a starter adventure as I'd already used Marsh Bell in my home group and wanted try something else. It went very well and the players soon grasped the essential parts of the system. They are ramping up on the gaining of AP's, though that was a little odd to them at first. A light bulb came on in the second combat concerning what stances actually represented. The interaction with the worthies in Dale at the end of the adventure was well received and played out well. I think that it runs better than Marsh Bell as an introductory adventure but I might beef it up a bit in the combat area as a company of six heroes rather breezed through the adversaries.

They are looking forward to next week and their first Fellowship Phase plus the chance to get on the trail of the half-orc and investigate Mirkwood and, in the case of the dwarves, see if the Mountains of Mirkwood are suitable for mining Bwahahahahahaha!!!!

[Ecorce]

I have two players who didn't know at all what a RPG is. They've played video games very few.
They only needed one game (half of the adventure) to understand and familiarize with general rules.

But... they also pointed out rules that seemed wrong to them, like the fact that they had to wait for the end of the adventure to increase their skills. (which is not a bad suggest, according to me)

Since we don't play a lot, I have to remember them again sometimes the general rules, but they remember easily then.

[Hermes Serpent]

The increase of skills at the end of an adventure is, of course, nothing different to most RPG's and I'd tell those unfamiliar with the concept that it represents training in a relaxed environment, possibly getting help from a teacher or expert in the field to show them the right/better way of doing things.

Getting AP's is all about using skills to see what works and then in the comfort of a safe place reviewing what worked and what didn't to increase your skills.

If you wanted to allow the increase of skills on the road as it were then they'd probably should be restricted to only increasing those skills that they've used i.e. keeping track of skill use and then applying the increase accordingly. Somewhat like the skills increases in BRP based games like Call of Cthulhu where boxes are checked and only those skills can be increased. That however would give little incentive to increase skills from zero and apply every increase only to those usable skills.