Teaching Newbies

[vonpenguin]

So after a considerable amount of schedules conflicts I'm finally starting a face to face game this Saturday. Of the four players three have never RPed before and the last hasn't since DnD in the 80s. I've given the three complete newbies a brief rundown of character creation and templetes which they seemed to understand and while none of them settled on a character I think they're leaning towards a Wizard, a Changling, and a Champion of god.

Does anyone have any advice on how to smooth over the process of teaching them and getting the characters and city made? Any player aids floating around the internet I can print out for them?

[Saedar]

There are a couple of things over at the DFRPG downloads page.

Additionally, you will probably need to spend a little bit of time assisting with anyone doing spellcasting. It has a few different levels of complexity with how Conviction/Discipline/Lore interact with different spellcasting aspects.

Explain maneuvers in some detail and then use them in play so your players can see how useful they are. But really, that is a good piece of advice, in general: teach by example. In the face-to-face game I played, people had trouble grasping some concepts until they saw them in play. Maybe try a demo session to show off some of the different things?

[Falar]

You could always run an intro session or two (or however long it takes you to complete the adventure to your satisfaction) of Neutral Grounds and then go on to the actual game. Especially with a handful of newbies, it could be quite the recommended path.

[crusher_bob]

If you plan to try to do the full city and character creation in one session with some people who are completely new to RPGs, I think that part I'd emphasize the most would be the shared story bits of character creation.  That way, people will be able to get some idea of how to interact with the world and the other characters via the medium of their character without having to worry about the minute to minute details of a 'live' session.

If everyone has read the books, be able to provide examples of how this would would with Harry, Murphy, and Tomas as PCs.  If people haven't read the books, then be thinking of some other media that you've all been exposed to that you can use to demonstrate the same idea.

Next, an explanation of how the rules are mostly interested in producing a 'story' rather than a world simulation.  For example, that's why it's possible for you to take a sprained ankle consequence from being shot with a gun.  Also, it's why certain 'knot cutting' solutions to things (like, for example, throwing the bad buy off the edge of the building) don't really work in the system.  Because having you throw the bad guy off the roof and kill him, round 1, is not that interesting.  So, for example, if you try to push the bad guy off the roof,but you don't do enough damage take him out, then he somehow avoids falling off the roof, but he make take consequences that reflect what lengths he had to goto to avoid falling off the roof.

[vonpenguin]

Hmm thanks. Crusher I like all your advice. some of it I planned to do anyway and some I didn't think of. Saedar and Falar. While sample sessions might be a good idea I kind of want to get the players attached to their characters asap and I feel that one shots wold be detrimental to that. but maybe I could throw a few examples at them useing the stories they come up with?

[Chris_Fougere]

What I tend to do with new players/new games/new systems is to explain as we go along.  Granted that doesn't help much during City/Character creation but I know my players jumped right into City Creation with only a few guiding questions from me.  Character creation meant I explained in brief what Aspects where and how the worked.

When it came time to actually play though, I just threw them in head first.  PCs, Cultists, possibly evil wizard, potential human sacrifice and some sort of tentacled monster from the deep recesses of the Nevernever all coming to a head in a small trailer park.  I describe the situation along with a brief mention of how Zones work.

As the PCs interact with the story I break the rules out as needed.  I start off with a simple "Make Alertness rolls" and explain how to make a basic roll using the Fate Dice and the Ladder.  As things get going, I respond to the PC actions with information on how to do it mechanically.  Yes, it means its sort of herky-jerky as a player says "I want to aim" and I explain the way maneauvers work and then another player says "I want to use Incite Emotion on the Cultist" and I explain how that works.  After the first play session though everyone has a pretty good idea of how things work and we've only needed to use the rules we needed.  I didn't have to explain Thaumaturgy because it didn't get used.  I only had to explain the Attack option of Evocation because its all that came up.  I didn't have to worry about explaining Sponsored Magic and debt except in the briefest of terms.  It all worked very well.