How to Get Into Tabletop RPGs! 

The best advice I got out of this video is the highlighted line. Make your NPC's at the level of Wrestlers. I think this is the best advice I've ever received.

Even better doing it without naming it too.

@@austinbekken7315 For sure. Matt seems like a good guy with an obvious passion for gaming, so I always felt sad his name is attached to something with such negative connotations.

I have described it as “Actual Play is about as real as professional wrestling” and I love Pro Wrestling.

This comment is 100% correct.

Wow, that's actually super good

* writing down *

Best advice to follow Quinn's advice

"The dragon will stay curled up on its pile of gold, presumably until the end of time, and the other monsters will just hang out in the dungeon, picking their noses or playing cards." Is that it, or is there more to it than that?

@@blandalbloot1138 I've not played M0tW, but it might be more like "If the players fail to investigate and stop the Beast of Blarg, it will foray deeper into town each night, eating Farmer Mose on his farm on the outskirts on Wednesday, killing the entire Jones family on Maple street on Thursday, and nearly killing Stinky Pete the vagabond currently residing on Main street. If the players fail to stop the beast before Saturday evening, the beast will open the portal under the main street library, unleashing the horde on the unsuspecting townsfolk of Townsburg"

That's a good thought in general, but I've definitely had GMs use the "It's your world, so it's whatever you make of it" as a way to excuse their own lack of creativity. It's great to have players be involved like that, but you still should be prepared with a fallback if they're not able to contribute.

Brilliant.

This is built into most Powered by the Apocalypse RPGs. They're designed with collaborative worldbuilding in mind and frequently advise the GM to do as little prep as possible. :)

"Oh, well, we have an elf in our party. Why don't we ask her about her culture, and what her people like to eat?" The girl playing the elf, currently chowing down on a pack of gummy worms irl: "Worms!"

​@@micahnightwolfhell ya worms!

The difficulty is if one of the players is a rules lawyer. They can bring the entire game down if they're always arguing with the GM.

That is genius

Great introduction!

That’s a great way to explain it! I’m so using that for my group. Thanks!

@@jamesthelimey1738 Do it! No problem!

Fantastic description 👌🏻

You are there to play a game, not to tell a story. The "story" is what happens AFTER you are finished playing (it is the recounting of the deeds that happened during the game at the table).

It's why Monster Manuals are the best. All the spreadsheets you could ever want combined with reams of Bible nonsense.

It cracked me up too! Probably the most accurate description of a RPG rule book ever uttered!!!

My favorite system is Mythras and the print is hilariously small to save on ink and paper. Love the game but damn.

Can’t wait to watch tabletop RPG rules, GM tips and tricks on Watch It Played. 🤩

I can actually hear Rodney Smith's voice when I read this. Guess I might watched a TON of his videos.

Just reporting back to say: I did it! Last month I ran two separate RPG sessions, and they were great learning experiences (and fun!)

@@WatchItPlayed out of curiosity; what game did you manage to get to the table?

@@christopherwintersvahn6087 Critical Foundation and Labyrinth

Absolutely on “public” secrets. There’s no wrong way to play, if you’re having fun-but with the exception of a few games where keeping secrets from the other players is a core part of the gameplay, if you’re not sharing your secrets, you’re doing it wrong. 😉 I kinda feel like keeping your character’s secrets from the other players is kinda the player version of adversarial play, because it’s treating the other players as your competition or your enemies, rather than as your collaborators. If somebody ruins your fun when they know your secrets, the problem isn’t them knowing your secrets, the problem is them. Maybe they’re a jerk. Maybe they misunderstood what you wanted and thought they were helping. Maybe they didn’t understand that this was a secret that their character didn’t know. (Ok, this last one could be you-make sure you’re really clear that what you’re sharing is something the other characters don’t know.) You can have so much more fun if the other players can play into your secrets, rather than you having to try to work them into the story while nobody else knows what you’re doing, so they can’t help except by accident.

And a secret that _never_ gets revealed isn’t really doing anything for the bigger story. Imagine a novel where the main character has a secret, but it never comes up in the story. What’s the point? And imagine the difference between knowing from the start that they have a secret, but only find out the details much later, vs a secret just being dropped with no foreshadowing in chapter 17. Letting the other players (and the GM) In on the secret makes it possible for them to help you with that foreshadowing, so that it can be that much cooler when the secret finally comes into play and is revealed.

I totally agree with you. Those are m favorite videos also among the regular reviews. When I can get a feeling for what it is like to play that game - instead of just knowing the rules. In other videos this gets a bit lost between the wacky sketches and jokes. 😉

Or the Twilight Imperium Documentary. Well, even the Review of TI got me into their entire channel.

In addition to this I want to add how damn important Safety Tools are! I personally recommend Script Change by Beau Jágr Sheldon but others out there use tools like Lines & Veils, the Traffic Light system, & the X-Card. These are extremely helpful not only in getting everyone on the same page, but making sure everyone involved can openly express themselves without worry of making others uncomfortable or having their comfort suddenly yanked out from under them. Even when I have nobody add much of anything to the "Do not include this" list, we often all come away knowing what collective tone to aim for and have a better starting point for building characters together!

Agree. I had one friend complaining that the others players at a DnD game were ruining it, he was trying to play a silly critical role celebrity spot style game, and they were wanting a gritty lord of the rings drama fest. His character had 0 skills or roleplay aspects to support this. Session 0 saying this is a gritty LOTR style serious game would have changed his character and his mindset from the get go.

Yeah, this is great advice. Even today, my campaigns often start with my players treating one another like strangers. That's no good! Way more fun to start a campaign with some of the characters being exes or colleagues or siblings, at the least.

YES! SO MUCH YES!

God yes! I played a Cthulhu game without a session zero. I chose a female character and the GM neglected to inform me everyone I interacted with would have ‘era appropriate’ attitudes toward women. Meaning I had to work twice as hard to do anything. I REALLY wish there’d been a session zero. I deal with sexism enough in the real world I don’t want it in my made up world. I’d have chosen a male character or noped out of the game if I knew in advance.

And how was it???

@@dimazum It went well! I ran three one-player sessions to roll characters and introduce the players to the mechanics and themes of CoC. Then we came together and played a three player session of The Haunting with the same characters and had a great time!

@@sojou.RN. Good one! I have played RPGs in the past, mostly D&D, and now I'm about to be a GM for the first time, playing Mutants & Masterminds! Hope it plays out nice aswell :D

Same, Ive been on the wrong end of Bad GMing (total Railroading, where when I tried to talk to an NPC as my character, the GM ran the entire conversation by themselves), so I tried to make sure not to do that in my own attempts at doing it, but some of the things Quinns mentioned, while sage, also were hard for me to nail down what I wanted to do or how I wanted my games to go.

Paranoia is a tricky game for long-form campaigns but an absolute blast for one-shots and short adventures. Drive your character like you stole it, life is more fun when you push the red button, you're going to die a couple of times anyway, and that's on a good day.

This is excellent advice. I feel like a lot of people try D&D because it's the game everyone has heard about and go "Well crap, these games are full of numbers and charts and fighting, I'm out." which is a huge shame. So yeah. While I totally agree with the advice in the video that it's impossible to really guess what kind of game you want when you've never played ANY, I think after you've played one or two, you should be able to say "I'd like something where my character's personality matters more than their loot" or "I'd like something where position on the battlefield is more important" or "Could I get something with less math please?" or whathaveyou.

@@mpureka The #1 reason I find people give for not playing RPGs other than D&D is the perceived mechanical complexity of other systems. They seem surprised when they realise that D&D is one of the most complicated contemporary RPGs out there (obviously historically there were much crazier systems around in the 1980s or whatever) and if you can play D&D, you can sure as hell play Deadlands/Savage Worlds or a Modiphius game or Blades in the Dark or WEG Star Wars or almost anything else (maybe not Shadowrun, but almost).

Great advice. Paranoia is the greatest RPG experience I've ever had. It's perfect if your friends are assholes - it gives them a chance to shine.

Just experienced this as a new DM, and with new players. It made me realize why i love this hobby and how unique it is

I will forever remember the little oneshot Knave game I ran for four people, one of whom was a seasoned player, and the other three newbies. It was the end of the dungeon, the horrid creature controlling this vile place was in front of the characters, a man partially fused into a wall of fleshy growths, immobile yet magically powerful. One of the newbies looked at their character sheet and said "I got a bear trap. Can I just shove it into his face? He can't move, right?". For a moment I floundered, and then said "YES you do that and SNAP his head comes off!". They were converted right there and then.

M

@@JarLoz I love that.

Exactly! That one moment a new player realises that they can do anything. The look in their eyes when they realise what this potentially means. A joy to behold!!!

Great advice. It is such a wild revelation to some players when they learn their GM is just making shit up off the top of their head but it can equally be a terrifying reveal for a GM to admit they are just making stuff up in response to what the players are saying. Everybody is there to have fun and tell a cooperative story. When GM and players understand that everyone at the table is responsible for both of those things together, it is just the absolute best.

Really great point. Every time I've said to my players "You know what? Can you give me 5 minutes to figure this out?" or "What do we think is a fair ruling on this?" or even "What's weird about this pub, do you think?" it's immediately made the session better.

@@Quinns_Quest The thing I love most about FATE is that is encourages players to create truths about the setting. But you don't need FATE to do that. In a town the players keep visiting just ask each player to establish one location that their character likes to go there. Have them mention one (new) NPC that their character likes or dislikes. Within a few sessions, those will be the players FAVORITE locations and characters to interact with. And when your goblin hoard attacks, they will suddenly worry that wally the woodcutter made it into the keep before the doors are closed, and be willing to go look for him if he didn't. Now if I make up wally and try to make them care, well they will just let wally get eaten so they can play a card game! :)

This is so important, and so hard to break the habit. There's this mystique around GMing that can really hinder you as a storyteller just because you don't want to let your players peak behind the curtain. One of the best things I discovered is how much better my games get when I ask my players "what do you want to do next session?" Cuts down on prep, focuses my narratives, and makes my players feel very seen and heard.

Yessssss

Matt Colville had a great advice here: if a player asks you if they can do something crazy and/or innovative, your answer should usually be: maybe, let's find out together. This usually leads to a skill roll or even a whole mini-adventure and is the perfect invitation to create the best memories from the game. My answer to the player asking 'can I play something unusual' would be: Could you elaborate why you want to do that? As you said, perhaps they want something that the campaign is not providing, or perhaps they feel like they want to emulate a character they like... or perhaps they just want to screw with the other players.

This is an important point: when a player asks a seemingly oddball question, they’re saying this is how they think they want to play and you need to give that some consideration.

Good advice, I learned the same lessons from the same mistakes. Now I take joy in setting up scenarios just to see what happens, I make cool stuff and let it go into the void for the fun of making the thing. And I have learned I am an awful writer, I couldn't story my way out of a Kobold lair. But my players are amazing by sheer virtue of collective story telling, the best story lines get filtered to the top and the bad ones get left behind really efficiently. Together we have had some amazing adventures and all I did was say the mayor was kidnapped by an Owlbear, and the Gnomes are on strike.

Last session I had a location where I was expecting the players to spend a month. They spent probably about 60 minutes in there before escaping out of a window. But you know what? The knowledge that they'd "broken" my expectations was more entertaining to them than my original plan was! They all left going "Great session!"

Some of my first personally written adventures were quite linear and I've totally made this mistake. I think D&D in particular was never very good at explaining what makes a good GM/DM. This has come much later since Chris Perkins hosted the PAX games and have come out on what makes a good DM.

Exactly! I remember in one of my first (too tightly designed) dungeon, my players broke through a wall and found a route around an orc ambush on a ledge I prepared. I went with it, improvised and let them come up the ledge behind the orcs - which were facing the other direction. Same fight in the end, but the players where the ones surprising the orcs and were super excited they apparently outsmarted the baddies.

I write little story hooks that the players can follow or not, and then procedural generate maps for the areas they seem interested in. Because we're doing it over Roll20, there is some focus as to where they expect to go, and since we really only have about two hours a week to play--if that--most recently they've been cleaning out a Goblin Warren that's a culmination of several months of tracking the goblin whereabouts and dealing with their various attacks.

Agreed, that comparison was ON POINT.

"Normalize the awkward." Yes! Absolutely!

Personally I think shows like Critical Role are the worst things to happen to the hobby because it can set unreasonable expectations. It was one of the things that sent me on my spiral to finally quitting.

I've always been confused by the unrealistic expectations people pick up from them. For me they're a constant source of enjoyment and inspiration. Like you don't watch professional athletes do sports and then expect to perform on the same level when you play. has exploded and really grown in recent years. This is definitely the best time to be a ttrpg player that there's ever been 🤷‍♂️

Personally I am always thinking about whether I’m running the game that I and my players enjoy and not comparing my group to these shows. If my players behaved liked the people I see on CR they’re not being themselves. Let your own game evolve into what you’re all comfortable with and the fun will never end…

ikr it's like "oh no quinn's hot"

lol thought you wrote 5 year old subscriber and was weirded out

Plus the tan

Also he's absolutely jacked.

hard agree

Yesssssssssss!!!!

While D&D is iconic and it is wonderful that it is now popular culture and getting new people interested; the flip side to it is, as a TTRPG system, I would rate it on a lower tier of quality. There are so many better systems available. Both for new players and as total coherent focused systems. D&D in it's current iteration is very wishy-washy, contradicts itself, and it is very vague in many of its aspects, and it only gets more so with every new book that Wizards of the Coast puts out. I find this makes it harder for both new players and particularly new GMs to know how to navigate it.

@DerGrantelbart I think that's being unfair for the explicit list of hard moves a GM can do (and is only allowed to do when PCs fail a roll, except when players look to them for answers) in PbtA systems. And FATE is not telling GMs to improvise any more than D&D does. And DCC is old school D&D so...

Yeah I tried a bit of d&d about a year ago and just didn't really feel like the story in the basic box had anything to recommend it - it really relied on the players wanting to go around and kill stuff to get loot which just wasn't what mine wanted to do. I also didn't find the combat very satisfying or tactical even though it was so heavily emphasised. We gave up after 2 sessions with no one really having a good time and ended up selling the box... I'd say at least part of that was my fault in that as GM I didn't really know how to deal with the players not wanting to follow the plot hooks (we ended up in a town I hadn't actually prepared for in any detail and skipped the first dungeon) and then somewhat tried to force them to go to the place they were expected to go... So I think the approach in that box is somewhat contrary to Quinn's advice here - it very much felt like a highly scripted plot on rails and when the players didn't want to do that the emphasis on needing to know all the detail of the dungeons and monsters meant it was hard to improvise

Inappropriate swearing and forgetting the name of a major character hits way too close to home

I think i remember Tom doing an episode on solo RPG's around the time of the first wave of the pandemic🤔

"The Dungeon Dive" just posted a run-down of some Solo RPGs on their RU-vid Channel, if anyone is interested.

@@timbirk4044 yes, they've covered them on the channel before too. Tom covered A thousand year old vampire, and I think they also mentioned Artifact and A Quiet year too. I found 'A mending' through SUSD podcast too, another feature would be comfy I guess.

@@genghispawn3919 oh wow, I just went through that video. Amazing recommendation, I hope the algorithm picks it up. I am intimidated by oracles and other simulators that can convert regular RPGs into solo experiences but their presentation was so clear, I might give it a closer look with some of the tools mentioned especially in the end segment.

@@TheCyberSpidey Dope -- The Dungeon Dive as a channel is in a way different niche than SU&SD, but he's putting out great content. Glad to point you to it.

Not just that, but it can make game sessions very long. On the other hand, if you've got people who can't always make it, a larger group can be useful to balance too many people not being able to play any particular day.

If you have a huge group of friends who want to play, something I've seen is dividing everyone into 2 groups and have them all play different games, but in the same world and different parts of the world. Then you can plan some kind of fun crossover later on, or have characters cross-over from time to time, etc

Welcome to the hobby!

Get the 'Starter Set' or the 'Essentials Kit'. Either one is all you need to get started, and get you playing for weeks / months.

Do the thing!

That was my favorite quote of the year so far. 😀

It's quit a common anolegy. Like it's had been sayed for years now

That's generally good advice, but don't let your players just do anything they want as well. Restrictions and conflicts to be overcome make for much more interesting stories than just letting the players have a meaningless power fantasy.

@@stevejakab274 absolutely. I tried to make my example responses suggest "that's very cool but i don't think it's going to work"

yes lad do it

Finding a good group to play with is actually the hardest part of RPGs. People can have very different expectations of what they want from a game.

As a big fan of both ttrpgs and fighting games, I can say that the initial intimidation factor is high but the rewards are so worth it for both. If anyone wants to get into either, I'd be happy to act as a guide/mentor/cheerleader for your endeavor.

What the what you just read my mind!! 2 communities absolutely worth getting into

Unsolicited advice warning If you get into ttrpgs you get a creative output, you delevelop skills like storytelling, acting, improvising, and balancing a groups needs. You get great stories of drama and comedy that you crafted together. All in a game system that is enforced socially, so all the rewards are social. You become a more empathetic, social, cooperative person. If you get into fighting games, you get better at fighting games. It's better than no hobby but you're not developing yourself in any other way than specifically fighting games. If it's a steep learning curve you want, or a competitive community, just pick almost any other sport and you'll become a healthier, more well rounded person.

I didn't mean it as an attack on people who are into it already, but in response to the idea of picking fighting games to start investing your time and energy in. Also there are lots of things nice about fighting games and the community around it I didn't touch on but my point still stands.

@@tychoclavius4818 I’m going to try and separate myself from the implication of your first comment, whether intended by you or not, which is that pursuing fighting games as a hobby is a waste of time. The competitive drive, analytical thinking, adaptive reactions, and social graces (admittedly not as well enforced by some) that I’ve learned in fighting games are the same you would learn in chess, or go, or any card game you can think of. And while I would never put down the benefit of ttrpgs, I’ve seen some truly shy and closed off people bloom within a game, I think there are some that get some very similar benefits from fighting games specifically. The one-on-one nature of the competition along with random chance being a rarity within those games teaches you to accept that you won’t always win, and finding someone better than you is a gift because that’s someone you can learn from. It teaches you to accept that you make mistakes and the drive needed to correct them. I could go on, but I value the lessons I’ve learned over the years from fighting games and I think they actually make an excellent complement to the lessons learned in ttrpgs. Especially for those of us who are less physically inclined or are not able to participate in sports for one reason or another.

... there aren't enough rules about halberds.

@@dahobdahob Eh, I think it has enough. 5e is not trying to be THAT tactical about your weaponry. Reach and Brace are a thing, I think that’s about all you’d need in 5e.

15:20 For me when I come back and wanna hear this again

Have you tried pre-written adventures/scenarios? They can be a good way to bridge the gap between reading a lot of largely-abstract rules and disjointed example scenarios, and actually playing a full session of a game with other people, if that's what you're having issues with; a lot of modern games now offer them, thanks to the wild success of D&D 5's actually-good box-sets. Some games have similar boxes to D&D, but others might still have a beginner's 'example adventure' available online or something. Check around, check out the designers' websites, check your role-playing game distributors of choice; if all else fails, you can always web search for '[your preferred system] introductory scenario' or 'beginner adventure [your preferred system]', and such.

Since people reading this might be completely new to RPGs: “Lines and veils” are ways of excluding certain story elements. • a line is something that you agree as a group not to cross. So maybe you decide “there’s not going to be rape in our game-it won’t happen during play, it won’t be part of character backgrounds, and it won’t be referred to by characters”. Usually, but there’s no requirement, these are things that would ruin one or more player’s fun, or derail the game. They could be things that reflect past traumas or touch on a phobia, or they could be things that you just don’t want in _this_ game, but might be fine with in a different game or with a different group. You can decide whether the things that are “over the line” literally don’t exist in your fantasy world, or you’re just not going to talk about them, or you don’t care which it is, so long as they don’t show up in the game. By their nature, it’s good etiquette not to demand explanations or try to negotiate the limit-if somebody says “no clowns”, you don’t say “what if it’s just a few clowns?” But clarifying where the line is, respectfully, is perfectly reasonable. If somebody says “no jump scares”, you might need to clarify whether they’re talking about things that might make their character jump, or things that make the player jump? Are they wanting to avoid creepy villains getting the drop on their characters? Or the GM yelling “ATTAAACK!!” when the enemy gets the drop on them? • a veil is an agreement that something might be part of the story, but it’s going to happen “off screen” or be vague and without details. So your group might say, “yeah, sure, we’re vampires so obviously we sometimes kill people to feed, but we don’t need to play through them.” And then when it comes up, instead of either the player or the GM talking about exactly how the character seduces their victim, or narrating the sounds and smells of killing then, they’d just say “ok, you’re able to find someone to feed on tonight, and nothing special happens” or “…but they managed to scream, and you had to flee before you were finished” or “…but they managed to scream, and now you’re on the run with a posse of villagers and their dogs after you”. Lots of people veil gore and/or sex. It’s like a fade-to-black to keep a movie PG-13, but we all know what happened. In addition to using these as safety tools-to keep content that would harm players out of the game, as well as content that would ruin the game for them-these are also very useful tools for crafting the sort of game you want to play. Maybe you’re playing a Goonies-inspired game, so you agree that kissing will be veiled and anything more sexual than that is over the line. Or you’re playing a serious fantasy-military game, so you’re all fine with violence and gore and crude language, but you draw a line at bringing in real-world racial/ethnic/sexual slurs, and another line at “silly” humor that might undermine the emotional weight you’re going for.

Matt Colville's got a great one as well. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Eo_oR7YO-Bw.html

and pick up Curse of Strahd ^^

This here is good advice. Using somebody else's module doesn't make you less of an artist, because RPGs are not art. And there's a lot of cool tricks to learn from somebody else's book which you can shamelessly steal and put into your own games!

@@scimmytag Curse of Strahd is great. I hear the updated version has fixed some of the more problematic elements of the original.

One thing to keep in mind about them though is that they are written for everyone and for a particular story, so they can be a bit prescriptive or not written in a way that helps you gm in the way you like. You can totally raid them though for cool ideas and ways to start scenarios the way Quinns talked about

I whould refrace this into: If you see a cool idea that fits into your game, take it, steal it, make it your own. This is how inspiration works.

Yup, and the confusion is probably caused by the Mutant: Year Zero video game (Road to Eden) which defaults you to playing the animal-people mutants.

Agreed. Especially after they get comfortable, I have come to trust that my players are going to get out of most situations and it's so fun to watch how they do it.

@@squashwash4381 My players have managed to turn so many no-win (this is a high level area do not enter) scenarios into (sometimes too close) victories through sheer creative malice, I am hardly surprised when one of them finds a loophole I didn't plan and rolls high enough to exploit it. It is always amazing to see unfold and it leads to such interesting and rewarding situations for me to create around.

This is a big one for me and something that made a big difference in the games I run. I would add to this that being a fan of your player's characters also helps you think of interesting ways to challenge them as after all we're looking for excitement and drama in this game so be a fan, but don't make things easy.

Another John Harper masterpiece! He’s the creator of Blades in the Dark. (You probably already knew that, but just in case…)

@@jamesthelimey1738 If the only one-page RPG they know of is Lasers & Feelings, and they only know of it from Oxbox, then probably not! And if Donlad is reading this, there are TONS of ingenious single-page role-playing games out there that would be fantastic either for new players or for experienced ones. Looking up the games of Grant Howitt would be a great place to start.

Yes, you've hit the nail on the head there. The best GM's are the empathetic ones. Of course this doesn't mean you give the players everything they want, we all want an engaging story and that needs to have pitfalls as well as triumphs. Yet to enjoy these ups and downs, a GM would be amiss not to appreciate the experiences the players are having.

Often, the players are more of a menace than the villain as well. Lol.

When I was younger I played Hero Quest, which I was told was entry level D&D. Then I was given the D&D box, was completely confused! The manual felt insurmountable with new vocabulary like "dexterity" which I, at 8 years old, could not get to grips with very easily. And the really sad thing is we pretty much stopped playing Hero Quest after that too.... The storytelling stuff would have been right up my alley. But that manual? I can't imagine ever going back. After Quinns was talking about the Heart RPG I looked at the manual for that. The art is beautiful but the instructions are so dense and impenetrable. I don't like big rulebooks in a board game with strict rules so why would I want a big hardback novel-length manual for a player-run storytelling game where anything can happen? It makes no sense.

Yup my DMing is like this lol ru-vid.comUgkxZm5nQqbR6C-dIwvmGCzGLBbOObtA5jt1

Exception: horror RPGs, especially Lovecraftian ones. It's not only expected that the players will "lose" it's generally part of the fun. You have to make sure player expectations are set ahead of time, though.

Always give them a reasonable "out". Now, if they really do stupid things... Note that killing them isn't always the only option, either. Having them wake up owing the local cleric who barely knows medicine a few favors and the elf with a new peg leg... that's flavor. Lol.

Yeah, I find I prefer to play "crunchy", and run "rules lite". If the players want to follow and self-impose a lot of rules, that's cool. But I don't want to have to referee it all. If one of my players wants to cheat and give me really high numbers on their rolls, I will adjust the world to accommodate. Like Quinton said, if as a GM you are saying NO to a player, I tend to feel you are making a mistake at some level. This is only really a problem when you have players looking for different kinds of experiences (one wants a tactical challenge, the other just wants to do cool stunts), but even there I think a good GM can figure out a way. (your character is in the parkour room tearing up a dozen enemies, while your character needs to sneak in and do the tricky part of the encounter.) It makes things harder though.

And I just saw the end of the video saying not to watch tons of videos. My bad.

Yes! This is great advice. New GM's can too easily find themselves stuck in books trying to find the right table or rule. Sure, don't be afraid to find a rule or clarification, but players will be grateful for keeping the flow going if you just wing a rule here and there. As with the storyline, new GM's having a general grasp of the big picture of the rules rather than the detail is appreciated. This allows them to improvise and give a reasonable demand of the player without the table getting bogged down and delayed in specifics. The more the GM plays, the more rules they will recall with absolute accuracy though none of the players will notice either way!

Amazing advice!

Apocalypse is to be met with eyes wide open. Praise be to Verhu.

Mörkbörg!!!

i completely agree. if you make your own character, you care about that character. premades suck

We have an ongoing houserule I think EVERY RPG needs to implement (Sorry traveller fans): Create your character at level 1, when it is time to level up, you can FULLY redo any aspect/feat/race/class/profession/age/etc of your character for free for level 2 one time. This eliminates the classic paralysis or intimidation of choosing wrong at level 1 and ruining your character forever (or having to let them die and come back with some kind of penalty for it later). Even in higher start games, start at level 10? Before completing level 11 level up, you can redo your character.

@@mccallosone4903 I think premades are fine in the right scenario. Trying out a new game at a convention? Just want to dip your toe into a game system? Absolutely go Pre-made, but in everything else, I would prefer to make my character.

Love this. It reminds me of one piece of advice I read which is to re-use memorable NPCs every single time you can, even if it's narratively contrived. Players are almost always more excited to unexpectedly meet someone they remember from a previous session.

​@@Quinns_Quest Absolutely trying to do this. And my bespoke setting so far includes people as far reaching as a retired Satan and a PC's drunken and broken Uncle on the path to redemption. I am absolutely looking for means of keeping people relevant. Heck, we're running what was supposed to be a one shot to learn Cortex Prime set in the same place. I threw in a character they'd previously murdered as a different party juuuust to see what they'll do as different people.

Exciting news! Have fun!

🤣

Btw. Isn’t it ”an elf”. :D English not my native

Except players may not want that. You need to discuss things like this before hand.

@@stevejakab274 Of course. I always introduce my specific style of running games because I do things a little differently, and it's important to set expectations properly

Often if you let them drive the story, you also have a plethora of options and ideas that they themselves gave you. That merchant that you robbed? Well he's hired goons to come after you. That villain? Well, now you have a run down castle to fix up... because the local ruler doesn't want the headache or expense. Big bad #2 - you have time to figure that out. They will spend 1-2 weeks just making their new "home base" like they want, hiring labor, shopping, and all of that...

If only there was a way to actually buy it nowadays…

Same!

Oh yes, pitch it as a one-shot! The trick to getting any game off the ground is barrier to entry. Come up with a fun premise (or two) you think the group will like, pitch it to them as a one-shot maybe a 2-3 hour session. Get the buy in for the first session. Then afterwards ask if they'd like to continue with a session two, or if they'd like to try something else. I've been playing for over 10 years and most of my games start this way. This works better with games that require a low barrier to entry as well. Powered By The Apocalypse games are pretty good for this. But I think you can make it work with just about anything that isn't a White Wolf game from the 90s.

If you're worried about introducing RPG's to your tabletop group, there's ways to ease them into it without going full-on into D&D or Call of Cthulhu. I suggest trying a one-page RPG called "Cheat Your Own Adventure". Give it a Google. It's free and it doesn't require a GM. It plays like Choose Your Own Adventure books where everyone takes turns forwarding the story until the next decision needs to be made. It can be over and done with in a half hour and if your friends like telling goofy stories you'll probably be rolling laughing by the end. All it needs is 2D6's.

Gloomhaven is half-way to being a role-playing game as-is (point of fact, some days I see people playing it and think it looks like a heavier, more complicated version of some of my old favourites); if your gaming group already has their head wrapped around that, you could just hand around a game or two that you're thinking about running, ask them what they think. And if they like the little bits of discovery that Gloomhaven has in its sealed-folder stuff, then they're going to _love_ games that have a game-master handling all the hidden information (and/or inventing new bits of story and environment as and when needed). I'd say go for it; worst thing that can happen is that you all get a funny story to tell about the time you tried out 'that one game, you remember?'

I've returned to RPG after ca. 15yrs and I strongly agree with Quinn's tip: RPG is about players and the story that both GM and players create.