Being unable to complete a character sheet unless someone walked them through it and made every decision for them
We used to play various table-top role-playing games over 20 years ago. D&D is known for its totally humiliatingly complex character creation, which is usually totally unnecessary, especially when ‘learning’ new players.
Edit: sorry for my confused mind; I meant DSA not D&D.
Character background is also not that important in my opinion. You simply explain that the goal is to play a role and that the character's background is important and determines his actions. Demanding that everything is well thought out increases the barrier to entry immensely. So keep it simple.
I remember my first ~~D&D~~ (Edit: DSA) sessions with new groups where it literally took us 5 hours to get all the characters ready.
Our group, after years of experience, simply explained the world to new players (we preferred to play World of Darkness, or shadowrun). We asked them what they wanted to play and roughly decided together with them what their strengths and weaknesses were. Rolling dice was more of a show for the newcomers, we hardly ever rolled dice ourselves. If you had 9/10 points in physical strength, we didn't think you needed to roll if you hit someone in the face. That just hurt.
Our rounds became more and more enjoyable over time. Fewer rules, fewer dice orgies. More common sense. More focussed on each other and on the game itself. At the very end, we even played without a game master. Often ancestor rounds in world of darkness (vampires that were several hundred years old. Something like demigods.) Dice rolling was more or less obsolete. We had night-long in-charachter conversations.
Oh, I miss that very much.
I have autistic traits and it definitely helped me to put myself in other people's shoes. But it helped me even more to overcome my speech disorder and to learn how to deal with it (stuttering).
No. I don't know what your parent poster is talking about. D&D chargen is not in any edition of the game terribly complex.
It's not wildly simple, either -- D&D is squarely "rules medium" and there are plenty of RPGs with simpler chargen. But it's not notably hard for its space.
20 years ago there was more manual calculation of numbers on a character sheet, that now is likely to be handled by a digital sheet
In my opinion, character creation in shadowrun is relatively simple, if a little time-consuming. In WoD character creation takes 10 to 30 minutes max, even for a complete beginner.
Backstory and internalizing the game system is a lot less straightforward in WoD though because the intent is to provide just enough rail to facilitate creativity within the setting.
D&D is known for its totally humiliatingly complex character creation, which is usually totally unnecessary, especially when ‘learning’ new players.
Had to do that as "homework" before my first D&D session long ago, and it was indeed a long process, but that actually made it very exciting for me and made me invested in the character from the start!
Comments
We used to play various table-top role-playing games over 20 years ago. D&D is known for its totally humiliatingly complex character creation, which is usually totally unnecessary, especially when ‘learning’ new players.
Edit: sorry for my confused mind; I meant DSA not D&D.
Character background is also not that important in my opinion. You simply explain that the goal is to play a role and that the character's background is important and determines his actions. Demanding that everything is well thought out increases the barrier to entry immensely. So keep it simple.
I remember my first ~~D&D~~ (Edit: DSA) sessions with new groups where it literally took us 5 hours to get all the characters ready.
Our group, after years of experience, simply explained the world to new players (we preferred to play World of Darkness, or shadowrun). We asked them what they wanted to play and roughly decided together with them what their strengths and weaknesses were. Rolling dice was more of a show for the newcomers, we hardly ever rolled dice ourselves. If you had 9/10 points in physical strength, we didn't think you needed to roll if you hit someone in the face. That just hurt.
Our rounds became more and more enjoyable over time. Fewer rules, fewer dice orgies. More common sense. More focussed on each other and on the game itself. At the very end, we even played without a game master. Often ancestor rounds in world of darkness (vampires that were several hundred years old. Something like demigods.) Dice rolling was more or less obsolete. We had night-long in-charachter conversations.
Oh, I miss that very much.
I have autistic traits and it definitely helped me to put myself in other people's shoes. But it helped me even more to overcome my speech disorder and to learn how to deal with it (stuttering).
Has there been any edition of d&d where character creation is more involved than any edition of shadowrun?
No. I don't know what your parent poster is talking about. D&D chargen is not in any edition of the game terribly complex.
It's not wildly simple, either -- D&D is squarely "rules medium" and there are plenty of RPGs with simpler chargen. But it's not notably hard for its space.
20 years ago there was more manual calculation of numbers on a character sheet, that now is likely to be handled by a digital sheet
Yeah you right; I meant DSA and edited my comment accordingly.
Ah my mistake, I meant DSA and not D&D.
In my opinion, character creation in shadowrun is relatively simple, if a little time-consuming. In WoD character creation takes 10 to 30 minutes max, even for a complete beginner.
Backstory and internalizing the game system is a lot less straightforward in WoD though because the intent is to provide just enough rail to facilitate creativity within the setting.
Had to do that as "homework" before my first D&D session long ago, and it was indeed a long process, but that actually made it very exciting for me and made me invested in the character from the start!