I read a post today about someone wanting to play an OSR game and then cooling on it quite rapidly because the GM presented them with a river to cross and they couldn't work out how to do it.

Players moaning about misty-stepping and athletics rolls.

Reminiscent of Chris Bissette writing an adventure for an MCDM magazine and editor reporting that it caused a series of TPKs because 5e players just walked into the river because there wasn't a 'pass river' skill.

@Taskerland there's a lot of obvious things to be said about the dangers of dragon game's rigid, procedural aspects being forced upon people who don't choose them consciously, just don't know any better but I think it'd be worth investigating how much of this is reinforced and solidified by bad, self-taught GMing of people who just bought a D&D manual and maybe read some dungeon-oriented blogs and just ran with their assumptions borne of having played Baldur's Gate back in the day.

The idea that you can be in the hobby long-enough to be involved in playtesting scenarios for a magazine and have an entire group of characters drown themselves in a river because there's no 'pass river' skill is really worrying.

Those people probably have 150k followers on YouTube.

@Printdevil @Taskerland I actually met it running open signup games online. (And that was _after_ it had been filtered by people who were prepared to use a straight videoconference system rather than actual roll20 or one of its clones.)

@Taskerland "We tried to cross but our beards became waterlogged and we sank"

@Taskerland I'm not only not at home to this, I'm camped out against it with a sign.

@RogerBW @Printdevil I'm reminded of when I started drifting back towards the hobby, I decided to run Mines of Phandelver and I was *horrified* by how bad an introductory adventure it was.

The first encounter has a load of Goblins attacking you, forcing you into mass-combat as your first encounter with the rules.

If I were to write an introductory adventure for a broad audience, I would start with the fundamentals of engaging with a fictional world.

@Printdevil But imagine how those failed stand-up comedians would emote as they marched into the water? A true golden age for the hobby.

@Taskerland @RogerBW @Printdevil Given a few bad dice rolls, it’s very possible that that first encounter will end in a TPK. When I’m running something for people who haven’t played before I give them a chance to make a skill roll for something like shooting a bottle off a wall or arm-wrestling their friend, where they can fail and learn about pushing a roll or facing a non lethal consequence.

@Taskerland @RogerBW @Printdevil Given a few bad dice rolls, it’s very possible that that first encounter will end in a TPK. When I’m running something for people who haven’t played before I give them a chance to make a skill roll for something like shooting a bottle off a wall or arm-wrestling their friend, where they can fail and learn about pushing a roll or facing a non lethal consequence.

@Printdevil @Taskerland I hate this shit about VTTs with passion. Digital interface prompts not only ignorance of mechanics (which is not necessarily a bad thing) AND relegates fiction into binary world of computer.

It is the thing that let's me play and it pollutes the culture xd

@satsuma @Taskerland @Printdevil I dimly recall the sample adventure in the Games Workshop RQ2 did this. There's something up on that cliff, make a climbing roll, There's lunch on the hoof, make a Bow roll. That kind of thing.

Those are the breadcrumbs you need for a solo game, or a beginning GM, but you need off that very quickly or scenarios look like you're cutting the meat too small.

@RogerBW @satsuma @Taskerland

@Printdevil I think for absolute beginners, the hard part to understand is never 'roll the big dice and look at the numbers to see if you succeed at doing a thing'

But then I did once run a game for someone who wasn't familiar with fantasy and thought that he was wandering around a town with a bag full of rabits killing homeless people.

Origins: A Carrier Bag Full of Rabbits

Origins is a series of posts in which I reflect upon my relationship with RPGs as well as the events that have shaped my tastes and understanding of games. The rest of the series can be found here. A boardgame-player asking for recommendations as to their first RPG got me thinking about how accessible roleplaying…

Taskerland (tasker.land)

@RogerBW @satsuma

@Printdevil I think for absolute beginners, the hard part to understand is never 'roll the big dice and look at the numbers to see if you succeed at doing a thing'

But then I did once run a game for someone who wasn't familiar with fantasy and thought that he was wandering around a town with a bag full of rabits killing homeless people.

Origins: A Carrier Bag Full of Rabbits

Origins is a series of posts in which I reflect upon my relationship with RPGs as well as the events that have shaped my tastes and understanding of games. The rest of the series can be found here. A boardgame-player asking for recommendations as to their first RPG got me thinking about how accessible roleplaying…

Taskerland (tasker.land)

@RogerBW @satsuma

@Printdevil I think for absolute beginners, the hard part to understand is never 'roll the big dice and look at the numbers to see if you succeed at doing a thing'

But then I did once run a game for someone who wasn't familiar with fantasy and thought that he was wandering around a town with a bag full of rabits killing homeless people.

Origins: A Carrier Bag Full of Rabbits

Origins is a series of posts in which I reflect upon my relationship with RPGs as well as the events that have shaped my tastes and understanding of games. The rest of the series can be found here. A boardgame-player asking for recommendations as to their first RPG got me thinking about how accessible roleplaying…

Taskerland (tasker.land)

@RogerBW @satsuma

@Taskerland @Printdevil @RogerBW @satsuma "…he had spent three hours wallowing in a horrific fever dream where Warwick Davis wandered around a council estate with a garden gnome and a carrier bag full of rabbits who were all eagerly encouraging him to murder a bunch of homeless people with a fire axe…"

A perfectly normal concept for an indie game these days.

That's just my games. Ask @devilsjunkshop

@BigJackBrass @Taskerland @RogerBW @satsuma

@satsuma This wasn't about understanding the mechanics though... this was about understanding that it's a fictional world and it's okay to go 'Is there anything that we might be able to use to fashion a raft?' Understanding how to push dice is a skill that should come after the basic processes of engaging with a fictional world. @RogerBW @Printdevil

@Taskerland @RogerBW @Printdevil It was more of a “It’s a bright, sunny morning on the ranch - what chores need doing? Do you need to round up the cattle, or maybe you’re idling and throwing horseshoes at a pole?” This should set the expectation that they can choose what they want to do and maybe it will lead to a skill roll where success isn’t certain.