In my last column, I picked a fight with Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Revised Core Rules. I'm still picking the splinters out of my chest (rimshot). You can read it here if you want the whole story, but I'll sum up: I loved everything about the book except the Cinematic Unisystem, because the book seemed so perfect for introducing new roleplayers, but the system isn't. Then I talked about the importance of keeping your intended audience in mind when designing a game.

I got a lot of thought-provoking responses to the article, and the posters made some really good points. Beginning of the End made some interesting points about what D&D and oWoD have in common that makes them attractive to newbies. While the point that having colorful, easy “hooks” to hang a character on (Vampire's Clans and D&D's classes) makes so much sense that I feel like an idiot for not thinking of it myself, I wonder if the “moderate degree of crunch” Beginning of the End mentioned is really an advantage. From my experience, the levels of system complexity of the original World of Darkness system is a lot less than that of AD&D or D&D third or fourth editions – enough so that describing them as having roughly the same broad level of crunch seems kind of inaccurate. That said, Beginning of the End's point about simple/freeform not being the same as easy, especially for a new roleplayer, also makes a lot of sense.

But this brings to mind a question: when we think in terms of “a good game for introducing new roleplayers to the hobby,” do we mean “this game will get their attention on the shelf, convince them to buy it, and then give them the tools to start roleplaying with their friends, who also don't roleplay,” or “this game makes it easier to introduce your friends who don't roleplay to the hobby.”

The two are fundamentally different. The first is essentially a theoretical topic: D&D, no matter how it's written, will always be #1 in this. How many RPG's grace the shelves of any store other than a dedicated gaming store? A handful, and most of those are put out by whoever's producing D&D at the time. White Wolf also has a presence at the local Borders or Barnes & Noble, but that's just about it around here. A combination of market presence, lavish art budgets, and name recognition pretty much seals that deal, and unless there are Wizards of the Coast or White Wolf designers reading this, the discussion's pretty much moot. Anything we create will be very unlikely to be encountered by non-gamers, unless they're exposed to it by their gamer friends.

The second, however, matters, because even a limited press Indie release or .pdf-only game that does the job well could be a big help to a lot of roleplayers. And so that leads us to the question: what does make a game newbie-friendly?

It's been said before that it's vital that newer players know what they're going to be doing in a game. In D&D, the dungeon crawl is the default (though, of course, not the only option). In Shadowrun you have the, well, shadow run (dungeon crawl with guns, sometimes) or the caper-flick heist if your players prefer the subtle to the explosive. In Vampire: the Masquerade, the players knew they'd be playing vampires in a Machiavellian political and social environment. In West End Games' Star Wars, or any other well-written licensed game (including Buffy) the players can understand the tone of the game based on the source material.

Beginning of the End made a great point about new players needing an iconic hook to hang their characters on, much as they need a clear “point” of the game. D&D's classes, Vampire: the Masquerade's Clans (which contained both physical and many personality/social elements, as opposed to the nWoD counterparts), and Shadowrun and West End Games' Star Wars archetypes all fit this theme.

However, the degree of crunch in these games ranges from pretty low (WEG's Star Wars ) to pretty substantial (D&D 3rd and Shadowrun), though none of them leave a lot of areas “blank,” like a truly rules-light game like Risus does, and none of them requires a lot of interpretation or opinion, like oWoD Mage did.

Many of these include significant areas for power-gain and even min-maxing (some of the monstrosities I saw when GM-ing Shadowrun made me agree 100% with the “if you didn't make the character for this campaign, you can't bring it in” rule). This brings me to another question. What kind of person are you trying to introduce to roleplaying? What works to introduce a fifteen year old guy may not work for a twenty-something woman (I know, there are always exceptions), and what works for a MMORPG player and avid video gamer may not work for a more theatrical person. I think it's this urge to introduce not only people who don't currently play roleplaying games, but non-gamers - ie, people who you don't do other hobbies that could easily dovetail into RPGs, like MMORPGs, video games, and comic books – to the hobby that leads would-be designers to try to create freeform, rules-light RPGs for beginners. I guess, to some degree, it still comes down to knowing your target audience.