Fan Club Video #5: How to Teach TTRPGs!

I also do a rolling teach for board games, my friends are confident (and they are right to be) that they can kick my ass even if they don't know all the rules from the start.

Cameron Dohrman

Hey! I know it's a year late, but I finally became a patron! I'm hopefully going to GM a public event for random people for the first time next week, and this seemed relevant. It also overlapped with good advice I've heard before, particularly The Angry GM! Read his blog where he puts on a sweary act to give good GMing advice, or pick up his book Game Angry where he tones that back and says his greatest hits. One thing Quinns and Angry hit on is sell your game, don't teach it. If your players are new (and maybe you are new!), the energy and passion you bring will paper over holes better than pausing the game for a rules lesson. Also, you can leave swathes of irrelevant rules out, and do a rolling teach for the relevant ones. One other thing Angry suggests to do with a new players is do the rpg version of driving practice in a parking lot: use a premade, simple adventure, give only premade characters to the players, run things for a session or 2 max, then throw it all away. If everything went well and people want more than just the appetizer, start a proper adventure or campaign and create characters.

TangoFox

I want you to know that this video was very validating to me as a GM. My group has always struggled or even right out refused to read the rules, but have been good about learning in play. But there's a small zone of reddit that would constantly say that players that don't read the rules are being disrespectful of my time as a GM. I've always defended my group (and not just because they're my friends and family), but I had always felt like maybe I was doing my group a disservice by not making them read the rules. But this video has confirmed that it's okay to teach the players as you go. So thank you for that. I meant a lot.

Max Husarik

Thank you for the help! Yeah, the fact that this wasn't an already established friend group but it's just the 5 frinds of mine who independently told me they wanted to try rpgs, and who barely know each other, is definitely making things harder. I don't think the rules are the problem really, it's more about the roleplaying and the decision making. I think they've yet to figure out what "the game is a conversation" means. Anyways, we always chat a bit before the session and then do unsetting questions, so that's coverered, and session after session they are starting to build up confidence. It just takes time I guess :) I'm wondering if suggesting they watch some actual play (i.e. critical role) is a good or a terrible idea. For people who aren't confident it might make them feel like they are expected to act like THAT, which of course isn't the case... On the other hand, my previous table was also all new players but we all got the hang of it much faster, because we had watched actual play and knew what we were trying to recreate (we had "role models", if it makes sense). Ok enough rambling, thank you again

em.path

I'd say maybe drop the "what do you do?", it works for experienced players to note that "ok, i'm done telling you stuff", and to stop them from fishing info, but for new players it's often really daunting. It feels like maybe you should just let it roll more naturally, "The bartender taps his finger on the counter waiting for your reply, he's eager to know if he can take the quest advert down". That aside, what aren't they confident in? The rules or roleplaying? Rules wise, video games were touched as a way to do rolling teaches but the process actually is one of 'tell them how or what, let them try it out, repeat the interaction to make sure they have it, offer a small acheivable challenge for them to prove they understood the concept and the execution'. If we're talking about interactions, it sounds maybe the group is just a randomly formed pick up group? That's always hard, it goes more into socializing and making sure everyone is comfortable to get started. Cold sitting people down at a table after they've sat in silence won't bode well, you want people to have shared a few minutes with each other, and then participated in a conversation together. Even if they don't know each other, bring an icebreaker simple game that gets everyone interacting.

cosmitz

Man, those few frames where he says "so long as you, the GM, have internalised all the rules" is the 100%, unscripted, highly visible, toil of the years of the man who's bits of soul have left his body permanently from reading millions of words worth of rules over his lifetime. Also, the excitement part, that's something that i caught on from Quinn's much earlier videos on how to teach boardgames, and he started with "why should the players be excited about playing this game". And i found out i just inherently never did that. And why sometimes some people just weren't getting it until we had played, or after saying stuff surprised like "that was fun!", like they weren't expecting to have fun from my teach. I just was never really telling them why the thing we'll be playing will be cool or fun or why i even brought the box to begin with. Passed of course tormenting them to play it with me. I've been definitely doing that since though. It's not natural for me, but i see the importance of it. And it's kind of funny that it's helped me relationship as well, i'd often start out why we should see a movie with "Well, it's pretty terrible though", and i realised that's not something enticing to say about the next two hours of your life, so instead it's "we're going to laugh and have fun at the goofy and over the top stuff".

cosmitz

Hi quinns! (& Fellow patrons!) I'm DMing the Wildsea for a party of 5 totally new players. We are 4 sessions in and they are slowly learning the ropes, but they are still NOT confident at all, especially when it comes to acting as their character and having a pro-active role in the narrative. Every time there's a "what do you do?" The table freezes in silence. And since there's no experienced players at the table but me, they don't even have positive models to learn from. Any tips on how to loosen them up a bit?

em.path

I play the boardgame tough calls with people and after 20 minutes of debating fun. I ask if they want to add dice and 2 hours more fun to it next time

Steffen Fitz

I'm a big fan of shorter game sessions in general, but I really love the idea of 'micro' games - 10-15 mins max. You could probably improv something like that fairly easily building off of some of the rules lite systems out there. Character creation would have to be fairly shallow, unless you strung them together to flesh out the character as you played.

Kate Eldred

That’s a fabulous story! When you discovered dice and rules, did that makes things better or just different? A friend and I would do one-on-one roleplaying on school trips -- but this was way after we were already playing AD&D. Also, we were not very good at it: the scenarios would usually end up being a bit confrontational and we weren’t good at creating a story together.

David

What you describe is something that me and my friends were doing when we were kids, before we knew TTRPGs existed and it works. It started out as simple "what would you do in this situation", but instead of situation resolving, it was leading to the next situation, exactly as you are describing it. There were no rolls and it was always one GM and one player. We "played" on a bus, when we were bored in class, during sleepovers, practicaly anywhere. At some point, in some weird reverse engineering, we found out about cRPGs and started to incorporate elements of those, untill we were practically playing a campaing without knowing what RPGs are! So, to summarize, yeah, it works, and it works great. It introduced me to the concept of roleplaying and gave me a massive headstart when I picked up actuall RPGs, becouse I have already been doing that for years

Micał Nowak

Great video, very helpful for someone wanting to get into DMing with new systems

Lamont A-R

If you have new players who are already somewhat interested, this is the way to do it. But what if you have someone that you would love to play with, but who will not be sitting down at a TTRPG table any time soon? My wife springs to mind. I would love to play with my wife. She is clever and good at improvising, but she’s had one bad TTRPG experience (no it wasn’t me) and she is not keen to repeat it. She would also not have the patience for a longer session. What if we could play for a shorter session, perhaps only 5 minutes, and perhaps without her even realising that we were playing a roleplaying game? That would be fun. Is there anything out there that fills the criteria? Does anyone here know of anything like this? What I am imagining (and it doesn’t have to be exactly like the following) is a set of single scenes that the GM can present, where players get to make a few significant choices. It might be a bit like presenting someone with a dilemma and asking “what would you do?” but instead of there being a single decision to make, their actions lead to further actions. I imagine just a few moves being strung into a small, yet narratively satisfying, sequence. I imagine this being played on the buss, or while waiting for the waiter to bring you your meal, or in the queue at the grocery store. Sometimes a five minute scene might lead to a follow up scene a day later. And voila, you have a game going. Could this be done? Has someone done it?

David

I teach mathematics and the thing that I work on hardest is limiting my explanations. In ttrpgs there are many concepts that link together, like the example with STR, wounds and crits so you will often need to gradually progress through layers, horizons of explanation of the same concept: like the whole trope of explaining why the sky is blue.

Tim

Laughing about making the rules up! I started playing mausritter with my kids (5 and 7) and they started to go off the rails and outside of the rule structure. I was trying to figure out how to make it work without shutting down their ideas and then eventually I thought, "What am I doing?" I stopped looking at the rules and let the kids live the wacky wild fantasy that they wanted to roleplay.

Jacob LaBruzzo

One thing I've always found really useful to bear in mind is that players will teach each other; you should let them do it. Resist the temptation to jump in with a rules explanation or a lore refresher if you can be reasonably confident that another person at the table is on top of it - even better if it can happen in character! That's interpersonal dynamics at play between fake people, the spice of life itself.

revengeofgibbon

The most challenging part for me is getting everyone around the table. Once they're there, everything flows smoothly. But reaching that point can be very difficult. For me, the first step is choosing the right RPG to propose. If I can get them excited about a particular game, the next step is to build hype. While I'm preparing the campaign, I share information with my potential players, much like a marketing campaign for a movie. I use various tools: trailers, music, quotes, lore elements, illustrations, and more. By generating excitement, it's more likely that they will show up eager to learn the rules and create a character.

Fernando Barajas

Rolling teach ftw! Also, if you've put a ton of effort into getting people on board with a particular game, and after everyone else seems thrilled, somebody has the guts to put on a sour face, and just state that the game seems "meh" or "OK, I guess" after session zero... maybe just f#ck 'em? Leave 'em out of the campaign. It's fine, trust me, even if it's a friend, because they might f#ck up your campaign with their attitude. That kind of a player will set the game at a very low priority and they will not be commited into keeping up with a schedule, showing up on time or anything else an invested player would do. Of course, you don't need to be rude to them about this; you can simply show them the door with love and appreciation for their time, and state that you might be running a game that they could find much inspiring later in the future and that they are welcome in joining that one if they wish.

Jukka Hiltunen

Absolutely ADORE using the rolling teach instead of frontloading the rules

Jack Graham

Quinns

Quinns

I'd highly recommend pitching something (maybe a couple of ideas) that you're excited about and and gauging interest. As the GM you'll be doing a lot of the legwork (in most systems) so you'll want to be excited.

Abrahm Simons

I graduated with a degree in education. I honestly don’t believe that anything I learned in college helped me as much as running TTRPG’s for my friends.

Fabrice Dorantes

So true. The connections between running a roleplaying session and teaching a classroom are absolutely legion... including the terrible ways it can be done horribly wrong!

Brett Rolfe

I think the community already had a discussion asking why there seems to be a surprising number of designers who are or used to be teachers, and this video gives some answers. Which is to say, you could take a lot of those principles and tips and apply them to teaching in general -- in a way, how you describe your playing table sounds like a really healthy and productive learning environment. Peer teaching! Meet the learners where they're at! Positive feedback culture! ... which actually encourages me (who works in education) to try to bridge the two activities more. Also, isn't that terrifying frog a toad? (I'm no biology teacher, though.)

Mr. N. Hacksaw

Pausing the video to comment my appreciation of the comedic timing of the blooper-burp.

Ainar Miyata

In my experience character creation can be quite difficult for new players. In complex systems such as DnD there is often a lot of moving bits and concepts to explain, even if you don't get into the nitty gritty it can take quite a while. So now before running a campaign in a new system, I'll usually try a one-shot with pre-made characters, so then players have a better grasp of what they want. One thing I also do is to create the mechanical skeleton of different character archetypes but leaving blanks and options for the players to fill in with their own ideas. Finally, I try to understand each player's character concept, and suggest options to translate it mechanically. Usually, it's easier for me to narrow down player choices to a few relevant options rather than having them looking trough all of them on their own.

RladalFatih

So good!

Jason Aronson

You've told us how to teach. I'd love a video about how to LEARN a new RPG. A 200+ page rulebook can be very daunting, and my temptation is always to reach for a cheat sheet version. I've definitely had moments of flailing improvisation when an edge case I wasn't ready for appeared. Alternatively, I might have learned it well, but still struggle to turn those mechanics into the experience I imagine. Combat's usually where it grinds to a halt for me.

Jim Huxter

I think it's a good idea to have a few examples at the ready for explaining some of the most likely points of confusion in game terminology so you're not thrown off when they happen, and so everyone's thinking about them in the same way. A classic DnD example is the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom, where the first is knowing a tomato is a fruit and the second is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad. If you have a good thematic explanation at the ready for your obtuse mechanics like Armour Class and Spell Save DC, you can make the players care about what they are and what they say about their character.

Jim Huxter

When Quinns mentioned "every animal is scary to a mouse" my first thought was "giraffe" and then I couldn't stop cackling about just how intense an experience looking at a giraffe would be for a mouse.

Gregory Morrison

it's the wildsea of course, thanks quinns. If I'm told something is my new favourite thing I will obey.

Richard Podmore

Mausritter!! I do love a good excuse to eat some cheese

Mitz

This is timely. I'm about to get get a group of newbies together... Including me. I can't wait

Richard Podmore

The Good Stuff!!

BassPope

Another video that I will put on in the background whilst I work, that inevitably gets put on the main monitor as it's just too good! As a first time GM, would you go out and just pick a system that interests you (Heart sticks out to me!), or would you run it past your would-be group and see what systems interest them?

Elliott V

Quinn’s this video came just in time. I’m about to go to Gen Con to teach Call of Cthulhu for Chaosium so thank you! Thank you! Thank you, for reminding what’s really important!

Nash Farmer

Ohhh! I remember asking about this! Thank you so much!

Salmon