Onboarding New Players

Something I’ve had to give a lot of thought to is how to go about bringing new players up to speed on how my home game works, what they an expect of me and what I expect from them. I’m currently running Worlds Without Number, an OSR system that’s on the crunchier side of things in terms of character creation and advancement as well as combat options, and this means that it’s even more important I ensure that players understand the system effectively so that they can make informed decisions as they play.

To this end I’ve set up a few resources – I’ve made a color-coded reference document for combat actions (including what each action requires) as well as cutting out the system reference sheet included in the WWN rulebook and providing it as a separate document for ease of use. Ultimately I do need players to read the actual rulebook and I can’t necessarily offload that, but I do want to make it easier for folks to jump in without feeling like they have to fully absorb a 300+ page book before their first session.

I’m also committing to sitting down with each player before their first session and running them through some basics. These include character creation (which I might make a reference for, especially since it can be hard for newcomers to recognize the “must-pick” foci or arts), general rules and the tone of the game.

The last one is the most challenging to get across and I don’t want to just point at things like the Principia Apocrypha or the Quick Primer for Old School Gaming and tell them to read those and come back. To some degree that’s because I don’t always agree with those documents or feel they apply to my current system of choice, but mostly because I feel like the best way to get across what your game is like to prospective players is to engage with them directly as opposed to giving them more homework. These resources can be helpful and if a player is interested in reading more I’d freely recommend them, but I have a lot of players new to TTRPGs in general joining my table and I think more than anything the personable approach works best.

This is more of a short post, just outlining some thoughts I’ve had recently as a follow-up to my post about Opening My RPG Table, but it’s been helpful as a sort of north star for me as I’ve run some other one-shots and become mor familiar teaching players new rules quickly as well as having played in other games and identified what I liked and didn’t like about how players were engaged with the material.