Need advice for D&D

t. WOTC community manager

>New players need structure, and rules lite games are terrible for new players because it leaves them with more questions than answers.
Actually it's the opposite.

D&D (or at least, modern iterations) are bad for that, even 5e, because either there's so many rules that they end up adopting the mindset of a player instead of a roleplayer or certain options will make them have much less fun in the long term than other options, which they generally won't realize the first time they play.

A more rules-lite game will generally force you to come up with multiple ways to deal with an obstacle without necessarily spelling out what your options are beyond "this is [stat], it represents X" and leaves you to determine when X is appropriate or not.

New players need to learn that the conventions of a video game RPG won't carry over to a tabletop RPG, which is difficult to do when the game is written like a Prima Strategy Guide.

Oh man, what an excellent rebuttal.

Ignore the retarded trolls. This is the only serious advice you will get on Veeky Forums: buy the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Masters Guide, subscribe to two or three podcasts explaining how you can manage to enjoy D&D and avoid the pitfalls, and remember, the only rule is to have FUN!!!!

>Ignore everyone who disagrees with me!!!!!

There's really not that many rules for new players. The starter set smooths over the hardest part (making characters), and the rest is all based around the very simple core mechanic. It's faster to get to the point of proficient playing than many board games.

>A more rules-lite game will generally force you to come up with multiple ways to deal with an obstacle without necessarily spelling out what your options are

That's exactly why it's not good for new players. Forcing people to come up with ideas without a good frame of reference often just leaves them confused and actually limits them to mimicking the few examples they've seen already. Leading a group that's never played a roleplaying game before into a rules lite game is like asking a band that's never played together to compose a song on the spot. You're far better off giving them a bit of sheet music and telling them to improvise and add their own flair to it.

Rules Lite games are great, but not for new players.

Here's the thing though, in a rules-lite game, you can at least prod new players into the right direction by helping them understand how their stats work.

STR is for lifting and attacking, DEX is for stealth and ranged, INT are for spells, CHA is good for influencing people before you interact with them, etc. etc.

And once the players have an idea for how their stats work, you can start introducing exceptions to the rule in order to teach them that, unlike a video game, a stat can be used for different scenarios depending on the nature of the action, like using STR to intimidate a stingy shopkeep by crushing a stone in your bare hands or using DEX to subtly cast a spell without getting caught.

Now, the players are thinking of how they can use their stats in multiple ways, which will also make it easier for them to figure out how to roleplay their characters as well and once they make that leap, it'll become even easier to get them to roleplay in future games.

The basics of 5e are d20+ability checks. Skills provide a bit more complexity to the mix, but as soon as a player has figured out exactly what you just described, they're already up and running in 5e. At level 1, they might also have four or so special abilities to read up on, but the game at that point is actually comparable to many rules-lite games.

Admittedly, Combat is another layer of complexity, but it's also one of the things that new players need the most structure with.

>And once the players have an idea for how their stats work, you can start introducing exceptions to the rule

Which is basically the process of leveling up. 5e can look pretty scary if you look at it in its entirety, but if you're looking at it step by step, level by level, it's actually a rather slow build-up, designed to lead players through the basics of roleplaying before hitting level 5 where the game really comes into its own.

Thing is, new players looking at the book will see the whole thing in it's entirety, if they're not scared by the relative complexity of it they'll quickly realize there's still very concrete rules for a lot of things that's lacking in a rules-lite game, while yes a DM with experience would know you can house rule things. A new DM might not realize that or feel he's too inexperienced to play with the rules of the game. So this leads to situations where players will feel like they can't be creative when they really can, because the rules are more or less set in stone.

Magic is versatile as fuck and gets the most focus but there's so many options that new players will feel overwhelmed, especially since spells have their own unique rules that you have to know in order to use them effectively.

Combat is the most efficient way of dealing with most issues without using magic but it also starts to stagnate as everything gains more HP than you can reliably deal damage, compounded with the fact that most options that aren't "attack" will tend to have their own rules or not be covered by the rules at all, so they default to auto-attacking and hitting the enemy until they die, which is the worst thing you can teach a new player.

The section for learning how to use your ability scores comprises like 4 pages and even then each skill only gets a few sentences and using different combinations of skill+stat is a variant that most people will ignore.

So it's like a rules lite game being run by a very constrictive GM by default.