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Monday, January 9, 2012

Newbies to the Hex Crawl

In a week or so I plan to initiate a handful of people into the world of the hex crawl.  Some of them have a little experience with RPGs, but very limited.  Most of their experience is with card games. 

On average the players are 15 to 20 years younger than me which makes me feel fucking old.  But, it should be interesting if my GMing techniques can translate to the initiates.  One of the problems I've run into with younger players is they are terrified to make a mistake.  When given an open world to explore they get paralyzed with all the choices. 

Here's my plan.  And like all things I say and do are subject to change at a whim.

In the first session I will have a batch of premade characters and the players can choice one.  I considered having them roll up their first characters, but since there will be five to six players, only one rulebook and the probability of me needing to explain a lot of things, I decided to give them characters so we can get to the game.  If not the first session would be consumed with character creation and I really want to get them used to the dice and system. 

That leads me to what system I will use.  I am planning on using Swords & Wizardry.  I am leaning toward the core rules, but may decide on the complete rules. 

The first session will be me teaching them which dice are which.  Explaining the various things on their character sheets and then a brief practice adventure so they can get used to the game itself.  Prop wise I will be using a vinyl battle map and token figures (since I have no real miniatures).  I want to keep it simple for the first session so they can focus on learning the game and not on the do-dads. 

The adventure I'll be running is the one I made for Starter Adventures.  I need to playtest it anyway.  So this will be a fantastic opportunity to do it.

6 comments:

  1. Where's the 'staks? Sunday's not the same without you.

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  2. I know. Just got caught up doing other things and then the playoffs and never got around to it. But I see you did, so at least someone did a Sleestak Sunday. So not all hope is lost.

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  3. What happened to Sunday you time waster!

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  4. "So not all hope is lost."

    Remember, in the Land of the Lost, all is Lost.

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  5. I've never played (well, not sense I started) with a entirely first-time group, but it seems like to me that, while they don't have the advantage of more experienced player's showing them the ropes, they also don't have more experienced players to feel intimidated by.

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  6. The Sleestaks were too drunk and depressed to make an appearance after that heart breaking loss against the Broncos.

    Good luck with the game. It sounds great!

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