D&D: is it the gateway game for the rest of the hobby?

[deflagratio]

I count novellas as "one day of steady reading or three days of intermittent reading". So it's still a quickstart for me.

Except a novella is much easier to digest than a reference document. So if it's 3 days of intermittent reading (which is what I was using for my time estimates in my previous post) for a novel, it's likely 4-5 days of intermittent reading to understand a reference document of similar length. Steady reading definitely will improve the understanding of the reference document so the page count should more readily fit into 1-2 intermittent reading sessions.

 

[raniE]

I count novellas as "one day of steady reading or three days of intermittent reading". So it's still a quickstart for me.

I’ll echo what a friend said about this. If the product says QuickStart, I expect to be playing within 30 minutes.

 

[raniE]

One fascinating example of Quickstart is actually found in the Core book of Ace & Eights. They start the book with a very basic version of their combat system to allow people to play shootouts and running gun battles. It introduces the core gimmicks/unique mechanics of the game (Shot Clock and the initiative system).

Which is similar to the board game thing of having a QuickStart sheet in the game box, rather than sold as a separate thing.

 

[deflagratio]

I’ll echo what a friend said about this. If the product says QuickStart, I expect to be playing within 30 minutes.

I would argue an hour. Especially if you look at the quickstart times for RPG-In-A-Box style games.

Which is similar to the board game thing of having a QuickStart sheet in the game box, rather than sold as a separate thing.

I love that Aces & Eights quickstart is only 8 pages long. The day I got the book I had friends over and we were having shootouts instantly. If they had done a separate kickstarter, I would say the 8 pages for combat, One Page for Skills, Half a page about how to earn XP (with more details on the included character sheet) because it's a unique feature of the game, and the other half for simplified chase mechanics. 10 pages of mechanics, leaving 10 pages for the adventure (with built in GM Advise), 4-6 pages for Pre-gen characters, and the rest for advertising or to fluff out the adventure.

 

[AsenRG]

I’ll echo what a friend said about this. If the product says QuickStart, I expect to be playing within 30 minutes.

"Unrealistic expectations (TM".

I would argue an hour. Especially if you look at the quickstart times for RPG-In-A-Box style games.


I love that Aces & Eights quickstart is only 8 pages long. The day I got the book I had friends over and we were having shootouts instantly. If they had done a separate kickstarter, I would say the 8 pages for combat, One Page for Skills, Half a page about how to earn XP (with more details on the included character sheet) because it's a unique feature of the game, and the other half for simplified chase mechanics. 10 pages of mechanics, leaving 10 pages for the adventure (with built in GM Advise), 4-6 pages for Pre-gen characters, and the rest for advertising or to fluff out the adventure.

It would be nice, I'd even argue that it would make for a better quickstart, but it's not how most quickstarts in the RPG industry are done, in reality.

 

[Zebraman]

I think it's fairly simple. Pretend that whatever the "full version" of what AsenRG says is a quickstart doesn't exist. If you can still keep playing the "quickstart" without ever going "hang on, there's stuff missing here, clearly" I think it then qualifies as a full game. If not, then you've probably got yourself a quickstart set.

But you don't know what you don't know.

If a quickstart set didn't introduce magic or wizards you might think that wasn't a thing in the full-game.

Or if it only introduced a handful of different monsters you might think say orcs and goblin skirmishes and Bugbear warchiefs (hypothetically) were the only threats there were.

If you didn't know anything about rpgs you might not realise character creation is a thing and characters are always pregenerated such as in a game like Heroquest.

You might not know experience points exists and your characters can develop.

 

[AsenRG]

But you don't know what you don't know.

If a quickstart set didn't introduce magic or wizards you might think that wasn't a thing in the full-game.

Or if it only introduced a handful of different monsters you might think say orcs and goblin skirmishes and Bugbear warchiefs (hypothetically) were the only threats there were.

If you didn't know anything about rpgs you might not realise character creation is a thing and characters are always pregenerated such as in a game like Heroquest.

You might not know experience points exists and your characters can develop.

Or you might decide to make social advancement and gear the way to advance, barring one-off developments decided on a case-by-case basis by the REFEREE...Classic Traveller, anyone?

 

[Grognard GM]

But you don't know what you don't know.

If a quickstart set didn't introduce magic or wizards you might think that wasn't a thing in the full-game.

Or if it only introduced a handful of different monsters you might think say orcs and goblin skirmishes and Bugbear warchiefs (hypothetically) were the only threats there were.

If you didn't know anything about rpgs you might not realise character creation is a thing and characters are always pregenerated such as in a game like Heroquest.

You might not know experience points exists and your characters can develop.

Any Quickstart that doesn't include crack dealer-esque "Hey, wanna try the REALLY good stuff?" via cool pictures and adds for the main game and supplements, would be a pretty stupid quickstart.

 

[Vile Traveller]

Any Quickstart that doesn't include crack dealer-esque "Hey, wanna try the REALLY good stuff?" via cool pictures and adds for the main game and supplements, would be a pretty stupid quickstart.

For these and other options try the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules!

 

[AsenRG]

Any Quickstart that doesn't include crack dealer-esque "Hey, wanna try the REALLY good stuff?" via cool pictures and adds for the main game and supplements, would be a pretty stupid quickstart.

That is their raison d'etre indeed - but players and GMs might just decide to run in a different direction!

Da street finds its own uses for things.

Except a novella is much easier to digest than a reference document. So if it's 3 days of intermittent reading (which is what I was using for my time estimates in my previous post) for a novel, it's likely 4-5 days of intermittent reading to understand a reference document of similar length.

Not really, IME...at least if it's a game document. I have some experince with how long those take.

 

[raniE]

But you don't know what you don't know.

If a quickstart set didn't introduce magic or wizards you might think that wasn't a thing in the full-game.

Or if it only introduced a handful of different monsters you might think say orcs and goblin skirmishes and Bugbear warchiefs (hypothetically) were the only threats there were.

If you didn't know anything about rpgs you might not realise character creation is a thing and characters are always pregenerated such as in a game like Heroquest.

You might not know experience points exists and your characters can develop.

I didn’t say “imagine there are no other RPGs, I said “imagine the game this is supposedly a QuickStart for doesn’t exist”. You might certainly get the wrong idea about things, but you could also think Carcassonne was just a bad version of Memory tiles or not even a game if the rules were missing.

On the other hand, magic rules for instance missing just mean that there are no rules for magic. Many games don’t have magic rules or extensive monster lists. Mythras Imperative doesn’t have magic rules, but you don’t need magic rules to play. As for characters and a scenario, if those exists, you are much more likely to be actually dealing with a QuickStart which simply can’t sustain a game past the QuickStart on its own.

 

[deflagratio]

Not really, IME...at least if it's a game document. I have some experince with how long those take.

Yea, but would that hold true to something outside of the D20 space? Do you find it easy to digest less familiar systems? A quickstart guide should be written with people new to RPG's in mind. It needs to be quickly and easily digestible to someone with no idea how rpg's normally work. If someone feels that the quickstart is so long that they need to start adding sticky note flags to find info you've definitely failed in the design of a quickstart. Quickstarts are ultimately a marketing tool. A combination of pamplet and DIY demo. The book needs to be able to easily explain it's core mechanics, setting, and why you should play the game in as few pages as possible. The longer it is, the more likely people will not finish and decide that if the hyperbasic rules are this complex and involved, what does the full game look like? A quickstart at over 100 pages is not going to convince anyone that they will be able to quickly run a game.

 

[AsenRG]

Yea, but would that hold true to something outside of the D20 space? Do you find it easy to digest less familiar systems?

Most definitely yes, on both counts! In fact, a d20 document would take me longer than any brand new RPG because the mechanics have a strong tendency towards boring me, with obvious consequences...