The First Roll is Free

Over the weekend I found an exciting new opportunity, I got to introduce a young geek to the joys of roleplaying.  My new brother-in-law came by on Sunday to hang out with us, and I convinced him (with no arm twisting at all) to join my Savage Worlds game.  As a 15 year old kid he tried to hide his interest in playing, watching him try to play it cool made it worth asking.

Starting with the Basics

The first thing I did was asked him what type of character he wanted to play.  Some basic probing questions of if he wanted to be young, or old, male or female.  Strong, or good with guns.  Then I followed it up asking him what the character did for a living.

“He’s in the CIA!” He responded.

“Interesting,” I say, making a note on his character sheet, “What does he do for the CIA?”

“He uh…  Does Black Ops Missions, but he does it cause he’s good at it, not cause he-you know-likes killing people.  Nothing like that, he just does what the government tells him to do.”

We went on with this line of questions for a couple of minutes.  At no point did we get into the crunch of the game.  It’s important for this type of introduction not to get into rules.  It’s not that I thought he couldn’t grasp them, I just didn’t want his focus on something that wasn’t necessary for play.  As a new player I wanted him to ask, “Can I do this?” Not, “How do I do it?”  The difference, to me at least, involves some imagination.

Getting the Old Hats Involved

All of my players are relatively new to Savage Worlds and we’re just beginning to understand what Pulp Action really means.  So while we did have a new player they’ve been roleplaying enough to learn how to prompt each other well for responses.  Creating a call and response from a new player helps draw them out of their shell, and my players prompted wonderfully. They even showed him the frenzied action of the game by ramming a vehicle into a warehouse and driving over all of the enemies.  It was rather joyous to watch all of them working together.

The Aftermath

The drive home was spent hearing a recap of the events that had just transpired.

“Remember when I shot those two guys with the rifles? That was really good huh?”

“It was a great shot, you were fantastic playing.  You picked up on the mechanics really quickly.”

“I didn’t think I would, it was so confusing at first, but when I figured out it was just simple addition it started to get easy.  When are you playing again, I want to play again.”

I had to smile and reminisce on my own joy of beginning to play, when I drank way to much soda and powered through epic marathon sessions of Dungeons and Dragons.

“I think you could definitely join us again,” I said trying to suppress a grin.

“AWESOME! My character is so cool I want him to be able to…”

What was your introduction to gaming? Or have you ever introduced a new player, how’d it go?