Of all the roles the DM takes on, none is more important than bringing new players into the hobby. DM a game, and your player has fun for a night. Teach them to play, and they may have fun for the rest of their lives (or think you’re a gigantic weirdo — it’s a win either way).
DMing new players has its own rewards and challenges. On the one hand, they haven’t played anything before, so every goblin, dragon and rogue demigod is new and awesome to them. On the other hand, you have to help them learn the game mechanics, their character mechanics, and how to engage with a wide-open RPG world. It’s a lot of fun but requires some extra thought to onboard the new player and make sure they have as much fun as possible.
In this episode, on the eve of DM Dave launching a mostly rookie campaign, the 3 Wise DMs talk about how they handle new players, what they do to try to teach them the game, and how they make it fun without overwhelming the poor newbs.
1:00 Dave’s new game for Bonnie’s girlfriends, all newbs, running Rime of the Frost Maiden …
4:00 Remembering 0-level antics and Necros: The Dragon Magazine school of evil wizardry
8:00 Tip 1: Where do you start? Do you teach the rules first or let them build a character they’ll love?
14:00 Tip 2: Why we hate teaching the game with pre-gen characters (well … mostly)
19:00 Tip 3: The joy of DMing players who haven’t seen any RPG tropes before
21:00 Tip 4: Guiding new players into the right characters for them
23:00 Tip 5: Letting the player create characters together instead of a bunch of secret randos
26:00 Tip 6: How we try to get new players out of their shells and into the roleplaying
29:00 Tip 7: Should you start your new players in a big town to explore or lead them right into a dungeon?
34:00 Tip 8: How self-directed are your players? Getting a feel for how they’re going to react to the world
39:00 Tip 9: What do you do beyond session 0 to session 1, 2 and onward? When do you put the real long-haul campaign together?
44:00 Tip 10: “The protagonist is directly messing with you!” What to do when the party doesn’t know what it wants to do
47:00 Tip 11: Make sure the new players have good characters who want to be adventurers (ideally heroes)
52:00 Tip 12: Teaching the game mechanics: Should you start with combat?
57:00 Tip 13: Teaching new players their place in the world
60:00 Tip 14: How do you help new players learn their characters better?
66:00 Final thoughts
I start new players with Basic Fantasy rather than throw them into the deep end on their first session. Even if 5e isn’t nearly as “deep” as 3.5 or Pathfinder. This introduces them to all of the basics, no pun intended, without throwing too much stuff at them all at once. This is also a good way to introduce new players to character death. I definitely would not recommend a new player spend a bunch of time building a character that they love. I want their first character, or two, to be throwaway characters. This way their first death isn’t massively disappointing, potentially turning them off before they’ve really gotten started.