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I've got this experiment with A Penny For My Thoughts that I'm gonna try. I'll invite a group of players and we'll play the game completely unprepared - no one will even read the rules beforehand. Why, you ask. Well let me explain:
Many of the indie role-playing games (oh come on, you know the games I'm talking about, don't ya?) are advertised as games that you can play without any preparation. What is usually meant by that is that none of the players need to do prep for the setting or the events of the game beforehand. This is excellent but it is a long way from the way you can, for example, pick a new board game and learn it the first time you play.
In my own experience you have to read the average indie role-playing game at least twice before you can introduce the rules to the rest of the group and facilite the play to a group of fellow novices. In many occasions you have to parse the game text thoroughly before you can introduce it to a group. There's even a thread on parsing game texts on Story Games .
In an ideal situation every player would figure out the game's rules before gathering to play. This doesn't happen very often, at least to me. An important reason for that (in addition to the game texts to be hard to learn) is that the reasons to play are varied: not all are interested nd invested in learning the rules. Maybe learning the rules is not part of the enjoyment of the game to some of the players at all.
One way to overcome this problem is to play new games with people that have played them before. This is not always possible. Additionally it would be practical to be able to refer to a handy rules tutorial in the midst of the gmae while learning games this way.
I've pondered if the game text itself could be a solution to this problem. Wouldn't it be practical if the texts themselves contained a tutorial that could be used while learning to play by playing? As I mentioned before it is possible to learn playing board games this way. The same goes for video games which have tutorials that teach the user interface of the game to the players. It doesn't seem unthinkable to achieve this in role-playing games too.
I would think this function of the game text would be important especially if the designer has aspirations to reach new players previously unacquinted to role-playing with his/her game. This seems to be the goal of many a designer nowadays as well as other rpg enthusiasts.
This thought popped into my mind when I started reading A Penny For My Thoughts the other day. The rules of the game seem to be written in the order they are to be learned and used nd additionally the symbols that express how the rule text they refer to are to be read (read on, stop here and use this procedure now, return here shortly etc.) seemed to indicate that the game is written to support learning the rules while playing. Which is just what I had hoped to get in a game.
And I thought: "I have to test if it works!". So I stopped reading the rules and started drafting players for my experiment right away. The disadvantage of this kind of experiment is that one player can test one game like this only once.
My first (and only, for me) experiment will probably consist of players that have plenty of role-playing game experience. It would be interesting to test the game with players new to role-playing too if my experiment goes fine. Finding the players could be a hassle though so maybe that won't come true in the near future.
But, if everything goes all right we'll experiment with A Penny For My Thoughts by January 15th. I'll write about my own experiences after that. I'll also request other participants to report their views on it too.
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