Treebore wrote:
Hey Luther, look on the bright side, only Lizard is acting like he knows everything, once upon a time you would have had a dozen or more other posters telling you how all knowing they are. Is rpgnet getting better, or are all the "all knowing" board members just slacking off?
Actually, it looks as though the Mods have had enough of this sort of thread-crapping as well, if what I just saw posted in that thread is any indicator, so maybe that's why.
But, whatever, I didn't even reply after that because the whole thing is so mind numbing. When I posted here, we got some civil debate about a single point 'Can a completely new person pick it up and how can we improve on that aspect of the game?'
When I posted over on RPG.NET, however I got the response 'don't listen to him. C&C is not easy to learn because the book isn't thick enough, it isn't sold at Barnes & Nobles and you won't be able to join the big kids at the D&D table dooming you to gaming ostracism' which is such a stupid series of non-points that it made my head hurt.
On the subject of newbies and C&C, I have these points to make (which is why I suggested it to the OP in the first place):
1. It's very easy. And there is advice on running the game in the books.
2. It's relatively cheap.
3. Theres a free download that gives you the basic rules and another that gives you a free adventure to try it out.
Beyond that I'd argue:
1. People didn't always have a DMG. Some still don't. I didn't, because I started out with the B/X set and even after that, I went to WFRP, not AD&D, so I still didn't have a DMG, just a damn fine setting to play with (which is why I recommended WFRP as well). And I still managed to grock the basic concept at the age of 13 without any help at all
2. These days, people are much more aware of what roleplaying is then 'back in the day' . What with MMORPGs, CCGs and the fact that D&D is such a established part of popular culture that it and Gary Gygax even came up as a question on 'Who wants to be a Millionaire?' means that entry into the hobby is far easier than it was back when no-one had ever heard of role-playing or thought it was some sort of weird ritual for demon summoning.
3. Even if the person in question is a total newb and has no idea what to do, the very fact that they had a place on the internet to ask that question and immediately recieved 40 posts in an hour tells me that advice on running a session is not going to be hard to come by even for those 'poor doomed souls who risk ostracism by starting with something other than 4e.' This is the age of the internet for goodness sake, and there is no shortage of gabby nerds willing to talk your ear off about their a-number 1 past-time...
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IMHO, AFAIK, YMMV.
