I'm very interested in those simpler systems you mention, but I got hooked on RPGs because of the storyteller system of simple dice pools, so I don't know if id like your suggestions but I'm going to look.

I'm amazed about how many of you RPGers are helpful, please take my tips as a base line of a newbie, its just what I found to be helpful.

Not sure if it's a 'tip' or 'suggestion' but in tabletop, I've found it useful to create a portfolio of universal NPC bios which can be tweaked for uses in a verity of campaigns. Creating a list of 'types' (warriors, craftsmen, companions etc.) including a generalized personality and background has come in handy:

NAME:

SPECIES:

PROFESSION:

ROLE:


That way, I can thumb through my NPC portfolio, add in names and setting aspects and don't have to create new NPCs every time I need one. It has helped a lot in terms of defining personality and bringing a sense of familiar realism to the gameplay. I'm not pretending this is 'new' as I'm sure others keep similar NPC records.

I wouldn't read all of a rulebook to start, as someone said, there's too much you don't understand.  Read enough about the game, not necessarily the rulebook, to get an idea whether you will like it, then try to find someone to walk you through chargen.  If you have the basic book, read the chargen part, but even then it's helpful to have someone who knows the game to point you to certain parts.  After you have your character, skim parts like combat to get the feel for it, and go back to read more carefully now and then as you play and find you can follow it better.  Don't have your first character for a game be a 'heavy' one.  My experience is with D&D, from 1st ed to 3.5, with a touch of 4th.  In the later version a fighter is heavy; there are so many feats and the ways they combine.  Any kind of magic user - cleric, mage, sorcerer, druid or ranger - is also heavy, both spells and feats.  I recommend a rogue for a first go; there are still details but a lot of it is more easily related to things you already know, and that knowledgeable mentor can more easily point you to feats, etc, that combine to create, for instance, a rogue with a skill set that interests you and is also likely to be viable in the environment you expect to play in.

Know the rules, but don't sweat the rules. You're not a computer and no one should expect you to be. Making sure everything is perfect takes time and is likely to spark arguments and very often the correction doesn't wind up making a significant difference anyway.

Along those lines, say "Yes, and..." as much as possible both as a player and as a GM. If someone asks if they can do something or if the thing they want to be true is true default to saying "Yes," followed by something that builds off of this acceptance (rather than negating it, or making the person wish they hadn't said anything). This builds trust, creates a game that adheres to player preferences and expectations, and generally speeds things along.

Another tip, if you don't have a party of friends, there is a special set of rules that allow you to play any any! RPG solo, its a Game Master Emulator, you should research it.

EG: you ask it questions like "Does this Road Have any cars on it?" you would guess its about 70% likely cars are on the road, you roll 2d10s and get a number from 1-100 if its below 70 you now know there are cars on the this particular road, the trick is to ask the right questions.
This message was last edited by the user at 00:35, Mon 08 Aug 2016.

Another time saver - If you're joining an established game on here that's recruiting new players, don't be afraid to ask the GM for a thumbnail of the current plot.  Oftentimes it doesn't hurt to read the most current thread, and that may indeed be to your benefit, but if there's a complex plot or a lot of back-and-forth discussion, just getting a GM-directed summary (or player-made summary, if your new party will oblige) is very helpful in getting up to speed.

Reading the book depends on the system. Icons? Read everything rule-related, skip the fluff. D&D? Read the very basics (preferably, ask an experienced person) then just look at the mechanics while creating a character? Anima? Drop the book and run away because it will make you cry.

I can't honestly think of a single RPG book I've read cover to cover in 30+ years of RPG gaming.  I've read a whole lot of various books, but never the whole thing.  That's crazy talk.

Honestly, I'm not sure what the thrust of this thread is really about.  A good deal of the tips here have nothing to do with saving time and seem to be more about learning to play RPGs in general.  Others are... just odd.

Anyway, if you're a new player to a game system, I do recommend something I rarely hear mentioned, and that's listening to an actual play podcast or two.  This is doubly true for a new GM to a system, but it also helps players understand what the game is really "about".  While the game you end up playing/running may be only superficially similar to said podcast, you can get a feel for how the game flows and all of the most major areas of play that way.  Depending on the system, there may even be tutorial type podcasts out there.

From a GM's perspective, I recommend having either a good list of pre-generated NPC names or a good random generator you can access as needed.  Beyond a name, 99% of NPCs can be done as a 10 word description as long as you have a general feel for how stats should be in the game.  There's no need to stat out everything.

I just found an RPG gamers Imformation manager, there may be more than one, but it seems to organise all of your charts maps char sheets and has generators, its got a map maker and has online play. I cant say who or where but look into it, I was keeping all charts and sheets organised myself and it was a real messy thing to do, this definatly is a time saver
This message was last edited by the user at 14:01, Mon 08 Aug 2016.

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 21):

I have read every 7th sea book cover to cover and most of the Shadowrun 1st-3rd ed.  I am currently working on 5th ed shadowrun.  I am known in my tt gaming group as the person that can tell you what page number rules are on.

The thread can be good advice to some and maybe not so to others.  I personally find it easier to learn a system by reading it and then having it explained to me by others who know it better.  No singular piece of advice is going to work for every player.

I hope you don't mean Anima: Beyond Fantasy. Yes, FFG did some terrible things with the translation, and the organization could use some work, but the system itself is a rather beautiful thing. Of course, everyone will have a different view on things, so another tip for new players is "Don't judge a system before you experience it." It might not be a time-saver, but take recommendations with a grain of salt, because you never know if someone is approaching a system from an entirely different perspective than you, or even if you might like some of the things they hate about it, or vice versa (no matter how detailed someone is, there's always the chance they're describing something differently than you would).

So, again, take a look first. Except for FATAL, where the only recommended course of action is to burn before reading.


Learning to play an RPG can be a time-consuming process if done in particular ways. The tips here are indeed about learning to play RPGs in general, and having those tips can save time for some. Instead of approaching blind, or thinking you need to learn things in a particular order, the suggestions here can save time and frustration on all sides. Some may be odd, as you put it, and others aren't really tips at all (as I pointed out myself), but a time-saver is anything which helps you do something more efficiently, which I think most of this qualifies for.

In short: there's no reason these tips can't be both, or even all three. ;)

Speaking of time-savers that're all three, after you've made a character or three to get used to the system, I'd typically recommend stopping right there until you get into a game. Unless you're GMing, there's not much point to having a reserve of 7 to 3000 characters, especially if you design characters anything like I do. The more details you put into your characters, the more likely they are to not fit into a new game you might join. Not that a character can't be adapted, but after 1-3 characters built, you're typically not going to learn anything you won't learn better in an actual game.

In reply to PCO.Spvnky (msg # 23):

I tend to focus on a higher-level understanding and know where to look things up rather than remembering specifics (and I write out lots of notes on what things do, if I'm playing).  It's a function of attention span and lack of time, for the most part (but mostly attention span).

Actually, speaking of related player tips:

If you're playing a game either offline or online, don't hesitate to make lots of notes on how things work and/or where they can be found.  In an offline game, this might require you to make a note sheet separate from your character sheet.  Still, it's vastly better in a game that you're not familiar with if your abilities can be easily tracked down.

Let's go with Pathfinder as a quick example:


vs.


The second one is overkill for an experienced player, but can save a new player a whole lot of time looking stuff up.  When I'm playing in an RL game, I produce a note sheet that has similar definitions and references on it so I can find stuff quickly.  This is even more critical if you're playing a game where you're using multiple books to make a character.

I have a couple of tips for saving time and learning RPGs:

1. Don’t do everything the designer tells you to do.

Most rule sets have a sentence or two that says you don’t have to follow all the rules - you can make up your own mind.
Find that sentence and highlight it!
Then ignore all the rules that waste your time.

2. Use simpler rules.

Over recent years, I have lost patience with rule sets that comprise more than 20 pages. I’ve found that you can have 90% of the fun with 10% (or even 1%) of the rules. Check out ‘indie’ rules (short, I believe, for independent designer/publisher). You don’t need to be a corporate giant to produce good rules, and many indie games are free.

Opinion:
My current favourite is a rule set called 1PG because its core rules are written on 1 PaGe. There are several other pages of background description and explanation, but your character generation, skills, combat, weapons, task resolution, etc. together comprise a single A4 page. That saves a lot of reading time, and a lot of You Tube browsing time, yet playing the game is just as much fun. :)

I'll agree with you on #1...I have mixed feelings about #2 (but that, to me, is entirely a matter of personal preference.)

One of the reasons I stopped playing D&D ages ago was because I didn't feel the need for a new edition every few years.  I came into it during the heyday of AD&D, and we had a perfectly good time playing with that.  We routinely did stuff in our games that weren't covered by the rules...we common-sensed our way through it.  I realize that doesn't work for everybody...but in just about ALL of the games (including here on RPOL) that I've been in and really enjoyed, pretty routinely something comes up that isn't strictly laid out in the written rules...and the GM either adapted another rule to cover it, or just made an arbitrary call as to whether or not it would work.

I still remember reading Gary Gygax's intro to one of the AD&D books (I think it was the DM's Guide, not positive...it's been thirty years and change since I read it!), where he pretty much said, "These rules are GUIDELINES.  They've worked for us...but if they don't work for you, change them, or throw them out."  I've had the good fortune of having a long string of game masters who did exactly that.

And I do agree that simpler is generally better, for gaming rules (especially for PbP gaming).  At least, up to a certain point.  And that point all depends on the game.  If you're playing a straight-up action shoot'em up adventure, the core rules you need are pretty straightforward.  The more wrinkles you add to that mix, however, the more complex your rules need to be for the sake of consistent play.  Is there magic?  Psychic/Supernatural powers?  Different racial abilities?  Specific skills that MUST be clearly outlined?

I will agree, however, that if the core mechanics of the game take more than a chapter to explain, you probably don't need that game (at least, not when you're starting out in gaming.)  I tried a couple of different complex games...and by the time I got my character built, I honestly had a hard time caring about the game anymore, except as a justification for all the anguish I put myself through building the character.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 27):

If you are talking about one of the 1E or 2E AD&D books, the rules changed as Gary changed them.  Eventually Frank Mentzer was allowed to give official rulings.  Pretty much everyone winged it; the rules for much either didn't exist, or was too specific to Gary's own world view to work for everyone.  Something TSR tried to do, with mixed levels of success, was standardize the rules so that if you sat down to play a tournament game, the rules would be the same at every table.

And I agree about the constant changes though I will never know how I might have felt about 3E if they hadn't made the RPGA change to that before the books were even out.  *sigh*  My gypsy bard got just trashed in the change, some of which was inevitable, but mostly not if I - or indeed anyone - had known the rules when I had to decide which of her collection of items to keep.  (I don't blame them for using the change to strip people of their vast collection, even mine was pretty large and it was minimal compared to some.)

I've never understood 4E, I own a couple of the books, but didn't find them interesting enough to work through chargen, and what on earth is 5E??

Lol. Not BESM and GURPS by any chance? Those did that to me. Total diametric opposite of my current outlook. :)

Consider your answers to the SamePage tool
( https://bankuei.wordpress.com/.../the-same-page-tool/ )

It will help you determine early on whether a given game is right for you... by helping you figure out what about roleplaying in general works for you.

Remember, what works for you might not work for others.

In reply to icosahedron152 (msg # 29):

GURPS was one of them, yes...although, I have to say, I've tried it three different times now, and none of them was the same experience.  The first time I played it, we were all playing wizards' familiars, whose wizards had been abducted by someone...and we had to go rescue them.  A cat, a gecko, and a very large jumping spider.  That one was pretty simple.  The other two?  Not so much...

The other one was The Burning Wheel.  Chargen was so complex that out of the dozen of us that started it, only half were still there when the game actually started.  A big part of the complication was the requirement that every character have some kind significant connection with one or more other characters in the group, which sounds good in principle, but the GM's take on it made it arduous.  And after all of that, we didn't even last through the first encounter before the GM called it quits.

One of the things I loved about the D6 Star Wars system was, I could take someone who'd never played any RPG before, and walk them through character creation, from blank sheet to ready-to-play, in an hour or so.  It was complex enough to be interesting, simple enough to be unintimidating, and if you had a GM who was willing to hand-wave things every so often for the sake of cinematic storytelling, there was actually a LOT you could do with it.

My tip would be: it's about storytelling. Never let the game mechanics, the stats or the dice dictate a story. You tell a story that is fun and entertaining. If a NPC tries to rob a PC, you don't need to worry about his stats. Just decide if he should be a tough challenge, a mediocre challenge, or a poor challenge.

Stats are only for your benefit really--they let you get a sense of challenge and personality. You don't need to know if he's got a 17 DEX, only that he's quick and fast. If he's smart, give him a 16 Intelligence. If he's not too bright, give him a 9 Intelligence. Otherwise, just knowing that he's not too bright means he can be tricked easily.


My second tip: don't let the dice control the story. It took me years as a GM before I learned this rule. The dice are not god. Just because you roll a high number doesn't mean it's an automatic success. If it doesn't fit the story, then ignore it. Or fudge it. It works both ways, too. A poor roll could still succeed. It's why GM's dice rolls are often secret.

This message was deleted by the user at 07:13, Wed 10 Aug 2016.

I can see where you're coming from, StarMaster, but I don't completely agree with you. There's a danger of railroading there. If you ignore the dice every time you don't like what they show, you're no longer playing Traveller, or D&D or whatever, you're playing Freeform. What's the point of rolling dice at all if you're going to ignore what they say whenever you feel like it?

There has to be a middle of the road option.

PC's will never die from a bad dice roll in my games (unless the bad roll is compounded by their own stupidity*), but for me the dice may alter the direction of the game, may deprive them of something valuable, or may even change the story itself.

The important thing is knowing when to roll and when to tell a story. Experienced GMs will have a handle on this (though every GM will be different) but inexperienced players may be less sure.

* If a PC has one hit point left, the GM gives them an opportunity to run away, but they choose to fight on, they deserve what's coming...

This message was deleted by the user at 07:13, Wed 10 Aug 2016.

Icosahedron, you pretty much said what I said just in a different way.

You are right about the dice, but you are also right about knowing when to roll and when NOT to roll. I think I was going on the way I learned--roll the dice and see what happens. If you're from the Roll the Dice school of gaming, then you also have to know when to ignore the dice in favor of story.

I never meant that it should be as arbitrary as I may have made it sound. The dice are only a randomizer. And sometimes, the dice result can be fun to play out.

It just depends on the game, the players and the story.

Depends on the system as well. Crunchy systems I think, lose a bit when you just ignore the dice in favor of the story.

I remember a time in tabletop; when the GM basically said to ignore all the rolls for combat we'd been making, because his off-the-cuff decision to ignore those, made for a better story. I think for fairly dice-light systems that works. But for something like DnD for example, especially for 3rd-4th, that cheapens everything. The chance of death -has- to be part and parcel of it. Sometimes, the dice just don't behave.

I agree with not rolling dice and with not letting dice control the story.

I like the approach I learned from "Spirit of the Century" and Fate: before rolling the dice, consider success and consider failure. If both aren't interesting (for whatever your table decides that means) then don't roll the dice. Just go with an outcome that's interesting. It's basically why RPG simulation doesn't generally extend to, say, walking: there's pretty much only one interesting outcome to it, so we just assume it succeeds. Only when something complicates and failing at it could be interesting would we roll.

That doesn't mean to take an entirely free-form approach, it just means being more judicious about assigning results to the faces of a die. Since any face can come up, assigning "the game becomes a flaming wreck" (again, for whatever your table decides that means) to one face of the die is flirting with disaster. This doesn't mean dice should never be rolled, just that when they are rolled the game itself is not one of the stakes.

I know this approach won't work well for all people, because it involves openly acknowledging that one is playing a game, and that some results are off the table. If there's a roll to see if a character either jumps across a creek or falls and is swept downstream, but not to jump the same distance over a bottomless pit, some players will take issue. One can try to avoid setting up "save or die" type situations, but without taking away player choice and agency there's only so much avoidance that can be done, at least without talking to the players about it.

It's hard to say how much time this sort of thinking actually saves, though it could be a lot if it avoids arguments and un-fun game derailments.