So I'm trying to teach my mom how to play skyrim. This is her first "real" 3d game. Before now, she played pokemon and Animal Crossing. Sadly, after 3 years, she's gotten bored of acnh.
I chose skyrim for a few reasons. She likes fantasy settings and loves dragons. Skyrim has an entertaining story and so many things to do. Of all my games, skyrim is probably the most user-friendly.
Guiding her through Helgen was an experience. It took two four hour sessions to escape. Session three had her going through Riverwood. She followed Rayloff and did the hoopla for that portion of the quest, then went to go sell junk items at the merchant. This, as always, led to the bleak falls barrow dungeon. She made her way through the crypt, accidentally t-bagging everything that attacked her. Her go-to move when being attacked is to mash the B button and face a way from the foes instead of stabbing them. Had to stop just after the giant spider, not for arachnophobia reasons, but cause it was getting late.
This article provides an overview of how you can teach someone to play a game. It describes game literacy as a starting place for helping so
In this UniversityXP article, Dave Eng provides an overview of how you can teach someone to play a game. It describes game literacy as a starting place for helping someone learn how to play a new game. Often, the game that you select should work well for player types, tastes, and experiences.
or, I Was Into Forge Indie Narrativist Shit, So I Got Good At Running And Writing Teaching Games, And So Can You
Not just the act of teaching games, but of writing teaching games, one-shots to introduce new players to tabletop games that are the shit but that don’t have free advertising from the MacElroys. Or Matt Mercer.
(Well, Matt Mercer doesn’t advertise for them most of the time. What I’m saying is, please play Monsterhearts.)
Above all, you need to get to the stuff that makes the game good, quickly. What that means in theory is that teaching games can’t have the same structure as games for people who know how to play, where a slow burn and self-expression and mechanical mastery can come into play.
In practice, this means I have three things to keep in mind:
1: Preconstructed Characters Are Your Friends
2: Go High-Concept, Genre, and Simple
3: They Won’t Finish The Adventure, So Frontload The Good Stuff
Explanations after the cut. Post 1 of 3. Today I’m explaining why Precons Are Your Friends:
Precons are hooks to show the players What People Do and What Kind Of Story This Tells. They don’t know that prior to play, or how to make mechanically effective characters, so do that for them.
When I did I/O at cons years before the Quest, it was literally a bunch of Final Fantasy 14 classes made in Valor, stapled to a bunch of stereotypes about different kinds of MMO players.
“Here’s Deedee, she’s a Monk who was a tremendous egg that always played tall strong women because she wanted to be one IRL.”
“Here’s Hikaru, he’s a Black Mage and also a STEM nerd who writes the game wiki.”
“This is Alesha, a Paladin who plays with her daughter and likes the fantasy of helping people.”
“This is Sekhmet, a Thief who plays this game because her life sucks, she’s poor, and she gets to stab Bosses and pretend they’re her boss.”
Hannah took that and said “This is Ace, a Warrior who was a YouTuber doing a cheesecake character for laughs on stream,” and that was when I knew my templating worked - but you don’t get there immediately, she got that from looking at my precons.
Some games have very easy character creation, we’re talking maybe 15 minutes of checking boxes on a sheet with strong thematic resonances. This is one of the major strengths of Powered By The Apocalypse and it’s red-headed stepchild Forged in the Dark, which include Masks, Monsterhearts, Scum and Villainy and of course Apoc World. In those cases, sure, have people make their own characters.
But most games, particularly ones with a lot of mechanical and tactical depth, will take hours to explain for little benefit to getting to the good stuff. Skip it. Precons are your friend.
