# RPG A DAY 2024: Quick to learn tags: #thoughts #thoughts/RPGaDay/2024 ![[RPGaDAY2024-024x723.jpg]] Alright, so here's the deal. When we start talking about games that are quick to learn, it puts someone with a lot of experience in reading and understanding RPGs in a very awkward position. At this point, there really isn't anything that isn't quick to learn *for me*, and it's extremely difficult beyond that wider context to really get down and dirty and understand what is complicated for most people. Unless you're putting **[[Battlelords of the 23rd Century]]** in front of me^[Which is simultaneously beautiful and horrific, as it should be.], I'm probably going to find it extremely quick and easy to learn and understand whatever it is. So I am going to remove myself from the context of the question and instead change it very slightly: > *What RPG have you found it extremely easy to teach to new players?* This is something I have a little more experience with because not all of my friends are hardcore RPG geeks. It's hard to imagine. It's hard to encompass. But that's the way it is. You can't always live in a dorm room for the rest of your life. Much as you might try. I regularly have new RPGs coming into the house, and I'm not shy about showing them off. Beyond the things that are just on the shelf because they are part of the collection, there is the trophy table, which has special editions, special covers, and limited prints, things that go back to **[[Other Suns]]**. I am happy to share my love of the field as a whole with anybody who walks into my house. If you're in my house, I probably like you or you are prey. Either way, you're probably going to hear about RPGs. So, what is the easiest game I've found to get over to a new, not-hardcore RPG player in the last year? I'm going to start sounding like a broken record here, but… it's **[[Ironsworn]]**. ![[Ironsworn (cover).jpg]] Look, it's not even my fault this time. I literally handed her the book and the asset cards. And I said, "Remember that time you played **[[Pathfinder]]** for about three hours at [Anime North](https://www.animenorth.com/)? Remember how long it took you to make a character? Here, pick three assets. We'll set your attributes and you can have a character in minutes. I can run you through something off the top of my head. And she said, "I can have a Cave Lion as a pet! *Fuck yeah!*" ![[Ironsworn - Assets - Cave Lion.png|200]] That's all it took. I don't think I've had a single person that I have shown the book to and then sat down and talked to them for five minutes who didn't feel at least a little bit of understanding of how the game works. It's all there on the page. You can literally do a five-minute introduction, show them how to roll the dice, generally acquaint them with the idea of moves and start playing right then. The biggest hurdle to getting new people into the game is making sure that they understand that the fiction comes first and then you figure out what move is triggered. If you can get them to describe what it is they want to do to start with and then you go, *"Okay, that sounds like it's this thing because it's related to this set of things that we're doing right now, and here are the ways that can affect what's going to happen next,*" you're good. You're done.^[That moves are clustered in the text by *"what kind of thing am I doing"* is woefully under-praised. Seriously, it's a marvel.] You are fully on board with a new player and they are ready to play. There are games that I run on a semi-regular basis where getting someone into play is even faster and lighter, but none of them have the same amount of flexibility and potential for interesting outcome which is in the hands of the player as much as **Ironsworn**. It's the combination of all of those elements that really make it one of my favorite games to teach people. I'm looking forward to getting to do it a bit more in a couple of weeks at [[DragonCon]]. We shall see what we shall see.