Another thought: Print up a few cards with effects, such as Slowed, Weakened, Ongoing 5 Damage, etc. that the GM can drop on the character sheets when the characters are affected by them. Make sure they describe the actual effects, and say “Save Ends” when applicable. You can also use colored beads or poker chips to identify who marked who.

I’m realizing that, run properly, 4E can be a great system for introducing new players to RPGs.

If you are going to play D&D, I second the highlighted character sheets, but with different colors – All the defenses are blue, all the attacks are pink, all the skills are yellow, etc. You may want to circle the characters’ “best” abilities, as well (such as a Ranger’s Perception).

I’d also strongly recommend the Power Cards; they make 4E so much easier to play.

You may also want to suggest that the players flip their character sheets face-down for RP. They can flip them back to check things, but they’re not distracted by all the cool stats.

Finally, you may want to make 2x as many characters as you have players, and let them choose them based on quick descriptions.

Hold the phone… Staple the quick descriptions over the character sheets, so the description is the first thing the players see.

Example: “Neanne Mirgalana is a rather large Half-Elven woman with more personality than most acting troupes. She’s constantly entertaining others with her stories and especially her (often bawdy) songs. Don’t sell her short, though – Neanne is very comfortable and skillful in nearly any social situation, has a nearly-encyclopedic knowledge of history, and is rumored to be quite talented with the many blades she has stashed about her person. She’s six feet tall, nearly 200 lbs, with green eyes and auburn hair. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.”

Follow that up with a short list of the things the character is best at – using a sword – stealthy – spells – etc. I’ve found this provides an easy handle for the player that puts the numbers beneath it into a more understandable context.

A method I’ve used to pull fresh players into a game is to put them into a tense situation right off the top – only a short verbal introduction to tell them where they are. Something wherein each player can discover their skills/personality and get a bit of confidence in how things work without risking death.

In your scenario, I would suggestion something along the lines of throwing the players into an immediate confrontation with drunken town thugs. A non-lethal confrontation where standing up to the bullies is half the battle – a short scuffle results in the bullies backing down/running away. This gives the players a taste of their abilities without leaving them wounded. It also provides them with some role-playing opportunities and an immediate hook with some of the town folk who have been victims of the thugs. These town folk serve as your NPCs who encourage your players to get involved with the town and the rest of the adventure.

But most importantly, remember to have fun yourself.

Help them have fun pretending to be other people. I know it’s fun for many people to run a character like a finely tuned machine, but I suspect that the fun part of RPGs for most people is being able to be 1) someone else in a 2) different world.

If someone comes up with a fun, in-character idea, roll with it. Don’t worry about sticking to the plot too much. While linear gaming has its place in some games, I don’t think it’s right for new players. There’s an implicit social contract in a linear games that GMs will try to clue lost PCs into what their goal is and that the PCs will play along with the given plot. New gamers, though, won’t be familiar with this, so don’t make them play that way. Let them run around in your world and go nuts.

Their roleplaying will be fine. Don’t worry about it. I don’t know if girls are just less conditioned to be awkward in front of one another or we’re more naturally social or it’s just that all of my friends are also writers, but I’ve yet to meet a girl who didn’t take intuitively to the RP part of RPGs.

I say use the regular character sheets. A lot of the draw towards roleplaying I find is the setting. No, not Eberron, I mean your living room. The feeling of sitting in a group with these strange charts of paper while one guy sits behind a cardboard screen, with strange coloured and shaped dice. So the sheets are important, I guess, to me at least.

But highlight what’s important. Literally. Take that yellow highlighter and note their HP, Defenses, Attack and Damage, and Initiative modifiers. I’d highlight the Skills header too, just to note that they’re important, but not each individual skill.

Also, power cards are important. What I would do is let them figure out some stuff that is obvious to us, though. Tell them what a minor action is, and let the ranger come to his own conclusion that “Hey, using Quarry every turn would be a good idea.” Oh, and make extra cards for those things as well. Even though Hunter’s Quarry isn’t a power, it would make an important card.

What else… Be patient. These girls probably haven’t done anything like this since they played house in elementary school. So it’s not going to go anything like with your usual group. But that’s obvious, I guess. (I was only thinking about House because my 8 year old niece said she and her friends played House and said that she was Cuddy. I don’t know what to think about that. I might have to have a talk with her mother.)

I’ve decided that the characters will all know each other. It just makes sense and saves time. I like @happyturtle’s idea of adding an NPC, and it may work into the adventure I’m creating (with Scott’s help).

I think the big trick is going to be letting everyone do some characterization (role-playing) with some dice tossing. I’m hoping that even through we’re using pre-gens the women will embrace their characters. And, as @omnus said, I’m guessing there will be a lot of socializing, especially since not everyone knows each other IRL.

My game concept is basically that the village our trepid adventurers live in is having it’s big once-a-decade celebration. Part of that is a contest among the village that sends groups forth to explore the local “Tom Sawyer” cave. Let’s me do something traditional (dungeon crawl), set up challenges the characters should be able to overcome (traps, monster encounters, boss fight at the end) and have a reason for celebration at the end (the party beats the dungeon and claims rewards).

@flourish
You totally stole my game day name – “newbs with boobs.” I was trying to convince Scott to use that as the posting title.

@rafe and @skelly
Thanks for the recommendation. Hopefully when I get home I can take a look at it (darn this corporate firewall).

@darrell
Ohhh .. color coding the dice, great idea! And the perfect chance to buy new dice!

The first issue is best addressed, I think, the way TSR and WotC try to bring new players in, with colorful pregenerated characters, simplified rules sets, and as much multimedia as you can bring to help kickstart the imagination. The prime example in my mind was the classic “First Quest” boxed set from 2nd Edition, which had very nice full-color maps, a few miniatures to start with, color tiles for monsters, traps and key items of treasure, and perhaps most importantly, a CD with voice tracks laid out for the players including dialogue and sound effects to frame each encounter. The set had three starting adventures, and each one, as you went on, had less and less handed to the DM, transitioning not only the players but the DM into the role. Now, I don’t know if such an aid is available these days, but some of the same effects can be garnered from having a handful of minis, shortened lists rather than tables out of the book, pregen characters sheets showing just what is needed to run the game at hand, and maps and pictures and background music as possible to help their imaginations attach to your words more meaning. All this will help ease them into gaming that first critical game. After that, though, it’s good that they’re using 4th Edition D&D, which does an excellent job of outlining game concepts and teaching the core of the gaming experience. Don’t sugar-coat too much, I would further advise, by paring down the rules, but make sure they get all the positives of an adventure: memorable characters, exciting treasure, and lots of action.

Most gamers go through three steps as far as game-play motivation goes. Hack-and-slash, problem-solving, and then role-playing are the common progression points. Setting too much up for beginners involving role-playing and puzzles or deep plot issues may be more than you need. Certainly, touching on these is good, but for a first time I’d make nodding acquaintances of them and move on to mostly action.

Lastly, there is a different psyche to the all-girls group that I run, as opposed to the mixed- all-male groups. The all-girl group is far more into the social aspect of gaming, and has required me to learn patience and to be more generous with the time at the table so they can get their social fulfillment taken care of as well as the entertainment of my game session. I can only refer to my own situation, of course; I hardly make a claim that all groups, regardless of gender, behave the same! Nonetheless, I recommend keeping that first game very loose, and open up the possibility to further sessions if you do not accomplish the end of the adventure in one sitting. I wouldn’t make any other assumptions based on gender, however. My ladies can be every bit as crude, boisterous, and bloodthirsty in character as their husbands and boyfriends, after all!

The DM there did a quick-reference sheet for us, but only of action types. That could be useful, too.

A ringer may be overrated, in my last D&D running, I had 3 newbs and 3 veterans; the newbs turned out to be much better RPers than 2 of the hack & slash vets.

Re: gender: That game (“Feywatch”) was almost all women players, my wife– who was not playing– quickly nicknamed it my harem. I recommend sticking to the single-gender group if possible, especially if it was recruited as such.

When teaching a new system, I usually run a sample combat with randomly chosen pregens before doing much of anything else, just so everyone has some idea what they’re getting into. That way they can say, “I like how that guy stood ten squares away and didn’t get hurt – do you have one like that for me to play?”

I’d skip most of the intro roleplaying stuff. With experienced roleplayers, they can find excuses to make that sort of thing work, and it’s still awkward. Just start off with kicking in the door.

Since it’s D&D, my main tip is to not let anyone have any kind of die even NEAR them that they don’t use for their character. That cuts it down to a d20 and maybe two different sizes of damage dice.

i.e. All d20s one colour, d12s another, d10s a third etc.

So you can ask a player to roll a d20 (or whatever), and when they ask which one that is you can automatically tell them that it is the “blue” one, and the same will stand for every player.