I put up a poll for my local gaming store asking which game they thought would be the best system to use for beginning players getting into the hobby. FFG Star Wars won, with Dungeons & Dragons coming in second. I though this was pretty awesome. I feel like this game has such an awesome mechanic in the Narrative Dice as well as being Easy to learn and hard to master.

Frankly, I think the beginner boxes have a lot to do with it. I'll admit the only other beginner boxes I've ever really looked at is the Pathfinder one, but the FFG Star Wars boxes are way better. The adventures are all fairly fun, the characters are manageable, and the mechanics progress well.

I would imagine that learning FFGs Star Wars as your first game, then going on to other games would mess you up just as bad as starting with other games and then playing FFGs Star Wars. Alot of people have a hard time getting narrative, and I can see having the narrative aspects toned down to the levels common in most other games could be restrictive.

But, yeah, I could see it being a good choice for a first game

3 hours ago, korjik said:

I would imagine that learning FFGs Star Wars as your first game, then going on to other games would mess you up just as bad as starting with other games and then playing FFGs Star Wars. Alot of people have a hard time getting narrative, and I can see having the narrative aspects toned down to the levels common in most other games could be restrictive.

But, yeah, I could see it being a good choice for a first game

Yeah and if they started with narrative dice the pass/fail only d20 setup may be kind of blah to them. The first time they roll a high hit but roll a 1 for damage they are gonna be like "what?" lol

I thnk both are quite bad as noob games, but that is me. The internet has a lot of free games floating around that are way easier to get the grasp of RPGing than those. But that is just my opinion. For ease of learning and playing, I would go for barbarians of lemuria, but that is me.

Cheers,
Xavi

Star Wars is probably one the best settings for most people new to RPGs, because the setting is familiar, which makes roleplaying more natural.

If you're playing, for example, DnD's Forgotten Realms, odds are good that none of the players are gonna have any idea what's going on in the setting, who any of the factions are, how to picture Dwarves, how magic is/works, etcetera; except to imagine the whole setting as Lord of the Rings, which it isn't. What is the daily life of a peasant farmer on the Sword Coast? Random New Player doesn't know.

But Random New Player probably does have an idea of what daily life is like for a moisture farmer on Tatooine. RNP knows what the Empire is, how Stormtroopers behave, what sorts of things to say and not say in a shady cantina. That familiarity makes roleplaying so so much more intuitive and easy. ****, a lot of people probably have already roleplayed in the Star Wars setting as childen.

I would argue the best game for people totally new to roleplaying is some sort of Zombie Apocalypse game, set in the real life area where the group lives - it's very easy, and loads of fun, to pretend to be a raider sacking the local grocery store or blowing up your zombie former-principal or whatever. And, again, most people have probably already done it! (If you never had a zombie plan, are you even a real person?) The only big roleplaying bridge that new players would have to cross is the idea of playing someone else , with different goals/aspirations/etcetera, which is a great improvement relative to all the challenges something like DnD presents to new roleplayers.

8 hours ago, svelok said:

The only big roleplaying bridge that new players would have to cross is the idea of playing someone else , with different goals/aspirations/etcetera, which is a great improvement relative to all the challenges something like DnD presents to new roleplayers.

I usually am like myself.

A lot. Like a lot

Try playing a totally different character sometimes. Like that guy at work you hate. Makes for an interesting exercise.