Comments on: Fluency: maybe you never thought about it either

By: ketjak

ketjak — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:03:27 +0000

The term used for the concept of “fluency” is generally “accessibility.” D&D is actually fairly accessible – that is, as a fantasy setting inspired by Lord of the Rings-style fiction, anyone who has read fiction in turn inspired by LotR will understand most of the tropes used in D&D. 4E has changed that a bit, but it’s still pretty much the same as it has been since Basic.

By: ethan

ethan — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:48:06 +0000

@jonathan I felt the same way when I saw fluency used to describe a player’s familiarity with the setting. For a whole day I was like, “why didn’t I think of that before!?”

While it’s cliche’d, I think starting small is the best method. It helps if the player’s characters have an in-game reason to be clueless and need explanation from NPCs.

By: jonathan

jonathan — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:33:20 +0000

This is a major problem for me becuase many, and sometimes all, of my players are not just completely new to the game; but completely new to the setting as well. I can’t just plunk down 1500 pages of FRCS and say “make a character that fits into this setting”.

A simple solution is to start SMALL.. very small. Like.. all the characters are some the village; and you don’t know what’s over that hill and only vaguely whats down river. Maybe thats a bit extreme, but the small the setting the fast people can develop fluency.

BTW — “Game Fluency” i love the term. If I still had a blog, I would blog the hell out of this…

By: Mike Kenyon

Mike Kenyon — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:10:48 +0000

Absolutely true! And this happens even within the same game. I have been playing D&D with my old high school teachers for a few months now, and they have always, always, always played in the Forgotten Realms setting. For the past twenty years! These are the same guys who own almost every single FR novel published, have read every FR splatbook across multiple editions, and who know more about that world than they do ours.

Playing with them is exceedingly difficult, because I have no idea how my character is supposed to act or react, in accordance with his region, deity, class and race. Even if I decide to ignore that, and play my own damn character, I’m never as invested as I feel I should be.

My solution to that is to start learning. I have started to learn about the regions, learn about the gods, learn about some of the major events that have happened. And I’ve started to enjoy the game more and more!