I’m trying to get a few friends who are not into roleplaying games introduced to the genre, and powered by the Apocalypse games are usually pretty good for that.
How is Uncharted Worlds for new players? Does it require a lot of reading and investment just to get started? Is it too complicated for people unfamiliar with this type of game?
If they’ve ever told a story then they’ll be able to play UW. It’s actually (IMO) one of the easiest PbtA games to pickup. I ran a one-shot with the players pretty much not knowing anything about the system and they had a blast. In that case, they had been roleplaying for years, but UW is sufficiently different that they were still able to pick it up quickly.
I thought it was pretty easy; choose an origin, choose a couple of careers, and you’re almost done with character gen. Faction building is more a brainstorming thing if you want to make your own as a group or you can run with the default factions.
The biggest time sink are the factions. In my time playing UW, I’ve come to think the game will work fine if the GM preps the factions ahead of time. Deciding the number and what they are will flavor the setting immediately, and give your players ideas they can grab onto while making PCs. Then, you hand the reins over to them as normal and ask them to fill in the details about insignias, weapons, personalities, events, and so on. The best of both worlds!
There are pregen characters, a jump point (adventure) and there is some preview material for Carta galaxia with some faction info if you want to use it. The only investment required from players is there willingness to engage and help tell a story.
As GM, it’s your job to reduce the amount of reading new players have to do. That goes doubly so if they are brand new to roleplaying.
BTW, I’m assuming you were asking about the level of reading investment for the players, and not for new GMs.
The system is easy, lots of info is up-front on character sheets.
There’s a lot of junk about asking questions about factions and the setting, but that is intended to “invest” players in an ongoing campaign because the factions are their ideas. The GM can design these details instead for a one-off.
Handling time as compared to other PBtA games is lower. This is largely down to the use of more scene-based resolution as opposed to action by action rolls.
I would use the pregens for a first time group, character choices can get overwhelming if they aren’t already PBTA pros.
Casey McKenzie That would make sense since a starship crew must obligatorily fill in all the essential starship roles and the players won’t accidentally design six engineers or six captains or six “public relations officers” with guns.
Also if you create characters at the table picking X options from these 3 sets of choices can lead to a lot of reading and waiting.
I’m glad to hear that Alfred Rudzki thinks it’s OK to do the factions first. With sci-fi, there are so many divergent inspirations that you can get some radically incompatible PCs if you’re not careful. Doing the factions first allows for the communication of subgenre, I think.
I started and am running a UW game with gamers completely unfamiliar with the Apocalypse World mechanics and conceits, and it’s going swimmingly. We created the factions together using the random chart in the book, and I’ve been making sector maps, etc. There haven’t been any problems with my group’s learning curve. Rather, it’s been more my getting used to this iteration of the PbtA system and achieving the right sense of pacing and flavor. It’s a little wonky building characters in terms of sorting through the career/origin alternatives, mostly due to having to share one book, but once that was done, we never looked back. I do feel like I want to flesh out starship moves a bit more, so the mechanical choices are richer and help reinforce the setting
better.