The New Year is almost here. Thank God. Because I’m pretty much done with this frigging year. I just have to get through the damned holidays. And I ain’t having any of that holiday crap this year. Holidays are for happy people and I hate happy people.

But I’m not here to piss and moan about my life and you ain’t here to watch me wave my cane and yell “Bah, humbug!” We’re here because lots of you are looking to start up new games in the coming you. And a bunch of you have told me you mean to try out new tabletop roleplaying game systems in the coming year. I wonder if that’s something to do with the looming threat that is the new D&D. What? You ain’t interested in an even more player-indulgent and shittier version of D&D that you can only pay to play in WotC’s private, walled garden? Color me surprised.

Sorry… sorry… dialing down the bitterness.

It’s like this: you’re looking to start a new roleplaying game campaign and explore a new system. And you want to know if there’s a best — or day I say True Game Master — way to learn a new system? And your timing couldn’t be better. Because I, myself, am teaching myself a new system right now. Well, not right now; right now, I’m writing this shit. But I’ve got a new group of weekly victims and I’m introducing myself — and them — to Cublice 7’s Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. And so the timing’s great to tell you the Angry Way to Learn a New System.

Introducing Yourself to a New Roleplaying Game System

I see that starry-eyed look in your eye. You’re smitten with a new tabletop roleplaying game system, aren’t you? You’re done with the same old shit. And you’ve convinced or cajoled or bullied your players into trying something new. Or you’ve replaced them with other, better players. Whatever works. The point is, it’s time to learn a new system.

And now you’re staring at a 300-page textbook of dense-as-shit rules knowing you’re going to read and memorize every last word. And suddenly, this new game system doesn’t seem like such a fun idea, does it? There has to be a better way.

If you ain’t the kind who frequently tries out new game systems, you might not even remember the last time you had a learn a rule system. You may not remember how you even learned the system you have been running. “How did I learn this shit,” you might ask yourself. “I don’t remember actually reading these books.” And, given the shit most of you spew in my comment section and supporter Discord community, you probably didn’t read those books and I’m pretty sure you never actually learned that shit.

So, how do you learn a new game system? Do you really have to read all those rules? How does Angry learn a new game system? That’s the best question. After all, Angry’s a sexy gaming genius and he’s got zero patience for bullshit so you just know Angry will figure out the most efficient, most effective way to learn a system.

Before I tell you how I learn systems, though, I want to tell you how not to learn systems.

The Worst Way to Learn a TTRPG System: The Effing Rulebook

The absolute, worst way to learn a new roleplaying game system is to learn it from the core rulebook. Or rulebooks. Yes, those books the publisher published with the express purpose of teaching you how to play and run their game? Those are the worst ways to learn games. Even teachers don’t expect you to learn from shit from textbooks. And most roleplaying game rulebooks aren’t written as well as your average accounting or calculus textbook.

That’s good news, right? You’re probably relieved to know I don’t expect you to learn your brand-new system by reading its giant-ass Tome o’ Rules. Well, not to piss on your parade, but I do expect you to eventually read the game’s full rulebook. If you don’t want to read big, honkin’ rulebooks, you picked the wrong hobby. I just don’t expect you to start there. Or to learn much from it.

The Second Worst Way to Learn a TTRPG System: Effing YouTube

YouTube is a thing. And thanks to that — and thanks to the wodges of lazy-ass people who figured out they don’t need an adult job if they can scam people into paying them a monthly stipend for content creation — thanks to YouTube — yes, I am very much aware of the hypocrisy, thank you — and thanks to YouTube, you can find dozens or even hundreds of videos of idiots playing and running any roleplaying game system that exists. And that probably seems like a great way to learn a system, right? Hell, it might even make learning fun! Except there are slim odds of that given there’s a hell of a lot more chaff out there than actual wheat. That’s what happens when you destroy all barriers to entry.

And that’s the problem right there. When you learn a game by watching someone else play or run it, you’re not necessarily learning the actual game. You’ve got no way to know whether the group you’re watching actually learned the game themselves. Or learned it right. For all you know, they learned by playing at other tables or watching other YouTubers, and no one’s actually gotten it right. It’s the whole nobody plays Monopoly by the rules problem.

Moreover, watching people play and run games doesn’t let you see anything but the player-facing mechanics. You’ve got no clue what the GM’s doing behind the screen or what’s going on in the GM’s head or what the GM did at home to prep for the game. You’re only seeing the player’s perspective. And that ain’t enough to run games.

And, besides, it’s not like you’re giving that shit your full attention anyway. These days, when someone learns something from a YouTube video , they mean they have the playlist running in the background while they vacuum or drive or whatever. And I’ve explained a thousand times why that shit doesn’t count and why you can’t multitask.

The point is, that you can’t learn to run a system by watching others play it. Nor can you learn to run a system by playing it at someone else’s table. And you also can’t learn it from the rules. So what’s left?

The Third Worst Way to Learn a TTRPG System: Running the Game Your Effing Self

If you’ve got any level of Game Mastering experience — and I do mean any; if you’ve run nothing more than three sessions of a game once — you absolutely cannot be trusted to run a new game system. Experienced Game Masters suck at learning systems. Why? Because your frigging ego always gets in your way.

Game Masters assume that once they’ve run one system, they can run them all. That’s because they know The Truth. They know all roleplaying games are basically the same. They all work the same way. The differences are in the niggling details. Now, that ain’t completely wrong, but it is wrong enough to really screw with your ability to run new systems.

First, experienced Game Masters tend to skim rules instead of reading them. And they say shit like, “Well, this is just Ability Checks but with 2d6 instead of a d20 and fixed target numbers and two levels of success.” Thus, experienced Game Masters tend to miss important nuances in game systems that make them very different from each other. If you take, for example, modern D&D-style action adjudication to an AD&D 2E table, you’ll discover the game just ain’t equipped to resolve most actions with dice rolls. And trying to force it means wrecking the thing that makes AD&D 2E unique and wonderful in its own horrid, misshapen, mess of a way.

Second, experienced Game Masters like to tinker. So, as they skim — not read — new systems, they’re already identifying the stuff they’ll have to tweak or change or ignore. And they’ll be picking and choosing which optional and variant rules to include or discard. And no matter how much you think you know, you are not equipped to futz — I said futz — with a system you’ve never run.

Third, Game Masters with homebrewing experience — Game Masters who are used to writing their own adventures, campaigns, and settings — assume that they’re not just equipped to run any system, but that they can also write content for any system.

All that’s a great way to ensure every system you run feels the same as every other system. It’s a great way to bury the subtle differences that make this system or that system unique. And I’m pretty sure you didn’t set out to learn a new system to make it work and feel like every other game you’ve ever run, did you?

Letting the System Speak for Itself

You can’t learn a new system from its rulebook. You can’t learn it from others. And you’re not qualified to learn it by running it for yourself. So what can you do?

Nothing.

The fact is that you’re screwed. Once you’ve learned how to run any one, single roleplaying game system, you can never, ever properly learn another. Whatever system you’re running now, that’s what you’re stuck with for life. Hope it’s a good one.

Am I being sarcastic? Obviously. But I’m also being honest. The truth is, if you really, truly want to learn a new system — to give it a fair shake — you have to approach it the way you approached your first experience running any roleplaying game ever. You have to assume you know nothing and that you’re starting from scratch.

A long time ago, I told you the best way to introduce new players — and yourself — to the roleplaying game hobby was to run a published adventure using pre-generated characters and then throw that game and those characters in the trash and start fresh with a real game once you were done.

If you have to learn a new system by acting like a rank newbie, there’s your answer right there. Find yourself a published adventure, find yourself some pregens, commit to running just that adventure, and throw all that shit in the trash when you’re done and ready to run a real game of your own.

And the best way to do that… is a Starter Set.

In Defense of Starter Sets

Most game publishers are smart. At least, they’re smart enough to recognize they ain’t gonna win any fans with their big-honkin’ textbooks-full-of-rules. So most of them these days put out Starter Sets or Basic Games or Beginner Boxes. They’re prepackaged products and usually have an abbreviated rulebook, an adventure module that’ll fill three to five play sessions and a handful of pre-generated characters.

The very best Starter Sets are designed specifically to teach Game Masters how to run the game. The Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play Starter Set I’m running doesn’t even have a rulebook in it. The module’s arranged to teach rules, mostly in sidebars, in a gradual, logical order. But even if your system’s Starter Set doesn’t do that, it’ll at least limit how much you have to learn to get playing.

Because that’s really the goal. You want to learn the game by running the game. The less you have to read and prepare beforehand, the better.

Lots of Game Masters have a disdain for Starter Sets. Hell, most of my fans sneer at any and all published game materials. They think — they know — they can write better game content than anything a publisher shits out. And they’re right. I know I can. Mostly, anyway. I will defend homebrewing as a cornerstone of good Game Mastery to my last, but even I know it’s rank hubris to think I can write better content for a system I’ve never run or played than the publisher can.

I can’t.

Besides, the whole point of committing to a time-limited tutorial game you intend to throw away when it’s over is that you’re not emotionally invested. You’re not trying to run the best damned game you can. You’re trying to learn the system and you know it’s going to suck. But fortunately, the tutorial game won’t count in the long run.

Without a Starter Set

While most big publishers are smart enough to put out Starter Sets — though they’re not smart enough to wonder why the hell they’re designing games so complicated they need to publish abbreviated versions of their games so humans can learn them — that doesn’t mean every game’s got a Starter Set. Some big publishers don’t put them out. Smaller and indie publishers rarely bother.

What then?

Starter Sets in Disguise

Just because you can’t find something labeled Starter Set, that doesn’t mean your game’s system lacks such a product. Many publishers — even small and indie publishers — do put out the same shit you’d find in a Starter Set. They just don’t pack it up or sell it under that name.

For instance, many mid-sized publishers put out content for in-store and convention games. One of the best ways to get a Starter Set but Not is to grab whatever a publisher puts out for Free RPG Day. That’s an annual event where publishers supply retailers with introductory game packs for their systems and many publishers make that shit available for download too. The modules are usually way too short to learn a system from, but you can substitute any published module and use the pre-generated characters and introductory rules to get by.

Lots of crowdfunded creators publish preview content for their upcoming games. And they amount to the same sort of thing: short module, pre-generated characters, and abbreviated rules. And many such content creators make those previews available even after the project is done and published.

The key is to visit the publisher’s website and look around. You know what you need — introductory rules, pre-generated characters, and a module — so see what you can find. And absolutely don’t shy away from contacting publishers about such materials. The contact information on their websites? Use it.

DIY Starter Sets

Tabletop roleplaying games are a do-it-yourself kind of hobby. Putting together your own Starter Set is really just par for the course.

The goal, remember, is to get behind the screen and running the game as quickly as possible. You want to minimize anything that ain’t running the game. Abbreviated rules let you learn as few rules as possible before you start running your game. Pregenerated characters let you skip learning — and teaching — the whole character generation rigamarole.

The goal is also to shut your Game Mastering ego up and let the game’s system — and its publisher — speak for the game. That’s why you want a module written by the game’s creators. Yeah, once you know the system, you’ll be able to write better content than that prepublished crap, but you don’t. And you don’t even know how to judge content for the system. Which is why you don’t want to get your modules from some online rando.

Most publishers have some modules to run. Sometimes, they include adventures in their core books. Otherwise, you might have to download — or buy — one from the publisher’s website. If you absolutely can’t find something written by the game’s publisher, you might have to settle for some random content creator’s work. Shop around. Do your due diligence. Read reviews. And ask around.

Pregenerated characters are sometimes trickier to find. If you absolutely can’t find an — that happens — you’ll have to make them yourself. That means learning the Character Creation rules early. It sucks, but what can you do? What you can’t do — unless your game system has an explicitly streamlined Character Creation process that’s basically part of the game — what you can’t do is have your players make their own characters. You ain’t equipped to teach anyone anything about a game you’ve never run.

Hopefully, your module is equipped to teach you how to run the game. If it’s not, you’ll want to see if your system has an abbreviated ruleset for newbies. Many big systems have a published set of Basic Rules or some shit like that. Just don’t confuse a System Reference Document for the game’s Basic Rules. You cannot learn a system from a System Reference Document. An SRD is for people who already know how to run the game to reference.

Unfortunately, though, you might find yourself stuck with learning the game from the core rulebook.

Stuck with the Rulebook

If your game’s Core Rules are the only tool you’ve got — because watching videos ain’t an option — that’s what you have to work with. It sucks, but that’s how it is. But your goals remain the same: start running the game with a minimum of up-front work and run the game as the publisher intended because you’re a clueless newbie who ain’t equipped to do otherwise.

To accomplish those goals, you don’t want to read your system’s Core Rules from cover to cover. I mean, no one wants that ever, but you absolutely don’t want that now. The trick is to read your chosen adventure module first, even if it’s the module at the back of the Core Rulebook. I shit you not.

Basically, sit down with the module and start reading. Keep the Core Rulebook handy, though. When you get to a point in the module where you’ve got to use the game’s rules — say the module calls for a skill check — open the Core Rulebook to the Table of Contents and skim down until you find the first place that looks like it’ll tell you how to handle that. Flip to that page and read. Once you know enough to handle that specific event at the game table, go back to the module and keep reading.

Work your way through the module like that — look up shit you need to know to run the module as you come across it and read only enough in the rulebook to understand that specific situation — until you’ve read the whole thing. Or until you’ve read enough to fill your first planned session with adventure.

Next, look over the pre-generated characters. Is there anything on there a player might use in your first session that you don’t know how to handle? Look it up. The goal is not to know the system perfectly, but rather just to feel like you can muddle through one session of play. You don’t need to know everything about spellcasting or even every spell on the character sheet. Just to be equipped enough to muddle through what’s likely to happen in session one.

And if you’re stuck building characters for your game? Do that shit after you’ve made your study of the module and the basic gameplay rules. Then open up to the Character Creation rules and get to work. Just keep it simple, for fuck’s sake, and don’t bother with any aspects of Character Creation that won’t come up in the module. If the thing’s entirely a dungeon crawl, for instance, you don’t need to worry about downtime or town-related abilities or library research or spells that take three days to cast.

But You Can’t Hide from the Rulebook

If you follow the above instructions, you’ll get three to five sessions of tutorial play. You’ll learn your system’s most important rules by actually running the game and you’ll minimize the up-front time investment in learning the game.

But you still have to read the rules. Eventually. You don’t have to learn the game from the rulebook alone, but you do have to read the rulebook.

While you’re running your three-to-five session practice game, you must also read the damned rulebook. Yes, the whole thing. Yes, from cover to cover. Yes, read, not skim. Fortunately, it’ll be a much easier read because you ain’t trying to learn anything from it. By reading the rules while you’re also muddling through the game, you’re combining practice, immersion, and context. You’re more likely to understand what you’re reading and to retain it. And you’ll feel less stressed because you ain’t trying to learn it all in advance of running the game.

Of course, I’m not stupid. I may look stupid, but looks are deceiving. I know you’re not going to read every page of the book, from Contents to Index. I know you’re going to skim right by some shit. Everyone does. No one reads every spell description and every weird little special ability every character might acquire. I want you to read as much as you can and I absolutely don’t want you to skip something just because you think you know what it’s going to say. You don’t know what Wisdom means in every game system just because you know it in D&D. You don’t know what a skill covers in a specific game without reading the description.

It’s okay to skim shit that’s only going to come up if one random player chooses it from a list of a hundred options. But if it’s on everyone’s sheet or if it’s likely it’s going to be on someone’s sheet, read it. And understand the only thing you’re allowed to skim are picayune and fiddly character options. You can’t skip the big stuff. Know how the system describes every race and class and background and career and skill and whatever. And you can’t skip any rules. Not even the corner case shit. Read about falling damage and drowning and grappling and sleep deprivation. You don’t have to memorize the rules — you don’t even need to be able to summarize them — but you absolutely must read them once.

Why? Because you’d be surprised what sticks in your head when you do things this way. And even just remembering that a rule exists somewhere in the book can drastically streamline your Game Mastering.

Tu-Torial and Beyond

And that’s it. That’s Angry’s System Learning System. Get yourself behind the screen as fast as possible with minimal prep work, use published materials directly from the publisher even if you think it sucks, and learn only what you need to start running the game. Meanwhile, as you’re running your game, read the rules from start to finish just to have read them. Don’t sweat learning or memorizing or taking notes. Just trust your brain to absorb shit.

And when you’re done with the whole thing — when you’ve both finished running your tutorial game and you’ve read the entire rulebook — you’ll be ready to start a real big-boy game with bespoke characters. And you can even start writing your own adventures if you want. Just stick with following the published adventure-writing guidelines for a while. And don’t tinker with the rules either. It’s okay to institute a few optional rules from the book, but don’t start effing with the rules or the system.

As a general rule, you are not ready to strike out on your own — to modify the game or build custom content — until you’ve run it for at least twelve sessions the way the publisher intended. Until that point, the publisher is still smarter than you.

And, even then, you’re not actually ready to strike out on your own. But the only way, at that point, to get ready is to strike out on your own and then get yourself out of whatever trouble you land in.