Sponsored.  Everyone in the industry knows how essential it is to provide an easy route into roleplaying games, or RPGs.  Because, as everyone in the industry also knows, getting into RPGs can be truly difficult—and, historically, we've not made it easy.

This isn't deliberate.  You'll rarely find a community so delighted at the idea of teaching new people how to join in.  People love teaching their friends, family, and co-workers how to build a character and get started with RPGs.

But that's the nub of the issue.  As it stands, roleplaying is best taught by an experienced player.  RPGs tend to be a social hobby, and that means they're best learned in a social atmosphere.  Or, perhaps we should be clearer: they are best first encountered in such an atmosphere.

How many roleplayers were first introduced to RPGs by an older sibling, parent, friend, or teacher?  It's the ideal way to learn, because opening a core rulebook with no idea what you’re doing is a sure way to find yourself baffled.

Starter Sets aim to be the way past this bafflement, giving a new player the tools to teach their friends in one handy package.  Too often, though, Starter Sets assume a familiarity with parts of running and playing RPGs which leave newbies totally confused, scared, or even embarrassed.

For example, one of the big questions we've seen new players ask is: how do you talk at the table?  Should you talk as your character, in the first person?  Or about your character, in the third person?  It's such a central aspect of RPGs, but so little explained in Starter Sets.

In short, Starter Sets have been, up until now, pretty good at explaining the rules, but less so at communicating the experience.

So, that's what Steamforged Games is attempting to change in our collaboration with Kobold Press.  We love Kobold Press as a company, and when we approached them about a possible collaboration, we already knew we wanted to create a Starter Set.

About the Starter Set
Helping people start roleplaying is a genuine passion for Steamforged.  It's a key inspiration behind our Epic Encounters "adventures-in-a-box" and Animal Adventures roleplaying lines.

We want to make gaming more open, and easier to learn. If you don't have an experienced Game Master (GM) to show you how to get started, the Tales of the Valiant Starter Set teaches you how to become one.

For example, the first book isn't a host of game rules or baffling terminology.  It's a conversational introduction to what a game of Tales of the Valiant is going to be like.  It's about how you spend time at the table, how you interact with the GM and other players, and what to expect from an RPG.  It's intended to be a reassuring guide through the natural anxieties potentially preventing people from picking up their first d20.

Now, once we've helped players understand what an RPG is, and how they're going to play it, then we can get into more traditional Starter Set fare.

One of the best elements of the first RPG product owned by many roleplaying vets—the orange-boxed 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons starter set—was how its adventures were structured.  It started with a basic situation—your characters go into a room and fight a goblin—and grew more complex, adding in new rules step-by-step.

This is something we've emulated across five adventures.  These start with a solo adventure, designed for novice GMs to get a hang of the rules and the rhythms of gameplay (and we should doff our caps to Chaosium who were, to my knowledge, the first company to include a solo adventure in their superlative Starter Sets) before trying to teach it to others.

The rest of the adventures take the four gorgeous character miniatures provided in the box through a series of classic fantasy roleplaying situations.  There are wizards to rescue, trolls to talk round, and wraiths to consign to the grave… but with each new quest, more rules are gradually added, to ensure neither a novice GM or a new player becomes overwhelmed.

This gradual introduction of options and complexity is also reflected in the way characters are built.  We're taking the iconic characters from Tales of the Valiant and breaking them down, showing players how levelling up works, and helping them understand how to build a character over time.

Of course, there’s also a rules reference book.  So, players can check anything they need to, and when they're ready for the detail, it’s waiting for them.

When players are finished with the Starter Set, they should be ready to pick up the rest of the Tales of the Valiant books and get stuck in.

The fundamental aim of any Starter Set is to teach players the rules of a game.  We're hoping, by combining the experience and expertise of Steamforged Games and Kobold Press, we can leave a player eager to do more—to understand roleplaying more deeply, to build and explore worlds, and create dozens of characters to explore them.

Interested in stocking the Tales of the Valiant Starter Set?  Get in touch at b2b@steamforged.com.

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