Hey Solar, and welcome to Roll20 So it seems that the real question here, aside from 'who will teach us' is 'what do we want to learn?' You've indicated D&D, and 5e in particular. Which is a good system, certainly, although not one I'm intimately familiar with having only played it maybe twice. You then mention that you're not familiar with any ruleset, although you'd rather play something standard as opposed to homebrew. In addition, you said you and your group aren't likely to focus on the roleplay aspect, by which I'm guessing you mean talking in silly voices and saying thee and thou a lot. From this, I'm guessing you want a simple, established system. 5e is perfect for this. It's a repeatedly-refined system (Dungeons and Dragons has been played for decades), and in its current incarnation has gone back to its roots in the way it's played. It gives the players enough options to have fun with, the GM enough rules to know how to deal with situations, and a very simple way to manipulate the odds - the Advantage/Disadvantage system. I'm going to call 5e a medium- Crunch game. Crunch is usually (broadly) defined as the mechanical element of a role-playing game. Fluff is the story elements of the game–characters, setting, plot, flavor, etc. There are lots of different game systems out there, with lots of different 'levels of crunch' to them. Pathfinder is a heavy-crunch game, in that it has a lot more specific rules laid out for things, and a lot more details to keep track of, than 5e does. For example, in Pathfinder, if you want to make an attack you start with a d20, add your base modifiers, add your special modifiers, add circumstantial modifiers, add specific modifiers that only apply if this and that and the other things are happening, subtract modifiers based on what the enemy is doing to try to stop you, add or take off points depending on any number of other things, and then compare that to a couple different possible target numbers depending on what, exactly, you're trying to do. In 5e, you roll a d20, and add a pretty simple base value to it. Sometimes, if the GM thinks it's appropriate, you do this twice and keep the higher (or lower) of the two. Much simpler, overall... less 'crunchy'. But, for some the fun is keeping track of those numbers; for others, the fun is seeing what the dice roll comes up as; and for others, the fun isn't about the dice at all but all about storytelling... aka fluff. A low-crunch, or even crunch-free, roleplaying game is the sort of thing I'm guessing you're not interested in, as these tend to be heavily focused on the funny voices thee-and-thou stuff your group isn't looking for. Not that there's anything wrong with that. A heavy-crunch, or even extreme crunch game (like GURPS or, gods forbid, F.A.T.A.L. (a game in which, I kid you not, you need to roll to determine the size of your character's genitalia (and associated orifices))) is likewise probably not something your group would want. Not as a first experience at least! The second question you need to ask yourselves is, what kind of game do we want to play? And by this, I mean the plot of the story of the game. Do you want a mindless killfest? Do you want a murder mystery? Do you want a rescue-the-princess situation, or a covert ops infiltration? Maybe you just want to go into a cave system and explore? Some game systems work better for one than the other, and some systems are open enough that you can do just about anything in them. It really comes down to the creativity of the GM and the players, and finding out what they like. And then comes the question of party makeup - is your group willing and able to build four very different characters with four very different sets of abilities to learn? For example, the classic D&D group... a fighter to kill stuff, a cleric to heal, a thief to sneak and a wizard to try to keep from getting himself killed. Each of these different classes, even within the same system, have very different choices to make in terms of what they can and cannot do, and amount of 'work' needed to create and play such a character. Another option is to play all the same base type of character, but with different specialties and of course personalities. An example of this might be four members of a military company, all of whom are fighters, but perhaps one uses swordplay, another the axe, a third excels with ranged weaponry and the fourth one uses potions and scrolls or something. The benefit to this type of play is that you all learn the same rules at the same time, with just one or two differences between you to add flavor. As for me, I run a Pathfinder system , here on Roll20, and have been fairly successful introducing new players to the game with it. I've been less successful in recording these games, but I've been trying. If you'd like to see how I do things, you can find me by searching my name on YouTube - I've got a few sessions posted. I personally like the relatively high crunch of the system, although I have a tendency to 'gloss over' the numbers when they get too extensive to easily calculate, and ignore rules that don't suit my style (such as encumbrance. Who cares how much you're carrying, as long as it's not crazy-heavy or something?) I like to set up situations in terms of objects, locations, and critters (monsters) and then let the players decide how they want to handle the situation... if they charge in to fight, fine. If they want to stand there all night and plan out the battle first, fine. If they want to send in the 'face' to try to charm and talk their way through the situation? Fine. Whatever they have fun with is what's fun for them, so I say... let 'em do it. And it usually works out pretty well. So if you like what you see and think Pathfinder would be a good fit, let me (or Gray T (not affiliated, (s)he just offered first!)) know and we'll see about giving you a game to try out! -Phnord, (who seems to really like parentheses tonight!)
