Kind of an obvious reply, but I ran Dungeon World to people who explicitly requested me to run D&D to them. I told them we were going to play something with the same spirit and tropes of D&D but more focused on the fiction and storytelling than rolling the right numbers to kill monsters, and everyone was into that (these were people who do improv theatre, though, so that made a lot of sense to them).
What to run for friends who want to "learn how to play D&D"?
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This feels less jerky and more like respecting their time and stated interest. I don’t know that I would have been interested in games like Paranoia and Car Wars and Toon if I hadn’t gone through D&D first, at least in part because once I had played a session or two, I was more than willing to try something new because D&D wasn’t hugely interesting to me and didn’t grab my interest in the way other games later would.
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If feels like the unasked question, part and parcel with all this, is how well do you know the people asking you and how well do you know their tastes? What’s the pre-established trust bond?
For a group of newbies at my friendly local game store? I’ll run them 5E because partially that’s what they asked for, partially because I do not want to give off a “I know better than you” vibe and maybe make it a short adventure and gather feedback afterwards.
For my friends or gaming community where we have trust? I’ll bring up alternate options and why I’d rather one of those.
And of course the answer I’m assuming before all this is “I as a GM want to run a game in 5E” and deal with the book keeping, number crunching, etc.
Even in trad gaming, it’s all about the conversation 
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This was my gut reaction as well; my own answer would be 13th Age, because it’s essentially D&D but with some great narrative twists like the Icon dice and unique high-level abilities that go above and beyond in elegant ways. They also add interesting mechanics to classes in ways that don’t feel too beholden to D&D’s less clean mechanics.
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I want to play a group like the fellowship in LoTR, facing inner struggles and betrayal on a great quest: Follow
I’ve never heard of this game before! Could you elabourate?
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Follow is a GM-less game by Ben Robbins. The players choose a quest and take turns framing scenes about the steps their fellowship must take to complete the quest. The scenes themselves are rather freeform, but the resolution system is neat:
After each scene the players choose stones based on whether their character agrees with the direction the fellowship has taken and whether they as players think the characters did what they had to to overcome the challenge. You draw stones from this pool and the combination determines whether the fellowship succeeds at the challenge, if any of the members of the fellowship are lost, and if anyone betrays the fellowship.
What I like about Follow is that it abstracts away a lot of other details and focuses play on the motivation of the characters and the tension between their personal agenda and the goals of the fellowship.
The challenges folks might have with it are similar to other freeform games: framing scenes, pushing toward dramatic resolution, and improvising setting on the fly. I think it’s really well-done and I’ve played it with folks new to rpgs and they liked it a lot. There’s a little more about it on Ben Robbins’ site: http://www.lamemage.com/follow/
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Another option I thought of which respects the “we want D&D to be our first gaming experience” wishes would be to run 5E, but use a PbtA-styled approach to skill rolls. Hard move on a miss, give them a hard choice or a compromise if they only fail by a few points. I think that also mostly jives with the rules as established, and you can even use it during combat, with almost-hits giving players small tactical advantages or opportunities to dialogue with members of the opposing team and possibly end the fight early.
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Ohh snap I didn’t realize it was that Follow that you were talking about! Huh. I would never have thought about facilitating a GM-less game for ppl who say they want the D&D experience. How has this gone for you? Were ppl receptive to it?
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I would mean toward Dungeon World to given them the D&D feel, but if what they really want is epic fantasy, I would maybe quietly work them into something like Fellowship.
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@Agatha I wouldn’t suggest Follow if someone wanted to play D&D.
However, if someone wanted to play a fantasy rpg about an epic quest contained in a single session of play, I would absolutely suggest Follow. Back when I hosted a monthly Story Games night, the most common question from folks new to rpgs was: Is this like D&D? I’d say that most folks expected totally different mechanics (not having a pop culture point of reference for GM-less games) but we usually hit the themes they were hoping for.
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I tend to go with 13th age. My most recent group of people who had never played RPGs before were intimidated by the size of the corebook, but they were reassured when I pulled out pregenerated characters. They got hooked into the fiction by choosing Icon affiliations, their backgrounds, and the One Unique Thing.
One of the advantages to using 13th age for a completely fresh group is that they don’t have any sense for what the limitations are. For instance, one of my players chose “extremely wealthy” for their One Unique Thing. I rolled with it, and the party was able to get anything they wanted when they were in town.
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I’m also in the “just run Dungeon World” camp. There’s definitely merit to running what they want to play, but there’s just as much merit in running what I want to run. Dungeon World aligns so much better with my GMing comfort zone, while providing exactly what the D&D-curious newcomers I’ve played with wanted.
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Yeah, be honest with them and yourself.
If they do not know anything about DnD, Dungeon World actually carries a couple of hick-ups. The whole deal of having a stat and a derived modifier is super obtuse, for example.
Personally, I’d use World of Dungeons or actually Vagabonds of Dyfed with just the key phrases, for a first experience. Depending on if they are naturally inclined to lean more into a creative writing direction or not.
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I don’t think offering non-D&D options for people who want to “learn D&D” is necessarily elitist or self-centered. “D&D” is like “Kleenex” in the popular usage, where a brand name is used to designate the entire hobby. Plus, if their interest was piqued by Stranger Things or Community or whatever, it’s not like the specific mechanics were what they were drawn to, but rather the mystique. You can probably hit that mystique for a non-initiate better with a more elegant system then trying to teach them 5th Ed.
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I agree with what @dunadhaigh is saying–D&D broadly means “roleplaying games” often times regardless of actual genre or playstyle.
It sounds like they do want to play with those epic fantasy tropes, so why not just say “I’d be glad to run the new edition of D&D for you, but it can be a little fiddly and hard to learn, and there’s this game I like called __________ that I think captures the same feel but is a little more accessible, and frankly I have more fun running it. It’s y’all’s decision, but would you be willing to give _______ a shot?”
To answer the original question, add another voice to the chorus suggesting Dungeon World. Oneshot World or Homebrew World are both hacks that get you up and running very quickly and I think either would be an excellent introduction. So would stock DW of course! If they want something with more collaborative world-building and that’s a little more deadly, you could always offer Freebooters. But I definitely buy that whole “Dungeon World is what you thought D&D would be like when you first heard of D&D” thing. It’s my go-to for introducing new folks to the hobby (when they want epic fantasy, anyway).
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When friends said they wanted to learn D&D back 9 years ago, I looked at D&D 3.x and mentally said “nope”, then I found Pathfinder and said “OK”, but before I got too far found Savage Worlds and said “yes”, and just ran some fantasy skin of it. Keep in mind my friends wanted to play “D&D” from the perspective of trying a role playing game as they’d heard of it for over 20 years, and not really interested in the mechanics and to be able to be a D&D player for other tables.
Nowadays if someone asked, given that I don’t actually run D&D and would have to study to do so, I would start by finding out what they are looking for. Once I’ve sussed out the level of narrative vs. mechanical-game stuff they want, and their background as a gamer and touchstones, I’d probably just end up running either Dungeon World, or World of Dungeons, or some story games that are completely unrelated like Fall of Magic or my MR-KR-GR hack.
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I have to say, I absolutely love Beyond the Wall and would normally recommend it, but as a warning, only a few playbooks in that game let you play as non-humans. There’s one Faerie Changeling book, one Dwarf Mentor book, and I think maybe an Elf. It’s also very geared towards having a party of people who all grew up together, either in a small village or as nobility, with maybe a mentor or two thrown in, so if your group is less interested in that, it might not work for them. However, you could always ignore the “default human” thing and tweak things slightly so that they might have been raised in a village full of intermingling humans, dwarves, elves, halflings, half-orcs, etc, and just have them make note of what race their character is.
I do think your best bet is Dungeon World, but I want to toss out one option that hasn’t been mentioned yet that I think could be a fun one-shot game for you to just jump in and have a quick play. It’s a Lasers & Feelings hack called Muscles & Miracles and just like Lasers & Feelings, it gives you a short little setup paragraph blurb, the GM makes a simple little one-and-done adventure, and all the characters get to choose their race/class/demeanor/stat balance/goal and the party’s strengths and problem. It might give them a good starting idea of things!
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I’d have a chat with them to find out what, exactly, they’re looking for in a game.
If they are dead-set on playing D&D, then go ahead and run some D&D 5e. It’s a remarkably decent traditional RPG experience that runs a whole lot smoother than early D&D retro-clones or 3.x/Pathfinder.
If they are just looking to to play generic fantasy and aren’t insistent on D&D, then run either Dungeon World or World of Dungeons.
Good luck!
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A lot of people do not come to D&D from just hearing about it but or seeing it on a TV show but by watching Let’s Plays streams theses days. So you can ask abotu that, to see if they are familiar with tropes. They also might feel like they allready know the rules, after having seen a few streams. So there might be good reasons for them to be asking for D&D.
Dungeon World at least has the same stats. But I am in the “just run D&D” camp.
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TBH is smooth and easy, and I also like Swords & Wizardry Continual Light as an introductory game; it is rules light enough that you can focus more on the story. I like it aesthetically also, because over 60% of the illustrations are mine.
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