To keep a long story short: me and a few friends are hosting a workshop at our university where we have the opportunity to talk about TTRPGs, and we want to use it to show people what other games exist beyond Dungeons and Dragons. Obviously I’m going to show off Torchbearer, I’ve had my best experiences with the hobby GMing this game and I’m very passionate about it, but it is a complicated box to unpack in an hour of time.
I have a fair amount of experience teaching the system to others, I’ve introduced roughly 20 friends to the game, but I’m a little intimidated by the prospect of introducing it to complete strangers with varying and unknown amounts of experience with the hobby. (We have not received a lot of information from the organizers of the event)
Since there’s people here who’ve been to conventions and the likes, I was wondering if anyone had tips or insights for me.
An hour seems too short a time to both explain the game and run a short adventure. But what about a quick 2-room adventure with a simplified ruleset? (Using only abilities, and no conflicts or advancement mechanics, for instance)
Simply going over the character sheet while explaining the mechanics is how I always teach interested players, but that approach seems a bit dull for a workshop. How do developers at conventions usually go about explaining complicated games?