crocuta mentha

The number of people willing to accept players who won't read the rules even though they come back week after week is bizarre - you wouldn't accept it for any other game, and RPGs are just a kind of game! If the rules of one game are 'too complex' just switch to a different game! If they claim they 'don't have time' - cancel one session. That 3 hour block is now dedicated game-learning time, and 3 hours is plenty. Easy.

See, "RPGs are [...] a kind of game" is where the disconnect lies. There's a large chunk of the present D&D fandom who don't think of tabletop RPGs as games; they think of them as performances being put on by the GM for the audience of the players, who – like any audience – are obliged only to be physically present. In this understanding, the "game-ness" of the activity is part of the performance – i.e., the GM is merely pretending to moderate a game with rules as an act of kayfabe; there's no point learning the rules because there aren't "really" rules to learn.

(Partly this is a product of folks coming to the hobby whose sole prior experience is with high-production-value podcasts, where the GM actually is an entertainer putting on a show for an audience, and often a professional actor to boot; partly it's a product of Hasbro attempting to market D&D as a zero-entry-barrier hobby by framing the GM not as a fellow player with special responsibilities, but as a volunteer service provider whose job is to facilitate other people playing D&D.)

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