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Feb 1, 2013 -- 8:24PM, chaosfang wrote:

 I think the best way to introduce new people to the game is to fire up their imagination and make them want to game.  Now I'm not talking about JUST the fluff, I mean having them excited to play THEIR character concept from levels 1 to whatever.

When I first played D&D, I didn't know what class I wanted to be until somebody
told me that paladins are the cops of D&D. I was 14 at the time, during that I always wanted to be like my character, who filled with virtues.  I still remember spending 50 gp so a fisherman can retired
with his mother. How we laugh to tears when somebody made a joke about my paladin getting it
on with the mother while the whole room stare at us. 

I think the best way to introduce new player is to help them decide what they want their
character to be and once they famaliar with D&D, they can flesh out their character. 
It's hard to fire up their imagination if they don't know what they want. 
You got to tell them what they want then watch their imagination go loose. <--- (I think that's a saleman tactic)

I dunno about the "you got to tell them what they want then watch their imagination go loose".  Nobody ever told *me* what class to play in any RPG (be it CRPG or TRPG), and considering the number of new players that I've been handling for weeks now, my sales pitch goes mostly as follows:

"Tell me, what sort of character do you want to play as?"

Not class, character.

Most people typically grasp at familiar concepts -- Legolas, Merlin, Conan, dual wielder, Moses -- and from there it's easy to tell them, "well, this class fits that description quite well because ______" then have them warm up to the idea of being able to play as whatever character concept they want using that class.  So eventually they end up playing the class I recommend because it fits the idea of their character.

EDIT: The nice thing about this approach is that it even works for those who can't make up their minds.  "I want a simple to play character", is an easy enough concept to build on -- provided the system has it in mind -- then I'd suggest a number of stuff that lets them play the way they want. 

Feb 1, 2013 -- 9:50PM, malcapricornis wrote:

Now, back when I played 1st ed AD&D I thought a lot of the rules were flat out dumb. So we changed them. One of the first things we did was get rid of weapon and armor restrictions for all classes. If a spell had a somatic component there was a chance for failure based upon armor type and shield. Otherwise no penalty.

Weapon no penalty at all. Didn't break the game at all.

Especially since the game was so inconsistent with the demi-human rules for multiclassing.  A elf fighter/magic user could use a sword and wear chain or plate no problem?  That was too inconsistent for us.

So, the stretch of making each class "feature" a general "feature" is not much of a stretch.   

To add to this, a simple, consistent and straightforward algorithm can solve any issues regarding classlessness (and to a certain degree even class imbalances as well).  It'd need work dev-side, but if it's polished enough, can actually work.

Doesn't have to be 4E-style "everybody follows exactly the same steps" algorithm, but it shouldn't be so wildly different that it makes designing new features or adding new classes downright horrendous in effort.