WISH: Games for Newbies
Ginger asks us to Name three games you might use to get someone who has never roleplayed before into roleplaying.

First of all, I can name one game I wouldn't subject someone learning to ropleplay to and it's one of my favorites. Champions. Champions is a lot of fun and teh most flexible system I've ever played outside of Amber. However. the shear wealth of options when building a character can be overwhelming.

I think Amber is an excellent game to start with, provided you don't run a "throne war" ( a game where the players actively work against eachother while competing for some goal). The simplicity of the rules and the ease of character creation goes a long way to make Amber newbie accessible.

Vampire from White Wolf is an excellent beginner game. The rules and character creation are simple and easy to learn and the setting is excellent. As I've often said, Vampire works best when you leave out all the other games in the system. Vampire has a solid sysem that is simple. After that, White Wolf made their games more and more complex until Changeling had the "magic system from hell."

Finally, there is the classic. Dungeons and Dragons. I learned to play on a system that is basically a rip-off of D&D, Palladium Fantasy (and its sister game, Heroes Unlimited). Most people start with D&D and there's a reason. For all its faults, D&D is a simple, fun game. Setting-wise, the plots tend to be simple adventure games that are easy to get in to and can appeal to both kinds of gamers, roleplayers and power gamers. It's classic, traditional fantasy. I've aired my complaints about D&D a few times here, but lately I've come to realize. It has its strengths as well as weaknesses. It's a great beginner game and almost anyone interested in gaming is going to already be somewhat familiar with the genre.