- Provided pre-generated characters
- Googled for player cheat sheets and shared them out
- Focused less on the rules and took care of them. Just asked them what they wanted to do and I ran with that, fitting their actions into the rules (5E's action economy seems complicated at first for new players)
- Basic rules like what initiative means
When I was starting up a Cyberpunk Red game in 2019, it was for a group of workmates who had never tabletop RPG gamed before.
They were interested in Cyberpunk because of the upcoming (at the time) console/PC game.
When I showed them their game was based on a book from the 1980's they wanted to give it a try.
So, I got the Jumpstart Kit when it came out - in print box set and as PDFs.
The Jumpstart was basically a set of pregen characters, a simple adventure, 3 additional adventure seeds, a lite rulebook and lite worldbook.
Using a pile of Linux tools and other hackery-fu I broke the PDFs down into "chapters" around 3-4 pages each.
Then, for a couple of months, I sent out one chapter a week with a "cover email" that explained what the chapter was about, and what they needed to do with it.
For the worldbook, the chapters were bites introducing them to a setting they were not at all familiar with.
For the rulebook, the chapters were bites introducing TTRPGs, character creation, equipment, skill checks, combat etc.
Then we did session zero where they grabbed the pre-gen they liked, we customized it, and then talked about how everyone's characters fit into a team... which included them telling me why they were a team and what their team goal was.
We also did a lot of hand-holdy session zero stuff like "lines and veils" "x-card" and things.
Then I had to put together "teaching sessions" where everything was explained before they did it.
For example:
Here's the situation, what would you like to do?
Okay, to do that, look at your sheet and find this stat, then this skill.
The thing you are trying sounds about this difficult.
So, now roll your dice, add your stat, and your skill and see if you get a total higher than how difficult that is.
For each major rule system as they came up.
Part of the point was to also introduce them to core "GMing" at the same time by doing a walkthrough of the new mechanics with them to "expose" the how it works under full broad daylight.
All that groundwork worked very well for me and the group.