I'm singling out DrBurst, purely because he's the enabler I notice the most. he';s the one who metaphorically tells people they can handle the 40' jumps the day they turn up to the bike park.

For example, I might be trying to explain say, van riggers being problematic, then he comes in with "Van Riggers are accepted at my table." Of course they are, because your table is perfectly planned, and contains essentially no threat. However, at tables where the GM needs to threaten the character, the GM has a false choice: No threat, or a threat that slaps the character seven ways sideways. It's a very binary sort of thing.

Either you land the 40' jump or you don't, and you break a leg.

The player has to be aware that that kind of thing can happen, likely will happen, then accept being ok with it. I've had players complain because a drone got shot and busted when they brought it into combat. My response would have been "honestly, what did you expect?"

Onto the thing at hand, BDThrall wanted to GM. I would have said no, as they're barely able to play. But a coach was needed, and I was going to do it, until Viva and SirPromethus decided to fuck with me and well, Liburr stepped up. he can tell you the details, but apparently it was completely downhill.

Thats less the issue than apparently DrBurst gave this person significant coaching and help. I suspect it was a lot of "doing it for them."

And that brings me to the crux. With less experienced people in chargen, in GMing and in games, we, as a community do it for them too much. We don't give them easy, low risk things to solve for themselves, we have overeager community members who hand out the 'answers' then we wonder why the new players don't grow well.

If I could, I would like an approach where new players are allowed to learn normally: Through small, low level mistakes. For example, it's hard to build a street sam to a point where they're not functional. Someone who doesn't have any idea what they're doing can still built a mostly working one.

In game, what a street sam does is pretty easy, the mechanics involved aren't too much and are well known. its not like the Gm is suddenly confronted with a player who doesn't know how to operate say, 4 drones in initiative order from a van, with a control rig etc.