A less common tip for teaching new and complex games: have…
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A less common tip for teaching new and complex games: have your players participate in the setup process.
The conventional wisdom I frequently see when teaching new games is to have everything setup and ready to go. The reasoning behind this is sound: it cuts down on the already lengthy process of teaching a new game, and allows the players to start playing the actual game earlier. This makes absolute sense.
However, I think this advice also cuts into one of the key learning tools we have which is unique to board games: **tactility.** You know when you buy a new game and start reading the rulebook and it all just exists in the abstract until you actually sit down and setup the board. By setting it up for your players in advance, you are denying them that teaching resource.
While it is undeniably probably faster to just setup and start teaching, it creates a new problem which is anxiety/paralysis. You know the feeling when you arrive at a games night to start a brand new game, and you're looking at this incredibly complex board that someone already set up with five player mats, a bunch of resources, stacks of differing decks and you have NO IDEA what any of it means? Then someone just starts *talking at you* teling you a billion complex rules, and you stop taking any of it in? It happens to all of us, and invariably this leads to someone saying "let's just play and we'll figure it out", and then every turn thereafter becomes bogged down with rules questions.
A lot of this can be avoided by just **getting your players touching the board and its pieces before even talking about rules.** Go through the setup instrucitons WITH them. Hand players something and give them a TASK to do. "Give every player three coal and then put the rest on these spaces in the foreign market". "Shuffle these event cards and then put two face up right here". You can even drop info as you go. Don't get into rules, but concepts. "Give each player three battle cards. You'll use these when you initiate combat." "Give each player five small factories, and then five of the upgraded buildings".
Getting players involved in the setup process familiarizes themselves with the layout of the board, the meaning of the pieces, and the flow of everything in very subtle, unconscious ways. Already through those simple setup actions, you've introduced key game concepts: resources, events, a foreign market, battle cards, upgradable buildings. While I might not know *how* those work yet, I can have them in the back of my mind while listening to the rules.
Setup is probably the *best* way to introduce yourself to a game, so please, involve your players in it!
#games
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The conventional wisdom I frequently see when teaching new games is to have everything setup and ready to go. The reasoning behind this is sound: it cuts down on the already lengthy process of teaching a new game, and allows the players to start playing the actual game earlier. This makes absolute sense.
However, I think this advice also cuts into one of the key learning tools we have which is unique to board games: **tactility.** You know when you buy a new game and start reading the rulebook and it all just exists in the abstract until you actually sit down and setup the board. By setting it up for your players in advance, you are denying them that teaching resource.
While it is undeniably probably faster to just setup and start teaching, it creates a new problem which is anxiety/paralysis. You know the feeling when you arrive at a games night to start a brand new game, and you're looking at this incredibly complex board that someone already set up with five player mats, a bunch of resources, stacks of differing decks and you have NO IDEA what any of it means? Then someone just starts *talking at you* teling you a billion complex rules, and you stop taking any of it in? It happens to all of us, and invariably this leads to someone saying "let's just play and we'll figure it out", and then every turn thereafter becomes bogged down with rules questions.
A lot of this can be avoided by just **getting your players touching the board and its pieces before even talking about rules.** Go through the setup instrucitons WITH them. Hand players something and give them a TASK to do. "Give every player three coal and then put the rest on these spaces in the foreign market". "Shuffle these event cards and then put two face up right here". You can even drop info as you go. Don't get into rules, but concepts. "Give each player three battle cards. You'll use these when you initiate combat." "Give each player five small factories, and then five of the upgraded buildings".
Getting players involved in the setup process familiarizes themselves with the layout of the board, the meaning of the pieces, and the flow of everything in very subtle, unconscious ways. Already through those simple setup actions, you've introduced key game concepts: resources, events, a foreign market, battle cards, upgradable buildings. While I might not know *how* those work yet, I can have them in the back of my mind while listening to the rules.
Setup is probably the *best* way to introduce yourself to a game, so please, involve your players in it!
#games
source
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