Teaching People To Play Games

This post was prompted by a comment made by a Facebook acquaintance following a humiliating duffing up at Bloodbowl in a local shop.

I teach people to play games a lot, both table top wargames and proprietary board/card games. The reasons for this are mostly obvious. In the case of my own rules for wargames there's no one else. With proprietary or third party wargame rules it's often the same as I've got them and the figures and no one else in our group does.

In terms of board/card games I suppose I have an alpha male tendency, - plus I often seem to get the rules pushed at me from a new box. Sometimes I get the feeling that a game isn't being played right and check the rules and before you know it I'm teaching the game. This happened memorably with "Memoir 44". We were playing as a group with someone who had all the expansions and everything and claimed to have played it a lot. Turns out he had been playing it wrong. For ever.

I'm not complaining, - much. Sometimes it's nice to be the person being taught, but that depends so much on how the game is being taught.

I have played games for the first time where the person teaching the game is intent on ensuring he is going to win, regardless. That means a bare explanation of the rules, or, sometimes worse, a full and complete explanation/speed read out loud of the game rules. Whilst you try and assimilate not just the rules, but also what they mean your opponent is starting off a killer strategy ensuring your inevitable demise. To be followed by his wondering why you never want to play the game again.

I tend towards the minimalist approach, giving the core outline, then dripping in the rules as they become relevant. That leaves you open to the "If you'd told me THAT!" accusation, so it isn't perfect.

The other thing is that the rules themselves don't always tell you how to play a game. Why do you need to collect the blue blocks? Why is it a good idea to have spaces between those pieces? Rules do not always tell you what tactics to employ. In a wargame you can always fall back on historical tactics if you're not sure and hope the designed has got some sort of clue as to how the period works. The problem here is where actually the game is driven by rules-based tactics, - i.e. when doing something nonsensical in historic terms is a winner in the game.

I'm of the view that if you want to play a game more than once then it's a good idea to explain to the other players why you're doing things, so they get a grasp of what's going on. You can pull out the full bag of tricks in a later game. There's more enjoyment in playing someone who gives you a good game rather than just be a push over.

I think this is particularly true where there's a fair amount of set up time for a game. If you're shuffling a deck and dealing only three cards then it doesn't matter if it's over in 5 minutes as you can re-shuffle and replay quickly. With something like "Firefly", which takes a while to set up and is a real table hogger then your opponent(s) have got to get something out of the investment of time in setting up and playing.

I'm assuming here, of course, that we all learn games still from someone teaching us. Perhaps the modern way is to make sure you know what you're going to play and watch the Youtube video first.