The Rulebooker

This is the person who is going to read the rulebook no matter what. Whether this is because they need to know every detail, can’t pay attention to someone talking, whatever it might be, this person is going to only learn by reading the rulebook.

Why This is Good

This is good because someone else knows the rules. They have gone through the book so if you have missed anything in it, hopefully they’ll have caught it. That means you get a more comprehensive overview of the rules.

Why This is Bad

Two reasons why this can be bad, firstly, you get a more comprehensive overview of the rules. So if you aren’t teaching it in the order they are thinking about the the rules, they might interject and break up y our teach for other people. This can hurt the learning process for other people a lot.

The other thing is that reading a rulebook often takes longer than someone teaching the game. You don’t want everyone else to have learned the game and then wait on the rule book learner.

How To Help

Two things that can help with the Rulebooker. Firstly, let them know what games are going to be played ahead of time. Board Game Geek has a ton of links to rulebooks for them to use. So figure out what games you are going to play and the new ones for the player and send them the rulebooks ahead of time.

Next, open up your teach of game setting the expectation that you’ll pause for questions or comments at certain points in time. This sets the expectation that no one will be interrupting during this process. Then ask for comments or questions on what you just taught. And don’t feel bad about interrupting if this rulebook reader goes down the rabbit hole of something that’s yet to be taught.

The Jump In

This player claims that they don’t learn except by doing. They get the general idea of the game and then they want to jump right into the game and start playing. Even if the rules aren’t fully explained they are gung-ho to get going and get playing.

Why This is Good

This can often be enthusiasm and that is great for gaming. Someone who is excited about a game gets more people excited about a game and that helps get more games to the table.

Why This is Bad

You need to know the rules to play the game. That is one thing that any TTRPG or board game has, it’s a set of rules that create the framework of what you do in the game. You can end up with someone who just wants to play and then will get annoyed when they don’t understand everything.

The Jump In player also can lose focus when rules are being explained. As much as the positive can be excitement and getting other players into the game. This can be a negative and push other players away from the game. It isn’t always that this learner isn’t interested in the game, but more that they aren’t focused. But it comes across as lack of interest.

How To Help

Show and tell is what I’m going to say is the biggest thing to help this player learn and stay engaged. Or it might be more Tell and Show. As the person teaching the game tell what is happening, but have the hands on learner of the group engaged doing stuff. When you explain how cards work, give them to deck to shuffle and put in place. When you explain how a move it done, have them move it on the board. For some people it is that they do learn so much better by doing. And for those people who have really short attention spans, giving them a new task every few minutes helps keep them engaged.

The Every Detail

This one is similar to the rulebooker, but I do think that they are different The Every Detail player is capable of keeping their hands off of the rulebook. But they need everything explained 100% clearly, including all the exceptions, before they are able to feel comfortable starting a game. This can come from a few different areas, often competitiveness.

Why This is Good

This is often the player who catches if you missed something. They’ll ask questions and often lead you through the teaching without knowing it. They won’t correct your rules, but they will help you know if you’ve missed anything with the questions they ask.

Why This is Bad

It is often impossible to cover every exception. And it makes the teach of a game way longer if you try and do it. So having to answer every question for them in the moment means that the others learning the game are checking out from the rules and forgetting what was already taught.

This adds a ton of time to the teach of the game. Like I said, other players are forgetting what was taught. And you are getting in less gaming. I don’t like to start a game with negative impressions or having to go back over rules.

How To Help

Only cover the important exceptions or exploitable ones. If something happens at phase 3 of the game that is completely separate from everything else, you don’t need to answer exception questions on that until then. And just be up front with that, say that you’ll answer questions and explain more then.

So what do I mean by exploitable exceptions Basically anything that you as a person who knows the game, can use to do better or make other people do worse at the game. If you can take over an area from someone with a certain exception, that’s no fun if you teach that when you do that.

Players Know How You Learn Board Game Rules

Like I said at the beginning there are other ways people learn, and most people learn in some combination of these stereotypes. But these three are ones that stand out as often being a larger hindrance to getting games to tables. So know where your weakness lies and where you strengths lie as learners.

For example, I know that I tend to be a bit of the first two. I have learned from so many rulebooks that I can read a rulebook and get going fast. So if I know I’m going to be learning a new game from someone teaching me, I should still read the rulebook. And because I’ve learned so many board games, I tend to just want to jump in as well. Once I hear the basic premise of the rules I can sometimes fill in the details without needing to hear them. Or at least I assume that I can and I want to get playing. The issue is that I might be wrong or the game might do something unique, so I need to listen for that.

This is the same when I teach, I need to pay attention when I read in the rulebook for those different things and really highlight them. It’d be very easy for me to assume that it makes sense to everyone. Or assume that it is going to work like every other game out there. Or even assume that people will be able to get that rule just with a simple description because it is common across other games.

How do you learn rules?

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So I today we’re breaking down the whole process of teaching a board game.

1 – The Prep

Step one is before people even show up at at your game night or to play the game, you need to know the game. The most important part in this is to know and have read the rules. I don’t mean having skimmed over them but really dived into them recently so that you’re ready to go. If you want to take it one step further, play a few practice turns for the number of people you’ll have as that’ll help you get a real idea of how the game works. Now, I rarely do that last step unless it’s a game that I can play solo, then I will play through it solo. But reading the rules before you play is important. This also doesn’t happen all the time, so have read the rules at some point in time prior. Pretty often I’ll get a game, bust it open and read the rules right away just so that I have a base for it, but ideally I refresh myself on the rules later.

2 – Start with the Theme

Even if the game doesn’t have a ton of theme, start with that the theme is and use that to sell the game. When I talk about Welcome To, I say that it’s a roll and write game about building your perfect Stepford neighborhood. Now, obviously the Stepford part is added, but it gives the game more flair. Overall, people will get into a game if they can get into the theme, even games without theme try to act like they have theme, so sell the theme. Even Euro games that have you trading in the Mediterranean technically have some theme that the designer is trying to claim is there. Sell that theme. This won’t be a large part of your teach, but it’s the hook, that sales pitch that you start with to get people into the game and get their attention. To go back to to my Welcome To example, I put Stepford in my pitch because that catches people’s attention. Talk about theme and hook the players.

3 – Talk About How You Win or Lose

Really another quick part of the teach, talk about how you win the game, generally. I wouldn’t, at this point in time go into details of how you get the victory points or how you defeat the bad guy, this is building up to really teaching the game. In a cooperative game, I would point out how you win the game or how you lose the game and try and keep it as thematic as possible while you’re doing this. For example: In Pandemic we’re members of the CDC who are fighting diseases (that’s the hook). Our goal is to cure all four diseases before time runs out, there are too many outbreaks, or a disease has spread too far (that’s the win/lose).

4 – The Game Play

So after that little bit of an intro, we’re now into game play. Ideally you give the pitch before you open anything up, and if people are still interested, you start setting things up. Unless, you know you are for sure going to play the game, then set it up ahead of time. When teaching the game play, show and tell is your friend. Telling a player they can go to the store and spend gold to get a card, that makes sense and is easy, but showing a card and demonstrating the whole process makes it clearer. Especially when you can also go to the Saloon, the Temple, the Fair, and 12 other spots. Another example of this, from an actual game, would be with Gloomhaven, show how you use the top and bottom halves of the cards and how you can and might change what you’re doing off of your cards. Go through everything you need to know to play the game. Now, for Gloomhaven, keeping it as my example, I might not explain what the poison, wound, stun, etc. tokens do at this point in time. They are important to playing the game, but not to starting to play the game. So only teach what needs to be taught to start the game. Also teach only important exceptions to the rules. A lot of games might have a lot of exceptions, but if they are small, don’t dwell on them. Teach the important ones so there aren’t any gotcha’s in the game.

5 – Reinforce How to Win

Get into how you win the game now. While teaching the core mechanics you should talk about how they impact how you win the game. But this is going to be the third time you talk about how to win and the time where you just focus on the mechanical aspect of the game. In Pandemic: “As a group, we need to get sets of five cards of each color and turn them in at a research station. We have to do that before we have too many outbreaks from the epidemics in the player pile, before the player pile runs out, or we can lose if there are ever all of the disease cubes for a disease out on the board and we need to play one more.” Then go into more detail on those lose conditions again. Again, show and tell is your friend here. Demonstrate what an outbreak looks like again. Point out the cubes and the player deck again. This is really about reinforcing how to win or lose the game. Obviously this is a cooperative example, and it’s even more important to point it out in a competitive game. With a competitive game if you don’t reinforce how to win (or lose) people will sometimes get upset because they feel like they could have or would have won had they remembered how to score points or what the victory conditions were.

6 – Play One Round

Some people might say to play this open so that everyone can see what everyone is doing and then restart the game. I don’t personally love playing open handed for two reasons. The first being that it can allow someone to quarterback everything. Players need to make their own decisions, so let them. The other being that at the end of round one, you can see if people want to reset. If you play with everything out in the open, you need to reset everything, because as the person who knows the game you’ll know what players might be planning. If you play it normally, and you can still give advice, players can choose if they want to continue or restart now that they know the rules better or have a better feel for the game. If the first round of the game takes a little bit, or if the game doesn’t have that many rounds, I think a lot of players will want to continue, but give the option or reinforce the win conditions or rules again if you decide to continue. This step isn’t always needed, sometimes you can just continue with the game, especially in a cooperative game where you might be already sharing information openly.

7 – Play the Game

Simple as that, play the game. Now, teaching doesn’t stop when you start playing the game. Especially if you know how to play the game and have played it before. Talk about what you do on your turn. Point out when an exception happens, why exceptions happen. Teach what conditions are in Gloomhaven when they come up, for example, or things along those lines. People wouldn’t have remembered them from the start, but once they show up and are put into practice immediately people will remember. And try to win but maybe hold back from destroying. Some games allow you to completely crush a new player, Ascension is kind of an example of that with the Construct strategy, so either try a new strategy to see if you can win that way, or point out the really good strategy in the teach, to avoid the gotcha moment.

Wrapping Up

Hopefully that helps you know how to teach a board game. One important rule that I don’t mention is don’t read straight from the rulebook, because I wanted to focus more on the teaching process. There are some exceptions to that, TIME Stories has a great hook at the start of the rule book, so use that hook. Some games will bullet point out all the actions you can do on your turn, you can use that and demonstrate them at the same time. But if you’re explaining beyond the bullet point, you are explaining it, not reading from the book. Rule books tend to be very dry and boring, so try and keep it more interesting with how you describe and demonstrate things. But I talk about a lot of those things in the article linked at the top of the post.

What are some tips or tricks you have for teaching a game?

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First, teach games often. As long as you’re paying attention to what you’re doing and you’re trying to improve upon it, you will get better. The adage practice makes perfect is true, the more you teach games, the better you get at it. You’ll know which things to highlight and which things to skip and bring up in the game.

Second, don’t read from the rule book. If you need it to help you remember, that’s fine, but try to read as little word for word from the rule book. Rule books are not always well written and not always are they meant to teach rules directly from. Fantasy Flight does a good job with a rule book of what you need to know to start playing and then a rules reference that you can dig into for more information, but most rules have all that information in them.

Three, highlight only the important things. I’m going to, after this point, write out how I go try to go through teaching a board game, but this one is pretty easy. There are going to be things that are exceptions to the rule, and unless that exception is important to a strategy, you can gloss over it, for a first game, try and teach the big points and the objectives clearly, smaller details can be filled in as time goes on.

So, what does this look like in practice? When I teach games, I generally try and go about it this way.

1. Theme/story of the game
2. Win condition
3. How a Turn Works
4. Actions You can Do On A Turn
5. Exceptions/Special Rules
6. Any Rules that Depend on Set-up

1 – Why do I start off with theme?

“In Welcome To… you can build your perfect stepford neighborhood.”

That’s basically the pitch that I always use for Welcome To… It works well because it gives people an idea of the white picket fence neighborhood, and even if they don’t know precisely what The Stepford Wives was about, it gives them a vague idea. This line or quick paragraph is how you sell a game and the mood for the game.

2 – Next comes explaining how you win the game, whether it’s cooperative or not and whether I go into every detail or not at this point in time, I explain how you win the game. In Welcome To… I basically as saying that you are trying to build the best most marketable neighborhood to get points by building pools, parks, fencing off neighborhoods and more. Or in Pandemic, the goal is to clear all the diseases before you run out of player cards, disease cubes or have too many outbreaks.

The win condition is just important to talk about up front because it again helps inform the type of game that you’re getting into. If it’s a big point salad sort of game versus a combat focused game. I think that Scythe is a good example of why you do this, Scythe looks like it should be a big area control, dudes on a map, alternate timelines, but it’s a Euro game. So setting that up through talking about how you win is important for expectation setting.

3 – The turn, I’m talking about the big structure of it here. In Welcome To… that is basically that there are going to be three pairs of card options to choose from and you’ll do what the pair you chose to use tells you to do. In Pandemic it’s trickier, you have your turn, you have the drawing of player cards, the infection step and discard step. Now it lays that out nice and clearly on the player aides, but there are still more steps. And it might not just be the turn proper, it could be the round. Sagrada is an example of where a turn is just taking and placing a die, but you need to explain how the draft works in terms of order. We’re not talking about the fine details yet, we’re just looking at the bigger picture.

4 – The actions step is where we get into the details and the longest part of teaching the game. The theme/pitch of the game, and win conditions should be fast, the turn or round information should pretty fast, but this is where it slows down a little bit. Go through all the different actions that people can take, that means explaining the backside of the cards in Welcome To…, walking through the actions in Pandemic, or how to place the dice and how to use special abilities in Sagrada.

With the actions, however, we’re still just going to teach the basic actions. If there’s going to be an exception to one, call out that there will be and come back to it during the exceptions section of your teach. These are going to be the things that everyone is able to do on every turn across the board. This is made much harder by asymmetrical games, but those are unfortunately always going to be a beast to teach.

5 – In the exceptions step, we’re looking to teach the important exceptions in a situation. For Pandemic, that might how the medic cures versus how everyone else does. How the Dispatcher moves people versus the rest of the game. We’re talking about the exceptions or special rules that are big. This is also the point in time where you have already talked that there are special actions in Sagrada, now you can go over what they do.

There are going to be some exceptions that you aren’t going to teach. These are going to be the positive exceptions, not the negative ones. They are going to be the ones that you teach when they happen in the game. So we’re talking about the ones where you get a bonus or get to do something special because of a situation in the game, and as the teacher you’re looking to teach those in the moment in the game instead of getting it bogged down now. However, if it’s a really bad consequence to an exception or special rule, teach that before the moment so it doesn’t feel like a “gotcha” or trap.

6 – Finally, set-up the game, now, for something like Pandemic, you can do this while you go. For something like Welcome To… or Sagrada, probably wait. This is going to allow you to do a few things, in both of them, now you’re teaching the specific scoring for that game. What extra things do you want to consider when drafting or placing dice in Sagrada. What are the three building permits that you’re working to complete in Welcome To…? Now, all the set-up shouldn’t happen now and for some games, Lords of Hellas, for example, you’ll want to have most of the game set-up before people get there. We’re just talking about finishing off those final touches for getting ready to play in that case, so you can explain the specific things for the start of your game.

Now, I know that sounds like a lot. But besides teaching the actions, the main meat of the game, you aren’t going to be spending a ton of time on the other parts. Exceptions and special rules, especially if the game has a long teach in the action part, should go by quickly. Same with set-up, if it’s a big game, Lords of Hellas or even something like Blood Rage, do set-up while you teach. That’s going to give people a really obvious visual example.

That is one thing that I didn’t talk about much, when you are teaching, we are showing as well. When you talk about a phase in a turn or a round, demonstrate it, if you can. When you explain an action, demonstrate it on the board if you can. These are contrived examples, but seeing while hearing is going to help people’s retention of the information and have less questions further down the line. Also, putting things in people’s hands can be helpful as well. If you’ve explained a deck and it needs to be shuffled and placed, hand it off to someone else to shuffle and place it. This might seem like it distracts, but it mainly gives that player a feeling of ownership of helping getting the game up and running smoothly.

With all of this said, finally, remember, you’ll probably never teach a game perfectly for everyone at the table. We’re just trying to present the information as easily or as usefully as possible for the greatest number of people. There are people who need to muddle their way through two turns before they get a game no matter if you’re the best teacher in the world. There are going to be people who think after hearing how the rounds go that they know how to play the game and will checkout at that point no matter what. As the teacher, it’s not about being able to teach it so that everyone is 100% engaged all the time, but to teach it so that most of the people at the table understand most of the game and then you go from there and play and teach in the game.

What tips or tricks have you found for teaching games? Are there anythings that have made teaching some games easier than others?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

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Most people who are interested in board games are going to be up for learning a new game from time to time. Though, there will be some people who aren’t interested as well, but that was a different article. So, you get the game to the table, now how do you teach people the game? I might have actually written about this before, but I think it’s worth going back over and giving some more suggestions, because this is one of the bigger barriers to entry for a lot of board games.

The rules to games are often challenging, and unless everyone loves board games, reading from the rule book won’t likely teach people. Even if the people do love board games, and someone starts to read from the rule book, I’m going to zone out, because I can just read the rule book myself if that’s how we’re going to learn. There needs to be a more engaging way to keep people involved in the rules.

Teaching Rules Steps:

1. Start out by knowing the rules yourself. That doesn’t mean that you’ve had to have played the game before, though playing a sample hand wouldn’t be bad or sample turn, just to make sure that you get it. Or you can watch videos from places like Watch It Played that go over the rules to certain games. What you’re looking to come out of is the win or loss conditions, end of game, and what people can do on their turn. You are going to want to know those things well.
2. Start with the theme of the game (if there is one). By starting with the theme, you can get people’s interest since you aren’t starting off with something dry. This is actually a time where you can read from the rule book, because some games, like T.I.M.E. Stories actually have a bit of a story at the start of the rule book. You can use whatever the game gives you to tell the story. Now, for some games there won’t be a theme you can do this with, I’m looking at abstract games or Dominion as examples, so you can skip that step.
3. Then talk about how you win or lose the game. This is going to be the most important information for people in the game. Generally it’s going to be about how you win the game, especially in a competitive game. You want to have the most victory points, you want to control so many territories, you want to empty your hand of cards first, whatever that might be. But if there’s a condition, say, if you run out of cards, that can eliminate someone from the game, tell them that too. Or for something like Pandemic, there are a lot of ways to lose the game, so talk about those while you talk about how you win. Pandemic is also a good example as to how you can combine this with step two, because you can talk in the theme about how you’re all members of the CDC who are trying to cure four diseases. In that case, you can get the information out in one fell swoop, though I would be tempted to repeat it again, just to make sure everyone knows.
4. Spend some time go over turn/round structure. This isn’t what people can do on their turn. But if you start by drawing cards, then playing two cards, then moving the villain ahead two spaces, then optionally getting an event card, explain that. This is meant to teach people who this works at a high level and what the structure is going to be through most of the game. It is also going to give you a chance to show off random decks of cards or things that the players might not immediately interact with in the game.
5. Go over what people can do on their turns. Now, this doesn’t have to be everything. Especially if there is a player aid that is good and clear. But talk about the important things that people can do on their turns. In Pandemic, explain how the moving works and how to treat diseases and how to cure diseases. Then, most of the characters have a special action that they can take. You don’t need to teach something like this which is specific to a single player, but have the players read, at this time, their special powers, if they exist, and in fact hand them out at this time, and then you can answer questions.
6. Show people the important parts of the game. But more than just showing off the important decks, let your players be involved in it. In Pandemic, as an example again, you can talk about the player deck and have someone shuffle it and hand out people’s hands of cards while you continue to teach more. It seems like it might distract from your teaching by having someone do something like that. I personally don’t think it will, in fact it might keep people more engaged. Because people are going to be paying attention so that if you ask them to help with something it won’t be obvious that they weren’t paying attention.
7. Finally, teach in the game as need be. This can be a few different things. Sometimes there are several things that only happen once or twice in the game, you can teach them in the moment when they happen. However, this only works if it isn’t something that is extremely important to the game or to the scoring. If there’s something that can give you an automatic win, teach that earlier even if it’s really rare. Or if it’s something that helps you as the person who is teaching the game and hurts someone else, teach it earlier or refrain from doing it, and give it as an example as something that you could do. Another thing that teaching in the game can be is letting players roll back a turn if need be. If someone has an extremely good move and makes a very bad move, point out the option to them, they might have forgotten or just missed it. But don’t do this all the time, because you’ll basically be taking that person’s turn and make this about teaching the game, so once you’ve taught something once during the game, you don’t teach the same thing again.

Now, there are probably more things that you can do. But being patient and teaching a game from theme first, and from a position where you know the rules is going to make it more likely that people will enjoy the game. And when people don’t enjoy the game, don’t assume that it was how you taught it, if you were trying to be considerate and engaging about it, not every game is for everyone.

Have you found any ways that make teaching a game easier? Or are there things that you’ve found help keep people engaged in learning the rules?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

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