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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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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