park.adam•15d agoMost Upvoted

The great debate: is it better to teach new players a game cold or let them read the rules first?

Honestly, my group can't agree on this. Last month at Dave's place, I tried teaching Terraforming Mars cold to two newbies and they looked lost for 20 minutes. But 3 years ago at a con in Portland, I let someone read the rulebook first and they got bored before we even started. Which side do you land on, or does it depend on the game?

2 comments

2 Comments

henry_webb6815d ago

Have you tried teaching them as you go? I've found with medium weight games like Wingspan, I'll explain the core goal and how turns work, then let them ask questions as we play. The key is having a cheat sheet for phase order. For heavier games like Terraforming Mars, I actually do a hybrid approach. I send them a 5 minute YouTube video before game night, then we spend 10 minutes going over the key icons and end game scoring. That way they show up with SOME clue, but we're not reading 20 pages of rules out loud.

noahclark15d ago

My group's been doing the YouTube homework thing for like two years now and it honestly saves so much time. For Spirit Island I sent them a 5 minute rule video and we still needed like 15 minutes on all the little power card symbols and invader stuff. The cheat sheet idea is clutch too, I made one for Root with just the turn phases and victory conditions and it stopped like half the "wait what do I do now" questions. Only thing I'd add is make sure the video is actually good, some of those rule explanations are terrible and just confuse people more.