Teaching Novices Board Games.. Properly

Thanks to The Games Journal for their new article discussing how to teach board games to those playing them for the first time. The author provides a how-not-to guide from his own experience, citing a friend who "..had to repeatedly refer to [the] rulebook.. [and] conveniently introduced a few rules during the course of the game, usually just as he needed to take advantage of them", then suggests an 'incremental approach' to boardgame teaching, consisting of a basic outline, then more detailed fleshing-out, suggesting: "..most people don't have the patience to hear out or the ability to absorb a detailed, chronological approach from top to bottom." Is there an approach that works for you?

Comments

Re:Make sure the goal is clear and obvious

[Ieshan]

Teaching chess, I find the biggest problem to be explaining the concept of forced moves.

I think it's very difficult for a novice to understand that most chess strategy depends on assuming where the other person will be moving on the next move, what you'll be doing, assuming where the person will move, etc.

It's difficult to assume where someone else will move if you can't figure out where to move yourself.

That's why I find chess puzzles so helpful. Teaching chess a few times about two years ago taught me that chess puzzles are everyone's best friend. The only correct solution are a series of forced moves, and the board positions are very "coaxing". There's no way to *not* see these sorts of things, given enough examples and enough time.

Masterful chess players (Grandmasters) often offer draws at unthinkable positions because they know exactly what is going to happen. Novices never draw because they can't predict what is going to happen next.

I just did this last night

[Daetrin]

We've experienced the 'steep learning curve' that some games have, where the owner sudenly remembers something we should have done way back at the start, but the solution is to comprimise. If the sudden inclusion of a rule allows somebody to win, we ignore it (for this game) and carry on play. We're playing for fun, not for prizes.

I've played Cosmic a lot online, but never actually used the board game i owned. However a friend of mine and her boyfriend wanted to play a board game last night, so we pulled it out. I did the tagline bit, but then had to resort to reading from the rulebook since i couldn't count on my memory to get everything right and wasn't sure what differences there might be between the online and print version. The game had been a last minute decision and i certainly hadn't had time to look over the rules first.

We played a turn or two, and then paused while i discussed the philosophy of deciding if you want to ally with someone, and which side you want to ally on. And there was more than one point where we eitehr came to a situation that i'd forgotten to explain earlier or that we couldn't find a clear example in the rules, and we voted on what to do in the case for that game.

At one point i suddenly realized that nobody had been taking a ship out of warp at the start of their turn. I'd mentioned the rule, and we did it the first two or three turns it was applicable, but then just forgot. So i just pointed out that we'd all been forgetting, and we decided it would be simplest to just have everyone take two ships out of warp and try to remember to do it right from then on.

Re:Player's turn

[Andy_R]

That method of ending that turn gives a huge advantage to whoever goes first in 2 player games, if they ignore the neutrals and just attack the other player, victory is practically certain, since the 2nd player will get a tiny start of move bonus compared to the first player, and the first player will have the benefit of trading in cards for armies before the other player even starts to play.

Stopping a player's turn when they either no longer want to attack or have 5 cards seems more balanced (that's the way the computer version I have plays it).

The other option of taking it in turns to attack once leads to the allocation of a huge number of armies, if players get defensive, you can use all the pieces up quite quickly.

I've also seen beginners try to play that each side must keep attacking until attack is impossible!

The instruction booklet doesn't tell you which of the above systems you should actually be following.

For fortification, most people also seem to add a stipulation that the destination is either adjacent to the source (which renders the reinforcement stage very ineffective) or that the destination must be reachable without passing through enemy territory, and some play that the reinforcements can go from one source to several adjacent destinations, and others will interpret the word 'can' in your definition to mean that more than 1 army can remain at the source, others that it only means the entire reinforcement stage is optional.

Again, the instruction booklet is unclear about this, and you need to agree with whoever you are playing what method you are following