FallCon - A Cornucopia of Gaming

In the previous article, I explained that as gamers we all find ourselves teaching games from time to time.  It’s an important role, and our goal should be to ensure that others have a positive experience and want to continue to explore this great hobby of ours.

In this third installment, I want to share a framework for game explanations that has worked well for me.  This should be considered within the context of some of the other "rules of thumb" that I outlined in Part 2.

A 5-Step Approach to Teaching Games

This is a sequential process, and I find it works well to pause at the end of each step to test for understanding before moving to the next step.

1 - Objective

I always start with the end.  What are the general objectives or victory conditions for the game?  And I back that up with one or two ‘path to that objective’ comments.  In Power Grid for example, I might say “Your goal is to power more cities than your opponents at the end of the game, and to do that you will need to build cities, buy power plants, and supply resources to those power plants to run them”.

As another example, I had a chance to teach Martin Wallace’s London last night.  My explanation began with, “Your goal is to collect the most victory points by the end of the game, and you’ll generate those points in three ways: 1) building boroughs in London; 2) placing cards into your ‘city’ in front of you that have victory points displayed on them; and 3) maximizing money while minimizing ‘poverty’ by the end of the game.

The key here is to keep it simple and at a high level.  Don’t get into too much detail about how to calculate the victory conditions, or convert final resources.  Save that for “Finer Points” later on.

2 -  Components

In order to do this well, you’ll want to have the game set up prior to explanation.  This makes it easy to direct people’s attention as you go.  It also gives people the opportunity to pick up, feel, and examine more closely the items you are describing – an important process in learning. And a word of warning if you're teaching games to really young kids: they may want to taste the components too; be prepared!

While describing each component, I explain what it does in the game.  For example, “These plastic chips represent money, and you use money in the game for …”, or “The cubes are resources, and they are used for …”.

It’s important to touch on every game component.   This includes not just the bits and pieces, but the board (and the different areas on it), player mats, reference cards, etc.

It’s in this phase of explanation that you’ll want to also describe the game iconography.  Some of the best produced games do a good job of being consistent with the icons.  For example, in the game 7 Wonders you might say, “Whenever you see the green wreath symbol, it represents victory points”.

3 - Structure and Flow

I find it very important to be clear about the structure of game flow, and I take special care with the terminology I use.  It can be confusing for learners if I mix up terms like ‘turn’, ‘round’, ‘phase’, ‘action step’, etc.

Most games have rounds, and turns that occur within rounds.  For example I might say, “Each round starts with the starting player and moves clockwise.  During that round, each player gets one turn”.  This example is simple, but more careful explanation (and repetition) is required if, for example, “The game is divided into 4 eras, each made up of 10 years.  Each year has four seasons and in those we’ll have four phases of three actions”. Hey! I think I played this game last week. In such cases, it's easy to get confused so we need to be specific and deliberate in explaining the structure and flow.

4 - Actions and Decisions

Once I’ve laid the foundation of structure, then I can define what players do and/or what decisions they will make in the game.  This may sound something like, “On your turn you will bid on the available resources”, or “At this stage you will take three actions.  Each one will be from one of the 5 choices …”.

This is probably the longest part of your explanation, and the area where you will want to have the most interaction.  Remember, at this stage you want interaction, so encourage questions and say to individuals, “hey, that’s a good question” as much as you can. 

As you move through any part of the game explanation it’s fair to defer some questions by saying, “That’s a good question, and let me come back to that …”.  You’ll use this tactic in dealing with questions that may skip ahead or are outside the logical order of your explanation.

In this phase of your teaching, be prepared to clarify, repeat and restate as people absorb the information you are providing.

5 - Strategy and Finer Points

A discussion of strategy for people just learning a new game is sometimes premature in the early stages.  If I do talk strategy in the initial presentation of a game, I generally try to keep it fairly simple, something like “in general money is pretty tight in this game so be careful about your spending”.  You may even consider leaving a discussion of strategy until some way into the game after players have played a few rounds.

The introduction of what I call the ‘finer points’ is really dependent on the particular game.  In my mention of the game London above, a finer point around scoring would be that “at the end of the game, money converts to Victory Points at a ratio of 3-to-1, while Poverty cubes deduct final victory points based on this table on the board”.   This is pretty deep in the detail, but becomes more important for players as the game progresses.

Putting it Together

Like anything, improving the way you teach games takes practice, but using a framework like this should make it easier.  Like G.K. Chesterson said when he turned the common phrase around, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly”.  By this he meant if something is worth doing, get started, make the effort and expect that you won’t be great to begin with.

Ever seen a kid starting to learn to ride a bike? A 3-year-old with enough practice can learn to bike without training wheels. The point is stick with it!. If you keep working on it, over time you’ll build your teaching skills and you audience will appreciate it.