3 ms·

When I have played new games with people, what I try to do is just launch ourselves into it, play a few rounds haphazardly and maybe sort of by the actual rules

When I have played new games with people, what I try to do is just launch ourselves into it, play a few rounds haphazardly and maybe sort of by the actual rules, figuring things out as we go, then start over and play the game for real. It takes a little more time to replay the start of the game, but if people are in the spirit of it, the exploration phase of it can move quickly. You don't have to try to make the right play. Just try something. If there's a thing in the rules that can happen, do it and see what happens, even if you think it's probably not the right way to do it.

jjnoakes 6y ago
My friends and I do this a lot on board game arena - it's nice because you can only make legal moves there (and trying to make an illegal move usually faces you with some context as to why it is illegal), so it's easy to explore part of the game's state space without having to know anything about the rules. Then after some number of rounds we'll read the rules and figure out how things worked that we missed, and then play a real game. It's quite fun.
fho 6y ago
To be fair that does not work too well with "event games" (ie events that take so long that you can barely play a round in one day). Example: Eclipse, which we play whenever we find time and people to spend 7-9 hours for a single game. Just starting to play would not really work here, because you can not easily play multiple games to learn the rules incrementally. That said, Eclipse is currently my favorite game as it's fairly complex, but the goals are laid out pretty simply: Collect victory points (VP), everything with a golden shield with a number gives you VP. From there it's mostly about teaching the players about the actions they can perform each turn (of which there are six) and the associated costs. But in the first turns everybody will use a single action (explore) so the learning ramp starts of manageable. The move and the upgrade actions are not relevant before ships where build, complexity builds up over the game. Also: Complexity arises from having a whole load of researchable technologies and discoveries on the board. But all of those are introduced slowly while the game progresses. All of this falls out of the window when you play with the alien races which changes the rules for every player ... which is why play all humans whenever we have new players at the table. Long text ... I just love that game ;-)

jjnoakes 6y ago

My friends and I do this a lot on board game arena - it's nice because you can only make legal moves there (and trying to make an illegal move usually faces you with some context as to why it is illegal), so it's easy to explore part of the game's state space without having to know anything about the rules. Then after some number of rounds we'll read the rules and figure out how things worked that we missed, and then play a real game. It's quite fun.

fho 6y ago

To be fair that does not work too well with "event games" (ie events that take so long that you can barely play a round in one day). Example: Eclipse, which we play whenever we find time and people to spend 7-9 hours for a single game. Just starting to play would not really work here, because you can not easily play multiple games to learn the rules incrementally. That said, Eclipse is currently my favorite game as it's fairly complex, but the goals are laid out pretty simply: Collect victory points (VP), everything with a golden shield with a number gives you VP. From there it's mostly about teaching the players about the actions they can perform each turn (of which there are six) and the associated costs. But in the first turns everybody will use a single action (explore) so the learning ramp starts of manageable. The move and the upgrade actions are not relevant before ships where build, complexity builds up over the game. Also: Complexity arises from having a whole load of researchable technologies and discoveries on the board. But all of those are introduced slowly while the game progresses. All of this falls out of the window when you play with the alien races which changes the rules for every player ... which is why play all humans whenever we have new players at the table. Long text ... I just love that game ;-)