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When I teach people how to play a game, I usually omit several of the rules upfront to help people grok the goal faster. For example when teaching Texas Hold'em

When I teach people how to play a game, I usually omit several of the rules upfront to help people grok the goal faster. For example when teaching Texas Hold'em, we might play all the way to the river with all cards face up and no betting. Then we'll play a round with up-front betting keeping our hole cards private. Finally, we play the game "correctly" with turn-by-turn betting. I'm surprised more board games don't include a "first game" playthrough guide to slowly introduce mechanics. This is extremely common in video games.

supernewton 2y ago
This is covered by the article. A board game might take 4 people and 2 hours to play. If your three friends didn't have fun with a board game the first time, they probably won't want to play again, and so you won't be able to play again either. Therefore there is a strong drive among boardgamers to play the "full" game the first time, because there might not be a second time. It also adds extra difficulty to design a game that even has a simple version that is fun to play. Take your Texas Hold'em example, imagine it takes 2 hours to play one game. If you start with a version that has all cards face-up and no betting, people would conclude that Texas Hold'em is a supremely boring game, and wouldn't bother to try the full Texas Hold'em experience!
- zahlman 2y ago
  I've seen people teach by playing the open-face (or otherwise simplified version) of a single turn as a way to give an overview of core mechanics. Naturally, this works better if the 2 hour game consists of dozens of 5 minute turns rather than a few half-hour ones. If you show one hand of Texas Hold'em, and don't actually play it, but instead talk through what players might be thinking at various points, then you not only cover the mechanics, but sell the game (through the rhetorical device of dramatic irony: you emphasize that the players don't have complete information, and may try to mislead each other, and may come to wrong conclusions even without such deceit, and of course nobody knows what will come on the river...). But of course, it's difficult to disentangle that from a strategy discussion.
ianferrel 2y ago
Yeah I do this too. I also, when playing a totally new game that no one has played, state up front that we're pretty much going to wing it for a few turns and after that we can see if we want to keep playing or start over. Start over is often better, and it lets people not worry about getting into an hour-long game where they badly misplayed the first few turns.
acbart 2y ago
Basically the concept of Hedy: https://www.hedycode.com/ https://www.hedycode.com/ A Python language/environment/progression that slowly requires the learner to understand more actual Python rules.
stevage 2y ago
"First game" tutorials in rulebooks are awesome. Space Alert has an incredibly good tutorial system built in, where you play through something like 7 or 8 games, adding a few new rules each time. Sleeping Gods also has a bit of a tutorial/quick start that works quite well. There should definitely be more of it.

supernewton 2y ago

This is covered by the article. A board game might take 4 people and 2 hours to play. If your three friends didn't have fun with a board game the first time, they probably won't want to play again, and so you won't be able to play again either. Therefore there is a strong drive among boardgamers to play the "full" game the first time, because there might not be a second time. It also adds extra difficulty to design a game that even has a simple version that is fun to play. Take your Texas Hold'em example, imagine it takes 2 hours to play one game. If you start with a version that has all cards face-up and no betting, people would conclude that Texas Hold'em is a supremely boring game, and wouldn't bother to try the full Texas Hold'em experience!

zahlman 2y ago
I've seen people teach by playing the open-face (or otherwise simplified version) of a single turn as a way to give an overview of core mechanics. Naturally, this works better if the 2 hour game consists of dozens of 5 minute turns rather than a few half-hour ones. If you show one hand of Texas Hold'em, and don't actually play it, but instead talk through what players might be thinking at various points, then you not only cover the mechanics, but sell the game (through the rhetorical device of dramatic irony: you emphasize that the players don't have complete information, and may try to mislead each other, and may come to wrong conclusions even without such deceit, and of course nobody knows what will come on the river...). But of course, it's difficult to disentangle that from a strategy discussion.

ianferrel 2y ago

Yeah I do this too. I also, when playing a totally new game that no one has played, state up front that we're pretty much going to wing it for a few turns and after that we can see if we want to keep playing or start over. Start over is often better, and it lets people not worry about getting into an hour-long game where they badly misplayed the first few turns.

acbart 2y ago

Basically the concept of Hedy: https://www.hedycode.com/ https://www.hedycode.com/ A Python language/environment/progression that slowly requires the learner to understand more actual Python rules.

stevage 2y ago

"First game" tutorials in rulebooks are awesome. Space Alert has an incredibly good tutorial system built in, where you play through something like 7 or 8 games, adding a few new rules each time. Sleeping Gods also has a bit of a tutorial/quick start that works quite well. There should definitely be more of it.