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?

Classic board game rule...

[KDan]

Let the Wookie win.



Sorry, I had to...

Daniel

Re:Classic board game rule...

[DavidLJ]

For anybody reallyinterested in this subject, the classic piece is probably the appendix in Lasker's "My Life In Chess," I think it is, anyway, in his autobiography. The Appendix is on how to teach chess, and I re-read it recently before teaching a seven year-old nephew the game.

The essence of it is simple -- and agree with the article that started this thread: you build up from a coherent subset of the game until you have the whole thing.

In Lasker's example you start out playing two rooks and a king agai

This is so obvious it hurts me to type it

[seinman]

Why not just tell them to read the damn rules themselves?

Re:This is so obvious it hurts me to type it

[Andy_R]

Because the rules often don't function well as a tutorial, since they (ought) to deal with every concievable circumstance.

Also, there are some games where the rules are horribly incomplete, for example the board game Risk, which (in all the editions I have seen here in the UK) doesn't bother to explain when a player's turn ends. Differnet people use different conventions for when it's the next person's turn, and for the inadequately defined 'reinforcement move at end of turn'.

Player's turn

[hackwrench]

A player's turn ends when he decides he doesn't want to attack another country and has completed the fortification stage, in which the player can move all but one army from one and only one country to one and only one other country About.com: Risk Rules [about.com]

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 w

Re:This is so obvious it hurts me to type it

[Rupes]

> Why not just tell them to read the damn rules themselves?

Well, looking at four random but highly regarded games from my shelves (Age of Steam, Puerto Rico, Amun-Re, and Funkenschlag), the english rules average a bit over eight 8"x11" sides each. This is a bit much for three other players to read in turn before a game when the explanation could be done in parallel.

Some good ideas, but...

[steve.m]

The tips are all pretty obvious (to me at least), and the article is written in the style of 'the GM is god - don't ask me questions when i'm talking!', which is OK for serious board gamers who must do everything 'by the book' and take things serious, but at the end of the day it's just a game...

A few of us at work (all aged ~30) meet up and play board & card games fairly regularly, we seem to get at least one new game every month, and only replay the good ones.

We've experienced the 'steep learning cu

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

Make sure the goal is clear and obvious

[dmorin]

I've found that the one thing that makes new players get all glassy eyed is if they don't immediately grasp the goal of the game. They'll understand the rules better in the context of the goal.

The two best examples I know are Go and Chess (I just had this conversation recently after trying to teach my wife Go). Take Chess first. Beginners are taught that the goal of the game is Checkmate. This immediately causes most of them to always go after "Check" thinking that it is "almost there." And if you ever suggest to them a draw, or that they surrender, they think you're nuts. The concept of the game being over before somebody is in checkmate is lost on them. This was clearly shown during that experiment when Kasparov played the world over the net. The expert advisors recommended a draw at a particular move, but the masses said oh hell no, we want to win.

Go has the problem that, for beginners, the ending is very difficult to understand. You are probably NOT going to play until the board is full. THe game ends by mutual agreement. But a beginner doesnt really understand what goes into that agreement. So they insist on playing on.

Re:Make sure the goal is clear and obvious

[MrWa]

I think a bigger problem with Go is not the ending, it's the beginning.

Chess starts with a board populated with pieces; these pieces move certain ways and there is a very small number of first moves. Since the goal is clearer (checkmate) in chess, even the novice has a good chance of starting out alright.

In Go you have a huge board with a lot more possible first moves. If the beginner isn't aware of opening theory there is almost no way to decide where to place the first stone.

That is why starting out

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

Don't forget "girlfriend rules"

[dmorin]

Somewhere kicking around I've got the Girlfriend Rules for 8-Ball, but they all still apply. Girlfriends are allowed as many "do overs" as required to get a move right. And when the girlfriend makes a good move, she is allowed to celebrate, sing, dance, taunt, and basically do whatever she wants - but when boyfriend makes a good move he is not allowed to make so much as eye contact. :)

slow news day?

[shdragon]

Come on now... I realize that it's the weekend and all, but honestly....suggestions for teaching board games? I think now we're just posting stories to have new stuff on the front page (please hold all "witty" comments regarding /. & dupes for another thread)

With a story like this, I almost mistook it for an SNL skit Delicious Dish [goodeatsfanpage.com]

Re:slow news day?

[evilquaker]

Come on now... I realize that it's the weekend and all, but honestly....suggestions for teaching board games?

Well, the other option is to post dupes of selected stories from the past week or month... would you prefer that?

(not that I'm saying the dupes won't happen anyway...)

Re:slow news day?

[simoniker]

This is actually a games subpager, not a front page story. If this were a front page story, even _I_ would be alarmed :)

Re:slow news day?

[shdragon]

You know, long as i've been here i'd forgoten about the "collapse sections" preference... hahaha. my bad.

so, are you ever gonna change this color scheme? make it less....bright?

Getting all stories on the front page

[Violet Null]

'Collapse Sections' is the setting you're looking for. If you choose this, all stories will show up on the front page for you.

Re:slow news day?

[amuro98]

It's not as easy as you might think - especially if your audience is made up of people whose most complicated board game, until now, was Monopoloy, which they last played at age 10.

Ordered teaching

[MrWa]

I think that teaching something in order is seldom correct. Most of the time the sequence is arbitrary and only easily remembered when you know the entire sequence.

A good example would be learning hiragana. James Heisig's book Remembering the Hiragana does not teach in the alphabetical order but, instead, in an order that more closely matches how a Westerner can most easily remember the characters. Teaching something so that it can be remembered, and focusing on the meaning or technicalities later, prov

Chess

[Viking Coder]

If you want to learn chess, Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games [amazon.com] by Laszlo Polgar is an interesting choice. It starts off with very simple puzzles, and works you up to much more complicated ones. All without any language - just diagrams of chess boards. Really interesting book.