F&%# Teaching New Players!

A subject near and dear to my heart.

Effectively teaching a game to new players is not a simple thing to do. Some games you just can't win the first time you play, there's too much to comprehend without a trial game. But in many games, teaching the game well can be the difference between a competive new player, and a new player who is just pushing pieces around. In most cases, a new players can be taught the major concepts rather than have to learn on the fly. I'm not a good teacher if I don't spent a couple minutes organizing my thoughts on how to approach teaching a specific game. If I do have some time, I think I'm pretty good at it. Each game is different, but these are the general steps I go through.

I think I'll use three games as examples, Settlers, Thebes and Automobile. I think these games have enough differention in mechanics to be good examples.

1) What am I doing? First describe the setting and the theme. Even in the games that have an awkwardly glued on theme like Ra, it still helps to know that you're trying to collect stuff and build a cool egyptian themed empire. In Settlers you're trying to build the best settlement on the island of Catan. In Thebes you're trying to uncover artifacts in the turn of the century middle east. In Automobile you're manufacturing and selling cars.

2) How do I win? Describe the victory condition. In Settlers you're trying to get to 10 points first. In Thebes you're trying to get the most points in a fixed amount of time. In Automobile you're trying to earn the most money by game end. Now while you explain mechanics, it's all in perspective. In Brass, money is a means to get VPs, in Automobile, money is what's up.

3) Now you can start high level flow of the game and work toward the details. How does the game work? What is a turn at a high level, and how does control move from one player to another player...in other words, when is a turn over? Many games are composed of a fixed set of rounds, explain this right way.

In Settlers, you roll the dice to see what resources are producing, and then you spend collected goods roads, settlements, cities and cards. There's no reason to explain the robber or development cards on the first go around. Explain the mechanic of how goods are produced, and how they are spent. Once that's clear, you can explain the details of cards, robbers, ports, etc.

In Thebes, each turn is a move around the map and an action such as taking a card. You are collecting these cards to do digs for artifacts. Explain how to move up the time track when a turn is done. Once you've given a number of examples and the mechanic is clear, take your collection of example cards and show how a turn can also be a move and a dig. Now you can hit the details, for example explain the special (non-research) cards and that you can acually only dig in each site once per year.

In Automobile there are four rounds, each round consists of the same set of steps. Basically pick a role, manage your factories and production, and sell your cars. Then I go through the steps and explain them in detail one at a time. Remind them, we're going to do this same sequence four times. In a game like automobile, a practice round would be recommended if most of the table has never played.

Often the most interesting mechanics are going to have to be saved until last. How the robber works is a whole lot more meaningful when you understand what it means to lose half your hand, and how stealing a card from an opponent could tactically be used to your great advantage.

4) How does the game end? What's a typical winning score? It may not be obvious, in fact it probably isn't, so reiterate under what conditions the game ends. I like to give examples of a winning score so a new player has some scope of what they're trying to accomplish. Also, during the game they might better understand the benefits of a situation if they have a target to aim for.

5) Advice portion - Once the rules are all pretty clear, I like to go over high level strategy in just a couple of senteces, and warn them of the most common early mistakes.

In Settler: "Most people think stone is the best resources and you want to make sure you have some access to it." "Sheep suck." "Very difficult to win without cities."

In Thebes: "You can string together multiple turns, that can be quite useful" "you want to try and squeeze in at least two digs the first year, and at least three the second, although depending on the quality of the digs, that might vary." "We really shouldn't be wasting our limited time with this game, are you sure you don't want to play something else?"

In Automobile: "Most people don't by luxury cars early, it doesn't seem to work." "Note that there's no demand for economy cars in the first round, don't build those!" "You need to be making money each round, but the big bucks will be made in the last round, as your figuring out the game, try to set yourself up for a big final round."

There you have it. How to teach a game in five steps.