Adam Skinner
United States
Chippewa Lake
Ohio
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Preface
This was originally a reply in another thread about teaching games. I thought it warranted a standalone article, so here it is for your viewing pleasure.
The Teaching
I do a fair amount of game teaching. I was teaching my 8 year old daughter how to play Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation (Deluxe Edition) yesterday (she loved it, probably because she won!), and I was thinking this morning how to teach her to teach games (a little meta-teaching).
What I generally do is present the theme of the game, and say like "We're all different countries" or "I'm the Fellowship of the Ring, and you're Sauron".
I then explained the components in the game insofar as they fit in with the theme. "See these stand-up things here? These are guys from the movies. You have bad guys, like the Balrog and the Nazgul, and I have good guys like Frodo and Gandalf."
So I showed her what we do on each turn. "On our turns, we have to move a guy forward. See how each of these spaces has two other spaces in front of it? We can move into either of those spaces. If one of my guys is there, we fight it out. If not, then your guy stays there."
Image courtesy of TimothyP
I then went on to explain the winning / game end conditions. "I win if I can get Frodo to Mordor. See how it's at the very end of your side of the board? It doesn't matter if you still have all 4 guys there; if I get Frodo there, I win. That's the only way I can win. I need to get Frodo to Mordor. It's your job to stop me. You can do that by killing Frodo. You get another way you can win though - if you can get 3 guys into my farthest space ('The Shire'), then you win. So you have two ways you can win: kill Frodo, or get 3 guys in The Shire."
So I circled back and showed her how to kill Frodo. "Now when you move onto a space with one of your guys that has one of my guys in it, we start a fight. See how each of these guys has something written on it? We read those out first. I get to do mine, and then you get to do yours. Sometimes that will end the fight right there. Most of the time, we'll get to play cards though. We each take a card out of our hand, and then we 'blind bid' it in front of us. We both put them down face down, and when we both have them face down, we turn them face up. Then we add the number on the card to the number on the character, and the highest total wins!"
I showed her the reference sheets that come with the game, which I'd set out beforehand. "You can see my whole team on that sheet, just like your whole team. And the cards too. You get 1-6 and 3 special cards, and I get 1-5 and 4 special cards."
Image courtesy of Ladislaus
"That's fair" she said. "I get the 6, but you get one more special card."
"That's right. And two of our special cards are the same: we both get 'Retreat' and 'Magic', see?"
As you can see, this method of teaching isn't formulaic, but rather it explains the game in it's own context from theme to simple mechanics to goals to specific info we need to know to play. I repeat things, and give concrete examples.
I left out some things, like "You can't move sideways in the mountains" and "the Balrog instantly kills somebody trying to move through the Mines of Moria" until we started playing. I had her place all of her guys randomly to start, and then place all of my guys randomly (without looking at my guys).
After she understood the basic rules, I put in those little caveats, along with the river movement (showing her the arrows and tracing the river with my finger).
One thing I make clear with children, and people who are new to playing different types of games, is that the first game is a "learning game". We try and learn the rules the first game, and learn how to play, and not worry too much if we win or lose. By the end of the game, you'll have learned the rules and identified some things that you could have done better. The next time we play, you'll know the rules, but you'll still be learning.
When I play in larger groups, I usually identify the newer players, and give the person "farthest away" from the newest player the starting player token. This allows them to see a few people taking their moves before they have to do something.
There's no magic formula, but there is a logical order to learning a game, and that's how you should teach it. With my regular game group, I teach strategy by playing the best I can, and talking about it later, particularly if somebody "let" me do something advantageous when they could have stopped it. Likewise, any devastating moves played to my detriment I highlight; this makes them feel good about the plays, and lets the other players know what happened there.
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jack raten
United States
Michigan
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Hey, Great Article!
This should help me considering I'm going to try to introduce the Confrontation to my sister today. It should be a lot of help, thanks.
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Eric Paisley
United States
Nashville
Tennessee
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This is why I come to the 'Geek. Thank you Adam for posting this. I found it to be very helpful as I'm often called on to teach a game and it's not really my strong suit.
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Posted Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:24 pm
