My game group said my teaching style was too slow and it killed the mood

We were setting up a new game of Scythe last Friday and I was going through every rule in detail like I always do. One friend finally said, 'Jenny, just give us the goal and three main actions, we'll figure the rest out while playing.' I tried it with Viticulture the next week and it was way better. How do you decide what rules to skip when teaching a new game?

3 comments

3 Comments

grace_white15d ago

Goal and three main actions" is basically the golden rule. I used to be the person explaining every possible resource conversion path in a euro game, and you could actually watch people's souls leave their bodies. Now I just say "you get wood, you turn wood into points, the person with the most points wins" and let the chaos begin.

rowan7259d ago

Totally, and I love how @lilyr25 puts it about skipping the weird edge case rules. I've found that even explaining the three main actions works best if you tie each one directly to getting points. People glaze over if you just list mechanics. The real magic happens when someone does that first dumb move, gets a point, and the lightbulb goes off. From there, they start asking the right questions and you can layer in the deeper stuff.

lilyr2516d ago

Yeah the "goal and three main actions" thing is smart. I mean I always try to skip any rule that only comes up in weird edge cases, like if a card has some super specific text. You can explain that stuff when it actually happens.