How To Explain Rules

francoisvn

Found a useful post by Shut Up and Sit Down for how to explain board game rules: http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/blog/post/some-tips-rules-explanations/.

If you play board games and struggle to get people to your table, I highly recommend watching this. However, if you don't really play board games (you should), a number of these points can probably be easily adapted to video games.

A few highlights (with video game adaptations):

• Know the rules properly and practice (making a good tutorial takes time on your part, but it is worth it for your players)
  
• Have a good hook at the start that explains: who you are, how you win, and why it will be fun
  
• Give them something to play with (ties in with the previous point)
  
• Introduce rules later (don't try bombard the player with the intricacies of your custom weapon system at the start)
  
• Dummy turns (hold the players hand for a few turns)
  
• Accompany rules with examples (you have to be doing this in a video game, no excuses)
  

What do you think? A useful video, especially for board-gamers?

Tuism

Explaining rules is one really important art, and one that I'm learning every time I show someone my prototype, especially physical games! Daniel is very good at it (@Kharrak, though don't think he's here on mgsa), cos he does it over and over and over :)

I hold an opposite opinion for video games though - if I have to explain anything myself my game isn't ready for showing. Observation is much more important than talk when testing a video game :)

dislekcia

francoisvn said:

• Introduce rules later (don't try bombard the player with the intricacies of your custom weapon system at the start)
  

Can I just say that, as a player, I resent the hell out of this technique? For it to work well, it has to be done at the pace at which each player is grasping the game. In a multiplayer setting, that's nearly impossible to pull off, so you tend to end up with advanced players feeling like the game is poorer than it really is, while struggling players feel like they're holding everyone else up. I've had several boardgames completely ruined for a group when really important rules were added halfway through a session, turning the current progress into a total loss for several players.

This works much better for single player games. The player's progress can be gated to mastering each new rule. But this still requires excellent feedback and structured rules so that players can "guess" which direction things are going to move in once they're introduced to a novel mechanic. Doing this well seems to come down to the order of rules being introduced - if you're trying a new order and people aren't going "Ohhh, so I can do X?" as the interaction potential of the rules dawns on them, you need to reshuffle that order.