So you want to teach the rules of a board game? What follows is my best advice on how to do so, based on years of teaching many different games. It’s certainly not the only way to teach a game, but in my opinion, the suggestions below hit the most important points.

Getting Ready to Teach

To start with, you must learn the game. That’s the single most important requirement for teaching a game. It means reading through the rules in advance of the game and looking through the rest of the components to ensure that you know how they work together with those rules. I don’t worry about reading through every card or every space on a board, but I do think it’s important to understand the general shape of things.

If you haven’t played the game in a while, you should probably read the rules again. I have a few dozen games that I’ve played enough that I can teach them cold, but for the rest, I usually pick up the rules and at least skim them before throwing the game into my bag for game night.

Introducing the Game

Before you dive into the actual play of the game, you first need to introduce it — to give the players a general sense of how it works and to create the framework for the rules that you’ll momentarily be teaching.

To start with, say what sort of game it is  and describe the goal. In many eurogames, that goal is simply to earn victory points, but you can describe both that end result and how to get there.

Example: “This is a route-building game. The goal is to earn victory points by playing long routes and completing tickets.” — Ticket to Ride

Example: “The goal is to earn victory points by controlling the biggest cities, roads, and fields with your meeples.” — Carcassonne

You should also overview an average turn. This will help players to get a handle on what’s going on and (once more) it’ll create a context for the rest of your teach. You don’t need any details here, you just need to give your players a sense of how the game plays.

Example: “During a turn you’ll produce goods, then trade what you have to try and collect the right combination of goods to build stuff.” — The Settlers of Catan

If there’s anything else that players should know about the big picture, this is the time to tell them. Otherwise, you’re ready to dive into the rules of the game itself.

Teaching the Game

Once you’ve introduced a game, you’re ready to actually teach it. I believe that the best way to do so is to teach the flow of a game. In other words, if the game is oriented around rounds that all the players participate in, you’ll describe how a round works, step-by-step; and if the game is focused on individual player turns, you’ll describe the flow of that player turn.

With that said, you should feel to skip around if it makes sense. This can be particularly helpful if a game round starts out with some phases that are only relevant in later rounds of play or if there are administrative phases at the start or end of a round that don’t matter much for explaining the game.

Example: “You start out each round by building cards, but you won’t have any at the start of the game, so let’s come back to that.” —Tournay

While you’re teaching the flow of a game, it’s important to think about what’s important. I try to explicitly point out the phases of the game that are the most significant in the game. I’ll conversely gloss over elements that aren’t very important (like those administrative phases).

Example: “Next you get to take two actions from a menu of actions. This is the most important part of the game, where you’ll spend the majority of your time.” —Any Martin Wallace Game

While teaching the flow of a game, I find that using a few techniques helps to improve comprehension.

First, offer visual examples. Show the parts of the game board that different rules apply to. Describe what the various parts of a card mean. Point out the various meeples and other markers that make up a game.

If a rule is sufficiently complex, offer a visual demonstration of how it works. If you’re feeling lazy, you might be able to point to an example in the rulebook, but don’t be afraid to lay out the components to demonstrate what you’re teaching.

Second, use analogies. If a rule seems complex, counterintuitive or silly, relate it to something in the real world. This will help players to lock it into memory, particularly if it goes against their expectations.

 Example: “The passenger is a fat, lazy American, so he always stays on the trains as much as he can, rather than walking. He’ll make a dozen transfers and travel around the whole city rather than walking a block.” —On the Underground

Example: “You’re a government contractor, so you actually want to build as inefficiently as you can, because you get paid based on how long your work takes, not how good the result is.” —Metro

Third, be entertaining. I’ll freely admit that this is the hardest bit of advice contained herein, because it can be really tough to stay entertaining while teaching boring rules, especially when everyone just wants to start playing. But, try and be aware when players are getting bored. If they are, offer up some more analogies or examples —or jump around to some more interesting parts of the rule.

Counter Example: “Hey! Pay attention, you’ll need to know this!” —Probably not the best methodology

Fourth, highlight rules that are easy to mess up. If you were confused by something when you originally read the rules, you might want to be extra careful when teaching those game elements. Similarly, if you’ve seen players make mistakes in past games, then it’s important to help players avoid those mistakes through your teach. I find it’s easiest to explicitly say, “It’s easy to mess this up” when reaching one of those problem spots.

Example: “You know you have to connect single pipes to single pipes and double pipes to double pipes, but make sure you also put blank walls up against blank walls. It’s easy to mess that up by running a pipe into a blank wall.” —Galaxy Trucker

Sometimes you also need to highlight a rule that players will mess up because other games work in a different way.

Example: “In most games, all the losers get their auction bids back, but not here. If you’ve bid it, it’s gone!” —Taj Mahal

Fifth, highlight rules that are easy to forget. This is particularly important if they’re options that players should know about but that don’t come up very often. Nowadays, some games are kind enough to list these easy-to-forget rules in a box at the end of their rules. If so, I tend to quickly read that box to the players after I’m done with the rest of the teach.

I’ve seen some argument about whether you should talk about the specific, fiddly things during a rules teach. In my opinion: teach the fiddly stuff. I think this is important because most games are competitive, and so you don’t want the rules-teacher to be the only guy who knows how part of the game works — because if it comes up, it’s likely to leave a bad taste in the mouths of the other players.

I offer two general exceptions to this: don’t sweat the small stuff if the teacher isn’t playing the game or if it’s a cooperative game where everyone is working together.

Ending the Teach

To end a teach, you must explain how the game ends and explain how to win the game. You long ago overviewed victory conditions, but now you should be specific. In my opinion, you should also teach the tie breakers — based on my fiddly-rules rule, above. With that said, I usually try to summarize tie breakers, so that make sense.

Example: “So for the tie-breaker, first the player with the most resources wins, then the guy with the most coins, then if it’s still a tie, it’s the player who went the least recently. In other words, it’s the guy who used his resources most efficiently, and so has the most left.” —Any Resource Management Game

I believe that you should also teach strategies to end the game teach — if you know any. You don’t want to go overboard here: you want to people to enjoy their own exploration of the game. However, you should provide general ideas both about paths to victory and gotchas to avoid if you can. Still, you won’t want to spend more than a few sentences on this.

Example: “Generally, you’ll get the most points from cities and from fields. For the fields, you should remember that your guys are going to be there the whole game, so don’t commit too early unless it’s really valuable.” —Unexpanded Carcassonne

Finally, treat teaching as a game-long commitment. During the game, you should feel free to query whether people understand the rules, to remind people of options they have, and to offer advice if you think a player is doing something because they don’t understand the rules. But, back off if players seem like they want to figure things out on their own.

Coda: How to Be Taught a Game

If there are lessons for teaching a game, there are definitely lessons for learning a game too. Here’s my even shorter advice for when you’re a teach-ee instead of a teach-er.

1. Pay Attention. Don’t let your attention wander and don’t get distracted.

2. Ask Questions if You’re Confused. I’m not talking about when you don’t understand how all the pieces of a game work together (more on that momentarily). However, if a teacher explained something and you don’t understand what he said, ask about it ASAP.

3. Don’t Get Ahead of The Teacher. There may be a dangling loose end in the teacher’s explanation, and it may bug the heck out of you, but have faith he’s going to get to it. It’s probably the next rule that he’s going to teach, and you’re only going to confuse and slow things by asking about it now.

4. Don’t Make Assumptions. Try to confine your knowledge of a game to what’s been taught, not to what’s on the back of the box, and not to how you think things work. If you start running down your own paths for how a game might work, you’re likely to miss a rule about how it actually does.

And that’s my overview on teaching and learning. Thanks to my friend Brad for suggesting the topic. If you have more ideas of your own about teaching, please talk about them in the comments below.

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