I swear I’m smart and have pretty ok reading comprehension…but when I pick up a new game I have the hardest time understanding the rules and mechanics by just reading the instructions. Watching videos is helpful but I still really only pick it up while playing the game and going through the motions.
So I’m slowly collecting games that I can’t play until I find people who know how to play.
How easily do you pick up new games?
If someone reads them out I struggle really bad. If I read it myself I struggle. This is one of the reasons I returned Wingspan, because I’m too stupid for it (it’s not even that complicated).
It’s not complicated once you play it, but for some reason, I also had a really hard time learning it using the rule book. Even with (or maybe because of?) the quick start rules.
Games like Gloomhaven, A Feast for Odin, Kanban or Gaia Project were quite easy for me to learn, bit Wingspan was different somehow.
It depends, I get some games right away, others can be a struggle. It’s such a great feeling when a difficult one finally “clicks” though!
In general I try to take advantage of all available tools:
- Rulebooks of course, both printed and PDFs. I have about 15GB of rulebook PDFs at this point. Being able to do a text search in the rulebook can be invaluable so when a PDF is image-only with no searchable text I run it through an OCR tool like ocrmypdf to (hopefully) fix it up.
- How-to-play videos. We had a thread listing some good channels earlier.
- A good digital implementation can be extremely helpful, especially the ones that preserve the “interface” of the game like BGA and Yucata usually do. When available I always try these even if I plan to play mostly in person because it’s a great way to make sure that I got the rules right. With new games I take it slow and make sure that I understand everything that happes. When I want to experiment I sometimes play hotseat with myself.
- That reminds me, playing a game against myself on the table can be very helpful too to make sure that I am solid before I try to teach it.
- Also, this might sound obvious but just unboxing and organizing the game and getting familiar with the components can give a great headstart before getting started with the rules.
- BGG forums for the game, especially the rules sub-forums. The Files section can have helpful extra material too like FAQs, teaching guides or player aids.
- A good podcast episode like the Decision Space deep dives can be helpful too or at least get me excited about learning the game.
- I sometimes make setup and rule summaries. Just writing these down can help to clear things up in my head. Wrote about this in another thread earlier today.
Feeling lost and having a hard time is in fact your brain telling you, it is learning.
I think it depends. Some game instructions are easy enough to understand on their own. However, more often than not I need a video breaking it down. My recent pickup of mint imperium sits idle because the rules provided are terrible and the videos online are not any better.
