Teaching Rules and The Art of Underwhelming

When teaching rules to games you’re either an asset or a liability. This guide will plant you firmly in the asset column. It illustrates a proven approach for teaching which starts with an overview and builds up that nucleus one layer at a time.

Your chief responsibility is to ease the burden of following along. By imagining people have forehead gauges announcing their overwhelm, one works to keep the needle as close as possible to zero. This is achieved by how much detail is adroitly omitted in each layer of the explanation. Underwhelm, if it’s attained at all, depends on the pace and the finesse with which you move from generality to specificity.

The steps of the incremental method can be modeled after building a house:

1. Lay the foundation
2. Frame the structure
3. Fill it out
4. Apply finishing touches

Lay the foundation

Start by connecting the ends (the object of the game) to the means (the vehicle by which one moves toward that object) in two minutes or less. This is the cornerstone of all good explanations. Answering the looming question “what wins and how do I get there?” right off the bat eliminates questions which will otherwise nag at the minds and hinder the attention of your listeners. It provides a kernel of understanding to build upon and makes everything to come that much easier to digest.

Frame the structure

Next, generally describe the structure. This highlights the key elements and paints a picture of a typical game. Rough out the phases and what players are doing. Allow that narrative move all the way up to how it ends and scores. Reiterate with what wins without confusing them with concepts you’ve yet to explain.

Fill it out

Now flesh out its bones covering all concepts at a surface level. Don’t be too expansive in the detail. Elaborate on the anatomy and purpose of building tiles^[1] or power cards^[2], but don’t explain each one. You’re still just trying to illuminate how all the motion moves one towards victory, not cover every little thing. You want to acquaint them with all that the game has without getting them to intimate familiarity.

Apply finishing touches

Cover all the remaining details. This can include each of the building tiles or the power cards. Or introduce some content (e.g. newly revealed cards) during play. The choice is yours. In either case, wrap things up by reiterating how the game ends and scores. They should have enough context at this point to really get it.

That’s rules teaching in a nutshell.

Start by connecting the means to the ends. Describe the structure of the game and of a turn, hitting on how it ends and scores. Touch upon everything while reserving enough detail to soften the blow of all that’s coming at them. Lastly, in the final addendum, share all that was previously glossed over. It’s all of roughly four passes eaching bringing increasing clarity to and focus upon that which is paramount: the means and the ends.

A great teach can only result from a mind obsessed with connecting means to ends. Or think of the players as travelers seeking a known destination. Your job, as their agent, is to equip them with a mental framework for how to get there.

Easy peasy. Right?

Tips

• Set up the game beforehand.
• Know the game thoroughly. Don’t teach what you haven’t fully worked out yourself.
• Never read the rules aloud as a substitute for an explanation.
• Use a game’s props at every opportunity to enrich an explanation.
• Embrace layering. The repetition which falls out of it is not a shortcoming.
• Respect the teaching role. Bad explanations spoil the fun.

Trajan by Stefan Feld is being used to demonstrate the method. You’ll appreciate the hows and the whys more if you already know it.

Teaching Trajan

Trajan’s BGG description starts: “Set in ancient Rome, Trajan is a development game in which players try to increase their influence and power in various areas of Roman life such as political influence, trading, military dominion and other important parts of Roman culture.”

This is flavor text. It sets the mood of the game, but doesn’t provide an adequate frame of reference. Let’s provide one.

Lay the foundation

The object is to score the most points. On every turn you’ll take one action driven by these trays (point them out). You’ll be picking up these markers (do it) and dropping them clockwise one by one (do it) until the last. The particular tray in which that marker lands determines what action you take. See how each tray has an icon that is also represented on the board (draw the correlation). The tray triggers actions allowing you to collect stuff from the respective areas (illustrate by moving a few cards and chits from the different areas to your personal tableu) and score it (advance a marker to signal scoring). That’s it. We’ll take turns until the clock runs out. Then we’ll apply some final bonuses and see who has the most points.

In less than two minutes, we covered the most important parts of the game while abstracting away many details like

• the game timing mechanism and what triggers game end,
• the fact that you can sometimes take more than one action per turn,
• the people’s demands,
• the relevance of the action marker colors, and
• the benefits that chits and cards provide.

This highlights the ends (most points), the means (taking actions to collect goodies), and connects the two (the goodies are worth points) despite details being grossly simplified or dropped entirely. That actions yield goodies (not always) and score points (not necessarily and maybe not immediately) are generalizations that are used to make the immediate ideas more intelligible.

Frame the structure

Now that the big picture has been unveiled, expose the structure and highlight how the game ends and scores.

As I mentioned, every turn involves manipulating these markers (pointing). We take all the markers in any tray and drop them one by one (show how it’s done) taking the action associated with the target tray (note the adjacent icon). Every time someone does that we advance this time track. Since I dropped 2 bits, we advance 2 spaces (do so). (Repeat this with 3 action markers.) Eventually, someone will cause us to hit or pass the starting space of the track (point to it). That marks a round. When that happens a demand tile will be revealed (draw one and show it). After three tiles have been revealed this way (draw two more to the display), the next lap ends the quarter. Then each of us has to meet the three demands by paying in tiles with matching symbols; otherwise we lose points (note the chart on the board for missed demands). After that we reset the board a bit and resume from where we left off. After four quarters the game ends and we add some bonuses to what we’ve already scored based on the stuff we collected.

The general idea of scoring was more reiterated than enhanced. The trouble with moving beyond that to points earned for workers and legionnaires left on the board is that these ideas haven’t yet been addressed and until they have been it’s better to not draw attention to them.

Don’t put the cart before the horse. Once we have context scoring will be revealed in full glory. However, for the time it suffices to know the general ends: collect goodies and earn points.

The audience now has a structural understanding which includes the timing mechanism, the four quarters, and the demand tiles. To avoid distracting from it, details not immediately related to structure were omitted.

Notice that the ends (“we add some bonuses to what we’ve already scored based on the stuff we collected”) and the means (“every turn is about manipulating this wheel to take an action”) were mentioned again. Embrace the reiterating of key aspects as a positive.

The idea of taking actions (getting goodies worth points) is too general. Let’s unravel it now.

Fill it out

I’ve mentioned that the tray you target determines what action you can take out here. Let’s look at these actions.

The Forum action (correlate the tray icon to the related spot on the board) lets you take a single chit and put it on your player board (do so). These chits have various uses which we’ll be looking at shortly.

The Military action (correlate the icons) let you stage men to the camp (illustrate) or deploy them into the provinces (illustrate) in order to grab a tile (grab it).

The same is true of the Construction action. It lets you stage men (do it) or move them out to grab a tile (do it). The Military and Construction actions are similar that way.

It should already be becoming clear to everyone that despite our earlier simplification earning points is not necessarily the direct and immediate outcome of an action.

The Senate action advances you in a race for the senate. With each step you’ll earn the points marked here (point them out). At the end of the quarter the two players who have advanced the furthest will get one of the available bonus tiles.

Notice the omission of details about tie breaking and how the bonus tiles are doled out.

The Trajan action allows you to take one of these tiles (point) and put it (do it) in the square where your Arch of Trajan sits. (Move the arch to the next spot without getting into the movement mechanics; just do things the way they’re supposed to be done.) You can earn immediate bonuses from these tiles if when you trigger the action in the respective tray you have bits of the two colors shown on the tile (point these out).

It seemed like the right moment for telling how Trajan tiles are earned. This was done, however, without major detour. Mentioning only that they payout rewards is sufficient for moving forward.

The Seaport action allows you to either draw or play commodity cards. The ships (point) depict some different ways these cards can be scored.

In this pass we briskly covered actions without much elaborating on any one. The guiding principle is ideas that are too long left unattended can distract or worry. That’s why ideas are built up together. The aim is to not get into immersive specifics while looming gaps remain.

You’re tasked with filling in several holes where each represents some concept. How do you fill them in? Not one by one as many intuitively do, but evenly. Shovel a foot of dirt into each first. Then another foot on the next pass. That’s the art in the underwhelming. That’s how to progressively build up an understanding. Having to revisit holes is in no way counterproductive.

At the beginning of the game we’re going to randomly seed each tray with two action markers and three Trajan tiles (place any 3 in the appropriate blocks). These tiles are earned when its respective tray is activated if that tray also has at least the two depicted action markers (show an example). Earned tiles payout immediately. This includes points (show the laurels) and some other reward. This ranges from giving cards (point to the commodity cards tiles), to giving modifiers (the plus-two tiles), to allowing additional workers to be placed to the camps (the construction and military tiles), to meeting citizen demands (point again) in a more permanent way, to yielding points straight up (the nine-bangers).

Understanding plus-two tiles hinges on first understanding extra action tiles, which haven’t yet been explained. And explaining them now would intrude on and distract from the idea being showcased: the rewards paid out by Trajan tiles.

The Trajan action allows you to take the top Trajan tile of any stack and place it where your arch is (demonstrate) and the arch advances to next open block. If none are open place it in the middle until one is (show it).

Notice how ripe this explanation is with visual cues. Showing reinforces what’s said and allows still other things to be left unsaid.

The Seaport action allows for commodity cards to be either collected or played. You can draw one face up or two face down keeping one (illustrate). You can use a ship to score a set of cards. The set can be all alike, all different, or in pairs (make examples) yielding the respective value (point out the legend on the ships). The ship flips (do so) and yields a lesser payout until it resets at the end of the quarter. Commodity cards are always played to your personal displays. This matters because there are bonus tiles (point to them) that payout points for matching played commodity cards at the end. In fact, you can play up to two cards face up without a ship for just this purpose and draw back that many cards face down.

The Military action allows you to add a legionnaire to the camp (do so) or advance the leader (advance it) and take the booty (grab the chit from his spot) if there is any. Or you could play one of your legionnaires (pick one up from the camp) to your leader province and score points (show the laurels) if none of your own legionnaires is already there. Foreign legionnaires don’t prevent this, but each one reduces the payout by 3.

The Construction action allows you to add a worker to the camp (do so) or place one from the camp to a construction site (do it) and claim the tile there (place it on the correct spot of the player board) if it’s not already been taken. After your first every new site must be adjacent to one of your existing ones (illustrate this). The first tile of kind — there are 5 kinds — earns you an immediate extra action (show the legend on the player board and demonstrate an extra action).

The Senate action earns you immediate points (pointing to 2, then to 3, and so on scoring as you go) and a chance at winning a bonus tile. The two players with the most votes (show that the tally marks represent votes) at the end of a quarter win a tile. First place gets first pick and second place gets the weaker side (flip one over) of the other tile. Ties favor the player whose marker is on top; the last player who arrives to a spot puts his marker on top.

No mention was made of the senate tiles, but had someone noticed them and inferred the connection there’d be little harm in affirming it. However, in as much as possible leave component particulars that won’t otherwise impede an explanation for last.

We keep taking actions like this until three demand tiles have been revealed and the quarter ends. When this happens people are docked points for unmet demands. Any tiles you managed to collect with the matchings demand symbols must be spent. Trajan tiles (point out the three spots) you may have earned (put a couple on your board) can be applied to meeting the demands. You won’t lose the Trajan tile but you will lose the other tiles you spend. If a certain item like bread is demanded twice (reveal two bread demand tiles) each must be satisfied by a different tile. For each deficit, points are docked (point out the chart on the board).

Next we resolve the senate race applying any votes on senate tiles (show one) a player has collected to his position in the running. The winner takes the bonus tile of his choice and the runner up gets the lesser version (flip it) of the remaining tile. The senate race resets with everyone’s marker returning to the start spot; however, the relative positions are preserved.

The tiles players spent on demands are removed. All senate tiles are removed whether on the main board or in a player’s possession. All the tiles remaining in the forum are removed.

The forum is refilled with forum tiles and extra action tiles (yellow backs). The provinces that are vacant get a forum tile. The senate gets the next two bonus tiles. The ships reset to their better sides and the game resumes right where it left off.

At this point everyone has a near complete picture of the game. All that remains is to tie up the loose ends.

Apply finishing touches

The tail of an explanation is somewhat formulaic. Explain the remaining component particulars and any other details that were glossed over. A quick mental review of the game is usually enough for recalling what was skipped. Using the rulebook can help. Reiterate what ends the game and review scoring one final time.

The tiles are color coded.

Forum tiles have green backs (flip one revealing the green back) and are seeded to the forum (point) and the provinces (point).

Extra action tiles are yellow. They have icons that match the tray actions. These tiles go here (show) when you get one. You can spend one per turn and only when you’ve triggered that action via your trays. If you have a plus-two tile (shown one and where it goes), you can do that action twice instead of once more.

Construction tiles are red and permit extra actions too, but only for the first one of a given kind. At the end sets of these will be worth points.

As the particulars of end game scoring are moments away, the simple understanding that sets are worth points will do.

Senate tiles are blue and are used to apply extra votes to a senate race. These cannot be saved between quarters.

It might seem odd that something so central as the tiles is left for the end. The trouble with trying to explain them earlier is the lack of context. Explaining a thing before the context in which it fits puts the cart before the horse. Doing so causes us to waffle between setting the context and explaining the tiles. Continuity is lost.

And detouring into exhaustive specifics when certain tiles are first mentioned is equally disruptive. Strike a happy balance. Satisfy the momentary needs and reserve the rest for the end. That is, preserve the bigger idea of the moment with just enough of the lesser idea to support it. That lesser idea will in a later moment become the bigger idea.

There are several wilds (arrange one of each in an array). The construction wild (show it) can be used to increase the number of tiles in a set during game end scoring. The extra action wild (show it) can be used as any kind of extra action tile. The demand wild (show it) can be used to satisfy any one demand. The commodity wild can be used when trading in sets or held for end game scoring.

At this point, you could show some differences in the Trajan tiles. You’ve already discussed what they do but you haven’t noted the variations such as how some worker placement tiles stage one worker and others stage two.

The last components to cover would be the bonus tiles. This wouldn’t take but a minute since everyone is now familiar with the game. That’s why saving component particulars for the end is good: it allows their context to be built up first.

Then mentally retrace what holes might still need filling and fill them.

Lastly, remind everyone that after four quarters or 16 rounds the game is scored. Then cover the specifics of final scoring.

That’s the rundown. How a player’s initial Trajan tiles are chosen can be discussed just as the game gets started.

Finally, share a few pointers to help ensure a good first outing. Some games are unforgiving and having to play one out after a critical early mistake defines despair. While that’s not Trajan you could mention:

Being behind in the construction and military areas can mean wasting some turns stepping over empty spots.

There’s some benefit to concentrating on areas especially those being neglected.

And that’s a wrap.

One teaching of Trajan is likely to vary from the next even with the same teacher. The delivery relies more on principle than recipe. Teach in the moment; don’t trying to recreate one from the past.

To recap, an incremental delivery looks something like this:

• Lay it
  The foundation. What are the ends? The means?
• Frame it
  The structure. What are the phases of the game? Of a turn?
• Fill it
  The body. What are the parts? Hold back whatever doesn't lend to the big picture.
• Finish it
  The body. What details remain? Recap scoring now they really get things.

What makes explanations easy to digest is how new concepts are examined from afar before zooming in. Those which start unfolding particulars too soon overwhelm. Introduce things as simple initially and allow the explanation to develop. Save some of its detail for the next pass.

Underwhelming is an art.

Remember, whether an explanation floats or sinks largely hinges on what’s said and not said in the first 2 minutes. Don’t unnecessarily tax your listeners. Lay a foundation that immediately sets all eyes on the means and ends and from there build up an understanding one layer at a time.