How to Teach Board Games
Hey there! Thanks for attending my PAX talk, "The Art and Science of Teaching Board Games. You're a peach.
Soon a Platinum Criterion Expanded Unrated version of my deck from the presentation will be here. In the meantime, here are some resources.
- My talk was a synthesis of my own experience and the advice of others. Three other articles I drew on for this presentation are The Finer Points of Teaching Rules, How To Teach Games: A General Primer, and 10 Tips For Teaching Board Games.
- The Youtube channel for the "Watch It Played" series of board game tutorials is https://www.youtube.com/user/WatchItPlayed.
- Here is the iOS app for Splendor; from there you can quickly navigate to other excellent implementations of tabletop games. Along with Splendor I enjoy Ascension, Lords of Waterdeep, and Agricola.
- To find FAQs, frequently overlooked rules, player aids, and more for any game, go to Boardgamegeek.com and hunt around in the "Forums" section or the "Files" section; sorting a section by "hot" will rank the items by popularity and help you find the best. The Robinson Crusoe Quickstart guide I mentioned is here.
- Here is the book about matching preceived skill with preceived difficulty: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
- And lastly, here is my review of Cosmic Encounter. I rarely play it these days, but still lovingly refer to it as "my favorite game of all-time".
Okay! Thanks again!
Matthew Baldwin
@matthewbaldwin