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Glazius posted:Not to say that's the right way to do it, but I like having access to setup instructions without opening the rulebook. Setting up a game wrong can ruin it as much as playing it wrong, but I don't have to teach setup so I'm less sure of it myself. Oh, it wasn't on the back of the rulebook, it was on the last section of the accordion foldout so you had to completely unfold it.
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Sep 4, 2018 18:41
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Mayveena posted:18CZ and 1860 are both good for two, however I don't think either are in print right now. There was a KS that included the 18CZ game, so maybe it'll hit an online retailer when the KS is done. I believe you can still buy 18CZ direct from Lonny.
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Sep 4, 2018 18:42
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Glazius posted:Not to say that's the right way to do it, but I like having access to setup instructions without opening the rulebook. Setting up a game wrong can ruin it as much as playing it wrong, but I don't have to teach setup so I'm less sure of it myself. I agree! But sometimes this means that you open a rulebook for your brand new game, read "See separate sheet for setup rules," and realize that your copy is missing the setup sheet. Oops! All fixed with a quick online download of the setup sheet, but it was a bit deflating.
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Sep 4, 2018 18:53
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For another introductory game, Skull (and Roses) is pretty good. You don't even need to buy anything, you can use whatever. Cards, coasters you doodles on, coins with a mark on one side, whatever, so long as they're identical "face-down" and one "face" per set is different; the retail version is just pretty. It takes minutes to explain and has a lot of depth, and it's social because you're all reading each other and bluffing and stuff. The only "problem" with it as a gateway game that I can see is that it's so simple, some people might not register it as a game, or at least this "kind" of game, filing it away in the same category as Poker and stuff, and thus won't think about making the next step. Particularly if you use playing cards to play.
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Sep 4, 2018 19:24
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You guys think that's complicated, we used to have to score farms in Carcassonne to trick those normies into game night.
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Sep 4, 2018 20:13
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i got my wife into the hobby when we were dating with mage knight, tash kalar, and agricola. Her favorite game now is The Colonists, though, so maybe we're not good examples of how to get people into games.
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Sep 4, 2018 21:09
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Impermanent posted:i got my wife into the hobby when we were dating with mage knight, tash kalar, and agricola. Her favorite game now is The Colonists, though, so maybe we're not good examples of how to get people into games. I disagree with that last statement. I think the idea that “normies” need super simple games to get into the hobby is overstated and arguably condescending. Just be sure to communicate the time and mental commitment beforehand, they’ll tell you if that doesn’t appeal to them.
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Sep 4, 2018 21:28
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Impermanent posted:i got my wife into the hobby when we were dating with mage knight, tash kalar, and agricola. Her favorite game now is The Colonists, though, so maybe we're not good examples of how to get people into games. You are a lucky man
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Sep 4, 2018 21:31
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Papes posted:I disagree with that last statement. I think the idea that “normies” need super simple games to get into the hobby is overstated and arguably condescending. Just be sure to communicate the time and mental commitment beforehand, they’ll tell you if that doesn’t appeal to them. I agree, it doesn't have to be simple but all other things being equal what it should be is accessible (which yeah, for some people also means simple  )
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Sep 4, 2018 21:34
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Papes posted:I disagree with that last statement. I think the idea that “normies” need super simple games to get into the hobby is overstated and arguably condescending. Just be sure to communicate the time and mental commitment beforehand, they’ll tell you if that doesn’t appeal to them.  My experience of getting a party game/CAH friend to play and understand ADP in one step belongs here.
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Sep 4, 2018 21:45
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I've said before that if someone had come at me with Settlers or TTR I don't think I'd get into gaming. Started out with the Start Trek ccg back in the 90s and I've loved complex stuff ever since.
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Sep 4, 2018 21:47
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Similarly, even though I'm super into mechanics, if it hadn't been for D&D and Cosmic Encounter (ugggghhh) I probably wouldn't be gaming. But Dominion is what bit me with the bug. I was pretty heavily primed for it though.
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Sep 4, 2018 21:50
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Papes posted:I disagree with that last statement. I think the idea that “normies” need super simple games to get into the hobby is overstated and arguably condescending. Just be sure to communicate the time and mental commitment beforehand, they’ll tell you if that doesn’t appeal to them. Well, you say that, but...well, for example, I can describe 7 Wonders to you as a card drafting game where you want to collect cards in certain configurations to get points. Then I'd explain each color of card and away we go. To someone who is inexperienced with board games, they're going to take one look at me and ask wtf a drafting card game is. poo poo, 7 Wonders was one of the first board games I played and it confused the hell out of me when I was told that once you have drafted all your cards...the games done. Like, that's it? That's the sort of reason that you want to introduce simpler games to most (not all, some are perfectly fine with a heavy title to start) board game novices - to introduce basic concepts before you start mixing them all together in a mishmash of unfamiliar mechanics.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:07
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There are definitely some concepts that take some explaining, but... you have to explain them. You don't say ;card drafting game' you say 'a game where you get a hand of cards, pick one, and pass ithe rest to the next person. You get points by combining the cards you pick together in certain ways, and once we've done x rounds of this, we total up the points and declare a winner.' Introducing the core concept of a game with two words of jargon is obviously going to confuse people who don't know what the jargon means. 7 Wonders is a more confusing one than most though, I've got to admit. It's perfectly OK to introduce longer and more complex games and concepts to people who are new to them, as long as you do it *clearly*.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:12
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Morpheus posted:Well, you say that, but...well, for example, I can describe 7 Wonders to you as a card drafting game where you want to collect cards in certain configurations to get points. Then I'd explain each color of card and away we go. Sure, if you insist on using insular lingo to describe the game it will confuse people. Most people over the age of 7 can understand the concept of “take 1 card from the hand of cards you have and then pass the rest to your left/right”.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:16
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thespaceinvader posted:There are definitely some concepts that take some explaining, but... you have to explain them. I can tell you from personal experience that the description you have simply does not cut it a lot of the time. Questions arise about the most rudimentary of mechanics that you and I could absorb immediately, but only because we have experience with them, or similar mechanics I'm not saying that 'normies can't understand our intelligent games hehehehe' but giving them a shotgun blast of information is going to frighten off a lot of people. I imagine I'd react the same way, as someone who has no experience with the genre, if someone took a more complex 18xx game and tried to thrust me into it.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:20
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Fox in the Forest was my first trick taking game and having a friend explain to me the basic concepts of this most rudimentary form of trick taking games really felt like trying to put a car together by reading the technician's manual. The whole time I was like "wtf is a trick why do you keep calling it a trick wtf is a trump why do I have to follow suit why do you get to lead wtf wtf wtf." Six months later and I can tell you off the top of my head the intricate bidding, contract, and bonus system of Koenigruffen.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:25
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Playing Euchre and 500 a lot as a kid is great for that.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:31
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Morpheus posted:I can tell you from personal experience that the description you have simply does not cut it a lot of the time. Questions arise about the most rudimentary of mechanics that you and I could absorb immediately, but only because we have experience with them, or similar mechanics Sure, but some people take to things immediately. The entire concept of gateway games is built around the assumption that people who don't play games are uninitiated into our mystery cult and need to be started off on something light and then be worked in, like scientologists starting with a personality test before they start talking about alien ghosts. The reality is that there are people who will pick complex games in no time flat and people who will have meltdown over go fish. It's more like there's gateway people and then there are people who will never get into the hobby.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:33
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I've said this a hundred thousand times by now, but it's not so much that games need to be simple as they need to appeal to a given prospective player's sensibilities. My mom is a math wizz and could easily play Agricola if she wanted... but she doesn't want to. She wants to play Carcassonne (and more recently Azul), and there's nothing I could ever say to convince her otherwise. And it's not a matter of the theme looking boring to her, but instead that she's convinced that it's "too much" and again, there is nothing I could say to convince her that she's definitely more than capable of playing The Farm Game. A lot of people have certain thresholds for what is "too much" or "too nerdy" or however they want to describe it and that's going to be different for everyone. This can be a matter of rules load, aesthetics, theme, and I'm sure plenty of other things. It's half the reason I expect to play Root a lot more than games like Kemet, because I know my specific friend circle is drawn to cute stuff a lot more than badass stuff. None of them would have issues learning the latter if they actually sat down with it but multiple have seen Root on the shelf and asked to play it with no prodding at all. People will learn a game as complex as you can imagine as long as they think the end result sounds cool enough, either mechanically or thematically. Similarly getting someone to learn even the most simple gateway games can be like pulling teeth if they think the basic idea sounds boring.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:33
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Also 100% what Countblanc said.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:35
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Countblanc posted:I've said this a hundred thousand times by now, but it's not so much that games need to be simple as they need to appeal to a given prospective player's sensibilities. My mom is a math wizz and could easily play Agricola if she wanted... but she doesn't want to. She wants to play Carcassonne (and more recently Azul), and there's nothing I could ever say to convince her otherwise. And it's not a matter of the theme looking boring to her, but instead that she's convinced that it's "too much" and again, there is nothing I could say to convince her that she's definitely more than capable of playing The Farm Game. Agreed with this 100%. The main barrier to entry is interest.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:37
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One of the few things I really agree with SUSD on these days is how best to teach and pitch games, and I really love Quinns' admittedly-indulgent metaphor of a board game sommelier who knows how to pick the perfect game for any given group. I'd say the biggest issue there is that "group" and "player" aren't synonymous and it's entirely possible you simply will not find a good introduction to the hobby that fits the exact aesthetic multiple people are looking for. Once someone is already neck-deep in this disgusting hobby they're a lot more likely to try things that are outside their comfort zone, but if you have 3 new people at the table it's a much higher burden to find something that appeals to all tastes and I think the "gateway game" is a really seductive idea as a result. It lets you ignore that difficulty and instead say "oh, it's New People Introduction Night, time to get out the New People Introduction Game(s)". Granted this is sort of inevitable unless you're willing to like, actively prune who you invite to any given intro night which is like the weirdest social behavior I could imagine describing to normal people, but yeah.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:40
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Yeah I can agree with that. I have a pile of games that I've basically only bought in order to get my coworkers into boardgaming, there's my wargaming group that I know can handle harder stuff, my fiancee managed to get into Gloomhaven because of the theme etc etc. You always need to target, but sometimes it's hard to target if you are going to meetups and you have a diverse group of people with diverse interests. What tends to happen at meetups is the "work out what you want to play" game, where everyone is in front of the pile of games and nothing seems to quite match everyone. Which is why I only go to meetups if I pre-plan games now.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:45
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I also think that beginning with "Starter" games is a good way to convince people that other games are too hard for them. Dominant Species is a bit more complicated than Agricola, but I'd say it's closer to Agricola than Agricola is to Uno. The whole discourse of "entry" or "starter" is a good way to make someone assume that the next step up is going to be bigger than it actually is. In other news I've convinced my BJJ buddies to play a game of Dominant Species with me 
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Sep 4, 2018 22:46
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I used to have anxiety about getting heavier games despite never encountering a game that was too heavy for me and that finally went away for whatever reason. Now I just think about whether or not I have the patience to deal with the weight of a game compared to what I'll get out of it.
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Sep 4, 2018 22:52
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I would like to add that I am someone who picks up games like Mage Knight pretty quickly, but when my gfs parents tried to explain the rules of euchre to me, holy poo poo I was just glass-eyed for all three games of it. Still have no idea wtf to do in that game.
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Sep 5, 2018 00:01
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Morpheus posted:Oh speaking of beginner games, I recently watched the year-old SUSD review for Bargain Quest, a neat game about selling poo poo to adventurers and making money. Looked really good! I had watched the video before, but after watching I thought "You know, this would be a fun game to pull out, especially for quick board games, like at work." Looked it up, all sold out of course. But holy poo poo, there's actually a kickstarter for a second printing! What luck! Don't worry, it's not good. Not quick either, but then, I played with 5. Took over 2 hours with rules explanation. There is an expansion module that just adds randomization that I highly recommend against as well. I can see it being tolerable at maybe 3 players, but still mediocre and king-makey.
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Sep 5, 2018 00:02
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Morpheus posted:I would like to add that I am someone who picks up games like Mage Knight pretty quickly, but when my gfs parents tried to explain the rules of euchre to me, holy poo poo I was just glass-eyed for all three games of it. Still have no idea wtf to do in that game. It’s impossible to understand euchre unless you are 3+ drinks in, and are mad at your partner for not getting your subtle jewelry tabletalk/giving the jack of spades to your opponents
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Sep 5, 2018 00:09
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Going to DiceTowerWest in March. Hope to meet some of you folks there.
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Sep 5, 2018 00:12
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For me, the "gateway" aspect of a game has a lot to do with how much of the rules need to be explained before you can even start. For example, it takes 2 or 3 sentences to explain Sushi Go (Party) before you start, everything else can be learned as you go. Although Eldritch Horror can be visually overwhelming because of all the components, you can start playing with very little guidance, then learn most of the rules only once you encounter them (although "this will take at least 3 hours" may be as much of a disincentive as complex rules). Even though gamers like us consider Inis and Kemet to be about the same "weight" (2.89 and 2.99 on BGG), the first is much easier to get people into because you don't need to know everything before you make your first decision.
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Sep 5, 2018 00:19
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That's another good point. When I'm teaching a new game to my gaming friends it's usually pretty smooth but when I'm teaching codenames to normies there's always one person who needs to butt in and have perceived edge cases explained to them rightgoddamnednow and I have to tell them to relax, that we can handle issues as we get to them, and if there's a problem we can just start over.
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Sep 5, 2018 00:41
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I got my kickstarter copy of Too Many Bones Undertow (and the base game) here in New Zealand sooner than expected, so have had a chance to play through 4 games so far. I find my thoughts about it nearly as jumbled as the game itself sometimes seems to be. I'm not sure it's a particularly great game, but I'm having a ton of fun with it and find myself thinking about it a great deal - how could I build my characters more effectively, what's the best approach for dealing with particular enemy abilities. There's so much the game does right, and when everything works well it works very well, but because it's built on a base of so much randomness it feels like the whole thing is very fragile at times. While playing I sometimes had flashbacks to playing XCOM, if XCOM had much worse failure snowballing. TMB is a sort-of tactical RPG based around nearly everything being done with dice. Most of the game plays out on a small 4x4 grid, which will have 1-4 'Gearlocs' (heroes) facing up to 4 enemies at a time. That doesn't leave much space to move, but there's a surprising amount of decision making that goes into the limited choices you can make around positioning. At times it feels something along the lines of MTG though, where it's just about making sure that you block the right enemies with the right heroes given their respective skills and abilities. And there are a lot of skills and abilities. The core of the game really seems to come down to this - the enemies all have different effects, from being untargetable every second round, to throwing out poison, splash damage, destroying your armour and so on. The heroes similarly get a crazy amount of skills to choose from, and much like a game like Gloomhaven, you can build the same character in very different ways from one game to the next. Choosing the right skills to combat the particular enemies you face seems to be a critical part of the strategy, and heroes with the wrong builds will get utterly annihilated, or may end up in fights that are literally unwinnable. This is where the game really shines for me though. Some of the skills are very interesting, and different characters play dramatically differently from one another. The decisions about where to spend your skill points are agonising, as there are so many possible options and you inevitably don't get to pick all of them. Overall, playing the game felt quite similar to me to playing Gloomhaven - the degree of complexity and decision making involved from turn to turn, the fact that it's basically just a series of combat encounters with developing your character in between, and the focus on understanding how to correctly build for and counter different enemy types. The big problem I can see, however, is the randomness. Almost everything is determined by dice rolls, and while there are ways to mitigate and manage this, there are times where it really can make or break the game. In general, the sheer number of rolls means that everything does even out well enough, and most of the time playing optimally does mean that you can deal with some degree of bad luck, but especially at lower player counts if you get a single exceptionally bad roll it can wipe out a character in one-shot making the encounter near unwinnable. The penalty for failure is also incredibly steep - you continue on to the next encounter which will be harder than the one you just failed, but without the rewards you would have got for passing it that would have allowed you to strengthen your characters. As a result, unless you were already a bit ahead of the curve, or get lucky in the subsequent encounter, failing one encounter can be the end of your adventure. When the game can take around 60 minutes to play per player, that's a real problem. All in all, there's so much I enjoy about the game that I find I can deal with this aspect (out of four games we played, it was only an issue once and caused us to restart the scenario, losing about an hour of play time), but I can certainly see it being a deal-breaker for some, and would have thought it might be for me as I generally prefer games with very little post-decision randomness.
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Sep 5, 2018 02:15
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Talked to a buddy today who was bummed they missed out on the Root expansion and he was all excited at finding a new, sealed copy on ebay auction currently only at 21$ so they were pretty sure their current winning bid would grab it for cheap. I mean, sure it could happen but I'm leaning towards thinking my buddy might be the one person who hasn't ever used ebay before 
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Sep 5, 2018 02:20
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Thanks for the recommendations. I’ve done a lot of esl teaching in the last several years, and I’ve found that a really important aspect of activity/game teaching is how much time and instruction are necessary before people can get moving on actually doing something. Games with tons of hidden information or a deck of rules-altering cards are really rough to teach; I often throw them out with the bath water.
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Sep 5, 2018 02:28
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Some friends of mine just launched a Kickstarter for a game that seems pretty fun, depending on the group: Congress: The Board Game. Seems like more of a social game, with some bidding components to it.
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Sep 5, 2018 04:40
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Drunk Tomato posted:Some friends of mine just launched a Kickstarter for a game that seems pretty fun, depending on the group: Congress: The Board Game. Seems like more of a social game, with some bidding components to it. I hope the gameplay consists of 1% voting on laws and 99% begging for money from doners for reelection campaign.
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Sep 5, 2018 05:01
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Biggest problem I have with that is that it seems to represent the system working as intended, not as it actually does. Without corruption, lobbyist pressure and all kinds of fuckery, it's basically a fantasy game. I mean, yeah, there's some shady dealing in there, but it's small fry compared to the real deal. The End fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Sep 5, 2018 |
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Sep 5, 2018 05:31
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I have posted this before, but if you want to introduce one person to board games, here is my tried and tested progression list: Jaipur - set collection, hand limits, victory points, action selection Campaign Manager 2008 - area control, deck building Biblios - auctions Caverna: Cave vs Cave - action selection, variable powers, tableau building Agricola: ACBAS - worker placement
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Sep 5, 2018 06:33
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I'm very much on the side of gateway games being a patronising idea. Instead just make sure your teaching matches the experience level of the people in the group I think Tigris and Euphrates was my second or third post-Monopoly game. It's fine to jump in the deep end
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