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A friend told me my game explanations were too long and it clicked
He said 'You're giving a history lesson, not the rules' after I spent 15 minutes setting up a game of Scythe. Now I just show the win condition first and explain the rest as we play. Anyone else get told they over-explain?
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the_terry2mo ago
Some games need that full context to make sense though.
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aaron_mitchell2mo agoMost Upvoted
Disagree, @the_terry. A good game stands alone.
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susan_adams2mo ago
Yeah but that's a dev problem, not a player problem lol. If your game needs an essay to explain the basic plot, you messed up the storytelling. Players shouldn't have to read a wiki before booting it up. Just put the needed context in the game itself, it's not that hard.
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the_piper3d ago
...and honestly I think that's good advice for most board games. I've had to learn the hard way that people tune out after about two minutes of setup talk. Now I do the same thing - win condition first, then just answer questions as they come up. For Scythe specifically, I'll show them the victory point track and the end condition, then just handle combat when it happens. Works way better than trying to explain the whole factory mechanic before anyone's even picked a faction. The trick is to accept that they'll miss some stuff and that's fine, they'll figure it out from context.
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