The way we talk about board game rules has totally shifted in my group

About two years ago, our game nights were a mess. Someone would pull out a new game, and the person reading the rulebook would just drone on for 30 minutes straight while everyone else zoned out. It was a total drag. The change came after we played 'Root' for the first time and got every rule wrong. Now, we watch a 10 minute how-to-play video together before anyone touches the box. It's like night and day. We actually start playing within 15 minutes of sitting down, and people remember the rules way better because they saw them in action. I think YouTube channels like 'Watch It Played' caused this shift. It's so much easier to learn from a video than a wall of text. Has your group made a switch like this, or do you still swear by the old rulebook method?

3 comments

3 Comments

park.abby24d ago

That's a good point about Watch It Played, but I want to gently correct something. The channel that really shifted things for a lot of us is Rodney Smith's "Watch It Played," you're right about that. But Root wasn't the game that broke every rule for my group. For us it was a game of Betrayal at House on the Hill where we spent the whole first half mixing up the haunt rules. The videos are still a lifesaver for learning, I just wanted to mention that Root actually has a pretty decent rulebook compared to some others out there. Either way, I agree with you that watching a video together beats the old method of one person reading out loud.

jesser791mo ago

Totally get what you mean, and @walker.max is right about how it kills the mood. My friend's group had a legendary disaster trying to learn a heavy euro game from the book alone. They spent over an hour setting up and arguing about a single poorly explained rule, only to realize halfway through that their whole scoring system was wrong. The game box didn't get opened again for a year. They finally caved and started using those quick video guides, and now they actually finish games instead of just fighting about them. It just saves so much time and confusion.

walker.max1mo ago

Oh man, the part about someone droning on for 30 minutes while everyone zones out hit way too close to home. We had that exact same problem, it just killed the mood before we even started. We finally switched to videos after a truly terrible game of Scythe where we messed up a core rule. Throwing on a quick tutorial first has been a total game changer for us too. It just gets everyone on the same page so much faster.

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