Over the holidays and into the Gregorian new year and lunar new year celebrations, my family invited me to play some board games and card games with them as a diversion from video games, and I thoroughly had a good time.  Sequence and Code Names are both excellent games that require thinking in different ways, and I’m glad I had a great group of people to play them with.

However, when trying to learn how to play them, those same people were… a little less than helpful.  And I don’t think this is a unique problem to them.  Many people explain games in ways that often leave the newcomer confused or leave the explainer to grow exhausted and say, “You’ll get it once you start playing.”  However, do we really need to leave things like this?  What if there was a better way to explain games so people can get into the games faster and be able to understand the game better from the get go rather than mid-match?

While attempting a computer game science degree in my undergrad years, I took many game design classes, and I read many game rules and learned how to play more than a few.  From these lessons, both from writing design documents myself and reading many different manuals, I think I’ve come up with a pretty easy flow chart to help everyone explain games better, and I’d like to share that today.

This flow chart works for all kinds of games, so to help out, after each explanation, I’ll be using my own flow chart to explain three different games of three different levels and media.

Example A: Tic-Tac-Toe (board game)

Example B: Freeze Tag (playground game)

Example C: Pokémon (trading card game)

By the time you’re through with this, I think you’ll have a faster and more efficient way of explaining games, and these examples should help you apply the concepts.

0. “The play space is…”

This is entirely optional and/or situational, hence why I noted it as zero instead of one.  After all, the play space of Monopoly is clearly defined by the board and the players’ inventories, even just looking at the box.  In many cases, like in Monopoly, the play space is obvious, but it isn’t in some, especially for more abstract board games and some playground games.  Lining out where those kinds of games take place (and under what time constraints if applicable) can be quite helpful down the line.

Example A: The play space is a grid, three units wide and three units long.

Example B: The play space is this big open field.  We’ve got 15 minutes on the clock.

Example C: The play space is this two-sided table set-up.  Each player has 25 minutes to cover all of the turns for the whole game.  (I will not get into the weeds of explaining the Pokémon TCG setup here, but you get the idea of what defining a play space is.)

1. “The goal of the game is…”

One of the biggest flaws in many folks’ game explanations is not describing what the game is for on the onset.  When I ask about what the game is, they’ll start talking about all these cool moves and strategies and such, and I understand that those concepts are what make games FUN, but they don’t really explain what they ARE.  It’s kind of like the difference between reading the box of the game and reading the manual.  They both are external parts to the game, but one is the sell, and one is the information.  When explaining, try honing in on that information first.

Be aware that the goal of a game is not always a win condition.  Some games, like solitaire, don’t have opposing sides, but a solution and a “fail” state.  Regardless of this, you’ll want to be extra clear when stating this goal and state it first so the person you’re talking to can relate the information ABOUT the game to this core game goal.  It’s like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  You don’t start by thinking about the glory of how well you can slather up a slice of bread with Smucker’s.  You start by thinking, “I’m hungry, so I’ll make a sandwich.”  The sandwich is the goal in this case.

Going back to games, these can either be to knock out an opponent, score more points than an opponent, or any number of situations.  That variability is also why nailing this step can be crucial to helping others understand a game.

Example A: In Tic-Tac-Toe, the goal is to mark three spaces of your shape on the grid in a row, either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, before your opponent does by taking turns placing one mark at a time.

Example B: In Freeze Tag, there are two different goals.  One person, dedicated as “it”, wants to touch all of the other players to “freeze” them.  The rest of the players must avoid being tagged and unfreeze the other players until time runs out or something.

Example C: In Pokémon TCG, the player has three different ways to win, and the game ends once one win condition is met regardless of the player who meets it.  They can either have their opponent run out of cards to draw at the start of their turn, take all of their own prize cards, or knock out all of Pokémon on the opponent’s side.

2. “Before the game starts…”

Some games have a set-up period.  In Monopoly’s case, it would be dividing up the money and maybe some starter properties (I do that.  Does anyone else do that?  It helps get the game right to the interesting/friendship-ruining parts faster in my eyes.).  There’s not much I can talk about with this one, since not all games have a set-up, and they vary in complexity and length, but it’s nice to explain because it also provides experienced players an opportunity to let newcomers know what parts of the play space are utilized and how.

Example A: Draw the grid.  Decide between the two players who will represent X and who will represent O.

Example B: Decide between the players who will be “it”.

Example C. Flip a coin or play rock-paper-scissors.  The winner chooses if they want to go first or second in the game.  Both players draw 7 cards to start.  Put one Basic Pokémon from your hand in the active field slot.  If you don’t have any, show your opponent, call “mulligan”, shuffle your hand back into your deck, and draw 7 new cards, repeating the mulligan process until you have one Basic Pokémon in the active field slot.  Then, without looking, place six face-down cards in the prize section of the field.

3. “When the game starts…” OR “When it’s your turn…”

This is the meat of your explanation, and it should be crystal clear.  Not “but if you do this, then you can be more efficient”, not “you should avoid this because it’s not a good play”, just the rules.  This way, your player will have a basis to step on when you explain strategies… LATER.  You don’t talk about how to balance yourself on a mountain bike to kids who haven’t taken off the training wheels of their street bike with the little bell.  Get the basics down first, THEN get into the fun (more on this later).

This might also be the time to talk about certain game conditions or status changes or things where they apply, but many will opt to cover these as they appear in the first game, and I think I’d go either way on this depending on the game.  So long as the newcomer has the basic understanding of the basic rules of the game, I think they’ll be set to understand conditional changes when they happen and how they enhance or impede the basic flow of the game.

Example A: When it’s your turn, draw your designated shape on the board in one of the empty spaces.  Then, your turn ends.

Example B: When the game starts, the person who’s “it” chases down and tries to tag the other players.  The other players must run away from “it” and tag frozen players to unfreeze them.

Example C: When it’s your turn, draw a card.  Then, perform any number of actions as long as the card allows you to do so – these actions include putting down Pokémon in the bench field slot (backups), activating Abilities on your side of the field, retreating (swapping Pokémon from the active slot to the bench and moving a bench Pokémon into the active slot to replace it, discarding energy from the Pokémon moving to the bench equal to its retreat cost), attaching Energy to Pokémon (used in attacks, retreats, and some Abilities), evolving Pokémon that haven’t been evolved or placed onto the bench during your current turn, and playing Trainer cards (Item, Stadium, and/or Supporter).  To end your turn, use an attack you have the Energy for or pass on attacking.  Between each player’s turns, players perform a Pokémon checkup to take damage and potentially heal from status effects, where there are any.  (This is very rudimentary, but you get the idea.  Even the official TCG rulebook is pages long.  I’m not copying it here.)

4. “The game ends when…”

While oftentimes already explained in the goal of the game, stating how the game ends can be a great way to round out the explanation and give some conditions for a draw, if there are any.

Example A: The game ends when one person completes a row, column, or diagonal of three of their shape OR if the board is full and no one has made such a completion, ending the game in a draw.

Example B: The game ends when “it” freezes everyone, ending the game in favor of “it”, or time runs out, ending the game in favor of the others.

Example C: The game ends when one player meets any of the possible win conditions (their opponent decked out, their opponent has no active or benched Pokémon remaining, or the player has taken six of their prize cards).  If time runs out, the player with the most prize cards taken is the winner.  If both players have the same amount of prize cards by the end of time, the game is a draw (not always, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s put that here instead).

“But when do I talk about the fun parts or strategies?”

That’s the neat thing – you don’t, at least in my case.

Everyone is different.  Maybe they want to have a better grasp on what the fun of the game is when they go into it even without knowing anything, and the people explaining can now give them that extra knowledge after they know the basic rules.  However, in my case, I like just going in with the basic rules and figuring out my own strategy in the first few games, THEN coming up with better strategies as I play more and more.  This is how I learned to get decent at Sequence.  I started not knowing how to really play the game, but once I discovered it was less about RNG and “attacking” and more about territory control and area denial, I started playing a lot better.

In many ways, the strategies and “fun” parts of the game can ONLY be understood and appreciated by the people who have a basic understanding of the rules.  In my mind, no one should be putting the cart before the horse in this case.

Regardless of whether you want to heed that advice or regardless of whether or not you want to use my flow chart at all, I hope this read gave you a new way to explain or even just understand games.  You’ll be surprised by how many games can be boiled down into this easy to understand explanation format, and how much faster you can get newcomers in on the action by following it.

As always, thanks for reading.