My last game night totally fell apart because of one rulebook

I always thought I was good at explaining games. Then I tried to teach Root at a meetup in Portland. The woodland alliance rules made zero sense to me and three people just pulled out their phones. I ended up ditching the whole session and we played Codenames instead.

3 comments

3 Comments

shah.shane11d ago

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves though? I had the exact same thing happen with Root last year, only I was the one who bought it thinking "oh this looks fun" and then spent an entire evening trying to decode the woodland alliance rules with a friend. We both just sat there flipping pages and looking at the board like it was some kind of alien puzzle. Eventually I just put everything back in the box and we watched a movie instead. It's honestly embarrassing when you bring a game to a party and nobody wants to touch it because the rulebook might as well be written in code. These designers need to learn that if you can't explain your game in a few minutes without needing a law degree, it's probably too complicated for casual nights.

shane_moore8711d ago

Man you just described exactly what happened to me and @shah.shane with that game, we kept passing the rulebook back and forth like it was gonna make more sense the second time. It's wild how a board game can make you feel like you're back in a high school exam you didn't study for.

felixb2511d ago

Oh man, I feel this SO hard. I once tried teaching Cosmic Encounter and spent 20 minutes explaining the flares and the entire room just stared at me like I was speaking another language. We switched to Sushi Go and nobody complained.