Nobody likes a bad rulebook. Some are too long, others too short. Some go into too much detail, others omit crucial information. Some read like tax code, others like a conversation with a drunk relative. But as people say, only a bad craftsman blames his tools. No matter how bad a rulebook might be, as the person explaining a game (and sometimes the actual game night host), you have to make sure that the first play of a game gets as much right as possible.

There are some techniques that should help you counter any insufficiencies a rule book might throw at you.

Generalize rules

Rulebooks are written to be both complete and sufficiently detailed. They have to provide enough specificity to anticipate obvious questions. But they must also offer enough examples to illustrate how a specific rule is applied in a wide range of situations. Sometimes these good intentions might overshoot the mark and go on too long.

An explanation at the game table has to generalize game rules and simplify them. It’s entirely sufficient for the person explaining the game to know how to handle all kinds of edge cases. After reading a rulebook, you should be able to handle all situations the game might produce. After having a game explained to you, you should be able to play it. These things are not the same. That is why a rules explanation doesn’t need to relay everything that’s in the rulebook.

New players must understand how a rule works and in which cases it is applied. If more details are needed, you should repeat and expand. Simply return to the rule at a later point and explain the fine print, when players can understand why this kind of distinction would matter.

Naming decision spaces before the game

It’s surprising how rarely a rulebook explicitly tells you what you’re going to do. In very rare cases does it outline or spell out the kind of decisions you will be making during play. Most of the time, you’re simply given a list of options. But what your decisions will actually look like, and which of them will have more weight than others, remains unclear. It’s obvious that not every decision you will take in a game will be equally important. Some have far-reaching consequences. Others disappear in the hazy web of player interactions. In most cases, you have to see the game in action, to tell the difference.

Out of the these early decisions we make in a game, we develop a first draft of a strategy. Some games leave this step wholly in the hands of players. If that decision you agonized over actually mattered or was completely irrelevant in the end, should only become clear in hindsight. This usually doesn’t lead to an experience that players are eager to revisit. (More experienced gamers have grown used to this type of ‘learning’ game.)

That’s why – particularly with more complex games – it helps to have a general understanding what does and doesn’t matter. Ideally, your first game should already be focused on the parts of the game, that make it fun. Pointing out those decisions at the start of the game, helps do that.

Setting the tone

There is a subtle, but nonetheless annoying mistake that can make its way into a rulebook. The writing style and presentation of the rulebook might promise a different experience than the one the game actually offers. An expansive and very technically written rulebook, suggests a game that is played in a serious and meticulously following its rules. Similarly, a game with a short rulebook full of pretty pictures, suggests a quick diversion that doesn’t tax players too much.

A good rules explanation sets the tone for the kind of experience the group is most likely to have. A fun, cheeky game doesn’t need a careful list of rules details. Similarly a complex and detail-oriented game doesn’t benefit from poking fun at its idiosyncrasies, or mixing rules up repeatedly. These kind of games need a confident explanation to generate trust in the robustness of the rules. These in turn will allow for a more robust experience. No matter what kind of mood a game assumes or tries to create, a good rules explanation should aim for the same.

Start with the real world

To the chagrin of most people who read a lot rulebooks, some publishers can’t stop themselves from trying to explain everything about their game using solely thematic descriptors. Most of the time this stems from the naive belief that a game will be far more immersive, if every rule and every game component is only referred to with its thematic description. Under absolutely no circumstances should you also make that mistake when explaining the game.

Instead, a rules explanation should always emphasise the connection between real elements (components and actions) and their thematic transcription. It’s not enough to only do it once – as seen in the inventory list in a rulebook. It is far more effective to use casual repetition here. A rules explanation that routinely ties the black wooden cube to “coal” and the orange-coloured cube to “iron”, embeds this connection in the heads of players. It’s only when we understand the real life actions we take at the table, that the thematic layer of the game opens up to us. Just like you can’t build a roof until your foundation and walls are up.

Identifying goals

There is not question that it’s fun to discover strategies in a game on your own. When you get to try out new strategies and find out if they’re very strong (or very weak), that always feels great. Some groups have turned this observation into an unspoken rule, that some rulebooks often adhere to as well. It’s assumed that the introduction into a new game should not say anything about strategies. That the fun sense of exploration mustn’t be spoiled this way. But in some cases this is the wrong approach.

A game you’re unfamiliar with or one that doesn’t easily match other experiences, becomes exceedingly hard to make sense of the first time you play it. In such cases it’s important that the rules explanation should give players a general direction to play towards. Right from the first game, you should have a goal that is different to “winning”. This way you can align your decision towards that goal, and actively participate in the game.

We know these kind of procedures from many other games. First we want to reach our first goal (e.g. buy a certain card), then tackle goal #2 (e.g. use that card to gain resources) and to conclude our plans with goal #3 (e.g. turning resources into victory points).

But in a new game we don’t immediately identify this type of procedure or strategy. The first play of a game can gain far more momentum, if our explanation already points us in the right direction. As soon as you can pick out a first useful interim goal, it becomes easier to find more of them in the game. It’s when you don’t really know what your next goal should be, that you end up playing towards the kind of thing that negatively affects our enjoyment.

A bad rulebook lowers the probability of having a great first game. But as the person explaining the game, you can work toward making sure that even a game with a bad rulebook gets to the table more than once.