My friend's 45 minute setup explanation vs my 5 minute demo

Last weekend at a local convention in Austin I watched a guy explain his favorite euro game for 45 minutes before anyone touched it. Rules, exceptions, edge cases, all of it. Then a friend of mine just plopped down the pieces, played a fake turn, and said 'you try now.' We were playing within 5 minutes and everyone got it faster. I used to be the 45 minute guy, big rulebook energy. Now I wonder if long rules explanations actually scare people off. Has anyone else switched to just starting the game and fixing mistakes as you go?

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william_garcia25d ago

I read an article once that said people remember maybe 10 percent of what they hear but 90 percent of what they do. That kinda stuck with me. The last time I taught a game, I just set up the board and walked through one full round myself, then handed the dice over. We ran into a couple of rule questions mid-game, looked stuff up when it mattered, and nobody got bored or lost. It's way easier to learn a rule when you're already holding the pieces and see why it exists.