I want to play more board games, but have an incredibly hard time learning from the manuals

[Fudgepuppy]

Me and my friends played some board games last year, mostly getting into easier ones, and then graduating onto playing Whitehall Mystery and XCOM. Then I mentioned to my friends that the Doom board game seemed cool, so they gave it to me on my birth day.

Since then, I've tried to learn the game, reading the manual back and forth, and watching videos online of it, but I just can't absorb anything about the rules.

Anyone else in this situation who have some tips?

 

[healbite-maritima]

Maybe you can find people who play board games on YouTube and watch them play?

 

[Monkey Gland Sauce]

https://www.youtube.com/user/WatchItPlayed

There are a few other similar channels I think, but this is the one I hear about most.

Here is a video for Doom (from a different channel).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KK9BQP55pH4

 

[Doober]

Honestly? A lot of tabletop board games are complex to the point of being obtuse and probably not very fun. There's definitely a high barrier to entry when it comes to learning one.

 

[ascii42]

Manuals will tell you the rules, but you kind of have to just play the game to start learning the strategies that emerge from the rules.

I recently played the Big Trouble In Little China board game. The manual was nice enough to include a sample round, which helped with learning the basic flow of the game, but we still just had to play it ourselves to learn what was a good idea to do when.

 

[Lyng]

You should try in the the boardgame hangout here on resetera I am sure all the folks in there would be happy to assist you.

 

[Deleted member 2752]

My IQ gets cut in half when someone reads game rules to me. I know there are different types of learning, but whatever category that one is, my rating must be 0.

 

[Bane]

I'm the same way to a degree. It's like I'm reading an alien language and quite frustrating when I can usually pick up a video game and in no time understand how everything works. What I do is go step by step though the book, read what it says to do, then do it. Unfortunately some rulebooks are very badly written to the point where even that isn't helpful (currently dealing with this with a recent Batman game).

The best advice I can give is to just jump in and start playing and don't worry about getting things wrong. Over a few plays you should get it sorted out and be fine.

 

[hijukal]

Usually I'll read the rules to get an idea of what's going on, then start playing with the rules still open. Sometimes I might play a bit until I get the gist and then start again.

tl;dr: Just start playing, refer to rules, it'll make sense eventually.

 

[Patapuf]

Usually one needs top play the game at least once to really grasp the rules and their context.

I think that's pretty universal?

 

[Deleted member 8861]

What I do in my circle of friends is that we get one person who's good at (and willing to) learn the stuff from the manual, and tell the rest of us

 

[kurahador]

I was the same when starting to dabble in board games. But once you start getting to know a number of games, the mechanics become sorta famliar that it'll be enough to get you started even with not truly grasp the manual. And that's when you truly learn about the game.

 

[Forkball]

Gotta learn by playing. So many times it felt like the person explaining the rules was reading from a theoretical physics textbook, only to get it after about three minutes of playing.

 

[Necron]

The barrier to entry is high indeed. You'll reserve one evening just learning and the strategies emerging from it. It'll go wrong, questions will take time to be answered... but by the 2nd playthrough it'll work out usually with the same group of people.

That said, I'm more into card games... hope that Bloodborne board game ends up as good as the card game at least.

 

[Erik Zarkov]

I run into this issue as well, and sometimes I've found myself falling asleep when trying to read game manuals. When I run into this, I usually hit up the game on board game geek and watch a few videos on how to play. I even find videos like this useful for learning how to explain a game to other people.

 

[Doober]

I run into this issue as well, and sometimes I've found myself falling asleep when trying to read game manuals. When I run into this, I usually hit up the game on board game geek and watch a few videos on how to play. I even find videos like this useful for learning how to explain a game to other people.

Click to shrink...

Yes! YouTube videos are a lot more help, OP. The ones for Infinity are really good.

 

[Nocturnowl]

Fortunately I have a friend whose good at getting the rules down and explaining them well.
Meanwhile I have another who is the opposite.

Personally I learn better by playing, you likely get some things wrong as you go and keep jumping back to the rule book but it's better than having 30 minutes of tedious overexplaining before your hour plus long game, maaaan, I hate learning new boardgames....

shit, that's what I'm actually doing tonight!

 

[apocat]

The best way to learn is by playing, but going through the manual (and optionally a supplemental tutorial video) to learn is something at least one player will have to do for that to work. It takes some self discipline, but you'll get better at it by doing it a few times. I'm usually the one who buys the games that I get to play with my regular groups, so it almost always fall to me to prepare and study. It's easier to get an overview of the game if you actually set it up while reading the rules. That way you can try out the different actions while learning and identify bits you havent quite grasped yet.

 

[cakely]

Get a friend to explain them to you, right before you play,

Reading the rules to a board game is a little like reading source code. Rules establish terminology and then expand that terminology into logical patterns.

Me, personally, I love reading the rules to a new game.