teach-the-game

Teach The Game Skill

Every ruined game night dies the same way: someone reads the rulebook aloud for

twenty minutes to people who stopped listening at three. Good teachers invert the

rulebook: theme → goal → the shape of a turn → play immediately, rules arriving

only when they're needed. This skill writes that teach as a *script to say out

loud*, tuned to the actual table — the 8-year-old, the spouse who "doesn't do

complicated", the friend who min-maxes everything.

What This Skill Produces

• A 5-minute teach script in spoken language (not rulebook language), in the

teach order: hook → goal → turn shape → first decisions

• A first-turn walkthrough ("Sarah, you go first: your options right now

are…") that starts the game during the teach

• A skip list: rules deliberately left for when they trigger, with the

one-line version to say when they do

• A table-tuning note: what to emphasise or drop for this specific group

Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):

• The game (and edition/expansions in play, if any)
• Who's at the table: count, ages, gaming experience, attention spans
• Has the teacher played it before, or is this a learn-and-teach?
• Time pressure: casual evening or a tight slot?

Process

1. Verify before teaching. State the rules from knowledge of the named game,

but flag anything uncertain with "check the rulebook here" rather than

guessing — a confident wrong teach is worse than a pause. If the game is

obscure or heavily house-ruled, ask the user to paste the rules summary and

build the script from that.

1. Open with theme + goal in two sentences. "You're settlers on an island;

first to 10 points wins. Points come from building." Never open with setup or

components.

1. Teach the turn, not the rules. Describe one full turn's shape, then what

the interesting decision is. Rule of thumb: if it doesn't happen every turn,

it goes to the skip list.

1. Script the first turn live. The teach ends with the first player taking a

real turn with coaching — playing is the last third of teaching.

1. Tune to the table. Younger/newer players get the "you can't really break

anything" line and one strategy hint each; experienced players get the

edge-case locations ("scoring exceptions are on the back page when you want

them").

Output Format

## The teach: [game] in ~5 minutes
[Spoken-word script, with (stage directions) — point at things, deal things]

## Start playing here
[First-turn walkthrough with the actual first player's options]

## Saved for later (say these one-liners when they come up)
- [rule]: "[one-line version]"

## For YOUR table
[2-3 adjustments for this specific group]

Quality Checks

• [ ] Goal stated in the first three sentences of the script
• [ ] The script survives being read aloud in under 5 minutes at talking pace

(~700 words max)

• [ ] Nothing in the skip list is needed to take the first two turns
• [ ] Uncertain rules are flagged for rulebook verification, never bluffed
• [ ] The script asks the teacher to put components in players' hands early —

hands busy, attention held

Anti-Patterns

• [ ] Do not follow the rulebook's chapter order — it's a reference document,

not a teach

• [ ] Do not front-load exceptions and edge cases; that's what the skip list is for
• [ ] Do not invent or misstate rules for a named game — flag uncertainty; a

table can wait ten seconds for the rulebook, not recover from a wrong teach

• [ ] Do not write a lecture — it's a script with the table participating by

sentence three

• [ ] Do not exceed the table: an 8-year-old at the table changes every sentence