This month we've been writing about "How do we evaluate games?" which has been less oriented toward game design and more for general board game discussion.
This week we gravitate back to game design with Teachability and how game design can benefit both the person teaching the game and allow players to grasp the game more easily. This is a set-up for our April topic of Approachability in Game Design. Comments and criticism are highly encouraged.
This subject was vivid Friday night as I sat down with my wife and son to play 7 Wonders for the first time for any of us.
Trying to read through the main rulebook to get going wasn't working. So, we just started playing and it fell into place even if it didn't end up being super-strategic. The hardest thing with those rules is all of the symbols and meanings and special cases that you think maybe you need to know up front.
Definitely put a good perspective on some challenges I have with the game I am focusing on designing right now. For example I thought having interesting thematic terms for some actions would be nice; like drawing from an area I called the frontier I termed "tame," useless and confusing compared to saying "draw from."
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7 Wonders is a wonderful example, as the outcome of decisions is not entirely apparent until you've seen the next age of cards. By the time the game is over you have learned by doing but it requires that first sloppy game to grasp the game.