"Avoiding “the talk”" Topic

With convention season upon us, could this be the year of minimizing "the talk". You know: those excruciating 30-40 minutes at the start that explains the whole game. This video also explains this

link

Start by defining the objective and how to move. Save everything else for later. If someone says "I want to shoot" explain you need to be with X" nothing more. Once they can and do shoot: work through a sequence

Respectfully disagree, at least in some instances. I have found that taking the time beforehand to explain how shooting is done (assuming it's not too complicated a process) pays ample dividends later, when the players can mostly run the game themselves and my attention can be directed to the scenario's progression as a whole. Conversely, when I skipped this preliminary I have found many firing phases in the game run one-unit-at-a-time, with frequent calls upon my attention. YMMV.

Certainly playing new rules I like the beginning talk, question and answer period. Yes if played before it gets tedious, but to others know how they feel.

A one page rules outline has always been helpful for me.

I do a limited talk of essentials to get things started, also mentioning that I will explain more rules as we go along, and hopefully before they become important to decision making.

And also encourage players to look over the provided turn sequence with rules summary as the game is moving along.

I have never understood the 6 turn limit for a lot of games of this type.

You should be moving figures within 15 minutes of the start time.

I prefer activation, move, and shoot rules overview as those will control player activity. It doesn't have to be a line by line reading of the rules but enough to let players know what they can/can't do. Any background fluff can be dropped.

It does seem a bit overwhelming to me to take in a pregame talk. I don't believe it really helps much. Short and sweet if you fell it is needed.

The last con I participated in, at 1 hour 5 minutes after start time no figures had been moved. In that time my side had to mark on our map where all our stationary troops would be placed, after the GM basically told us where to put them. The opposing players had seemed to drift off (eyes closed and motionless, I did not blame them). When they did wake up one went across the street for coffee.

At that time, I apologized to the GM and left. I was just too angry at that point to play a game that was supposed to be fun and left the con.

I had signed up for this game to learn the latest version of a ruleset. That did not happen.

I can easily see both sides of this discussion but I have to say erring on the side of pushing lead and rolling dice as quickly as possible should be a higher priority especially in a game ran at a con. YMMV.

-clark

30-40 minutes??! The last time I wound up hosting newbies, it was under 10 minutes for move, shoot, melee and morale. Everyone got a copy of the 10-page rules (including 2 pages of QRS) and it was off to the races. Very few questions and the game ran smoothly.

Hmph. In fairness, this was historicals. They might not have played the rules before, but they didn't have to be told what a dragoon was, either. I can see more difficulty if you invent troop types.

My instance was early war WW II. Everyone around the table knew what a tank was. :) Without naming names, it was perilously close to self-gratification by the GM.

I am so not a newbie, I just wanted to try the latest version of the rules. I thought this would be a good opportunity, I was mistaken. Live and learn and I feel I got a good story out of it if nothing else.

-clark

I've had good luck with a 1-page rules summary (turn sequence, movement, direct fire) and a 5-minute talk. Objectives and deployments are on your operations orders (which are very short for a convention game).

Games that take 30+ minutes to explain need a proviso that players must be familiar with the system. That's too long.

I strongly oppose the current received wisdom that convention games must be simple and fast-play, but the accommodation for more complex games is that players should already be invested in the system, or the system has to have so many broadly familiar mechanisms that veteran gamers will catch on quickly.

That said: I run quite a few moderately-complex systems (GQ3, RF&F, CY6, my own ironclad rules), but I can usually get a table of noobs going in about 10-15 minutes, from start of explanation to first turn. The GM has to be careful to cover the basics of movement/combat/C3, but leave out the details of execution that will explain themselves the first time stepping through the process. GMing a game is a skill that gets better with experience.

I've run loads of games at shows. I try to keep it short, but sometimes it takes longer to run through the preliminaries.

Not everyone putting on games at shows has good presentation skills, they are wargamers not teachers, so cut them a bit of slack.

Some GMs want to give a history lecture before the game which I have seen take up to 20 minutes or more to get through. Most of the players who signed up for the game already have an interest and knowledge of the battle and what led up to it. The GM is showing off his/her mastery of the subject. Totally unnecessary. I can usually explain the situation surrounding the battle in two or three minutes.