How to Play Board Games (Well)

This article might feel a bit silly. Why is there a guide on “how to play board games”? Surely everyone knows that you learn the rules, then follow them?

Well, no, not in my experience. To make sure everyone gets the most out of this project, I decided to write this article with some tips and advice.

In general, I have discovered two issues that plague certain board gaming groups.

• Board games are a social contract. And in any situation that involves multiple humans, you have clashing behaviors, or emotions, or unwritten rules. You have a messy mix of uncertainty about what to do or how to manage certain things.
• Many people invent extra strict rules (for themselves or others) that are not helpful. These are rules like “my child has to sit on their chair and is not allowed to be distracted for the entire game!” which are usually based on wrong assumptions or just copying what they saw other people do.

So, how do you soften these issues?

Step 1: Let go of any assumptions

I mean it. This is the biggest problem. It’s not that board games have too many rules or are complicated—it’s that people make them complicated by inventing stuff.

To give a more “positive” example, we can look at “overexplaining”. Many parents feel the need to not just teach the game, but to explain strategy too! They want to help their children, perhaps because they already assumed they would not understand.

And in doing so, they have to put in a lot more energy … while the child doesn’t actually get to play the game. A lose-lose situation. You are tired from constantly telling your kid what would be a “wise move”, while they are tired of not being allowed to do their own moves.

Many of these assumptions come from good intentions. That doesn’t make them actually good!

And so, when you aim to play (board) games with others, let go of any assumptions or strict rules you invented yourself. Let go of any ideas of “I must do X” or “I should make sure my child doesn’t do Y”. Let go of any “fear” that something might go wrong, or your child might not understand, or that you must prevent some situation you predict in the future but hasn’t actually happened.

Treat each game as it is, nothing more, nothing less. Pick it up, place it on the table, explain the rules, then see what happens.

Of course, there are ways to increase the likeliness of a game being a success. Let’s talk about those now.

Step 2: No good ever came from force

Humans are especially stubborn and free-thinking animals. You cannot force them to do what you want or like the same things you do.

Yes, it might seem like you can. But that’s all a short-term show, only for the eyes of the enforcer.

If you force a child to play a board game they don’t like, they might behave for that one game. But they won’t actually learn from it. They’ll grow a hatred for board games in general and find ways to never have to play one again. You made your life a little easier or more “controlled” in the short term, but ruined everything in the long term.

To give a personal example, my mother always forced me to sit at the table and eat during dinner. I told her many times that I hate it, but she commanded me. To this day, she thought she did something great. She wanted to create a “social moment” every day and make sure I ate enough (healthy) food. Her life was made easier because she controlled me and I did what she wanted. She still thinks she did great.

In the long term, however, I simply gained an unhealthy relationship with food and grew an immense hatred for dinner. Unless there’s a good reason, I probably don’t want to sit at any table and eat dinner ever again. In the long term, this “force” created only trauma, pain, and unhealthy eating habits.

Games can do this too. One must be very mindful of that. If you create negative associations in your kids with regard to games, they will simply stop playing them once they’re older … and probably never even give them a try for the rest of their life.

Force is a tool for short-term benefit of the enforcer. It is always a long-term negative effect for all, but especially the one that was forced.

As such, the process of selecting a game should always be something like this.

• Ask the players what they want to play.
• Come to an agreement about the game you are going to play.
• If not possible, it’s fine to split groups. (Play one game with one of your kids, play another game with another.)

For the longest time, I was averse to splitting the group too. I wanted everyone to join in on the same game. The more souls, the merrier, right? But no, this usually just led to no game being played at all. People have different preferences. And they might even change from day to day. Forcing someone to play a game they don’t want to play will never lead to anything good.

I wrote another article about what to do if your kids just don’t want to play games (or do any activity together): My Kid Doesn’t Want To Play.

I continue these thoughts there; this article is only about what to do once you’ve agreed upon a game and have started playing.

Step 3: Story over Rules

The reason we evolved to tell stories, most likely, is because they help us remember important things. It started with cavemen telling a story about how they narrowly escaped this mammoth, or how a fire got out of hand. This was a warning to all—the story helped kids remember not to make the same mistake.

As such, the most efficient way to teach a game is to wrap it in a story. Instead of listing the dry rules, start with the theme and why people should want to accomplish these things.

This is very personal. The one teaching the game knows the other players and knows best how to do this. It’s also very much a thing that works best when spoken and when able to touch and fiddle with the pieces of a game.

That’s why the rulebooks on this website are just a dry list of game rules. This makes them incredibly short and precise. I give the framework, the material and the theme, and now it’s up to the ones playing the game to start the story. (More on this at the end.)

For example, I could write the following rules in the rulebook.

• On your turn, play 1 card from your hand. These cards show Leaders. (Or Kings, Queens, Presidents, whatever.)
• At the end of the round, the Leader that appears the most on the cards played, wins.
• The action on the newly appointed Leader triggers.

To make this a story, you might explain the game to children as follows.

• We live in a fantasy kingdom. And as you know, a kingdom needs someone to rule and make decisions. Like what to teach in schools, or how much money people get for working.
• Fortunately, it’s time for us to pick who we want to be our Leader!
• One by one, we will cast a vote. Play the card that shows the one you like the most.
• Who wins? Do you know who wins when voting? Yes, the one with the most votes.
• We reveal the cards and count. The Leader we see the most officially becomes the next one.
• And now that we picked a new Leader, yes, they will change some laws. Look at those icons on the card. They tell us how the kingdom changes because we chose them.
• And you, my dear players, of course want the changes to be good for you!

As you see, this is more text. There’s flavor and theme there, and some more repetition. That’s why most don’t write rulebooks this way.

But hopefully you agree that this is more engaging and natural. You immerse the players in a new world, what’s happening, why that matters, and how they play with it.

The younger the players, the more important it is to set up the story instead of the rules.

Step 4: Start as soon as possible

Continuing that thought, it’s also not important to explain all the rules!

This is a running gag with my gaming groups. When I ask them if they want to know all the rules beforehand, everyone always says yes. Of course they want all the rules! They can only play the game (strategically) if they know them all, right?

But then I explain all the rules, and people get restless. Impatient. They start asking questions about the very first rule I taught 5 minutes ago, because they already forgot. They might cut me off to say “Can we just start playing?”

Based on many, many years of experience teaching games … I can confidently say that yes, you should just start playing. Nobody remembers the entire list of rules if it’s explained in one go, before even starting. Nobody can execute any proper strategy the first time they play a game anyway—that first game should always be treated as a “test game” or “learning the game, game”.

Using story, intuitively teach players the bare minimum of rules needed to get started.

• You do this on your turn.
• Because you win if you do that.
• (And perhaps one or two very crucial rules or actions to get right.)

As the game progresses, other rules will actually become relevant. That’s when you can tell people about them.

In a good game, those “extra rules” are very intuitive and logical. People won’t feel cheated—it will just feel right that those rules exist.

For example, take a tile placement game. Every player starts with their own little cardboard map, which is empty. During the game, they can draw tiles in some way, and place them on spaces in their personal map.

What’s a very common rule? “You can’t place tiles that go out of bounds / outside your map.”

Do we need to explain this beforehand? No! Half the players will assume this. The other half will try to do it once, see that it looks odd, you tell them “yes, there’s no space for that tile!”, and you’re good.

If players have trouble with this, it’s really a mind-set change that needs to happen.

• They might say it’s “not fair if they don’t know all the rules”. But … all the players don’t know all the rules, so how is that not fair?
• They might say they can’t properly play now. So explain to them that you only learn real strategy by actually playing the game, and your very first attempt will always be a “test game”. (If needed, actually call it that, and pretend the results of it don’t matter.) Or you might ask a question like “Oh, so I should have kept you inside for years until you had perfectly memorized all traffic rules?”
• They might say they want to know all the rules. Tell them they really don’t, but they’re free to read the rulebook themselves ;) (Any time I’ve offered someone else to read the rulebook and teach the game instead, be it on the spot or as preparation beforehand, they’ve declined and mostly stopped bugging me about knowing all the rules beforehand.)

Many people learn that games are about winning, but they’re not. They’re about having fun, and the fact someone wins at the end should just be an afterthought.

As Reiner Knizia said: “The goal of the game is to win, but it’s having the goal that’s important, not the winning.”

And by now you know why I usually take that principle one step further: “Games are not about winning, they’re about telling a story together.”

If you can get all players in that mind-set, playing games becomes much easier. You can explain only the basic rules in 1 minute, then already get started. Everyone will be far more relaxed about who wins or loses. Everyone will understand that they’ll only learn the full rules as they go, and that it’s fine.

Step 5: Reward instead of correct

Okay, so, you’re playing now. And your players, who have just learned half the rules of the game, are stumbling and struggling. This is normal. This is where the fun comes from.

Don’t be tempted to overexplain. Don’t take turns for other players or “boss them around”. Don’t immediately assume the game is too hard or your child isn’t having fun.

It’s a process. Children are much smarter than most people think, and they are curious and eager to learn. They will work through it, and by the time the game is over, they’ll have fully understood the rules. They’ll ask to play again, because now they understand why their previous strategy was silly.

This is natural. All that a parent (or teacher) needs to do is not ruin it. This circles back to what I said at the start about letting go of “assumptions” and “force”.

What’s the most important aspect there? Reward instead of punish. Praise instead of correct.

Get excited about doing something right, rather than explain (or get mad) when they do something wrong.

This is just general parenting advice, but it certainly applies to games. We’re often overly focused on the negative. A child could do everything right, but all they hear from their parents is the one thing they did wrong.

I’ve been fighting for years to turn this around. Punishment is rarely, if at all, needed. Correction has its uses, but should be limited.

Instead,

• When a child does something against the rules, just tell them: “Oh, do you remember rule X?” They’ll soon figure out that they are violating that rule and try something else. In fact, I might recommend you even let things slide sometimes. Because …
• You want to focus the majority of your comments on praising when they do something right! You know, the other 90% of turns that don’t break any rule. Instead of staying silent on those, which is quite natural behavior, get excited for them. They did something right. They placed a really good tile or placed a smart card. Great job!

There are two ways to course correct. One is to punish doing it wrong; the other is to reinforce doing it right.

I think you should always opt for the second approach.

Yes, when someone repeatedly and purposely cheats, make sure to call them out on it. If they don’t change their behavior, you either pick cooperative games, games that make it near impossible to cheat, or at worst have to exclude them from games.

This is extremely unlikely, though, in my experience. Because games are fun. Nobody wants to miss out on fun. You don’t even have to get mad at your child. Simply exclude them from the next game (and explicitly tell them it is because of cheating), and when they see others having fun without them, they’ll ask to be let back in.

Step 6: Involve everyone

It’s too common for a game to be “managed by one”. One person picks the game, sets it up, teaches the rules, and then also cleans it up when done. (As you might expect, I was that person in most situations.)

This should not become the norm. As stated at the start, board games are a social contract. In fact,

Board games are most fun when everyone is engaged and doing their best to play it.

So engage everyone all the way through!

• As said, involve your children when picking out the next game.
• Give them simple tasks to help with setup.
• If needed, pick games that are cooperative or have simultaneous turns. (Don’t pick games that eliminate players entirely!)
• When done, have everyone contribute to cleaning up the game too.

There’s a related type of behavior that I notice in avid board gamers a lot. I subconsciously started doing it myself too, from a very young age.

It’s the behavior of we’re in this together, whatever game you play.

• It’s another player’s turn? Ask them what they’re thinking. Propose possible moves.
• It’s your turn? Explain what you’re doing and why. Say your considerations out loud.
• Dead moment in the game? Ask the most silent player about something in the game. Engage them.

My most cutthroat gaming group is one of mathematicians. A group of friends I made at university, and we’re all officially Engineers in Mathematics. You can see why those games would be cutthroat, really aggressive, really hard to win, probabilities being calculated as we speak.

But while we play? We’re doing the whole list I gave above, completely by instinct. We’re actually helping our opponents possibly see a better move. We’re actually giving away our plans. Because we want this to be a competitive game that involves all players.

In a way, it’s more rewarding if you helped your opponent and still won ;)

Tips for Picking Games

Another tip for picking games is to vary it.

Many people tend to stick to the first game they know or like, and want to play that over and over and over. This is just a recipe for frustrating others and removing the game’s shine as quickly as possible.

If you make it a habit to always play different and diverse games, it’s fine if somebody ends up not liking a game that much. The next game will be a different one anyway! It will be a while before they play the mediocre game again!

So yes, I’d even recommend this is if you think your current game is loved by all and you want to play it fifty times. Just make it a habit to diversify. Played a game a few times? Time to switch it up with another.

Additionally, as expected, start simple. Every single mechanic or theme has a range of games (or expansions to games) from really simple to incredibly complicated.

Start with the simplest and shortest game you can find. This makes it very easy to teach and play a few times. By that time, players should understand the general idea, and you could move to a harder version of it.

This may sound obvious, but it’s very easy to overlook this. Longer / more complex games are simply a worse starting point. The extra “challenge” or “strategy” you get in return is not worth it. Even when playing with adults, even when playing with gamers.

Introduce the simplest version of a game first. Once understood, progress to a harder one. This kind of “progression” can go on for a while before you run out of more challenges to add.

Remember games are not set in stone. If you try a game and it still turns out too hard, you can simplify it yourself. Just completely remove a rule or two for the first game. Yes, that game will not be what the designer intended—but because it’s everyone’s first game anyway, this doesn’t matter. That first game is for learning the game and getting introduced to this new wonderful world. Once done, you can move on to actually playing smart.

When in doubt, pick a short game. When still in doubt, pick the simplest possible one, and randomly remove or hide stuff if need be for everyone’s first game.

Step 7: General Etiquette

The guidelines below are more optional and more customized. They are simply “unwritten rules” I’ve observed or maintained throughout years of playing board games.

• The rulebook is at hand and asking for rules clarifications is absolutely okay. This should not be hard or discouraged in any way.
  • Some players think it gives them some tactical advantage to act like “you should have remembered it, your fault!” This is not fun, not fair, not anything good really.
  • Similarly, if you worry something is cheating or you misremembered a rule, ask! Don’t try to give yourself some tactical advantage with this and then act as if you didn’t know later.
• You’re allowed to take back your turn until the moment the next player takes their turn. (This gives a nice grace period which is often all you need to realize some silly mistake. It also subtly encourages other players to be a bit faster in their decision making, and communicate when they do something.)
• If someone takes too long on their turns, it doesn’t work to tell them to “hurry up” or make jokes about it. It most likely annoys them and ruins their thought process, making turns even longer and the game less fun. Instead,
  • If you know such a person will play, set a timer on turns from the start. A generous one, but a timer all the same, applicable to all.
  • And try to get people in the mind-set of “make a choice” rather than “make the perfect choice”.
• Don’t ruin the game material. You can absolutely play a hundred games with paper material if you’re just mindful of how you hold and move it.
  • Some people hold cards in their hand with extreme force, which bends even high-quality cards. And once bent, you basically can’t play anymore, because the material is immediately recognizable and shuffling/holding/stacking is hard now.
• When you do something, really do it. If you decided to play a game, really play it, until the end. Do not look at your phone halfway through because you’re bored. Do not give up and walk away, or keep complaining so the others finish the game faster. This is, again, a mind-set thing: if you decide to play the game with all you have, then it will not get boring.
  • This also applies to smaller decisions during gameplay. For example, sometimes a few people want to take a break. Just to stretch legs, or grab food, or whatever. This is fine—but then everyone must agree and it must really be a full break. If some people keep playing, then it becomes a mess. They’ll change the game board (which the others didn’t see), while they must now wait a really long time before the others take their turn, etcetera.
  • Of course I’ve been in games that turned out to be not what I wanted/liked halfway through. But then I simply challenge myself more, I try more creative moves, I find ways to play the game differently and keep it interesting until the end.

The biggest problem comes from power differences. Some players have lots of experience with a game and are skilled, while others are new or weaker. This can make a game very lopsided, where one side is bored because it’s so easy, and the other is overwhelmed and frustrated because winning seems impossible.

For more thoughts about the general “etiquette” around this, read my article Should Parents Let Kids Win?.

If you aim to use board games in the classroom, it is definitely recommended to split people into smaller groups. A game that works with 6 players or more is extremely rare, and even then it’s usually chaotic and some players are just completely left out. Especially if a game is turn-based, of course.

Humans have not evolved to function in groups of 20+ people. Classrooms are just too full, and I think it’s a miracle when any activity with so many people actually works out and teaches them something. Just split into groups of 3 or 4, and you can even have them pick different games they want to play.

Conclusion

As you read this article, I hope you picked up some valuable do’s and don’ts. For me, the most important rule will always be …

Board games are most fun when everyone is engaged and doing their best to play it.

Because all the other tips are a result of it. If you have to force children to play, they’re not actually having fun, and the game is doomed from the start. If you don’t engage everyone, same thing. If you start with a long and dry description, same thing. If you don’t foster the right mind-set of having fun and doing exciting moves (over an obsession with winning), same thing.

It is useless to only play a game with half your attention. It is useless to pick something that doesn’t resonate, without a theme or story that captures the players, because their heart won’t be in it. And fun, as far as modern research shows, is mostly the result of really caring about something.

Now go and play fun board games!