Vent: That thing where everyone at game night claims they know the rules but nobody does

I setup Spirit Island last Saturday with three friends and two of them said they had played before. Turns out they had only watched a video and we spent 20 minutes re-reading the power progression rules. Has anyone else run into this fake-it-till-you-make-it problem at their table?

2 comments

2 Comments

marymorgan6d ago

Agree with you completely about the pre-skim, we actually do that now with any game that has more than a page of rules. I showed up to a "quick" game of Dominion once and three people had read the rulebook in different languages, which was a disaster but also kind of hilarious.

the_piper6d ago

Whoa, I actually kinda disagree here! In my experience, having people who've only watched videos is better than having no one who knows the rules at all. I've been that person before where I watched a playthrough of Terraforming Mars three times and still messed up the placement rules on my first real game. Your friends at least cared enough to prep beforehand, which shows they wanted to be helpful even if it didn't quite land. Maybe next time ask everyone to skim the rulebook together for 5 minutes before shuffling cards just so you're all starting from the same page.