Delivery

You can write a perfect teach script and still lose the table. Delivery is where the script meets real people, with drinks in hand and phones nearby. The good news: delivery is a handful of habits, and every one of them can be practiced.

This lesson closes Module 3.

Pace: short sentences, then stop

Talk at about two thirds of your normal speed. It will feel painfully slow to you. It will feel normal to them, because they are not only listening. They are matching your words to a board they have never seen.

Keep sentences short, one idea each. “You take two cards” lands. “You take two cards, which can come from the face-up row or the deck, unless one is a locomotive” does not.

And pause. After each part of the teach, stop for two full seconds. Silence feels long to the person talking and short to the people listening. Those two seconds are when a newcomer works up the nerve to say “wait, what?”

Ask questions that want an answer

“Any questions?” is a door held open for half a second. Most people walk past it. Asking a question means admitting you are lost, in front of people who seem to follow.

Try “What questions do you have?” It assumes questions exist, which makes having one normal. Better still, ask about something specific: “What would you do with these cards?” or “Which of these tickets looks good to you?” A specific question shows you what they understood without making anyone feel tested, and wrong answers come out in private, as conversation, instead of later on the board.

When someone asks, thank them for it. “Good question” is not filler. It tells the rest of the table that asking is safe.

Three things to leave out

• The rulebook, read aloud. Reading puts your eyes on the page and your voice in a flat, careful tone. Paraphrase. Keep the book beside you, open to the summary, for the one rule you need to check.
• Strategy tips. “A good move early is to…” is a second lesson on top of the first, and it takes away the pleasure of finding things out. If a gamer at the table offers one, thank them and say strategy can wait until after the first game.
• The gamers’ questions. A hobbyist asking about an edge case can pull the teach into a corner the newcomer cannot follow. “Let’s catch that one when it comes up” works for them too.

A worked example: the same teach, twice

Picture a Ticket to Ride teach to a table of four. Two of them play a lot. One plays now and then. One is your partner’s father, who has not played a board game since he was a kid.

The first time, you teach to the room. You look at the two gamers, because they nod and make you feel it is going well. You talk at their speed. One of them asks about double routes and you answer, because it is a fair question. You finish with “Any questions?” and the gamers say no. So does your partner’s father. Then, on his first turn, he takes three cards, not two, and someone corrects him. He spends the rest of the game a little quieter.

The second time, you teach to him. You sit beside him and turn the board so the map faces his way. You watch his face, not the gamers’, and slow down whenever he glances at the board. When a gamer asks about double routes, you say, “That comes up later.” You hand him two of the face-up cards and say, “You take two. These two, or one from the deck.” At the end, you ask, “Which of your tickets looks best to you?” and he points at one, and you nod.

The words were nearly the same both times. What changed was who you taught to, and how fast.

Get feedback you can use

You cannot see your own teach from the outside. The Newcomer Feedback Card gives a new player a minute’s worth of questions to answer after your teach, so you learn what landed and what did not. Ask the questions, then listen. Do not explain what you meant. The answer is not about what you said. It is about what they heard.