The Teach Library: Teach From a Sheet

Nearly every game course in the Ludarium Academy comes with a one-page teach sheet. They live together in the Teach Library, ready to print. That means for most gateway games, the hardest prep work is already done. You are about to teach your first game from a finished page.

A finished page is a gift and a trap. This lesson shows you how to take the gift.

What is on a sheet

Every teach sheet uses the same layout, top to bottom.

• The goal: one sentence on how you win.
• Setup: the steps to get the table ready.
• A turn: what a player does on their turn, in a few short lines.
• Scoring: how points add up, including the end-of-game counts.
• End of game: what triggers the end and what happens next.
• Three tips: the advice that helps a first game most.

Notice what that order is for. It is the order you need things when you are looking them up. It is not the order you say them in. The five-minute teach from Module 3 opens with a hook, then the win, then one turn with real pieces, then the gotcha. A sheet has no hook at all, because a sheet is written for anyone, and a hook is for someone.

A reference, not a script

The trap is reading the sheet aloud. It feels safe: every rule is correct, nothing is missed. But a sheet read aloud is the rulebook in a smaller font. Your eyes are on the page instead of the newcomer, and your voice goes flat the way everyone’s does when they read.

Use it like this instead.

Before the night. Read the sheet twice. Set up from the setup section, so the table is ready before anyone sits down. Setup never gets said aloud.

During the teach. Put the sheet face up on the table, turned toward the newcomer. Teach in your own words. When you reach a number, point: “Scores are here.” The page holds the details so your mouth does not have to.

During the game. The sheet becomes the newcomer’s. When they wonder what a long route scores, they can look it up without asking. That small bit of independence protects their dignity more than any kindness you can say.

Worked example: Ticket to Ride from its sheet

Picture teaching Ticket to Ride to your father-in-law, using its teach sheet. You have set up everything from the setup lines, with each seat’s tickets dealt face down.

You do not start with the sheet’s goal line. You start with a hook: “We are railroad barons racing to connect cities across North America.” Then the win, short, with the ending in it: “When anyone gets down to two trains or fewer, everyone gets one more turn, and most points wins. Points come from claiming routes, finishing your secret tickets, and the longest railroad.”

Now you look at the turn section. It has seven lines. You say three of them: “On your turn, do one thing. Draw two cards, or claim a route by playing matching cards, or draw new tickets.” You show a claim with real cards and trains. You add the locomotive line, because it trips people up: a face-up locomotive is your only card that turn.

Then everyone flips their tickets, and you say the one rule that surprises people: unfinished tickets cost you their points at the end. The sheet’s scoring section has the route values. You point at them and keep going. The rule about double routes with two or three players waits until someone looks at a double route.

Then play. You said about a third of the sheet. The other two thirds were there the whole time, on the table, for whoever needed them.

Make the sheet yours

After the game, take a pen to the printout. Three edits do most of the work.

1. Write your hook at the top, above the goal line.
2. Star the gotcha. Find the one rule that surprised your newcomer and mark it, so it goes first next time.
3. Cross out what you never said. Those lines stay true, but they are not part of your teach.

Do this twice and the sheet has become your teach script, the one from an earlier lesson, in your own voice. For a game the library does not have yet, use the same six headings to write your own sheet from the rulebook. Then teach from it the same way.