Pri’s nephew Micah is twelve and has been begging to sit in on a real Friday game night for about a year, and I finally caved a few weeks back, and I made the classic mistake of a person who’s forgotten what it’s like to be new at something, I picked the game I personally wanted to play instead of the game that would actually teach well. Terraforming Mars. Two hundred cards, a tableau you have to hold in your head, a corporate era ruleset I’d normally strip out for any first timer and didn’t, because it was my turn to pick and I was tired of teaching the gateway stuff.
It went about how you’d expect for the first hour. He was game, genuinely trying, but there’s a specific kind of overwhelmed a kid gets where the eyes go slightly glassy and the questions stop being about strategy and start being just “wait, what does this card do” over and over, and I watched that happen to him around turn three while I was busy explaining oxygen thresholds to someone else. Pri caught my eye across the table with the exact look she gives me at work when I’ve overcomplicated a QA form nobody asked to be that thorough.
We got through it. Barely. He was polite about it, twelve year olds are often kinder than we deserve, and he said he had fun, and I believe maybe forty percent of that. But the whole ride home I kept turning over how badly I’d misjudged the actual teach, because I know better, I’ve got this exact quirk built into how I think about every game I own, is it teachable, does the first play actually work or does it just work for people who already know six other games like it. I broke my own rule because I wanted to play my favorite thing instead of the smart thing.
The fix, obviously, is Star Realms next time, or Faraway, something with a rules card you can read in ninety seconds and a first game that clicks by turn two instead of turn eight. I texted Pri that exact plan two days later and she sent back a single word, finally, which I deserved. Micah’s coming back in a couple weeks and I’ve already pulled the box off the shelf, the small one, the one that actually respects a new player’s patience instead of assuming it’s infinite. I used to think a good teacher could make any game work for anyone with enough patience and a clear enough explanation. I don’t think that anymore. Some games are built to teach themselves and some are built for people who already know the language, and pretending otherwise just because I wanted to play my favorite one isn’t teaching, it’s just being a little selfish with extra steps.