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Asynchronous Learning · Pick Up and Deliver

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(soft music)
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Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the Podcast
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where I pick up my audio recorder
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as I step off the train and deliver an episode to you
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while I walk home.
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I'm Brendan Riley.
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(upbeat music)
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Well good afternoon listeners,
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it's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago
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and I am enjoying a casual walk home
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as I seek to talk about board games a bit more with you today.
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I was looking over my board games played
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and thinking a little bit about how we learn games.
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And I'm really interested in the learning hurdles
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of asynchronous learning.
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I'm thinking about this because I'm teaching
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in asynchronous class this summer mystery and detective fiction,
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which is of course I've taught many times
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and I've taught several times asynchronously online
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and the challenge with an asynchronous online class
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is finding a way to make it feel dynamic and engaging
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and active when you are in fact not online
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at the same time.
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So coming up with a variety of different kinds of activities
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to engage with the genre,
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engage with the spirit of the thing
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but at the same time tackle the process of teaching
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when not all the students are online together.
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Online teaching has of course been something people
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have been doing for a long time
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so there are lots of resources to explore
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but I thought for the purposes of our podcast here
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I would talk a little bit about my experience
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learning games online and thinking about that
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in terms of learning games generally.
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So to start with I wanna talk about how I learn a game
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that I'm gonna play on the tabletop.
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Now let's, there's two different,
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okay we'll see there's three different categories
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of game I can learn on the tabletop.
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The first one is learning a game from someone else.
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The most obvious or common way that this would happen
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would be you go to a game night, you go to a game event
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and somebody brings a game that you want to play
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that you've never played before.
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They say "hey you wanna play this?" and you say "yes"
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and so they teach you how to play.
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This is for a lot of people the main way
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that they learn games are sometimes the only way
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that they learn games.
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So being able to teach a game well is crucial
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if you have a game you want to bring out and show people.
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Of course the more complex the game is,
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the harder it is to teach it well
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and the harder it is to learn it well.
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It doesn't take very long before I think it's totally
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reasonable to assert that a first play of a game
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is a learning play and shouldn't "count" quote unquote.
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One example of how this happens is the tradition
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my family has of box topping a board game.
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This is the phrase we use for,
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I swapped it from blue peg pink peg podcast.
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It's the phrase we use for recording the results
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of a game play on the inside of the box cover.
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So we'll play a game and then after the game's open
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we write the winner and the scores,
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the players and all their scores and indicate the winner
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on the inside of the cover of the box of the game.
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I think this is a really fun tradition
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because it results in the sort of ongoing record
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of what the game is and how much people have played it.
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It's a fun little thing to do.
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Also for 99% of games the inside of the box cover
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is not like a treasured piece of a game
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so somebody who is maybe acquiring a second hand later
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usually won't have a big, won't have a huge problem
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with the idea that there are scores
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and results written inside of the game box.
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So when I'm doing a teach,
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when I'm teaching people a game for the first time,
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one, if I can have a player aid available I will
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something that they can follow along with.
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Two, I give people stuff first.
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Generally we'll set up the game before I start doing the teach
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and while I'm setting up the game I will actively ask people
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to do things.
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Here, please shuffle these cards, deal these out.
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Here you do this, you do this.
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And I'll give people their pieces,
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whatever their player components are.
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I think it's nice to give people something to handle
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while you're doing the teach,
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something they can explore or fiddle with
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because a lot of people, it's easier to pay attention
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if you have a sort of distractor.
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So that's the setup that's getting it ready.
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Then the next thing that I'll do is I introduce the theme.
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Who are we?
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What are we doing?
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For me, theme helps you enjoy a game
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because you can understand a story that's being told
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by the play of it, but it also helps you teach a game
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because if the way that a game works makes thematic sense,
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you'll remember it better.
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Even if it doesn't make thematic sense
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but it makes narrative sense, you could remember it better.
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I've mentioned many times on this podcast,
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the classic rules exceptions that
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Vlaada Chvátil puts in your rule books
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that are narratively explained
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and thus they stick in your head.
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For example, the narrative explanation
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that dragons are messy so they can't eat
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in the cafeteria in dungeon lords, for example,
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or what happens to an animal that ages out
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in the market in dungeon pets.
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These are narratively explained
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and they provide rules that you then remember
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through that explanation.
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I'm reminded of, I've read about a game called
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Wilmot's Warehouse which is a shared,
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it's a cooperative memory game
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in which you're trying to put items into a warehouse
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and then remember where those items are
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when you are going to get things.
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And the way that you play or the part
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that makes the game interesting is that
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when you're putting things in the warehouse,
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you're supposed to use kind of a narrative explanation
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to decide where you're putting them and when.
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And it seems like for a lot of people
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that narrative explanation ends up functioning
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really well to hold the game together.
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So I'm interested in this idea of narrative
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as a teaching tool and that's why I introduced
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the setting or the theme first.
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Following that up and in the in person thing,
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I then I use how to win as the next step.
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What are you trying to do in order to accomplish
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the goal of winning the game?
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I think if you don't sort of set people up with that,
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then often the teaching moment feels a little awkward
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because you haven't really explained how to win.
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Now with a lot of games, how to win
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really ends up just being earned the most points,
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which isn't that helpful because earned the most points
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isn't a very functional or useful way
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to engage with the question of how to win.
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Win earned the most points, well how do you earn the most points?
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Okay, well now we've reached some complexity.
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Nonetheless, you could say earn the most points
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by building houses, controlling land,
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and gathering resources.
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There you can kind of provide the paths
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by which people earn the most points.
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Another example of that would be like with revive,
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you might say earn the most points
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by building out your technology tree,
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accomplishing things related to your scoring goals
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and collecting the artifacts to multiply those scoring goals.
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That would be a way to explain how to win for revive.
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So after you've introduced this theme or setting
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and explain how to win, then you go into
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what you actually do in the game, how it works,
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and that varies game to game, what makes the most sense.
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And then generally you hit what our group calls
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the Aldrich line, named after our friend Brennan Aldrich,
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who when he teaches you a complex game,
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he usually gets to a point where it's,
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"well, I could keep explaining things
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"or we could just start playing and you can learn as we go."
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And generally the idea is there,
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the more complex the game is,
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the more stuff you're verbally and overtly going to leave out
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of the teaching moment.
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And instead, people will learn on the fly, you acknowledge,
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this is a learning game, I haven't told you everything,
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I'll tell you other things as they come up.
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But if I teach you everything,
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you're gonna lose stuff before we get to do it.
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So I think this is a really useful way
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to think about teaching in an online space.
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But the other experience I have as I think about this
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is the experience of learning an online game asynchronously.
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So the challenge of an asynchronous online game
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is that if you don't know the rules already,
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it's very hard to pick up the rules
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when you go to make your take your turns
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because the rules set is often very slippery
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until you've got it set in with narrative.
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That like when I learn a complex game,
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I will learn it and then play it
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and the playing of it
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cement the rules in my head to a degree.
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Now, if I wait a year to play it again,
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I probably lose a lot of that, but generally that's how it works.
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But when I play online, if it's a new game
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I've never played before, sometimes we just start playing
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and I don't really have time to absorb the rules.
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Other times I have to read the rules on my own,
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maybe I'll take the time to watch a video
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about how to play or whatever.
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But the challenge is I do all of that
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and then we start the game.
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And if I'm playing asynchronously, I make one move
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and then I don't make another,
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I mean, maybe I make two moves a day or one move
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and then I don't go again for 24 hours or whatever.
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And without having had the experience of the narrative
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setting in and the shared experience of the rules
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that first time, it's very hard to get those rules
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to settle in to my brain in future.
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Probably what I need to do for complex games
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that I wanna play online is watch a playthrough.
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I probably need to vicariously put myself
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in the situation of the players
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and watch them play a whole game of it
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because then I'll be able to understand
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what they were doing and why.
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And then when it's my turn, I can hold some of those ideas
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more strongly because I've seen them play out.
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That might have to be it.
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I know some people who just don't learn,
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they don't play online games until they play
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them in real life and I can understand that as well.
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So how does that connect to my asynchronous online teaching?
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Well, the first challenge is thinking about
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how to make the individual moments in the online teaching
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have that little bit of teaching reminder
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so that we're staying fresh.
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The idea that when we read an assignment
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we would then remember the previous assignments
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that we were offered is a little sketchy, right?
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We're not in person to share these explorations
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of the rules so maybe think about how to find
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that nuance a little more carefully.
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I think there's also the question of
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what kinds of engagement are interesting.
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Games where I have an amore elaborate turn,
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I think are easier to learn the rules from
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in the online space.
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For example, both revive and through the ages,
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have fairly elaborate online turns
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that you get to take without other people
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doing anything in between.
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The Vladimír Suchý games I think are pretty good
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for online play for the same reason
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that when you play underwater cities
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or when you play a Praga Caput Regni in those games,
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when you take your turn, you're sometimes
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at the relatively simple turn.
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But other times you're doing several things
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on your turn before you pass play.
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The more stuff you do, the longer moments
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of engagement you have to connect.
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I think by contrast something like innovation
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might be harder to learn because on some turns,
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very little happens.
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And so you have to kind of hold in your head
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a bunch of different things as you play.
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I have been playing Gaia Project and Age of Innovation
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a bit and those games are, I have done okay learning them.
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The thing is the way that I learned them
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is that I have played a lot of Terra Mystica online.
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And then having played a lot of Terra Mystica,
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I understand the basic process, but it's still,
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I played a lot of Gaia Project
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that I never got very good at it because I think,
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because I never really found the through line,
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the narrative through line that makes all the different
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pieces of what you're doing in that game come together for me.
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And I feel like the same thing will probably happen
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with Age of Innovation.
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One trick would probably be to play it online synchronously
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sometime when I have some time,
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find a synchronous game of it and have that going
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while I'm doing other things.
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And then once my turn I can take a turn,
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but I'm engaged with it for an hour or so
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as I play with other people.
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That seems like one key approach that I could take.
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So that does suggest for the mystery class,
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the online asynchronous mystery class,
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building activities where I'm asking people to engage
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in a sustained effort for a while.
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I want you to do this thing, it's gonna take an hour,
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here's what you're doing.
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Rather than something that they'll do piecemeal
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or in small parts over time,
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because that sustained engagement is probably where we get
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learning moments, hopefully learning moments
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without too much distraction from other things.
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This is often what makes in-class experiences work really well.
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It has sustained in-person, focused kinds of engagements.
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Well, I started out with this trying to talk
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about asynchronous online learning
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and I don't feel like I did that very much,
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but hopefully this was a thoughtful conversation
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about teaching and learning games.
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I would love to hear your thinking
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about how to best teach and learn games.
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Share your thoughts on that over on BoardGameGeek
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in Guild 3269.
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I would love to hear from you about that
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if you want to share your thoughts directly.
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You can email me, brendan@rattleboxgames.com
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or send me an BoardGameGeek message to Wombat929,
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which is my username over there.
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Thanks for joining me on my walk today.
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I hope your next walk is as pleasant as mine was.
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Bye-bye.
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(upbeat music)
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Brought to you by Rattlebox Games
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