Differentiated Learning in Board Game Design

A fantastic example for the general concept of differentiated learning has been applied to great success in the area of board game design, or at the very least, within the board gaming community (that is to say, people who love board games and consider it a major hobby).

A little bit of background. When I talk about board games I refer to games played on a table top: including dice and card games, things like chess or Monopoly, but to a greater extent I’m talking about designer board games. People who follow this hobby, this industry will know that any given year may see literally a thousand new board games released, with varying different genres and themes. It can range from a dexterity game about stacking cubes on tope of each other, to a complex strategy game about rebuilding the city of Lisboa among institutional and political complexities after the 1755 earthquake.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/161533/lisboa

One thing every board gamer (and of course, board game designer) knows is that the first thing you need to do, before you can start playing is you need to learn the game. A game can have rules that could be learned in under a minute (something like Jenga!) or to take an example at the other end of the spectrum, it could take an hours (as is the case with Lisboa). There is an additional challenge for designers is that the their players (we can consider them students) have to learn the rules of the game on their own. There are no courses on the rules and winning strategies of “Lisboa”.

Except, there are.

Board game designers have been successfully using differentiated learning in their approach to teach their games. Here are a few examples. Let’s say you got invited to your friend’s house to play a new game called Forgotten Waters.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/302723/forgotten-waters

As explained before, if you want to play and have fun, first you have to learn the rules of the game. Luckily, you have a lot of options that you are free to choose from depending on what suits your learning style best.

You could:

- Get the game’s manual (or download it from the game’s website) and learn all the rules by reading them carefully and following along the examples demonstrated. https://media.plaidhatgames.com/old_images/games/forgotten-waters/rules.pdf

- You could, as suggested in the game’s box. Go to YouTube and watch a video explanation on how the game works and have all the rules explained to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xQEGXBJ9NM&t=10s

- If that’s not enough, you could also find the designers of the game playing an entire game on youtube. Watch it being played from start to finish and learn as it goes along. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gmb4Ah2_1A&t=1515s

- Instead of learning all the rules, if you trust that someone else in your group already knows the game, print a rules summary, and lear as you start playing.https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/207583/forgotten-waters-action-cover-planning-reference-p

- Alternatively, you don’t prepare anything, and your friend will teach you the game in person before you play.

These are all viable options. In many cases, these alternatives are created by the board gaming community and not by the designers, but and more the game designers have been supporting these initiatives or even creating them themselves (as is the case with Forgotten Waters).