As a thought experiment with practical applications I have recently been thinking about the ways one organizes an activity for pre-literate humans. I have two who live with me and while they are both moving past that stage at an eternally surprising rate it will be awhile before they can read and understand even the most basic instruction manual. The particular aspect I've been wondering about today is how one might explain the rules of a board game (or role-playing game) to a child, or, more practically speaking, write down these rules in a way that an adult facilitating the game can easily absorb and then convey to the child.
I think there are a few questions that one needs to cover:
What's the point? How do we play? How do we know when the game is over and who wins?
Young kids are generally pretty impressionable. If you tell them "let's do this fun thing" and they don't have any real context for why they shouldn't do it... they will default to doing it. Adults aren't really so easily swayed... so the first thing you need to provide to the literate facilitator is reason to bother facilitating your game.
I've found that, when teaching my kids a new game, it is best to tell them what to do "now" but for adults it is important to provide a broader view. I've read the rules for a number of children's board games and come away with no clear understanding of how they work out in a practical sense. After muddling through the game using the rules as laid out and a few "wait, what do we do now?" moments, it makes sense... but it would be nice if my kids didn't have to see Daddy confused and appearing to make up new rules as things go along.
Take for example "Disney's Sleeping Beauty Pretty Pretty Princess".
If I were to write the rules for a parent I could start with: "This game challenges children's number recognition and counting skills while rewarding them with a chance to wear plastic jewelry. Players race to be the first to collect all of their colour of jewelry. The first player to have a complete set of jewelry while holding the crown and not holding the Maleficent token wins. Players take turns spinning the spinner to determine how many spaces to move their token around the board and performing the action indicated by the space they land on." followed by a chart of what action each space indicates. That tells me everything I need to know about how to play the game but it doesn't tell me how to teach a kid to play the game.
I could then write the rules from the perspective of the facilitator: "Have each player select a token and place it on their respective start square", "Explain that players will take turns moving their piece and collecting jewelry and that the first player to collect all their jewelry will win if they have the crown and do not have Maleficent.", "Choose a player to go first and an order of play", "On each turn ensure the current player spins the spinner, moves their token that number of spaces in a clockwise fashion and takes the appropriate action."
Admittedly, telling people what to do in this way is probably going to end up causing some new problems and a simple list of rules that can be referred to would still be valuable to resolve "disputes"... but just getting an adult to "read the rules out loud" isn't much use to a 3-5 year old... any more than it is when I try to do it with adults learning a new game.
It Doesn't Need to be Simple if it is Straightforward
Which brings me to the puzzle my brain hasn't solved completely yet.
If I, as an adult, can understand a game and prompt the players to take actions and make decisions... do they even need to understand their actions? Eventually they should understand why they are doing these things but it is far easier to come to understand by doing or reacting than it is to learn a list of rules.
For example in a Dungeons & Dragons style role-playing game there are an awful lot of things for a player to think about and for a child who can barely recognize all the letters on the page and sound out the easy words the complexities of building a character the traditional way isn't even a vague possibility... but if the game is designed from the beginning to be facilitated, a character can be built by the facilitator by asking the player what kind of character they want to pretend to be and then asking question like "would you like your character to be stronger than normal people?" or by asking the player to rank their features by priority. Perhaps, in place of xp, you give them poker chips that they can use to buy physical dice of a certain colour to represent their skill advancement. If you have combat, perhaps you take turns in the order players are sitting around the table to avoid the confusion of initiative. When a player wants to act, the facilitator should know what they have to roll. Ideally a character sheet would have only pictures and big clear numbers to make it easier for both players and facilitator to see and understand. Use monopoly money to track wealth and track possessions and equipment with doodles on index cards.
Anyway... just some stuff I've been thinking about.
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