Mara had been asking about Mage Knight for months, mostly because she’d watched me talk about it enough times that she wanted to see what the fuss was, and I should have known better than to say yes on a Thursday when we only had maybe three hours before she needed to head home. I did it anyway, because I love this game more than almost anything on my shelf and I wanted her to love it too, immediately, in one sitting, which is not how this game works for anyone.

I taught it wrong from the start, I think, front loading too much of the mana and combat system before she’d even moved a unit on the map, because in my head the rules all connect and I forgot that they don’t connect for someone hearing them for the first time. About forty minutes in she was still trying to figure out why she couldn’t attack a monster she could clearly see next to her, and I kept saying “just trust me, it’ll click,” which is the single most useless thing you can say to someone who is not yet clicking with anything.

We got through maybe two rounds before she looked at the clock and said she needed to go, and I could tell from her face it wasn’t really about the time. I felt genuinely bad the rest of that night, replaying the teach, realizing I’d basically done to her what the rulebook itself does to new players, dumped everything at once and called it teaching. Theo pointed out afterward, not unkindly, that I explain new games the way I want them explained to me, which is badly if I’m honest, all the exceptions up front before any of the fun parts.

I asked Mara a couple weeks later if she’d give it one more try, this time with me only teaching the bare minimum needed for one specific first encounter and nothing else, and she agreed, mostly I think because she’s a good friend and not because the first attempt had sold her on anything. It went better. Not great, she’s still not converted, but she made it through a full scenario without asking to stop, and she told me afterward the second version felt like a completely different game, which it basically was, just with worse teaching the first time. I’ve started asking myself before I teach anything now whether I’m explaining it for their benefit or mine, and the honest answer, more often than I’d like, is mine.