Alright, here we go, guys. Unfortunately, thanks to my computer restarting itself every time I tried to leave it processing or uploading overnight, and Darksbane working on some improvements to his site, we wound up later than usual this week. My sincere apologies.

Regardless, here we go! We've had several requests for a newbie episode so here's our first stab at it. We actually wound up with so much information that we're going to have to split this into multiple parts. This week we discuss player types, round structure and timing. Waiting for future release will be thoughts on deck construction, plot usage, and challenges. Let us know if you have some more ideas of things to cover so that we can have a solid audio intro for new players.

Also, for those of you who aren't newbs, fear not! Next week, we'll be back with a regular episode for your listening enjoyment.

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Episode 12 is not showing up in Itunes yet?

Ah crud. I've noticed that sometimes it's slow to update to iTunes.

Hm, I feel that if I was a new player, the episode would have confused me in a lot of places, or gave me wrong ideas about certain things. There were too many digressions in the middle of explaining one concept. And couple of explanations were kind of inaccurate or incomplete. Anyhow, for an educational episode, it needed a much tighter and more focused script. I probably would have started with a detailed explanation of Framework and Action player windows and the timing of cancel/saves, passives and responses, because I think that's usually the biggest difficulty for new players. Once you got that down, it's just going through the different phases with their respective framwork and player action windows.

But it'd be interesting to hear what an actual new player thought of the episode.

By the way, when my friends and I started playing, we also revealed a random plot card from our plot deck. I already suggested that we do that again for an evening as a fun variant, but hasn't happened yet.

Agreed, there were a few more things that I wanted to move around that were digressions from the topic we were on at the moment, though they might have worked later, but as I played with them in editing, it became difficult to decide where to actually cut them. One of the perils of essentially being several friends sitting in a room bs'ing is that no matter how hard we try, we wander in conversation and invariably one of us talks over another one when in the midst of logical cutting points.

Saturnine said:

Out of curiosity, how many of you would be using Valar in this scenario?

Kennon said:

Sounds like y'all need a conductor. Man.... one more reason I miss George "Mr. Conductor" Carlin.

Skowza said:

I would make it mandatory

I thought you guys did a decent job of highlighting some issues that beginners (and even experienced players) have, and then offering some solutions. It was clear from the content that you spent a bit of time preparing, trying to figure out what to cover.

In general though, I think the podcast itself was somewhat boring, and there was WAY too much information packed into this hour-long episode. It was a bit like reading the instructional booklet for my new LCD TV...no matter how excited I am about the TV, I'm just not enthusiastic about spending an hour accessing densely packed informational material for something that should be *fun* and intuitive.

Most of the content you discussed would have been fantastic in shorter bursts, and I think that going forward, rather than providing information all at once like this, you should strongly consider spacing info out over the course of many episodes. For example, a new segment on "rules and strategy" that spent ~5 minutes discussing a particular issue each week: how the shadows mechanic works, the rules and strategies for setup, and the response action framework would all be great issues to bring up in an episode...but discussing them all in the same episode is overwhelming.

Not to belabor the issue, but another problem is that most of the issues you discussed are not questions that new players likely have on their minds every time they play. As such, I think it would be MUCH more helpful to provide a reference sheet (like the FAQ but easier to understand and more comprehensive in how it packages related issues into one answer) than a podcast episode, which is not searchable or easy to pull info from.

In short, I think the content was good, but the podcast format didn't really work for what you wanted to do. Even if you got the information across, it wasn't interesting enough for anyone but AGOT wonks to listen to in its entirety, and if I were a new player, I would feel more overwhelmed than enlightened. (You guys didn't even seem to enjoy making the episode as much as you normally do.) Don't mean to be a downer, but just thought I'd offer some heartfelt feedback.

Wow, I had thought I was playing this game correctly until listening to this podcast. Always forgot to draw up to seven cards after setup. D'oh! Great episode guys, and thanks for highlighting the stealth/ambush issue, I wouldn't have caught that.

No need to worry about being a downer, Twn2dn. It was obvious that you're giving thoughtful constructive criticism. I can understand how this could be seen as a pretty dry episode. Heck, I wasn't even enthused about discussing timing in that kind of detail. I'm much more excited about taking some time to discuss plot choices and the give and take of the challenge phase. That's actually a really great idea to just do a 5 minutes rules quirk segment. I'll have to see if I can get the other guys on board with that.

You mentioned though, that you didn't think our questions were all ones that new players might have. Can you think of some that we missed so that we could tag them to use in the future (Possibly in that new segment)?

Also, has anyone caught the Easter Egg at the end? Something about our entirely accidental delivery makes that probably the funniest thing that we've said in any of our recording sessions.

I share a lot of Twn2dn's sentiment. I definitely applaud you guys for doing this, but shorter, specific segments would probably be more effective and easier to comprehend. I'm not saying players can't learn anything from this podcast, but it's difficult to follow and take in so much information at once. Also, being 100% certain about a topic of rules discussion before recording is a good idea. You don't really want to whipping up the FAQ or having to correct false statements. I'd go as far as restarting a segment if confusion develops or an incorrect statement is made (maybe just a minor edit if the statement was very minor and brief). While not official, a recording of rules explanation and clarification should be accurate and authentic. Unfortunately, unless you're really really into knowing everything there is about rules, doing this is probably going to be more work than fun; even then, it's still a laborious activity. ~Unless you're a cyborg like ktom.

The difficulty is actually not so much that there's too much content to cover (there indeed quite a bit), but figuring out how to best isolate the game's mechanics when explaining them and then weave them back together to with the rest of the game. For example, Moribund is a common topic of confusion and misunderstanding. Most experienced players know what it is. They'll even know how it happens, but many players (unknowingly) are confused as to when it happens. And that is where the notion of complexity arises when explaining the game - timing.

There's so much interaction between game rules and mechanics that one of the best things any player can do is to learn the Action Window in Detail section of the FAQ. It's literally the Swiss Army knife of AGoT. Unfortunately, very few players ever realize this and seldom is it ever explained by or recommended to learn by more experienced players, but that's probably because most (even experienced) players are daunted by it (or are too lazy to discuss it in detail ). FFG might have not done the best job in presenting it, but it does work.

So I don't know if you guys are up to it, but an audio explanation of the Action Window could be very useful. However, don't make a recording on it unless you feel extremely comfortable about the Action Window itself! If you're not comfortable and certain how it works, simply recommend to your listeners that they should check it out and if they have any confusions about it to go to the Rules sub-forum and make a post, or contact FFG for clarification through the Contact link at the bottom of every FFG page.

Finally, as far as I can tell, there can be anywhere between two and an infinite amount of Action Windows in a single round. Most will definitely have much more than two, and very few will go to infinity

Here's an interesting idea mixture to try. Review Moribund as a concept and then play, not a whole game, but 2 or three rounds, and highlight each instance of Moribund... setting up examples that include things like:

Playing ALPhD with a character chosen for MIL claim.

Syrio being non-targetable for a kill response after his own Response is triggered.

Rhaegar being targeted for Retreat before his own Response is triggered.

Other replacement effects like the Drowned Disciple, Longclaw and Pyre of the False Gods.

Kennon said:

Kennon said:

The way the information is presented, it feels like you give equal weight to issues like "rules/strategies for setup" and framework actions. If I were a new player, I would listen to this and think "wow, there's so much to remember before I even begin the game!" Although all of these issues are important, many don't pop up right away. I think this is important for two reasons: (1) providing so much info all at once can be intimidating/overwhelming and confusing, and (2) combining everything into one episode makes it more difficult for the listener to "unpack" those lessons for later use. It's much easier to remember 1-2 "key" items from each episode than a slew of items all packaged together. Of course, there are plenty of reference documents/strategy guides that provide A TON of information in one place; the difference is that they work as encyclopedias where you look up a particular issue/question and find a solution. I don't think you can make radio/podcast work as a "reference document" in the same way, since the medium not searchable and the listener has to listen to a hole bunch of unrelated stuff before reaching the desired content.

In terms of application, what this means is that rather than focusing each episode on a target demographic (new player, advanced player, Targ player, etc.), you should include a bit for everyone. So a 5-min segment on basic rules/strategy might be followed by a 10-min discussion about what we learned from Spain's recent (HUGE) tournament (I was really hoping you guys would have interviewed one of the top-4 players), followed by 15-20 minutes on a particular combo or advanced strategy, etc. In other words, don't inundate any one group of people with info...provide a variety. That keeps it interesting for the listeners and you guys.

As for content on the "newb" questions, the Rules Thread is full of fantastic questions/examples...things I would have never realized I didn't even know the answer to. Ktom and others do an excellent job of explaining these issues, but nevertheless certain questions are often repeated. It wouldn't hurt to start there.

In terms of other content, I *really* wish you would consider interviewing more people. I don't mean just FFG...there were 70+ players in that recent Spanish tournament, right? Isn't that the biggest AGOT tournament ever? Aren't you at least a little bit interested why certain players played X deck/card, and/or how a particular match up unfolded? That is EXACTLY the type of interview I would love to hear...doesn't all have to be designers discussing theory, health, or directions of the game...getting views from our peers would be great!

Just listened to this one.... Like the previous posters, I want to say that I admire you guys for trying to make a newbie-oriented show, but I don't think the execution of this episode does much to help newbies. No offense meant, but I'd go so far as to say that I would actively discourage a newbie from listening to this if I had the opportunity. With the information overload and the occasional bashing of the FAQ/rules complexity in this episode, I would worry that a newbie would be intimidated possibly into giving up on the game.

I agree with a lot of what FATMOUSE and Twn2dn wrote. Like Twn2dn said, it's not necessary to know all of the rules to play AGoT. So going over a huge chunk of the rules detached from the context of specific games might not be the best approach. The FAQ is actually a pretty good document (personally, I wish FFG would present it as a complete rules reference instead of an FAQ, but that aside...) and can explain pretty much any situation that comes up in a game. The rules themselves are also pretty logical (if not as streamlined as e.g. the rules of Magic). When I first started playing the game, I found the content of the FAQ dauntingly complex and often arbitrary, but, after playing the game for a while and coming across situations where I would wonder "Which player gets to respond first?" or "do these two cards work the way I want them to?", I started to appreciate the rules structure outlined in the FAQ. Once you know all of the different effects that have to be accommodated, the rules begin to make sense as the most/simple way of allowing for saves/cancels/response, etc.

So...my advice would be to focus more on specific game play situations (like Luke suggested, but I think it's fine to concoct the situations you want rather than to try to catch them as they come up in a real game). Also, and it seems like Kennon is already thinking about this as well, I think discussing the fundamentals of AGoT strategy is more important for newbies than the details of the turn/timing structure. There is some interaction between strategy and the rules, but I think it's better to present things like Stealth vs. Ambush in the context of the strategy of choosing attackers/defenders rather than during a rundown of the entire turn structure.

So I'd recommend coming up with interesting play decisions to discuss (like which challenges to make or which plot to choose for a particular board state) or starting up another game (like in Episode 11) and then zeroing in to discuss all of the decisions being made (and relevant rules interactions) at key points.

schrecklich said:

In case I wasn't clear, I was actually suggesting a "choreographed" game (I think "worked" is the Pro Wrestling jargon) to present the given rules/strategy with a game context. I noticed that someone asked on the Rules Forum about triggering an Icy Catapult from the discard pile. That being a perfect situation to explain Moribund...

FATMOUSE said:

Wait, I'm confused, why is there a "~" in front of that sentence?

goshdarnstud said:

I believe the "~" represents sarcasm on these forums.

ASoIaFfan said:

When the machine's revolution comes, gds....

I believe I am the target audience for this podcast. As I've said before, I've never played a non-poker deck card game, but do have some gaming experience. I have read the directionsthe FAQs a number of time. I think I have a very basic idea of the game (I do know you choose what Plot card to play.), but am overwhelmed by how to play it. Here are my thoughts:

I don't know why 12 minutes were spent on defining players by aligning them with characters in the books. If this is even a useful concept it's really for a general discussion, not for a newbie instruction podcast. (I also don't know why two minutes where spent on a discussion of how gays are attracted to one of you.)

I think, for a newbie tutorial, you should have focused only on cards in the core set. There was a discussion of a specific Agenda card, but no details on Agenda cards in general,again there are no Agenda cards in the core set.
I liked very much the strategy tip of getting as many cards onto the table during the Setup phase. I think however that Plot cards should have been discussed first since your choice the Plot card may influence your decision of what cards to lay down in the Setup phase.

I got lost at 30:00 minutes. There's a discussion of the Plot cards which have, "When revealed." But I thought we were still in the Setup phaseif I'm right then the "When revealed" wouldn't take place. Right?
You started to the terms "Framework Action""Players Action" before you defined them. It appears that this tutorial is aimed at advanced newbies, which luckily I am.

The Moribund discussion was confusing, but I think that's the nature of the product. At this point in the podcast, around 38:00 minutes, it sounded like you guys were struggling to explain the whole Response function.

At 59:00 someone said the object of the game is to get 15 power on your House card. I thought it's a total of 15 power from the House cardcharacter cards.

I really appreciate your starting this series. I realize how difficult this is, especially "on the radio." A mandatory listen for all instructors is to get ahold of the brilliant Bob Newhart's baseball routine. He plays a game publisher talking on the phone to Abner Doubleday who is trying to explain the game of baseball to him. I think it brings out the difficulty of what you are attempting.