The 7:1 rule for teaching new players feels totally backwards to me

I kept reading on here that you should have one teacher for every seven players at a board game table, and I finally tested it at a local meetup in Portland last weekend with a group of nine people trying out a heavy euro game. The rule assumes the teacher can keep everyone engaged, but what actually happened was the two experienced players got stuck answering the same questions over and over while the new folks checked out completely. We swapped to a 3:6 ratio, one veteran per pair of newcomers, and suddenly people were asking better questions and making their own decisions by the third round. I think the original number comes from convention demos where the teacher is a paid pro, not a regular player trying to run a game night. Does anyone else find small group ratios way more important than the teacher to student count? What's the biggest group you've successfully taught a complex game to?

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the_tessa25d ago

Oh yeah, I've seen this exact thing fall apart too. I finally stopped trying to teach more than three people at once, and it's night and day when everyone actually gets to ask their dumb questions without feeling like they're holding up the table. Small pairs just work better because the new players actually talk to each other and figure stuff out instead of waiting for the one loud voice to repeat the same rule for the fifth time.