Spent 3 hours setting up a game only to realize the instructions were wrong

I finally got my hands on a copy of War of the Whispers, a game a buddy recommended. I spent a solid 3 hours unboxing, sorting tokens, and reading the rulebook before I realized page 12 had the turn order completely backwards. Had to re-read every scenario from scratch, and my group was already over for game night. Anyone else run into a rulebook that straight up lied to you?

3 comments

3 Comments

markh851mo ago

Man did you check the errata PDF BEFORE you started? Because I learned that lesson the hard way with a different game and now my friends call me "The Guy Who Reads Rulebooks Out Loud At Parties.

williams.sage1mo ago

Buddy of mine did that exact thing with a D&D campaign he was running. Showed up with the books all marked up and sticky notes everywhere. Spent like 2 hours at session zero explaining the changes before we even made characters. Three people dropped out before we started.

corablack1mo ago

Had a GM do that to me once. He spent so long explaining his homebrew rules that we forgot why we were even there. The trick is to just hand people a cheat sheet with the big changes and wing the rest at the table... nobody needs to hear every nitpicky detail up front. Marking up the books is fine, but a two hour lecture before dice even hit the table? That's a guaranteed campaign killer. Better to just say "hey, I tweaked a few things, you'll figure it out as we go" and let them discover it naturally. Session zero should be about characters and world building, not a rules exam.