It's pretty odd to make a tabletop game these days that people can't have and can only play. This topic is for a thread of methods and meta-techniques for introducing a player to your game in a way that does not require any kind of permanent record. Ie, talking and teaching.

Any one may contribute!

One analogy I've been considering is to take web-games as a model. On a web game, the game is not "ownable". It is controlled and hosted by the developer, and only played by the player. If there are no rules or tutorial provided, then the game itself will not serve as instruction, but can be a model of behavioural cause and effect. Experiment. Push buttons and pull levers. See what happens. Building that kind of asymmetric (player/GM? player/game?) experimentation into a tabletop game may be an option.

To clarify, this jam is somewhat unlike the games like Mao or King's Cup or similar, where one is not allowed to be told the rules, and must infer the game's rules from observing play. Unwritten games are intended to be teachable.

Talking and teaching the rules of play (in a non-permanent way) is fine. However, recording the rules in video, audio or text embeds the ephemeral into concrete. Don't do that.