Before You Start
Read these rules once through. You won’t immediately understand everything until you see it play. You won’t get all the rules right the first time. That’s fine; the rules will make more sense when you read them again after you play. The system of Heroes in the Storm is designed to be learned as an ongoing process. Each time you play you’ll get better, until everything is second nature.
You might be the only person in the game group that’s read the book. That’s fine, too, but then it’s on you to convey everything to the other players, so that’s a job that you’re taking on.
What the other players will need to do, though, is buy into the idea of the game. Tell them it’s a game about daring adventurers in a magical fantasy world city. Mention a few Touchstones that they’re familiar with (see the list below). If their eyes haven’t lit up yet, maybe this game isn’t going to click with them. That’s fine. You can always play a different game with that person some other time. You want to have full buy-in from your players.
Read through the Starting Situation again and get a good handle on the important factions involved, what they want, who runs them. Or, feel free to make up your own starting situation. Just enough to throw the group into an interesting circumstance right out of the gate. You don’t want everyone sitting there, excited to play, and then say, “So… what do you want to do first?” The starting situation keeps the momentum high at the beginning.
For more, see Starting the Game.