If I want to get better at football I don’t ask the ball how to kick it. If I want to get better at chess I don’t ask the bishops and knights to give me advice.

Some games lend themselves to internal tutorialisation. Some games do not. A game like Portal, one brought up in discussions on tutorials a lot, benefits from having basic mechanics which are very simple, and therefore the complexity is built up not through introducing mechanics themselves but by changing how those mechanics interact with each other. A game like Crusader Kings, however, by necessity has complicated mechanics which only work when they’re all active and interacting with each other. It simply does not lend itself to starting off more simply, if you take out one mechanic the rest fall. And because of that I see nothing wrong with suggesting people watch someone else play for a little bit.