First let my say both my dad and step dad are the complete opposite. (I'm teaching my dad SC and my step dad wants to play but Is currently working on inventing a new branch of math to prove his Philosophical theory so is a little busy) so take anything I say knowing I have no experience.
Step one: Bust his thing about faster clicking. Find as many reps as you can with the lower apm player winning. Show him the BW chart and tell him about how the lower APM player wins and what APM actually is (Clicking/typing speed)
Step two: Bust his thing about no strategical depth. Get a bunch of VODs/reps with Really amazing tactics and show him the parts that were really BIG and point them out and explain what happened. DONT show him a game that dosen't appear great unless you get SC.
Step three: Show him a Day9 video just to bust his theroy about Depth a bit more.
a high level TvT ending with really intelligent battlecruiser play on a 4 player map. or a good macro based TvP on tau cross. both look a lot like chess and you can explain the army movements as both avoid each other then turn back to gain position.
Chess and starcraft I'm doing a little comparison between starcraft and chess here. Further down you will find a summary table explaining some of the most important differences and similarities. I've also included my suggestions for explaining starcraft to a chessplayer who lacks a background playing RTS games in the spoilers.
For starters, if you are going to appeal to his chess-liking side I suggest you go with a TvT with a clear and well executed gameplan. For example Fantasy vs Mind in the Incruit OSL 2008:
01:00 - 02:00 The first part of the game is forced, both players need to produce as many mining units as possible.
02:10 - 04:00 Players needs to build a Barracks and a Factory, without these buildings a player cannot produce good attacking units.
02:50 Mind is deviating from the normal opening game by prioritizing getting early gas. This will enable him to get out a few more Tank-units in beginning and gain a temporary spatial advantage at the cost of producing fewer units later on.
04:30 - 05:30 Fantasy is getting an expansion, he will produce fewer attacking units while this expansion is being built and therefore need to defend. If he succeeds in securing the expansion, he will be able to produce double the amount of units.
In the meantime Mind is delaying his own expansion further in favour of another building. With the Starport Mind will build the Wraith. This unit will consolidate his spatial advantage.
06:00 - 07:30 Mind has a superior army and goes out to secure a better position on the battlefield. Fantasy has to stay with his units at his expansion to defend because of Minds flying Wraith.
09:00 - 10:00 Fantasy has more units than Mind thanks to him building an earlier expansion. It is hard for him to utilizing his extra units though, they have a very limited space to manouver. Minds fewer units is much better placed.
10.30 - 11.00 Fantasy tries to break out to the center of the map but fails and looses more units than Mind. 11.00 - 11.30 Fantasy also does a flanking attack but his droppship was shooten down before it could do any damage.
11:30 - 15:00 Mind is winning. He continues to strengthen his contain to make sure Fantasy is completely blocked in.
15:00 Mind has built another expansion. Fantasy has also built a new expansion, but Minds is better since it contains gas, which is needed for producing more tanks. Soon Mind will produce more tanks than fantasy.
16:00 - 20:30 Fantasy use droopship flanking tactics to try and get back in the game. Minds contain holds.
20:30 Mind moves in with his superior army and destroys Fantasys expansion.
23:00 Soon Fantasy will get checkmated. He gives up, GG.
In both chess and starcraft this is the most essential one. The one with the most units are usually ahead (if your dad is a good chessplayer he probably has better understanding of this element than you do). Some units are more valuable than others and you want to kill off valuable enemy units while protecting your own.
+ The second element is activity (sometimes called controll/initiative). + Show Spoiler +
Units are better placed attacking the enemy miners (compare to King in chess) than in some far-away corner, some units are better suited for some operations than others. Controlling the map helps by getting better placed units and making expanding easier. Chess is also a game where build orders is very important.
How much time you have to consider different moves and strategies is very important elements in both chess and starcraft. Usually contenders seek to make their own play easy and their opponent difficult and time consuming. Chess being turn-based doesn't make much difference in this case. Be carefull with using this argument however, some chessplayers are really put off by cheesy strategies which aims to confuse or trick opponents. I do not know your dads standpoint on this issue.
Main differences:
- There exists a third element in starcraft, I call it information. + Show Spoiler +
Chess is a game of complete information, in other words, scouting is both impossible and unnecessary. I have two suggestions to deal with this: 1. There is chess-variants incorporating incomplete information. Get him to play a few games of dark chess for him to grasp the concept - http://play.chessvariants.org/erf/DarkChss.html 2. Begin by showing him games where incomplete information or scouting does not impact the outcome of the game (do not show him a buildorder ZvZ win).
In chess there is plenty of opportunities to loose units, but only one way of getting a stronger army yourself (you can "morph" a pawn into the superior queen). This resource gathering system will take a little explaining. You could try to simplify it by comparing getting an expansion base in starcraft to gaining an additional queen in chess.
In chess both players start out the same and has the same possibilities (except for white moving first). In starcraft there is three different races and starting locations, making the game potentially unbalanced from the start. Avoid this problem by showing him a mirror matchup, preferably on a symmetrical 2 or 4 player map.
Both of these are ways of making your overall army better in the long run at the cost of temporarily producing less units. No need for a detailed explanation here.
I would go with a micro intensive game commentated in english. A macro intensive game played by Flash or so might be too hard to understand unless you already know a lot about StarCraft.
Then again, if you are talking about comparing it to chess, you might want to show him a game that has a lot of "if he does this, I do this" to it. The game that comes to mind is the Casy vs July game on Reverse Temple.
but honestly... if I were a dad, and I see my kid playing a silly video game all day while I play a sophisiticated game and stood the test of time like chess, no amount of day[9] strategic commentary can change my mind about the game being stupid.
honestly, everygame CAN be strategical i mean, if you are really into a game, you can make any video game sound like as deep as you want. don't think starcraft is anything special just because it is to us.
i mean its not like your dad plays civilization4 and think its more strategical than starcraft lol...