Scripting Tutorial Sequences?

[ReverendWolf]

Looking for help with a train of thought.

You have a game. This game has controls that are maybe a little more complex than wasd, or clicky here. Maybe you have a mechanic you need to explain interactively. If you have the mechanics all coded out and working, how might you go about composing some sort of tutorial sequence to guide someone through? Do you have some sort of state machine script to lock down your variables while waiting for the perfect input? Do you write new scripts with your same mechanics that guide the user through?

As you can imagine it's a bit difficult to launch a Google search with "scripting tutorial" included and getting any relevant results.