Every board game rulebook is awful [pdf](drive.google.com)
drive.google.com
Every board game rulebook is awful [pdf]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nkHWqYre866xihxN3MnHr5YFzY4gQWDT/view
295 comments
I kind of like Root's approach, just make three separate rulebooks. One quickstart guide, one "normal" rulebook, and one "law" type rulebook laying out everything in almost procedural style with clear and consistent definitions etc. Many games could benefit from that.
Most modern boardgames do something like that (although typically in a single book with multiple sections).
The standard seems to be to start with a setup/quick start guide that walks you through the initial setup and the in-order game loop.
Then have a reference section that goes through all of the specific mechanics (e.g., a deckbuilder might have "then play a card from your hand" in the quick start, and the reference section would go through the various cards available).
Then at the end is a FAQ, that is mostly just all of the rule lawyer stuff.
Modern games also tend to be better at not needing new players to refer to the rulebook as they used to. Nowadays, you almost always get some form of a cheat sheet card that explains the core game loop, and many rules will be encoded in some way on the game elements themselves.
Now that I think about it, technical writing classes should really take field trips to game stores. There is a lot of impressive that goes into communicating how to play that most people never notice.
The standard seems to be to start with a setup/quick start guide that walks you through the initial setup and the in-order game loop.
Then have a reference section that goes through all of the specific mechanics (e.g., a deckbuilder might have "then play a card from your hand" in the quick start, and the reference section would go through the various cards available).
Then at the end is a FAQ, that is mostly just all of the rule lawyer stuff.
Modern games also tend to be better at not needing new players to refer to the rulebook as they used to. Nowadays, you almost always get some form of a cheat sheet card that explains the core game loop, and many rules will be encoded in some way on the game elements themselves.
Now that I think about it, technical writing classes should really take field trips to game stores. There is a lot of impressive that goes into communicating how to play that most people never notice.
> Most modern boardgames do something like that (although typically in a single book with multiple sections).
As a member of a boardgame club having played to approximately a hundred of less-than-two-years-old games[1] over the past year and a half, I can assure you most boardgames don't, even modern ones.
[1] yes, there are that many games. A few years back there were approximately six hundreds new games being released in a year, for the French market alone (granted it's one of the most dynamic), and I heard it more than doubled after Covid so I don't know where we're at right now.
As a member of a boardgame club having played to approximately a hundred of less-than-two-years-old games[1] over the past year and a half, I can assure you most boardgames don't, even modern ones.
[1] yes, there are that many games. A few years back there were approximately six hundreds new games being released in a year, for the French market alone (granted it's one of the most dynamic), and I heard it more than doubled after Covid so I don't know where we're at right now.
> six hundreds new games being released in a year
But many are just variations of a gameplay: Splendor and Century are the same thing (one of some limited actions per turn, most things visible, you buy something to generate resources to buy points). Most cooperative game too: it's either unlock like (escape room) or forbidden island (some objectives and a way to increase the pressure on players).
But many are just variations of a gameplay: Splendor and Century are the same thing (one of some limited actions per turn, most things visible, you buy something to generate resources to buy points). Most cooperative game too: it's either unlock like (escape room) or forbidden island (some objectives and a way to increase the pressure on players).
> Modern games also tend to be better at not needing new players to refer to the rulebook as they used to
I wonder if those new players have thousands of sessions of play under their belt or if they are truly new players or with only a few games of experience.
I don't listen much to the explanation of a new game because there are usually too many rules to remember, they resemble parts of some other games (like learning Python when you know Ruby) and I ask questions when I'm playing and (sorry if somebody feels bad about this:) these are not chess or go or backgammon, I'm not expected to study to become good and play thousands of games of them, they are all casual games to me.
All I need to have a decent first game and not score last is identifying a way to score points and play along that line. If I play that game again I will do better (maybe.) If I don't play it anymore it doesn't matter if I invested my attention into its rules.
I wonder if those new players have thousands of sessions of play under their belt or if they are truly new players or with only a few games of experience.
I don't listen much to the explanation of a new game because there are usually too many rules to remember, they resemble parts of some other games (like learning Python when you know Ruby) and I ask questions when I'm playing and (sorry if somebody feels bad about this:) these are not chess or go or backgammon, I'm not expected to study to become good and play thousands of games of them, they are all casual games to me.
All I need to have a decent first game and not score last is identifying a way to score points and play along that line. If I play that game again I will do better (maybe.) If I don't play it anymore it doesn't matter if I invested my attention into its rules.
One book to decide whether to play, one book for everyone and one book for "that nerdy guy anyone will ask during game"
Good idea
Good idea
You sell 3x as many books that way.
I bought two of the Fate books (first the "toolkit" book, then the "core system" book) not fully understanding the differences.
I bought two of the Fate books (first the "toolkit" book, then the "core system" book) not fully understanding the differences.
That's not really relevant to board games, though. Rules all free for essentially every board game.
The Fate books (at least several of them) are also free to download, with some Creative Commons license or similar, so you can read the rules without having to buy anything if you do not want to.
"...and one book to rule them all"
"...and in the darkness bind them"
Please. Ring-bind them.
It's the only way that they'll lay flat when open
I first read that rhyme 50 years ago and I have never spotted that before. Well played, sir
The latest edition even comes with token ring wraiths.
One war-game I played came with two rule books, which was incredibly helpful for learning to play - each player could read his own copy.
But single-page "QuickStart" rules for each player (which later serve as a reference) and a main rulebook can work well, also.
The problem with this is it can result in a bunch of "special cases" not being known about until later; IIRC we had this problem with Agricola and it wasn't until the fourth or fifth play through that we didn't identify a rule we had been mistaken about during play. That game's especially bad since it has so many possible interactions that could be A then B or B then A.
But single-page "QuickStart" rules for each player (which later serve as a reference) and a main rulebook can work well, also.
The problem with this is it can result in a bunch of "special cases" not being known about until later; IIRC we had this problem with Agricola and it wasn't until the fourth or fifth play through that we didn't identify a rule we had been mistaken about during play. That game's especially bad since it has so many possible interactions that could be A then B or B then A.
If you have fun isn't that the point. Ideally games should be a here are the simplified rules so you can have fun fast. Then here are the full rules so you can play a much more complex and fun game. Of course pulling that off is hard.
Ultimately the fun of a heavy board game comes in having interesting decisions to make and executing your strategy.
So the nuances can really matter. Even if you get the rules right, you don’t realise the importances of something until you play once or twice.
So the nuances can really matter. Even if you get the rules right, you don’t realise the importances of something until you play once or twice.
It's iterative.
You're not going to learn a full complex ruleset in one sitting.Having a one page quick start of the game structure, allows you to get a feel for it before coming back for a deep dive.
Your brain has a foundation to build on when you read the ful complex rules - it wont feel like your brain is maxing out at 100%.
You're not going to learn a full complex ruleset in one sitting.Having a one page quick start of the game structure, allows you to get a feel for it before coming back for a deep dive.
Your brain has a foundation to build on when you read the ful complex rules - it wont feel like your brain is maxing out at 100%.
This is addressed in TFA. In many cases, attempts to create a simplified version of a game just teach bad habits; strategies that work in the simplified game might be not just suboptimal when the full set of options is available, but actively counterproductive.
But I dare say many fans of "heavier" games - especially ones with more of a simulationist bent - would disagree that having fun is sufficient.
But I dare say many fans of "heavier" games - especially ones with more of a simulationist bent - would disagree that having fun is sufficient.
Agricola is pretty old. Many of the older euros that were translated to English are shocking. And the way information is conveyed is noticeably worse than a good modern euro.
The original Agricola rulebook is almost completely unusable and the only way to learn how to play back in the day was someone who already knew how to play teaching you - I presume in an unbroken oral tradition all the way back to Uwe Rosenberg.
More recent Agricola rule books are much better.
More recent Agricola rule books are much better.
Agreed, we tried to learn how to play from the book, and then got an existing player to help
In a typical wargame special case rules are numerous, but mostly expected and conforming to familiar design patterns (e.g. entering a map hexagon containing something special with a unit, depending on unit type and state, is going to cost some extra point of movement or end the move completely).
So they and can be looked up when needed (e.g. what units can move enough to cross this river this turn?) and promptly forgotten.
It is usually enough to study wargame rulebooks just enough to know general procedures and trust the simulation to be unsurprisingly realistic.
I have not encountered a wargame that shipped with two rulebooks in the box, but often the latest rulebook PDF is available as a free download, so when playing a large wargame we often have printed one copy for each player, or at least almost that many. It is always good to have a rulebook within reach.
It was rare, but appreciated. The full-color bound rulebook was almost always better than a PDF printout (though rarely the PDF would be a newer version).
What was the rule you didn't know about?
This is similar to the four types of software documentation: https://docs.divio.com/documentation-system/
I'm a little less than impressed by the presentation here. The idea that Divio is describing here is the Diataxis framework (https://diataxis.fr/), which "is the work of" (https://diataxis.fr/colophon/) Daniele Procida (https://vurt.eu/). Who, incidentally, is also giving the PyCon talk in the video on the page you linked (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4vKPhjcMZg). But I don't see anything resembling attribution for the ideas. They aren't just common industry knowledge or "received wisdom". (And the "quote" from David Laing at the top isn't really accomplishing anything, either.)
I’m not that impressed with Diataxis, considering it is basically describing the approach of Django project’s docs—which (both docs and the aporoach) predate Diataxis by many years—without giving any credit that I know of.
Jacob Kaplan-Moss described[0] the approach in 2009 (he omitted the How To guides, but they are in fact part of Django docs for as long as the framework is widely used). If there was a person to credit for this, that would be him.
[0] https://jacobian.org/2009/nov/10/what-to-write/
Jacob Kaplan-Moss described[0] the approach in 2009 (he omitted the How To guides, but they are in fact part of Django docs for as long as the framework is widely used). If there was a person to credit for this, that would be him.
[0] https://jacobian.org/2009/nov/10/what-to-write/
> I’m not that impressed with Diataxis, considering it is basically describing the approach of Django project’s docs
I worked on Django documentation and Diátaxis at the same time, so naturally you will see a lot of the same patterns.
I worked on Django documentation and Diátaxis at the same time, so naturally you will see a lot of the same patterns.
I don't think this is quite the same idea, and it isn't anywhere near as deeply elaborated, nor given a theoretical basis. Of course no concept on this scale just pops out of the ether fully formed - as I noted elsewhere, the dichotomy (tetrachotomy?) described by the Diataxis model bears a striking similarity to that in Kalb's model of experimental learning. But that's just it - Diataxis could claim that much more strongly as an ancestor than Kaplan-Moss' approach, which is simply proposing that multiple forms of documentation exist and should co-exist to complement each other, without proposing why or how.
Although this actually gets at a frustration I had with Johnson's essay. There's a section that presents research and examines the VSK model and Kalb's model, and in both cases finds: a) they're wrong, in the sense that they hypothesize different kinds of learners that don't exist; and b) they're useful, in the sense that they describe different kinds of stimuli that should exist in a learning environment. Not because they serve the needs of different students, but because they serve the needs to students at different times or in different conditions.
But instead of applying those lessons, Johnson basically uses the findings about VSK to dismiss critics, and spends dozens of pages re-deriving an approximation of Diataxis theory which would have flowed directly from mapping the Kalb model onto forms of technical writing (which, while not quite the same thing as "documentation", is good enough to get to the right conclusions).
It would omit what Johnson calls "lesson plans", but these seem to be basically just the source code for tutorials. And it would omit "textbooks", but I think a lot of these are bad anyway, for many of the same reasons that board game rulebooks are.
Although this actually gets at a frustration I had with Johnson's essay. There's a section that presents research and examines the VSK model and Kalb's model, and in both cases finds: a) they're wrong, in the sense that they hypothesize different kinds of learners that don't exist; and b) they're useful, in the sense that they describe different kinds of stimuli that should exist in a learning environment. Not because they serve the needs of different students, but because they serve the needs to students at different times or in different conditions.
But instead of applying those lessons, Johnson basically uses the findings about VSK to dismiss critics, and spends dozens of pages re-deriving an approximation of Diataxis theory which would have flowed directly from mapping the Kalb model onto forms of technical writing (which, while not quite the same thing as "documentation", is good enough to get to the right conclusions).
It would omit what Johnson calls "lesson plans", but these seem to be basically just the source code for tutorials. And it would omit "textbooks", but I think a lot of these are bad anyway, for many of the same reasons that board game rulebooks are.
My understanding is that it is Procida’s work at Divio that was then later spun out into Diataxis, with Divio permission.
Source: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/problems-with-the-4doc-mode...
Source: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/problems-with-the-4doc-mode...
Thanks. I already had "something about Diataxis" somewhere on my blog agenda before the HN post, and between this and the rest of the comments and the article I feel like I have a lot more material now.
There is no problem with Divio's site, see https://diataxis.fr/colophon/#origins-and-development. I started work on these ideas while still at Divio.
Sounds good, but I'm stuck with how to apply that to my current documentation. I need a how-to right now and all I get is an explanation.
> I need a how-to right now and all I get is an explanation.
This isn't a reasonable expectation. Your current state of documentation may be very different from some-other-software's current state of documentation. There may (or may not) be commonalities across those states, but assuming the most conservative situation leaves you with no commonality and the author's only option is to write the explanation for you. From there, you have to think about what transformations you need to apply to your current state to get it to the desired state.
Contrast this with game rulebooks. There is a clear commonality: situations where none of the players know any of the rules. Therefore, the rulebook can easily be written assuming no knowledge of the current rules of the game. Players that know the rules of the game can either a) go make everyone coffee and avoid polluting the learning phase with information that stretches the patience of the folks reading the rulebook; or b) claim to the players that don't know the rules that the rulebook is useless and they can do a much better job explaining all the nuances much better than the person that designed the game.
This isn't a reasonable expectation. Your current state of documentation may be very different from some-other-software's current state of documentation. There may (or may not) be commonalities across those states, but assuming the most conservative situation leaves you with no commonality and the author's only option is to write the explanation for you. From there, you have to think about what transformations you need to apply to your current state to get it to the desired state.
Contrast this with game rulebooks. There is a clear commonality: situations where none of the players know any of the rules. Therefore, the rulebook can easily be written assuming no knowledge of the current rules of the game. Players that know the rules of the game can either a) go make everyone coffee and avoid polluting the learning phase with information that stretches the patience of the folks reading the rulebook; or b) claim to the players that don't know the rules that the rulebook is useless and they can do a much better job explaining all the nuances much better than the person that designed the game.
Did you not read the link? The reference should be obvious. I'm giving the link too much credit calling it 'explanation' but it isn't even an example of what it advocates in any case.
It drives me crazy personally, I think Arcs abandoned this for good reason. Root has a major rules sprawl issue IMO. Many rules are spread throughout the cards, the "Learning to Play" guide, the "Law of Root", the player mats, etc. I don't actually think you can really learn the game unless you have the board and player mats right in front of you. Wehrle's predilection for thematic names with clearer/plainer synonyms I think makes this hard as well.
People who praise the game by saying "the board teaches you how to play" are technically correct, but I think this glosses over how difficult it is to internalize turn structure before sitting down to play the game.
That being said, it's not the worst game I've ever had to learn. That dubious distinction probably belongs to Wehrle's John Company (scowling at you "Events In India" rules).
People who praise the game by saying "the board teaches you how to play" are technically correct, but I think this glosses over how difficult it is to internalize turn structure before sitting down to play the game.
That being said, it's not the worst game I've ever had to learn. That dubious distinction probably belongs to Wehrle's John Company (scowling at you "Events In India" rules).
> Root has a major rules sprawl issue IMO. Many rules are spread throughout the cards, the "Learning to Play" guide, the "Law of Root", the player mats, etc.
Every rule AFAIK is in the Law of Root. So just refer to that. Once you've played once you should never look at the Learn to Play again. The player mats are player aids to remind you of the rules. The fact that rules are duplicated there is a plus, not a minus.
Every rule AFAIK is in the Law of Root. So just refer to that. Once you've played once you should never look at the Learn to Play again. The player mats are player aids to remind you of the rules. The fact that rules are duplicated there is a plus, not a minus.
OnePageRules [1], a free Warhammer alternative has something like that. They have a short quick version and an extended version.
[1]: https://www.onepagerules.com/
[1]: https://www.onepagerules.com/
Funny that you mention Root. I recently played this game for the first time with three other SWE friends (also their first times), and we all found the multiple sources of truth, each seeming to make the assumption that you have already read the others and occasionally referring you to them, thoroughly baffling -- to the point where we started to make joking comparisons to the kind of software documentation that has an Overview, a Quick Start, a Tutorial, an Introduction, a Beginner's Guide, a How To page, a User's Guide, a Getting Started page, a Specification, a Reference Manual... Looking at you, Maven plugins.
Then again, maybe it was just that we were all a teensy bit drunk.
Then again, maybe it was just that we were all a teensy bit drunk.
Can you remember any examples of the rules questions that came up?
I'm afraid I can't. In very general terms, I just remember the feeling that I got several times was similar to that of discovering that something that I had thought was a scalar quantity was in fact a vector. Un-thought-of dimensions just seemed to keep popping up.
Our bafflement was probably enhanced by not noticing the "Learn to Play" booklet initially. Then each of us trying to read a separate booklet, and disagreeing with the others about how to proceed, etc.
Our bafflement was probably enhanced by not noticing the "Learn to Play" booklet initially. Then each of us trying to read a separate booklet, and disagreeing with the others about how to proceed, etc.
Non-games could also benefit from different books for different use cases.
I once bought some disk utility software because I had a bunch of files that had accidentally been deleted that I really needed to get back (they were not on backup yet because they were recently created) and was quite happy that in addition to the 200 page exhaustive manual there was also a small booklet whose cover said in big print something like "Read this first if you bought this because you are trying to recover a disk".
That booklet was placed so that it would be the first thing you would see when you opened the box and you'd have to remove it to get to the installation floppies.
I once bought some disk utility software because I had a bunch of files that had accidentally been deleted that I really needed to get back (they were not on backup yet because they were recently created) and was quite happy that in addition to the 200 page exhaustive manual there was also a small booklet whose cover said in big print something like "Read this first if you bought this because you are trying to recover a disk".
That booklet was placed so that it would be the first thing you would see when you opened the box and you'd have to remove it to get to the installation floppies.
This is essentially how we run DnD. Players handbooks, DM guide, and some quick reference cards for combat and actions.
Root’s is… ok until it isn’t with all the expansions and then you don’t know which book to grab.
You can find the latest version of "The Law of Root" on their site and it's update June 2023 with the latest expansion:
https://ledergames.com/pages/resources
https://ledergames.com/pages/resources
You always want to grab the Law.
I know that there used to be some oversights where things where missing from the Law (like how to distinguish immediate effects from permanent effects on cards based on whether the box is paper or stone) but all of them have been resolved by now.
I know that there used to be some oversights where things where missing from the Law (like how to distinguish immediate effects from permanent effects on cards based on whether the box is paper or stone) but all of them have been resolved by now.
Catan brags about its Overview, Game Rules, and Almanac.
https://www.catan.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/catan_base...
https://www.catan.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/catan_base...
I remember the old Squad Leader series did this; a basic game and enormous amounts of "flourish" that could be added as you went.
And the "basic" game was pretty damned complex to start with.
And the "basic" game was pretty damned complex to start with.
And quickstart video tutorials please.
I recall my favorite part of opening up a new Nintendo game was poring over the manual. I didn't actually want it for instructions. It was the lore and the pictures and the dreams of what I could do with the game that made it fun.
Now, people are so media saturated that they're begging to remove as much content as possible in order to just get the clearest bit of information. I can't help we've lost something in society when we're not really enjoying or having fun unless we get immediate and overwhelming pleasure triggers.
Now, people are so media saturated that they're begging to remove as much content as possible in order to just get the clearest bit of information. I can't help we've lost something in society when we're not really enjoying or having fun unless we get immediate and overwhelming pleasure triggers.
What era were you doing this in? I love looking at these old manuals but every era was different.
I think the decline is kinda obvious… the manual is an expense, most people don’t want to read it, and it’s better to make the game explain its own story and gameplay. 1980s manuals had walkthroughs and explained the story because that kind of functionality was difficult to put in software. Today, games frequently have catalogs and encyclopedias you can access in-game, extensive cutscenes that give you the story, and tutorials for every important game mechanic.
It’s wild to look at the Final Fantasy II (you know, FF4) manual from 1991. It has half the story laid out with maps of towns and dungeons, followed by tables of the items and abilities in the game. Meanwhile, you look at Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from 2022. XC3 is absurdly complicated by comparison and has a much larger story, but it is playable without a manual because the game explains how to play as you play it. Somewhere in the middle, in the 2000s, you have the middle option—manuals that give you a list of characters in the story and tell you what all the buttons do.
Archive.org is great for these old manuals.
Worth mentioning is how games like Legend of Zelda were not anticipated to be beatable by ordinary players without help (help beyond what the manual provided). Phantasy Star 2 is in a similar category and I think you were expected to have the strategy guide.
Also worth mentioning is games like SimLife, where the manual is a proper software manual. It also has those weird cartoons about a family playing around with a gene splicer.
I think the decline is kinda obvious… the manual is an expense, most people don’t want to read it, and it’s better to make the game explain its own story and gameplay. 1980s manuals had walkthroughs and explained the story because that kind of functionality was difficult to put in software. Today, games frequently have catalogs and encyclopedias you can access in-game, extensive cutscenes that give you the story, and tutorials for every important game mechanic.
It’s wild to look at the Final Fantasy II (you know, FF4) manual from 1991. It has half the story laid out with maps of towns and dungeons, followed by tables of the items and abilities in the game. Meanwhile, you look at Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from 2022. XC3 is absurdly complicated by comparison and has a much larger story, but it is playable without a manual because the game explains how to play as you play it. Somewhere in the middle, in the 2000s, you have the middle option—manuals that give you a list of characters in the story and tell you what all the buttons do.
Archive.org is great for these old manuals.
Worth mentioning is how games like Legend of Zelda were not anticipated to be beatable by ordinary players without help (help beyond what the manual provided). Phantasy Star 2 is in a similar category and I think you were expected to have the strategy guide.
Also worth mentioning is games like SimLife, where the manual is a proper software manual. It also has those weird cartoons about a family playing around with a gene splicer.
Not OP, but I had a similar experience growing up in the '90s. StarCraft in '98 is probably the best example; the original manual is the only source with the backstory explaining how the humans in the game left earth in giant colony ships, got lost, and ended up colonizing the koprulu sector. Without that backstory, the game's story - and especially Brood War's story - are pretty hard to follow.
> Today, games frequently have catalogs and encyclopedias you can access in-game, extensive cutscenes that give you the story, and tutorials for every important game mechanic.
I was able to read the StarCraft manual on the bus to school, car rides, waiting rooms. If the info had been locked in the game itself, in some kind of sub-menu, I never would have read through it, because I was playing the game.
> Today, games frequently have catalogs and encyclopedias you can access in-game, extensive cutscenes that give you the story, and tutorials for every important game mechanic.
I was able to read the StarCraft manual on the bus to school, car rides, waiting rooms. If the info had been locked in the game itself, in some kind of sub-menu, I never would have read through it, because I was playing the game.
> I was able to read the StarCraft manual on the bus to school, car rides, waiting rooms. If the info had been locked in the game itself, in some kind of sub-menu, I never would have read through it, because I was playing the game.
Kind of a fun exercise to think how a modern game would be different. I haven’t played StarCraft II so this is just my take on a modern version of this.
Put some more info into cutscenes and really hammer the important stuff home (repeat it), taking advantage of the higher-quality cutscenes we can make these days. Other info goes in the encyclopedia. Make an encyclopedia mechanic—each entry for a unit is unlocked once you destroy a certain number of those units in-game. Unlocking the entry gives you some slight mechanical advantage, like the ability to see which upgrades the unit has or the exact HP values. Once or twice during the game, design a segment of gameplay that requires you to complete an encyclopedia entry in order to pass.
I’m sure the kids in the 2000s could just play games on the bus.
Kind of a fun exercise to think how a modern game would be different. I haven’t played StarCraft II so this is just my take on a modern version of this.
Put some more info into cutscenes and really hammer the important stuff home (repeat it), taking advantage of the higher-quality cutscenes we can make these days. Other info goes in the encyclopedia. Make an encyclopedia mechanic—each entry for a unit is unlocked once you destroy a certain number of those units in-game. Unlocking the entry gives you some slight mechanical advantage, like the ability to see which upgrades the unit has or the exact HP values. Once or twice during the game, design a segment of gameplay that requires you to complete an encyclopedia entry in order to pass.
I’m sure the kids in the 2000s could just play games on the bus.
> I’m sure the kids in the 2000s could just play games on the bus.
I certainly played gameboy in the car, until I inevitably got carsick and had to vomit somewhere. Pokemon vs nausea was a tough tradeoff.
I certainly played gameboy in the car, until I inevitably got carsick and had to vomit somewhere. Pokemon vs nausea was a tough tradeoff.
As much as I love StarCraft, they really could have explained this part of the story in a better way inside the game.
Manuals served another purpose in the 1980s: pirates rarely copied the manual with the game and so someone who bought the real game could learn how to play it while the pirates had a large collection of games that were no fun because without the manual they spent a lot of time trying different buttons just to see what worked - often they never did figure out the secret moves and so the game wasn't even winnable even though they could make progress and it seemed like they just needed to get better.
Also the manual contained the copy protection "proof of analog information" challenge answers.
Yep, LHX Attack Chopper had all the specs of the helicopters and weapon systems and would ask you random questions about those on start.
That was late 80's and early 90's
Late 80s early 90s. And yes I played all the games you mentioned when the games came out. I especially loved simlife, but it didn't age, at all.
Living rent-free in my head for 30 years:
"The family that transmogrifies together eats flies together!"
"The family that transmogrifies together eats flies together!"
Me too. And the Sega games too. It was something to read on the bus back home from the shop where you bought the game.
Also, the box art and booklet typically had much higher quality than the game. As a single example, look at Mega Man: https://retrovolve.com/an-illustrated-history-of-mega-man-bo...
And then there was a period in the 1990s when the FMV intro had higher quality graphics than the rest of the game.
These situations just don't exist these days. Although, admittedly, some people do buy game books and lore books because they're well illustrated (illuminated?)
Also, the box art and booklet typically had much higher quality than the game. As a single example, look at Mega Man: https://retrovolve.com/an-illustrated-history-of-mega-man-bo...
And then there was a period in the 1990s when the FMV intro had higher quality graphics than the rest of the game.
These situations just don't exist these days. Although, admittedly, some people do buy game books and lore books because they're well illustrated (illuminated?)
We've "lost something in society" because we don't want to be immersed in lore and pictures and dreams of what we could do while our friends sit patiently around the table waiting for us to look up if we can build a dairy barn in the farm flash step?
This is referencing a rule. I'm not sure I'm arguing against a clear reference, I like those. But I've certainly been at a table where we open the box, the host hasn't read the rules and frankly doesn't want to. I would hope you'd be excited about the board game, enjoy the book that comes with it, and then invite your friends over to play :-)
I've been that friend who was invited over to play with hosts that were really good and knew all the obscure rules. Not very fun when you discover your strategy fails because of some rule you didn't know of that they waited until you were committed to point it out.
> Not very fun when you discover your strategy fails because of some rule you didn't know of that they waited until you were committed to point it out.
At least half the time you get this feeling, they pointed it out with the rest of the rules and you just didn't notice.
At least half the time you get this feeling, they pointed it out with the rest of the rules and you just didn't notice.
Sometimes that is true, but often it is "oh, I forgot to tell you about that obscure rule". It always feels malicious when it happens to you though.
> Sometimes that is true, but often it is "oh, I forgot to tell you about that obscure rule".
Yes, that's also true. But it's still very common that the rule that trips you up was covered beforehand.
The fundamental problem here is that, at the time you're having the rules explained, you're not in a position to know what is or isn't important.
Yes, that's also true. But it's still very common that the rule that trips you up was covered beforehand.
The fundamental problem here is that, at the time you're having the rules explained, you're not in a position to know what is or isn't important.
Realistically with anything more than the most basic of games I feel as if it's reasonable to expect that the first 1-2 games are just practice because as you say, there will definitely be something that you've missed.
I think you may be romanticizing the past a bit here. I got a Nintendo when it came out too and I never did any of the things you've done. You may have just imagined everyone was behaving in the same way you were, when it's probably just as likely they behaved more like me.
I remember getting Ultima V as a kid and it came with this beautiful cloth map, some little game related physical artifacts, and a big lore book you could read to get the backstory and context. I read that thing cover to cover before embarking on that awesome game. It was really something special. They don’t make games like that anymore. Now it’s “Here, have a half-assed binary, delivered online, full of bugs (because we rushed it out without QA) that’s going to need a zero day patch just to work, and search the web if you want (fan-written) lore and immersion.”
Agreed. We're not romanticizing the past, it's now a business model that the first version of a boardgame is early-beta-qiality as a market exploration tactic, to see whether and how much $ should invest in fixing it.
One example I cited [0] was Asmodee Digital's implementation of Terraforming Mars released in 2018, 2 years already after the physical version of the boardgame became a global hit... yet the digital version had such basic bugs, it wasn't like they couldn't have easily found free (or paid) playtesters to document them. Stupid stuff liked forced delays/ cutscene animations; in particular I heard the mobile interface was unplayable. By all accounts it was several years before it was half-playable. But by then there wasn't much revenue potential left.
It's sad when this happens especially if you're trying to evangelize for a game to your non-hardcore friends, because a bad initial experience can kill the word-of-mouth (like they did with the digital version of Pandemic [1] (delisted in 2022), or things like Essential Phone 1.0, or 'Cyberpunk').
I'd much prefer if studios said "You can buy the beta version now for $14.99, or wait for the general release in 6-12 months for $Y".
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42294364
[1]: https://www.ign.com/articles/pandemic-digital-game-removed
One example I cited [0] was Asmodee Digital's implementation of Terraforming Mars released in 2018, 2 years already after the physical version of the boardgame became a global hit... yet the digital version had such basic bugs, it wasn't like they couldn't have easily found free (or paid) playtesters to document them. Stupid stuff liked forced delays/ cutscene animations; in particular I heard the mobile interface was unplayable. By all accounts it was several years before it was half-playable. But by then there wasn't much revenue potential left.
It's sad when this happens especially if you're trying to evangelize for a game to your non-hardcore friends, because a bad initial experience can kill the word-of-mouth (like they did with the digital version of Pandemic [1] (delisted in 2022), or things like Essential Phone 1.0, or 'Cyberpunk').
I'd much prefer if studios said "You can buy the beta version now for $14.99, or wait for the general release in 6-12 months for $Y".
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42294364
[1]: https://www.ign.com/articles/pandemic-digital-game-removed
I concede this may be true. First time I played D&D, I bought the rulebook and pored over it until I knew the rules and details -- and had a blast. Now, being a DM, no one reads the rules.
It's not the same. Instruction manuals were unambiguous. (SimLife's was really fun from what I remember.) You got one and it said everything it needed to.
D&D (and many other TTRPGs) have become too Judaic for my liking. You can read the Torah cover to cover, but like any religion you'll inevitably be told you don't actually "understand" it unless you also buy and read the Talmud and all these journals and attended these seminars. Literally "Rules Lawyering: The Game." All these add-ons revising canon and adding some crappy fanfic or art just feel like cheap cash grabs. It's just not good enough for what it costs.
Nintendo never sold you add-ons for the instruction manual expanded universe. Subscribing to Nintendo Power might net you cheat codes or a poster or something--bonus content--but they were never integral to understanding the games.
D&D (and many other TTRPGs) have become too Judaic for my liking. You can read the Torah cover to cover, but like any religion you'll inevitably be told you don't actually "understand" it unless you also buy and read the Talmud and all these journals and attended these seminars. Literally "Rules Lawyering: The Game." All these add-ons revising canon and adding some crappy fanfic or art just feel like cheap cash grabs. It's just not good enough for what it costs.
Nintendo never sold you add-ons for the instruction manual expanded universe. Subscribing to Nintendo Power might net you cheat codes or a poster or something--bonus content--but they were never integral to understanding the games.
In both religion and TTRPGs every once in a while someone says lets throw away all those supplements and get back to the original. Some of them then add supplements (either their own new ones, or the old ones) back as they realize something they want to change/clarify.
You of course should pick exactly the same stance on the above as I do. But like any true gentleman I never tell you my stance is.
You of course should pick exactly the same stance on the above as I do. But like any true gentleman I never tell you my stance is.
I loved my tiny little NES manuals (the artwork!) and big-ass PC RPG manuals like the one for Fallout 2.
I loved being able to rent a game for weekend from our grocery store’s vhs department. I’d spend the rest of the trip home eagerly reading the guide while my mom shopped and I’d be so hyped to play the game by the time we got home.
It’s a good thing the games were plug and play in the console back then, I wouldn’t have had the patience to install and download a 3GB patch before starting
It’s a good thing the games were plug and play in the console back then, I wouldn’t have had the patience to install and download a 3GB patch before starting
> I recall my favorite part of opening up a new Nintendo game was poring over the manual.
Have you by chance played Tunic? If not, there is a mechanic you may be particularly interested in. :)
Have you by chance played Tunic? If not, there is a mechanic you may be particularly interested in. :)
That mechanic is so creative. I love the gave but it's hard to describe what's so great about it to others without also revealing that brilliant mechanic which is really fun to encounter for the first time without expecting it.
A conversation vaguely pointing toward a key game mechanic that might have something to do with metatextuality but which mustn't be described for fear of spoiling it is a damn good way to get me to buy a game.
(Just purchased. Easy buy vs. wishlist decision since it's currently half-off on Steam)
(Just purchased. Easy buy vs. wishlist decision since it's currently half-off on Steam)
[deleted]
I did! And I enjoyed the mechanic, it was cute, incremental, and terribly fun.
As an avid board gamer, I think one of the biggest factors is page count. A big rule book makes the game feel less approachable. In the example provided at the bottom, the rewritten rulebook is ~50 pages. The original is 24. It doesn't matter how well it's written if it scares people off.
I find that many people are so afraid of reading game rules that they'd rather watch 15-30m how to play videos. It's telling of the industry that these videos are typically better learning resources than the rulebooks themselves.
My favorite rulebooks have 1-page rule references at the back or scannable columns on each page that summarize the main text.
As someone who enjoys technical documentation writing, I think board game rulebook writing would be a rewarding experience. Not exactly sure how to get into that field though...
(I have yet to read this in full, but I'm excited to dig in)
I find that many people are so afraid of reading game rules that they'd rather watch 15-30m how to play videos. It's telling of the industry that these videos are typically better learning resources than the rulebooks themselves.
My favorite rulebooks have 1-page rule references at the back or scannable columns on each page that summarize the main text.
As someone who enjoys technical documentation writing, I think board game rulebook writing would be a rewarding experience. Not exactly sure how to get into that field though...
(I have yet to read this in full, but I'm excited to dig in)
You are on the mark. The thing most people hate is learning a new game. My friend's wife refuses to learn new games but is fine playing Terraforming Mars every night (which is not an intro level game). Take games like Ark Nova with an hour teach (literally) and you really really have to want to learn and play that game. It is also why party games and simple card games stay so popular because the rules are always less than 5 minutes.
To make a great rulebook, you probably new two or three diagrams per page for each new concept. So do you have a huge rulebook that is easy to learn from or a small one that is hard to learn from. (The cost and weight factors are pretty negligible.) It also points to the ongoing success of card driven games since you can defer the rules overhead until someone draws the card and they can read the rules themselves as long as the turn structure is fairly simple to jump right in.
Source: I design board games as a hobby and pitch them to publishers.
To make a great rulebook, you probably new two or three diagrams per page for each new concept. So do you have a huge rulebook that is easy to learn from or a small one that is hard to learn from. (The cost and weight factors are pretty negligible.) It also points to the ongoing success of card driven games since you can defer the rules overhead until someone draws the card and they can read the rules themselves as long as the turn structure is fairly simple to jump right in.
Source: I design board games as a hobby and pitch them to publishers.
I loved playing games I was familiar with because the rules had been finalised with the people I played with, and we had agreed on the ambiguities (they became house rules). We then developed our strategies based on a known and "complete" understanding of the rules, and the fun came from winning based on the mutually understood set of rules, not a strategem that a player extracted from an unread part of the manual. On the other hand, learning a new game is fun when no-one has played it before, and part of the process was agreeing on the rules after a few run-throughs. Illuminati was great like that. Yet so was the Game of Life card game.
A complicated game/rulebook is a different beast. I believe it also needs a person willing to teach the game, or learn it on their own, then teach it. It needs a person familiar with the game, and new players willing to invest in the
game knowing they will play it together A LOT. That will exists.
>It is also why party games and simple card games stay so popular because the rules are always less than 5 minutes.
It's worth noting that "simple" games are not always simplistic, especially when they're head-to-head. I've played thousands of games of Haggis (which for two players could be played with an ordinary deck of playing cards and a notepad to keep score) online, and I can tell you that expert-level strategy gets into some pretty deep thinking.
I've also played thousands of games of Dominion online, and got to a level that I'd consider competent - above what almost any casual player would ever reach, but still awful next to real experts. A lot of people seem to hate that game in the board gaming circles I used to hang out in - a lot of players get the impression that simple strategies beat more complex ones, and the endgame is boring because you most often acquire victory points via otherwise-useless cards that clog your deck. But on a large fraction of possible "kingdoms" (and the random choice of card piles adds a huge amount of variety to the game), there are complex "engines" available that crush the simpler strategies. It's just that you actually have to learn how to implement them, which simply does not flow directly from a mechanical description of what the cards do no matter how well you teach it.
Which is to say, yes, card-driven games have some huge advantages - both when the cards define new rules space (the Dominion / Fluxx / M:tG way), but also just when they're a relatively simple component of an abstract, heads-up, imperfect information game (the Haggis / poker way). The latter benefit, I think, from a higher level of general expertise: children are commonly taught to play various sorts of card games, so they're a very familiar implement that can draw on a lot of powerful design language (set collection mechanics, numerical "ranks" vs symbolic "suits", etc.).
It's worth noting that "simple" games are not always simplistic, especially when they're head-to-head. I've played thousands of games of Haggis (which for two players could be played with an ordinary deck of playing cards and a notepad to keep score) online, and I can tell you that expert-level strategy gets into some pretty deep thinking.
I've also played thousands of games of Dominion online, and got to a level that I'd consider competent - above what almost any casual player would ever reach, but still awful next to real experts. A lot of people seem to hate that game in the board gaming circles I used to hang out in - a lot of players get the impression that simple strategies beat more complex ones, and the endgame is boring because you most often acquire victory points via otherwise-useless cards that clog your deck. But on a large fraction of possible "kingdoms" (and the random choice of card piles adds a huge amount of variety to the game), there are complex "engines" available that crush the simpler strategies. It's just that you actually have to learn how to implement them, which simply does not flow directly from a mechanical description of what the cards do no matter how well you teach it.
Which is to say, yes, card-driven games have some huge advantages - both when the cards define new rules space (the Dominion / Fluxx / M:tG way), but also just when they're a relatively simple component of an abstract, heads-up, imperfect information game (the Haggis / poker way). The latter benefit, I think, from a higher level of general expertise: children are commonly taught to play various sorts of card games, so they're a very familiar implement that can draw on a lot of powerful design language (set collection mechanics, numerical "ranks" vs symbolic "suits", etc.).
Spiel des Jahres quality games always have great rulebooks. Dominion, for all its complexity, has a very simple rulebook, and even all the corner cases you can run into with the countless expansion cards, have pretty neat "from the basic principles of the game" resolutions, usually obvious in retrospect. It is a very clean, rigorous design.
The same can't be said for games like Root. Which may have become more common in recent years, it's about 10 years since I was really into modern board games, so I don't know. But I suspect it's still the case that good designers and experienced publishers write good rulebooks.
The same can't be said for games like Root. Which may have become more common in recent years, it's about 10 years since I was really into modern board games, so I don't know. But I suspect it's still the case that good designers and experienced publishers write good rulebooks.
As it happens, I was taught Dominion by other players, but really learned it from online play and other such resources. It's the sort of game with depth that exceeds most players' patience - extremely replayable, but only if you don't really care about the fact that the theming is paper-thin (literally, in a sense) and happen to get captivated by the core mechanics (and the variety offered by the expansions).
This was way back in the Isotropic days, before there was an official client. So you could play games very quickly without any of the physical card manipulation at all, never mind shuffling. (It was a very minimalist client that didn't try to simulate any of that card movement with animations; it just immediately updated hand and pile contents and resource counts.)
I guess it's really just not for everyone.
(A story: years ago I tried to design my own deck-building board game which borrowed several Dominion mechanics - but you would play out your cards physically like tiles; instead of an action-counting mechanic or an Action/Treasure dichotomy, there were restrictions on what cards could be adjacent to each other. The feedback I got was overwhelming in its consistency: the more it played like Dominion, the less people liked it. But without that anchor I was lost in terms of designing something that made sense and had anything like game balance, and eventually I gave up.)
This was way back in the Isotropic days, before there was an official client. So you could play games very quickly without any of the physical card manipulation at all, never mind shuffling. (It was a very minimalist client that didn't try to simulate any of that card movement with animations; it just immediately updated hand and pile contents and resource counts.)
I guess it's really just not for everyone.
(A story: years ago I tried to design my own deck-building board game which borrowed several Dominion mechanics - but you would play out your cards physically like tiles; instead of an action-counting mechanic or an Action/Treasure dichotomy, there were restrictions on what cards could be adjacent to each other. The feedback I got was overwhelming in its consistency: the more it played like Dominion, the less people liked it. But without that anchor I was lost in terms of designing something that made sense and had anything like game balance, and eventually I gave up.)
My opinion, maybe unpopular, is that if you really want to feel like you're managing a medieval kingdom (or whatever) then computer games are just better anyway. For anything that gets the slightest bit like a simulation, you want to let the computer do the bookkeeping.
But even for computer games, after you've played for hundreds of hours of say Civilization, and especially if you approach it competitively, you hardly feel like the Hittites anymore. By then, it's just an abstract game for you, and you're OK with it or you'd have quit long ago.
But even for computer games, after you've played for hundreds of hours of say Civilization, and especially if you approach it competitively, you hardly feel like the Hittites anymore. By then, it's just an abstract game for you, and you're OK with it or you'd have quit long ago.
I would say (largely) even good designers don't write great rulebooks. It is a total different skill set. The best analogy is that Publishers are to Rulebooks what Software Releases are to QA. It is always left to the end and rushed out the door. There is an assumption that between social media and BGG and How to Play videos that people will figure it out.
Well, there's two steps. To write a good rulebook, you need good rules first. You need to really think about it like a programmer, in terms of procedures, invariants, completeness etc. So that when you, when you play your own game, you don't constantly run into rules questions that you have to stop and settle. If you do have clear and consistent rules in your head for your own game, then writing a good manual is just craftmansship, that you can even get in a professional technical writer to do for you.
But as all programmers know, your mental model of your program is probably full of holes and dubious logic. And so it will often be for board games. Then a technical writer can't save it.
But as all programmers know, your mental model of your program is probably full of holes and dubious logic. And so it will often be for board games. Then a technical writer can't save it.
Playing Dominion online is a LOT more enjoyable in person. The constant shuffling wears pretty thin pretty quick! :)
Large complex games can be fun. But they require investment, if you don't have a group who will play the game with you "often" then they are not worth learning. Meanwhile I can teach someone a card game in a couple minutes, play for some time over a meal and never see that person again.
I personally dislike how-to-play videos. If you blink and miss something, hunting around a video is much worse than scanning a rulebook. I also do not have the patience to sit there for 10-15 minutes.
> If you blink and miss something, hunting around a video is much worse than scanning a rulebook.
Not only that, but very nearly every one of them has rules errors. There is exactly one YouTuber (from Watch It Played) who consistently puts out rules-error-free videos. Any and all other video playthroughs, i take with a huge grain of salt.
Not only that, but very nearly every one of them has rules errors. There is exactly one YouTuber (from Watch It Played) who consistently puts out rules-error-free videos. Any and all other video playthroughs, i take with a huge grain of salt.
I really like a 5 minute how-to-play before either reading the rules, or having them explained to me. It gives me all the context and makes the other information sit much better.
I re-write rules for myself for games where I need a better teaching "script". For example, the Keyper rulebook was terrible, but the rules themselves were not. I wrote myself a summary so I could re-teach the game if needed.
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/269820/keyper-quick-rules...
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/212516/keyper
And Smartphone, Inc, because the rulebook was bad for looking things up quickly:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2979178/some-rules-notes-i-...
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/269820/keyper-quick-rules...
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/212516/keyper
And Smartphone, Inc, because the rulebook was bad for looking things up quickly:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2979178/some-rules-notes-i-...
Yes! Anything I'm serious about learning, I (re)write the documentation as I go. Haven't tried this with board games yet, but it actually sounds kind of fun.
For me, at least, there is no rulebook or textbook or docs page that is so great that I can learn about something just by reading about it. Unless I can mess with it (even just by writing my own text about it), I will never internalize it.
For me, at least, there is no rulebook or textbook or docs page that is so great that I can learn about something just by reading about it. Unless I can mess with it (even just by writing my own text about it), I will never internalize it.
I mostly agree, but it depends on "density". If there's lots of photos and diagrams that both makes the page count larger, and helps ease it. You can have a super dense text only book that's 24 pages, but hard to parse because there's no images/diagrams, etc... Layout also matters, as does spacing.
I looked at Twilight Struggle and was terrified at how thick the book was, but it's really more a reference guide, and each step is laid out in detail, so there were hardly any questions. And if I had them they were easy to find. It's intimidating at first, but in terms of ease? It actually worked really well. But for the most part, yes. Big thick tomes that are full of overly flavored text and lack of examples/references are the worst. I really like when there are player cheatsheets that help explain the flow of the game and common elements to help reduce downtime/asking the "leader"/teacher for info
I looked at Twilight Struggle and was terrified at how thick the book was, but it's really more a reference guide, and each step is laid out in detail, so there were hardly any questions. And if I had them they were easy to find. It's intimidating at first, but in terms of ease? It actually worked really well. But for the most part, yes. Big thick tomes that are full of overly flavored text and lack of examples/references are the worst. I really like when there are player cheatsheets that help explain the flow of the game and common elements to help reduce downtime/asking the "leader"/teacher for info
>A big rule book makes the game feel less approachable. In the example provided at the bottom, the rewritten rulebook is ~50 pages. The original is 24. It doesn't matter how well it's written if it scares people off.
I get the sense from the comment section many others here are reacting to the article title and sharing their thoughts on board game rulebooks generally, rather than critiquing the article.
Which is to say, I think you're right. The linked PDF is 150 pages and I think that's discouraged many people from trying to consider the author's ideas. Even though they're presented in a way that seems intended to benefit from (and demonstrate) those very ideas and make the material easier to read, the sheer volume discourages many readers before the first word.
There was a part earlier where Johnson argues:
> That's about 60 years of rulebook design. The 2023 printing of Acquire's rulebook is more readable than any previous printing's rulebook. But each printing of Acquire's rulebook has the same basic structure. The 1960s printing had sections for: objective of the game, game terms, setup, play (playing tiles, buying stock, merging chains), end of the game, and edge cases. The 2023 printing has more detailed rules, more example images, and more tips for new players, but the order and presentation of rules is roughly the same.
... but the 2023 printing apparently runs to 16 half-size pages, where the original rules fit on the underside of the box top. (And from the photo, it appears to make some use of bullet-point lists, too.) And this is apparently a relatively light ruleset compared to the others discussed in the article.
Surely there's some compromise to be made here.
I get the sense from the comment section many others here are reacting to the article title and sharing their thoughts on board game rulebooks generally, rather than critiquing the article.
Which is to say, I think you're right. The linked PDF is 150 pages and I think that's discouraged many people from trying to consider the author's ideas. Even though they're presented in a way that seems intended to benefit from (and demonstrate) those very ideas and make the material easier to read, the sheer volume discourages many readers before the first word.
There was a part earlier where Johnson argues:
> That's about 60 years of rulebook design. The 2023 printing of Acquire's rulebook is more readable than any previous printing's rulebook. But each printing of Acquire's rulebook has the same basic structure. The 1960s printing had sections for: objective of the game, game terms, setup, play (playing tiles, buying stock, merging chains), end of the game, and edge cases. The 2023 printing has more detailed rules, more example images, and more tips for new players, but the order and presentation of rules is roughly the same.
... but the 2023 printing apparently runs to 16 half-size pages, where the original rules fit on the underside of the box top. (And from the photo, it appears to make some use of bullet-point lists, too.) And this is apparently a relatively light ruleset compared to the others discussed in the article.
Surely there's some compromise to be made here.
I agree it's intimidating. I think the way to counter that is good player aids. If you have a really well designed reference in front of each player, then the teach is often "see that second line, well this is how that works". Also the teacher should read the rules ahead of time, so they can can summarize or go in more details depending on the comprehension of players.
Those videos often gloss over a lot of specific details (e.g. round-up or round-down) and thats fine to gloss over in teaching also. If the first game runs smooth and gives the game experience, they're more likely to play again than if you have to stop and dig through reference multiple times. You can always look it up after so you do the second game more correctly.
Those videos often gloss over a lot of specific details (e.g. round-up or round-down) and thats fine to gloss over in teaching also. If the first game runs smooth and gives the game experience, they're more likely to play again than if you have to stop and dig through reference multiple times. You can always look it up after so you do the second game more correctly.
> As someone who enjoys technical documentation writing, I think board game rulebook writing would be a rewarding experience. Not exactly sure how to get into that field though...
Do what the author did and start by writing a new rule book for an existing game. You can upload it to BGG and get feedback from players. After doing a few of those, they got contacted by a designer to write one for a brand new game.
Do what the author did and start by writing a new rule book for an existing game. You can upload it to BGG and get feedback from players. After doing a few of those, they got contacted by a designer to write one for a brand new game.
> I find that many people are so afraid of reading game rules that they'd rather watch 15-30m how to play videos.
I find this goes for everything. People are so afraid of reading they'll watch a 10 minute video for something they could've read in 5. Trouble is reading is something you need to practice and ability will fade away when not used.
I find this goes for everything. People are so afraid of reading they'll watch a 10 minute video for something they could've read in 5. Trouble is reading is something you need to practice and ability will fade away when not used.
My group recently played Veiled Fate. Loved the game, but the 40-page rulebook was certainly intimidating.
For medium/heavy-complexity games, it's essential to have a glossary (preferably with pictures), either/both at the start/end of the rulebook or the complete reference. And the glossary should have (clickable) section/page references for where to read more about a concept (and the glossary should be complete (but not nitpicking or pedantic), which sounds self-evident yet is not the case a shocking amount of the time). And the glossary should also be referenced by/ have consistent terminology with the quickstart/reference card.
It's not that I'm "afraid" of reading game rules, just that I know from lots of experience how rare it is for a (8-25pp) manual to balance explaining the minimal set of mechanics in a fast, comprehensible, logical order, also giving a feel for typical gameplay (even just 2P), and toss in some basic remarks about strategies and tips. Many times my friends and I have invested 1-3hrs in learning something, only to find the gameplay has gotchas by rewarding/punishing quirky things, or is simply broken. Or we have to go to BoardGameArena.com to find basic errata/clarifications/houserules for ambiguity, or the designer's own semi-official clarifications/ version 1.1. So, one guerrilla way to estimate how good/bad the official rulebook is to count the number of (and frustration level in) clarification threads on BGA, or whether an updated rulebook is downloadable, or how many unofficial fan cheatsheets or guides there are on BGA.
One infamous example was the 2010 version of 'Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game' (complexity 3.17/5, rating 7.3) where the physical boardgame implementation was so complex as to be unplayable (6-12+ hrs for a 2P game, I was told); it made the case why the computer version was better for implementing all the bookkeeping; my friend showed me multiple ringbound manuals of gameplay and reference guide and I simply said no (even though I loved the software versions). [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/77130/sid-meiers-civiliz...]
(Then they overreacted too far in the opposite direction with 'Civilization: A New Dawn' (2017) which simplified tech, combat, terrain way too much, down to 5 values each; it gave a huge advantage once you knew which civilizations were OP and which techs sounded useful but were a productivity trap and worth skipping. Like, Aztecs with nuclear weapons (special ability is to reuse that attack every other turn)).[https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/233247/civilization-a-ne...]
It's not that I'm "afraid" of reading game rules, just that I know from lots of experience how rare it is for a (8-25pp) manual to balance explaining the minimal set of mechanics in a fast, comprehensible, logical order, also giving a feel for typical gameplay (even just 2P), and toss in some basic remarks about strategies and tips. Many times my friends and I have invested 1-3hrs in learning something, only to find the gameplay has gotchas by rewarding/punishing quirky things, or is simply broken. Or we have to go to BoardGameArena.com to find basic errata/clarifications/houserules for ambiguity, or the designer's own semi-official clarifications/ version 1.1. So, one guerrilla way to estimate how good/bad the official rulebook is to count the number of (and frustration level in) clarification threads on BGA, or whether an updated rulebook is downloadable, or how many unofficial fan cheatsheets or guides there are on BGA.
One infamous example was the 2010 version of 'Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game' (complexity 3.17/5, rating 7.3) where the physical boardgame implementation was so complex as to be unplayable (6-12+ hrs for a 2P game, I was told); it made the case why the computer version was better for implementing all the bookkeeping; my friend showed me multiple ringbound manuals of gameplay and reference guide and I simply said no (even though I loved the software versions). [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/77130/sid-meiers-civiliz...]
(Then they overreacted too far in the opposite direction with 'Civilization: A New Dawn' (2017) which simplified tech, combat, terrain way too much, down to 5 values each; it gave a huge advantage once you knew which civilizations were OP and which techs sounded useful but were a productivity trap and worth skipping. Like, Aztecs with nuclear weapons (special ability is to reuse that attack every other turn)).[https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/233247/civilization-a-ne...]
It's so classic that board game adaptations of computer games are bookkeeping extravaganzas. I don't understand why people want to "replicate the computer game experience" in a board game, why not just play the computer game then? There are so many games that play to board games' strengths, instead of trying to be cut down computer games.
Sid Meier's Civilization is pretty much the poster child for an outstanding online game that cannot be converted to a (physical) boardgame without either super-heavy mechanics and bookkeeping, or huge simplifications and compromises that take all the interesting nuances away.
One example of many was the corruption calculation in each cilization every turn based on how remote each city was from the capital, the city population, tax-rate and luxury-rate, the number of military units garrisoned there, modifiers for wonders etc.
One example of many was the corruption calculation in each cilization every turn based on how remote each city was from the capital, the city population, tax-rate and luxury-rate, the number of military units garrisoned there, modifiers for wonders etc.
I've only read like 20 pages but this is already hitting the nail on the head for me. I've tried many times to play specific games with friends on Tabletop Simulator, but more often than not we bounce off because it's too tedious to read rulebooks.
I get that game designers want the player to understand all of the rules in a game but it quickly turns into its own game of trying to decipher a huge tome to understand how this game works. We just want to play the game as soon as possible and learn as we go, but tons of rulebooks try to teach you every single mechanic before you move a piece on the board.
My biggest pet peeve with rulebooks by far is how many rulebooks feel like they're written out of order (which is touched on in the book above). I would get to parts that should be simple like moving a character or something similar, but there would be ten asterisks to how it works, each explained in different parts of the book.
Fake example: "Here's the movement phase, where you can move your character! Character movement is determined by your weight, refer to the weight class your character is currently in." Meanwhile, weight classes are explained 30 pages later. Now you're expected to either memorize everything, or bounce around flipping pages left and right in order to go step by step...
I get that game designers want the player to understand all of the rules in a game but it quickly turns into its own game of trying to decipher a huge tome to understand how this game works. We just want to play the game as soon as possible and learn as we go, but tons of rulebooks try to teach you every single mechanic before you move a piece on the board.
My biggest pet peeve with rulebooks by far is how many rulebooks feel like they're written out of order (which is touched on in the book above). I would get to parts that should be simple like moving a character or something similar, but there would be ten asterisks to how it works, each explained in different parts of the book.
Fake example: "Here's the movement phase, where you can move your character! Character movement is determined by your weight, refer to the weight class your character is currently in." Meanwhile, weight classes are explained 30 pages later. Now you're expected to either memorize everything, or bounce around flipping pages left and right in order to go step by step...
I think there's an understated component here that many games are built off of your knowledge of other games, so at one point the rulebook is there explaining stuff but omits a lot.
But then you play the game and there's the right kind of symbology explaining the rules anyways! There are so many little details on boards of modern games that guide the rules. Doesn't solve tiny parts, but really you gotta figure it out.
I think rulebooks can be way better, but at the same time I think rulebooks are not meant for players, but for whoever is going to teach the game. And that person should sit there and figure it out way before the game starts.
But then you play the game and there's the right kind of symbology explaining the rules anyways! There are so many little details on boards of modern games that guide the rules. Doesn't solve tiny parts, but really you gotta figure it out.
I think rulebooks can be way better, but at the same time I think rulebooks are not meant for players, but for whoever is going to teach the game. And that person should sit there and figure it out way before the game starts.
I've wanted a standard rulebook format for ages. I should be able to intuitively flip to the win conditions page because it's always in the same place, for example.
You shouldn't have to "flip to" the win conditions. Historically they were among the first thing written in the rules (I was that weird kid who had actually read the rules for Monopoly, and could tell you that your "free parking" setup was BS, and explain how mortgaging is supposed to work...): in a section titled "Object of the Game" (sometimes in all caps).
Tagentially, I've been working on how to best to explain Destiny raid mechanics to new players.
Background: Destiny 2 is a co-op multiplayer FPS, and its pinnacle activity is 6-player raids, which requires players to combine fast-paced FPS gunplay, split-second reaction to mechanics, and coordination and communication with other players. This can be a daunting and overwhelming challenge for players new to the raid, even if they already are experienced in FPS gameplay.
Challenge: explain to a player, familiar with Destiny gameplay but new to the raid, the mechanics of an "encounter" in 5-15 minutes, live. It must be as concise as possible so as not to confuse or overwhelm them, and not stretch the patience of the other players already familiar with the encounter.
Too often I've see players start from the immediate aspects, working forwards towards the later/broader aspects of the encounter, but I find that in the firehose of information, by the time the explanation is complete, the player has forgotten the first, immediately important details: "wait, tell me again what am I supposed to shoot first?"
So the approach I've been experimenting with is to work backwards from the goal of the encounter, so as to finish with the most immediate, tactically important information, so it's freshest in their memory. I don't yet have enough data points to conclude whether this is a better approach ;)
In any case, I'm just barely wading into the immense topic that people have spent decades, careers, and PhDs on: teaching, but it is fascinating the breadth of choices one has in how to approach an explanation.
(I also play a fair bit of board games, and learning a new board game is the primary obstacle of adoption, so I really appreciate the OP author's points)
Background: Destiny 2 is a co-op multiplayer FPS, and its pinnacle activity is 6-player raids, which requires players to combine fast-paced FPS gunplay, split-second reaction to mechanics, and coordination and communication with other players. This can be a daunting and overwhelming challenge for players new to the raid, even if they already are experienced in FPS gameplay.
Challenge: explain to a player, familiar with Destiny gameplay but new to the raid, the mechanics of an "encounter" in 5-15 minutes, live. It must be as concise as possible so as not to confuse or overwhelm them, and not stretch the patience of the other players already familiar with the encounter.
Too often I've see players start from the immediate aspects, working forwards towards the later/broader aspects of the encounter, but I find that in the firehose of information, by the time the explanation is complete, the player has forgotten the first, immediately important details: "wait, tell me again what am I supposed to shoot first?"
So the approach I've been experimenting with is to work backwards from the goal of the encounter, so as to finish with the most immediate, tactically important information, so it's freshest in their memory. I don't yet have enough data points to conclude whether this is a better approach ;)
In any case, I'm just barely wading into the immense topic that people have spent decades, careers, and PhDs on: teaching, but it is fascinating the breadth of choices one has in how to approach an explanation.
(I also play a fair bit of board games, and learning a new board game is the primary obstacle of adoption, so I really appreciate the OP author's points)
I personally prefer to learn it from the front. I only teach the very first phase and tell the group to expect to wipe after the transition.
If there are key enemies to shoot or whatever I will send a screenshot into discord because the game has no good way to mark targets besides shooting them.
The main reason I like this method is because trying to do the whole fight in one go is just too much to infodump on someone. By the time they are ready for the phase 2 info, they will have enough confidence in the p1 strategy that you dont have to worry about pushing any knowledge out of their active memory.
I was also the raid leader for my WoW guild so the method does scale. You do need people who are able to learn from their mistakes though... Some just never figure out to move out of the fire.
If there are key enemies to shoot or whatever I will send a screenshot into discord because the game has no good way to mark targets besides shooting them.
The main reason I like this method is because trying to do the whole fight in one go is just too much to infodump on someone. By the time they are ready for the phase 2 info, they will have enough confidence in the p1 strategy that you dont have to worry about pushing any knowledge out of their active memory.
I was also the raid leader for my WoW guild so the method does scale. You do need people who are able to learn from their mistakes though... Some just never figure out to move out of the fire.
> the game has no good way to mark targets besides shooting them.
It's such a shame the mobile version is getting pings before desktop
It's such a shame the mobile version is getting pings before desktop
It's so bad. Only saving grace is the the total enemy count is usually manageable but I missed being able to just call for a focus swap and watch them melt like you do in WoW.
These days I just play monster hunter. No comms needed but you have to learn a weapon up front.
These days I just play monster hunter. No comms needed but you have to learn a weapon up front.
Me and my friends started comming recently on some harder monsters in Monster Hunter but it's completely unnecessary as you said. Stuff like, "mount finisher" "setting trap", all stuff that you could visually observe. The main benefit has been I'm much more cognizant of my teammates than I ever was in the past. Now I actually look at what my teammates are doing instead of just tunneling on myself.
My point is that explaining d2 raid mechanics gave me the chance to iterate on teaching in a targeted, globally understood (so there's a benchmark to compare against), and immediately actionable setting, which allowed me to practice these teaching essentials:
1. Be Concise! More information is not better, in fact it'll just overwhelm your students
1.a. Some details can be skipped entirely, until they become relevant
2. Repeat The Essentials! Repetition helps memorization, and highlights what's important. Some aspects are more important than others.
3. Visual and practical examples a essential! It's almost entirely useless to explain a subject without context or area to experiment in. Polite nods are your best outcome.
3.a. counter-example, the infamous "sudoers" manpage, so bad there's https://m.xkcd.com/1343/ about it. Start with examples, then generalize, not the opposite!
You may notice some contradiction between points 1 and 2. Yes! Finding the right balance is an art.
The challenge for ADHD geeks like me is to avoid the "train-of-thought" infodumping approach, and filtering for what's really the most relevant.
1. Be Concise! More information is not better, in fact it'll just overwhelm your students
1.a. Some details can be skipped entirely, until they become relevant
2. Repeat The Essentials! Repetition helps memorization, and highlights what's important. Some aspects are more important than others.
3. Visual and practical examples a essential! It's almost entirely useless to explain a subject without context or area to experiment in. Polite nods are your best outcome.
3.a. counter-example, the infamous "sudoers" manpage, so bad there's https://m.xkcd.com/1343/ about it. Start with examples, then generalize, not the opposite!
You may notice some contradiction between points 1 and 2. Yes! Finding the right balance is an art.
The challenge for ADHD geeks like me is to avoid the "train-of-thought" infodumping approach, and filtering for what's really the most relevant.
Something i like to do on top of this is separating the goals from the actions. Explain what, not how, we are trying to accomplish at a big picture level. Then, give concise, actionable instructions for how to accomplish the goal.
I very much dislike guides that combine goals and actions in one large, linear instruction set. As soon as there is any deviation, you don't have the high level knowledge to adapt. Sure, I'm supposed to stand on this plate and shoot these 3 things when you say so, but why? Someone died, now the timings are all off. How do I adapt?
I very much dislike guides that combine goals and actions in one large, linear instruction set. As soon as there is any deviation, you don't have the high level knowledge to adapt. Sure, I'm supposed to stand on this plate and shoot these 3 things when you say so, but why? Someone died, now the timings are all off. How do I adapt?
Summary: For me learning by doing with good callouts and short, high point briefing before worked great. I also usually use a similar style of prompting people to do things when I am teaching people IT stuff instead of doing it for them or only talking about it (family tech support, might be a chaotic raid, but usually less twitchy /s).
As a datapoint in a similar situation, I played in a guild in Lost Ark that was quite competitive (more than I was). This game has mechanic heavy raids, but I do not know how they compare to Destiny 2. I went into early raids essentially blind and learned mostly by doing and listening to good calls during it.
A few minutes before we went in, and during the straightforward way to the bosses, someone familiar with the mechanics explained the general idea, e.g. "there is an instant kill in all phases, in the first 2 you need to stand on the whitish spots, in the 3rd phase on the reddish spots". During the actual encounters, and before the switch of mechanics, they would call out in short what to do, e.g. "stand in red" or just "red".
I personally liked this way. It gave me a rough idea what to expect and refreshed my memory enough to not screw up in the heat of the moment. The explanation itself was also quite short, because we didn't go through the play by play, only covering the important stuff and relying on in the moment callouts. Plus, some briefing happened during the run to the boss. This method might only work with a somewhat competent/disciplined group. We played like this as a guild with good raid leaders and during crunch time we had good comms discipline. In addition we went into training raids with inexperienced players, with the expectation that we might not make it, but still try our best, and usually won. There also were more or less fixed raid teams that grinded these bosses without any explanation, because everyone had done it multiple times already.
I played another game with lightly mechanics based bosses and I, or someone else, explained in about 3 chat messages what to do when we went in with randoms. It was simple enough "I do X, shoot adds when I do X, if I die, do Y". The experienced players took care of the harder/mechanics parts, everyone else covered the easy parts. If you have a semi-fixed group for this, everyone learns all mechanics at some point by observing.
Edit: Typo
As a datapoint in a similar situation, I played in a guild in Lost Ark that was quite competitive (more than I was). This game has mechanic heavy raids, but I do not know how they compare to Destiny 2. I went into early raids essentially blind and learned mostly by doing and listening to good calls during it.
A few minutes before we went in, and during the straightforward way to the bosses, someone familiar with the mechanics explained the general idea, e.g. "there is an instant kill in all phases, in the first 2 you need to stand on the whitish spots, in the 3rd phase on the reddish spots". During the actual encounters, and before the switch of mechanics, they would call out in short what to do, e.g. "stand in red" or just "red".
I personally liked this way. It gave me a rough idea what to expect and refreshed my memory enough to not screw up in the heat of the moment. The explanation itself was also quite short, because we didn't go through the play by play, only covering the important stuff and relying on in the moment callouts. Plus, some briefing happened during the run to the boss. This method might only work with a somewhat competent/disciplined group. We played like this as a guild with good raid leaders and during crunch time we had good comms discipline. In addition we went into training raids with inexperienced players, with the expectation that we might not make it, but still try our best, and usually won. There also were more or less fixed raid teams that grinded these bosses without any explanation, because everyone had done it multiple times already.
I played another game with lightly mechanics based bosses and I, or someone else, explained in about 3 chat messages what to do when we went in with randoms. It was simple enough "I do X, shoot adds when I do X, if I die, do Y". The experienced players took care of the harder/mechanics parts, everyone else covered the easy parts. If you have a semi-fixed group for this, everyone learns all mechanics at some point by observing.
Edit: Typo
When I teach people how to play a game, I usually omit several of the rules upfront to help people grok the goal faster. For example when teaching Texas Hold'em, we might play all the way to the river with all cards face up and no betting. Then we'll play a round with up-front betting keeping our hole cards private. Finally, we play the game "correctly" with turn-by-turn betting.
I'm surprised more board games don't include a "first game" playthrough guide to slowly introduce mechanics. This is extremely common in video games.
I'm surprised more board games don't include a "first game" playthrough guide to slowly introduce mechanics. This is extremely common in video games.
This is covered by the article. A board game might take 4 people and 2 hours to play. If your three friends didn't have fun with a board game the first time, they probably won't want to play again, and so you won't be able to play again either. Therefore there is a strong drive among boardgamers to play the "full" game the first time, because there might not be a second time.
It also adds extra difficulty to design a game that even has a simple version that is fun to play. Take your Texas Hold'em example, imagine it takes 2 hours to play one game. If you start with a version that has all cards face-up and no betting, people would conclude that Texas Hold'em is a supremely boring game, and wouldn't bother to try the full Texas Hold'em experience!
It also adds extra difficulty to design a game that even has a simple version that is fun to play. Take your Texas Hold'em example, imagine it takes 2 hours to play one game. If you start with a version that has all cards face-up and no betting, people would conclude that Texas Hold'em is a supremely boring game, and wouldn't bother to try the full Texas Hold'em experience!
I've seen people teach by playing the open-face (or otherwise simplified version) of a single turn as a way to give an overview of core mechanics.
Naturally, this works better if the 2 hour game consists of dozens of 5 minute turns rather than a few half-hour ones.
If you show one hand of Texas Hold'em, and don't actually play it, but instead talk through what players might be thinking at various points, then you not only cover the mechanics, but sell the game (through the rhetorical device of dramatic irony: you emphasize that the players don't have complete information, and may try to mislead each other, and may come to wrong conclusions even without such deceit, and of course nobody knows what will come on the river...). But of course, it's difficult to disentangle that from a strategy discussion.
Naturally, this works better if the 2 hour game consists of dozens of 5 minute turns rather than a few half-hour ones.
If you show one hand of Texas Hold'em, and don't actually play it, but instead talk through what players might be thinking at various points, then you not only cover the mechanics, but sell the game (through the rhetorical device of dramatic irony: you emphasize that the players don't have complete information, and may try to mislead each other, and may come to wrong conclusions even without such deceit, and of course nobody knows what will come on the river...). But of course, it's difficult to disentangle that from a strategy discussion.
"First game" tutorials in rulebooks are awesome. Space Alert has an incredibly good tutorial system built in, where you play through something like 7 or 8 games, adding a few new rules each time.
Sleeping Gods also has a bit of a tutorial/quick start that works quite well.
There should definitely be more of it.
Sleeping Gods also has a bit of a tutorial/quick start that works quite well.
There should definitely be more of it.
Basically the concept of Hedy: https://www.hedycode.com/
A Python language/environment/progression that slowly requires the learner to understand more actual Python rules.
A Python language/environment/progression that slowly requires the learner to understand more actual Python rules.
Yeah I do this too.
I also, when playing a totally new game that no one has played, state up front that we're pretty much going to wing it for a few turns and after that we can see if we want to keep playing or start over.
Start over is often better, and it lets people not worry about getting into an hour-long game where they badly misplayed the first few turns.
I also, when playing a totally new game that no one has played, state up front that we're pretty much going to wing it for a few turns and after that we can see if we want to keep playing or start over.
Start over is often better, and it lets people not worry about getting into an hour-long game where they badly misplayed the first few turns.
The Farming Game rulebook[1] authors must have taken this list as a "how to" guide because it is by far the worst I have ever encountered. They intermix rules with some narrative meaning one has to parse a lot of words to extract which ones are relevant to getting started with the game and what actions are legal during play. It'd be like if those infamous recipe blogs intermingled the SEO content in between baking instruction steps
1: https://upload.snakesandlattes.com/rules/f/FarmingGameThe.pd...
1: https://upload.snakesandlattes.com/rules/f/FarmingGameThe.pd...
Galaxy Trucker takes this one step further. The first half of the narrative includes only partial explanations of most rules, with the missing details filled in later (still in narrative form), so you have to refer to two locations for any given rule. It makes for a decent tutorial, but it's a terrible reference.
Reminds me of competitive programming, a la Codeforces or IOI, where you solve incredibly challenging algorithmic problems that are wrapped in some silly story about a cow in a garden or something. (In my opinion, that is part of the challenge and fun!)
a side note, I actually quite like this game even though it's horrendously luck based. Like a less competitive monopoly.
I tried to work around bad rule books by building https://www.boardgameonepagers.com/
It’s open source, all the rules have simple markdown formatting that’s easy to glance through on an phone, and they try to be as concise as possible.
But it’s hard work writing rules and I’ve never given it the effort I’d like to.
It’s open source, all the rules have simple markdown formatting that’s easy to glance through on an phone, and they try to be as concise as possible.
But it’s hard work writing rules and I’ve never given it the effort I’d like to.
This is awesome! I don't know your goals with this, but maybe opening the rule markdown files through GitHub to crowd source info would allow you to reduce the hard work of writing the rules.
It comes with the (possibly harder) hard work of managing an open source project though.
My first thought is dedicating an hour or two a month to reviewing, merging, and deploying, but not sure if that'd be accurate.
It comes with the (possibly harder) hard work of managing an open source project though.
My first thought is dedicating an hour or two a month to reviewing, merging, and deploying, but not sure if that'd be accurate.
Already done. There’s a link on the homepage to the GitHub, and you can just add a new markdown file in the rules folder. It auto deploys on merge to master.
Please consider including a license in your repo
The rulebook for GMT's "Combat Commander" by Chad Jensen is in war gaming circles often mentioned as an excellently written rulebook.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/gmtwebsiteassets/living_r... [ 5MB PDF ]
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/gmtwebsiteassets/living_r... [ 5MB PDF ]
I think a lot of the problems with game _rulebooks_ are actually problems with the game _design_.
Once you start getting into _dozens of pages_ to explain the rules, there's no amount of re-organization or quality technical writing that can fix that.
Some people like really crunchy rulesets with lots of rules, and that's fine, but games like that are never going to have an easy teaching or learning experience.
Probably my favorite board game rulebook wasn't a rulebook at all:
Fog of Love has a playable tutorial, where all the cards are setup in a particular order with game rules printed on cards that you draw when you need them. You don't even really need to open the rule book to get through the first game, and it's actually a fairly complex game. The rulebook itself after that is mostly for reference.
Once you start getting into _dozens of pages_ to explain the rules, there's no amount of re-organization or quality technical writing that can fix that.
Some people like really crunchy rulesets with lots of rules, and that's fine, but games like that are never going to have an easy teaching or learning experience.
Probably my favorite board game rulebook wasn't a rulebook at all:
Fog of Love has a playable tutorial, where all the cards are setup in a particular order with game rules printed on cards that you draw when you need them. You don't even really need to open the rule book to get through the first game, and it's actually a fairly complex game. The rulebook itself after that is mostly for reference.
Yep. And it has to do with how complex the rulesets are, not just how many rules there are. If there are dozens of rules that could apply at any moment, that's much harder to deal with (and learn and teach) than sub-rulesets that are compartmentalised (like when in battle, use all the following rules).
I completely agree. I've seen many games with good rulebooks, but they're not the sprawling complicated dungeon crawlers like so many examples from the essay. Those big games are going to have complicated rulebooks because they have complicated rules, and there's no way around that without changing the games themselves.
I have noticed that when people are explaining the rules of a game, they tend leave out the goal of the game, or wait to mention it toward the end of the explanation. You gotta lead with what the goal of the game is.
The rulebooks (or videos) as well, do often omit this.
But even when the overall goal is either obvious or explicitly stated, it's very common for none of the described options or actions to provide a motivation for the action or option that connects to the goal.
In other words--yes, I can read some rules that say "on your turn, you can draw a BLANKLY card, play a FARB token, or advance one of your MORTGAGED BULLETS on the community barrel."
But why would I do those things? So many rulesets could improved by adding motivation, like "If you think an opponent that owns your MORTGAGE is getting to close to the BULLETPROOF PIT, then you can beat them to the pit by advanced a MORTGAGED BULLET toward the target." Ah! Okay, those are the circumstances under which I might want to do that.
Or, "If you aren't getting enough FARB tokens to block opponents, you might need more of the FARB-earning resources you can get by drawing BLANKLY cards. Remember that you're trying to either build a ROBOT--using parts on some of the FARB tokens--or destroy others' ability to build ROBOTs by shooting them."
The rules of the game aren't really "how you play"; and a newcomer doesn't have a playstyle. You need to mix the basic strategy with the rules instead of just giving a bunch of options and no pointers as to why you might want to do one thing over another.
But even when the overall goal is either obvious or explicitly stated, it's very common for none of the described options or actions to provide a motivation for the action or option that connects to the goal.
In other words--yes, I can read some rules that say "on your turn, you can draw a BLANKLY card, play a FARB token, or advance one of your MORTGAGED BULLETS on the community barrel."
But why would I do those things? So many rulesets could improved by adding motivation, like "If you think an opponent that owns your MORTGAGE is getting to close to the BULLETPROOF PIT, then you can beat them to the pit by advanced a MORTGAGED BULLET toward the target." Ah! Okay, those are the circumstances under which I might want to do that.
Or, "If you aren't getting enough FARB tokens to block opponents, you might need more of the FARB-earning resources you can get by drawing BLANKLY cards. Remember that you're trying to either build a ROBOT--using parts on some of the FARB tokens--or destroy others' ability to build ROBOTs by shooting them."
The rules of the game aren't really "how you play"; and a newcomer doesn't have a playstyle. You need to mix the basic strategy with the rules instead of just giving a bunch of options and no pointers as to why you might want to do one thing over another.
This is where the choice of theme can make a big difference. If chosen well, the players will be naturally guided to appropriate choices. Stock market game? Buy low, sell high! Farming theme? Can’t reap before you sow. Etc…
As someone with over 200 board games.
There is one game I can think of with a fantastic rule book is Azul. But I think that’s partially a symptom of those rules being very simple to explain and really you can only appreciate how complex it can get by playing. A close second is secret hitler thanks to its rules being all over the game itself.
Other games then fall into 2 categories.
Over simplification: an attempt to not bore seasoned players leads to some rules being up for interpretation. This leads to getting through the rule book quickly but annoyances while playing.
Over explaining: to appease everyone they explain every single thing in extreme detail. It’s agonizing to read through and by the time you’re done you forget how the basics in the beginning (like turn order) work. Some address this by there being guides or hints on the board or whatever.
Personally I have become a big fan of games that introduce things piecemeal or have a basic set of rules but then the complexity is dictated by card text.
But that doesn’t work for every game.
There is one game I can think of with a fantastic rule book is Azul. But I think that’s partially a symptom of those rules being very simple to explain and really you can only appreciate how complex it can get by playing. A close second is secret hitler thanks to its rules being all over the game itself.
Other games then fall into 2 categories.
Over simplification: an attempt to not bore seasoned players leads to some rules being up for interpretation. This leads to getting through the rule book quickly but annoyances while playing.
Over explaining: to appease everyone they explain every single thing in extreme detail. It’s agonizing to read through and by the time you’re done you forget how the basics in the beginning (like turn order) work. Some address this by there being guides or hints on the board or whatever.
Personally I have become a big fan of games that introduce things piecemeal or have a basic set of rules but then the complexity is dictated by card text.
But that doesn’t work for every game.
Over simplification can be ok but they need to provide an in depth faq after wards. I've got too many board games where the actions per turn are easy enough to understand, you get 3/4 of the way through then someone asks if this action means this token is generated again and you spend the next 20 minutes looking through the rules and the internet to find an answer.
Give me a simple step by step of a turn but also give me a huge list of faqs that we can reference during the game.
How much of this is just "most board games are awful"?
Awful in the sense of overly complicated and fiddly. There are plenty of games with deep strategic depth that have been around for hundreds of years and are simple enough that the rules fit on an index card and children routinely learn them from other children in the course of playing.
If you end up with a 20-page rulebook, perhaps the problem is not how best to organize that rulebook, but that you have 18 pages too many rules in the first place.
Awful in the sense of overly complicated and fiddly. There are plenty of games with deep strategic depth that have been around for hundreds of years and are simple enough that the rules fit on an index card and children routinely learn them from other children in the course of playing.
If you end up with a 20-page rulebook, perhaps the problem is not how best to organize that rulebook, but that you have 18 pages too many rules in the first place.
> If you end up with a 20-page rulebook, perhaps the problem is not how best to organize that rulebook, but that you have 18 pages too many rules in the first place.
Exactly. My pet peeve is when a game is launched as a kickstarter and they add new game mechanics as stretch goals. If it was a good game with just the basic mechanics then why on earth would anyone want it be more complicated just because more people have funded it? And from the other angle if it is a better game with the extra rules and mechanics added then why not make that the game? It is the job of the game’s designer to make the very hard choices and tradeoffs between complexity of rules and the fun people will have with them. If they abdicate this responsibility and leave it up to “let’s see how viral our kickstarter canpaing will be” then they don’t understand their task.
Exactly. My pet peeve is when a game is launched as a kickstarter and they add new game mechanics as stretch goals. If it was a good game with just the basic mechanics then why on earth would anyone want it be more complicated just because more people have funded it? And from the other angle if it is a better game with the extra rules and mechanics added then why not make that the game? It is the job of the game’s designer to make the very hard choices and tradeoffs between complexity of rules and the fun people will have with them. If they abdicate this responsibility and leave it up to “let’s see how viral our kickstarter canpaing will be” then they don’t understand their task.
Kickstarter games tend to have far more design than development, as the success of the kickstarter campaign has little to do with the game being any good, but with the material available at campaign time being attractive. So overproduced games with way too much art, and way to many systems, end up doing far better than, say, a simpler game that would have gone through a more traditional euro publisher 10 years ago.
If you talk to people in industry, they realize that this is making the games worse, but it's making them sell better. Just like today, just like with a movie, high sales don't come from great mechanics, but franchises or licensing. Your superhero coop game is going to do much worse if it doesn't have a license. Why do we have so many boardgames with video game licenses? Because it sells. There's way too many games in the market right now for even industry insiders to good track of most offerings. Buyers working for large internet game stores are overwhelmed.
So no, game designers are 100% understanding their task, which is to make a game that gets backed and is profitable. Cutting half the game after you told backers what you were doing is a disaster, and it's all those extra rules and extra boards that sold the game in the first place. The fact that the game is shelved after 3 plays is not a problem for them.
If you talk to people in industry, they realize that this is making the games worse, but it's making them sell better. Just like today, just like with a movie, high sales don't come from great mechanics, but franchises or licensing. Your superhero coop game is going to do much worse if it doesn't have a license. Why do we have so many boardgames with video game licenses? Because it sells. There's way too many games in the market right now for even industry insiders to good track of most offerings. Buyers working for large internet game stores are overwhelmed.
So no, game designers are 100% understanding their task, which is to make a game that gets backed and is profitable. Cutting half the game after you told backers what you were doing is a disaster, and it's all those extra rules and extra boards that sold the game in the first place. The fact that the game is shelved after 3 plays is not a problem for them.
How many times do Kickstarter backers have to get burned before they understand these ideas and switch to backing things that are actually likely to have good gameplay?
Never: a new fool is born every minute.
A large number of players are only interested in those "overly complicated and fiddly" boardgames (commonly known as "heavy"). The BGG ranking is massively dominated by those games [1]. There are also Youtube channels dedicated only to those heavy boardgames [2].
[1] https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame
[2] https://www.youtube.com/@Heavycardboard/streams
[1] https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame
[2] https://www.youtube.com/@Heavycardboard/streams
Or put another way, a large number of people who spend their time talking about board games on the internet appreciate "heavier" games.
My personal favorites are those games with simple rules and deep strategic depth and I play them regularly online or with other people who love those games in particular. I am also in two general boardgame groups and they both much prefer the complex rule games, I'll give my best guesses as to why.
1) They like the worlds of the complex games, building societies or facing some major broad challenge. 2) Elaborate games are so open-ended and hard to analyze forward strategically that they are much more balanced across people of different skill levels. People who would have no hope of a competitive, fun game of chess will have a more interesting game of Brass: Birmingham or Eclipse. 3) The games can be played with a lot of players and involve a lot more human-human negotiation and discussion, rather than pure strategy.
I love the simple but incredibly complex games myself, but I understand why they're not everyone's cup of tea.
1) They like the worlds of the complex games, building societies or facing some major broad challenge. 2) Elaborate games are so open-ended and hard to analyze forward strategically that they are much more balanced across people of different skill levels. People who would have no hope of a competitive, fun game of chess will have a more interesting game of Brass: Birmingham or Eclipse. 3) The games can be played with a lot of players and involve a lot more human-human negotiation and discussion, rather than pure strategy.
I love the simple but incredibly complex games myself, but I understand why they're not everyone's cup of tea.
Well, simple games are like simple procedural generation, just like how procedurally generated items all feel the same very soon every game of chess feels the same. To some they don't care about that they just want to play the same puzzle over and over, each chess board state is like another sudoku, to others they just want to consume more content designed by humans and then you need more elaborate rules.
To the ones who want human designed things chess is like this vast procedurally generated forest that just has trees everywhere with different branch layouts, so you have to climb them in different ways.
To the ones who want human designed things chess is like this vast procedurally generated forest that just has trees everywhere with different branch layouts, so you have to climb them in different ways.
I sympathize with this view, but I think it glosses over some of the point of boardgames - simulation of a world. Chess has been around for hundreds of years with great depth, but it is not a good simulation of a war or a battle. If you want something like that, then that's going to lead you to have a longer rulebook. (Though many games could still do with some mechanism-pruning).
I would argue that if your game legitimately requires a long and complicated rule book that perhaps a board is not the best medium for the game.
My partner loves board games, and one of my takes that drives her nuts is that IMO most board games are better as a computer game where the tedious mechanics are automated. I am certainly an extremist in this way, I believe almost every board or card game ever made is better to play on a computer, but I think we should all be able to agree that a LOT of board games would benefit from automation.
Monopoly is a great example, because basically everyone has at least some understanding of the game and basically no one has ever played it entirely correctly in purely analog form. I have literally never seen anyone do the auctions in real life, mortgaging is rare, and other "house rules" like the pot on "Free Parking" are common. All of these things tend to cause the game to drag on forever, ironically the thing most of those same players will complain the most about.
If you play any of the computer/console versions the auctions are automatic and easy for everyone to participate. Some support the house rules as options, but they have to be enabled and some versions specifically warn that they will break the game.
Computers exist to automate tedious tasks, if your game has tedious mechanics that require a lot of text to explain it'd probably be better as a computer game where those parts can be automated and the player just has to make their choices within that framework.
In industrial safety one of the mantras is that if it's easier to do it wrong than right people will definitely do it wrong, so you need to make the right path also the easy path, sometimes changing entire systems or processes to make it that way. I believe the same logic should be applied to gaming. If your game is complicated enough that effectively no one is going to play it correctly as a board game, either simplify it so that's not the case or don't make it a board game.
My partner would argue that the physical interaction with the pieces/cards/board/whatever is what matters and computers don't have that, but I believe if I'm judging a game as a game then the gameplay not making me hate it is the most important part.
My partner loves board games, and one of my takes that drives her nuts is that IMO most board games are better as a computer game where the tedious mechanics are automated. I am certainly an extremist in this way, I believe almost every board or card game ever made is better to play on a computer, but I think we should all be able to agree that a LOT of board games would benefit from automation.
Monopoly is a great example, because basically everyone has at least some understanding of the game and basically no one has ever played it entirely correctly in purely analog form. I have literally never seen anyone do the auctions in real life, mortgaging is rare, and other "house rules" like the pot on "Free Parking" are common. All of these things tend to cause the game to drag on forever, ironically the thing most of those same players will complain the most about.
If you play any of the computer/console versions the auctions are automatic and easy for everyone to participate. Some support the house rules as options, but they have to be enabled and some versions specifically warn that they will break the game.
Computers exist to automate tedious tasks, if your game has tedious mechanics that require a lot of text to explain it'd probably be better as a computer game where those parts can be automated and the player just has to make their choices within that framework.
In industrial safety one of the mantras is that if it's easier to do it wrong than right people will definitely do it wrong, so you need to make the right path also the easy path, sometimes changing entire systems or processes to make it that way. I believe the same logic should be applied to gaming. If your game is complicated enough that effectively no one is going to play it correctly as a board game, either simplify it so that's not the case or don't make it a board game.
My partner would argue that the physical interaction with the pieces/cards/board/whatever is what matters and computers don't have that, but I believe if I'm judging a game as a game then the gameplay not making me hate it is the most important part.
> Monopoly is a great example
No it isn't, because board game people hate it. I don't know who is defending Monopoly, but it's not board game fans.
> If you play any of the computer/console versions the auctions are automatic and easy for everyone to participate.
Sure. It still doesn't make for a fun game though.
> Computers exist to automate tedious tasks, if your game has tedious mechanics that require a lot of text to explain it'd probably be better as a computer game where those parts can be automated and the player just has to make their choices within that framework.
Sure. But good games avoid tedious tasks to start with. If anything I'd say the converse is true: most computer games would be improved by trying to make a board game version and cutting the mechanics that make that difficult.
> My partner would argue that the physical interaction with the pieces/cards/board/whatever is what matters and computers don't have that, but I believe if I'm judging a game as a game then the gameplay not making me hate it is the most important part.
If "gameplay" was the only thing that mattered then all games would be abstract games. And even abstract games often have a tactile part of the experience that creates its own feel. Every computer game is kind of the same - you sit in front of a screen and push keys - and that limits how much you can get out of it; there are no great novels about computer gaming.
No it isn't, because board game people hate it. I don't know who is defending Monopoly, but it's not board game fans.
> If you play any of the computer/console versions the auctions are automatic and easy for everyone to participate.
Sure. It still doesn't make for a fun game though.
> Computers exist to automate tedious tasks, if your game has tedious mechanics that require a lot of text to explain it'd probably be better as a computer game where those parts can be automated and the player just has to make their choices within that framework.
Sure. But good games avoid tedious tasks to start with. If anything I'd say the converse is true: most computer games would be improved by trying to make a board game version and cutting the mechanics that make that difficult.
> My partner would argue that the physical interaction with the pieces/cards/board/whatever is what matters and computers don't have that, but I believe if I'm judging a game as a game then the gameplay not making me hate it is the most important part.
If "gameplay" was the only thing that mattered then all games would be abstract games. And even abstract games often have a tactile part of the experience that creates its own feel. Every computer game is kind of the same - you sit in front of a screen and push keys - and that limits how much you can get out of it; there are no great novels about computer gaming.
> No it isn't, because board game people hate it. I don't know who is defending Monopoly, but it's not board game fans.
It's a great example because almost everyone discussing this topic understands the game and its flaws in physical game form, and most of us have probably played at least one digital version over the years.
Also board game people are the same people quoted in the article as saying that bad rulebooks were in fact great, so their judgement may not exactly be the best. Enthusiasts of any category tend to be able to ignore a lot of flaws in their favorite thing as long as the thing they like about it works. I'm a car enthusiast, and there are a lot of us who absolutely love objectively bad vehicles just because of one unique quirk that happens to make us smile.
> Sure. It still doesn't make for a fun game though.
Right, but it takes a lot of the parts that actually ruin most physical plays and solves their problems.
> Sure. But good games avoid tedious tasks to start with.
Remembering a book full of rules and what applies when is a tedious task. If the game requires players have a grasp on a substantial rulebook for basic play it is not avoiding tedious tasks.
That's what's great about computer versions of board games, the computer handles that part and players are only able to do things that are allowed. You never have to remember what you can do when, and more importantly never have to decide between unwinding multiple turns worth of gameplay, just rolling with it, or throwing away the entire session when inevitably someone gets it wrong.
There is exactly one game I've played with my partner's board game crew where I didn't discover some way they were doing it wrong, and that's Everdell which has a very well done computer version that they regularly play as well as physical, so they've been forced to learn how the game actually works instead of how they think it works.
> If anything I'd say the converse is true: most computer games would be improved by trying to make a board game version and cutting the mechanics that make that difficult.
I wouldn't disagree with that, but the fact remains that computers allow more complicated mechanics to be implemented without increasing the cognitive load on the players or increasing the odds of a game-breaking misunderstanding.
It's a great example because almost everyone discussing this topic understands the game and its flaws in physical game form, and most of us have probably played at least one digital version over the years.
Also board game people are the same people quoted in the article as saying that bad rulebooks were in fact great, so their judgement may not exactly be the best. Enthusiasts of any category tend to be able to ignore a lot of flaws in their favorite thing as long as the thing they like about it works. I'm a car enthusiast, and there are a lot of us who absolutely love objectively bad vehicles just because of one unique quirk that happens to make us smile.
> Sure. It still doesn't make for a fun game though.
Right, but it takes a lot of the parts that actually ruin most physical plays and solves their problems.
> Sure. But good games avoid tedious tasks to start with.
Remembering a book full of rules and what applies when is a tedious task. If the game requires players have a grasp on a substantial rulebook for basic play it is not avoiding tedious tasks.
That's what's great about computer versions of board games, the computer handles that part and players are only able to do things that are allowed. You never have to remember what you can do when, and more importantly never have to decide between unwinding multiple turns worth of gameplay, just rolling with it, or throwing away the entire session when inevitably someone gets it wrong.
There is exactly one game I've played with my partner's board game crew where I didn't discover some way they were doing it wrong, and that's Everdell which has a very well done computer version that they regularly play as well as physical, so they've been forced to learn how the game actually works instead of how they think it works.
> If anything I'd say the converse is true: most computer games would be improved by trying to make a board game version and cutting the mechanics that make that difficult.
I wouldn't disagree with that, but the fact remains that computers allow more complicated mechanics to be implemented without increasing the cognitive load on the players or increasing the odds of a game-breaking misunderstanding.
> There is exactly one game I've played with my partner's board game crew where I didn't discover some way they were doing it wrong, and that's Everdell which has a very well done computer version that they regularly play as well as physical, so they've been forced to learn how the game actually works instead of how they think it works.
Did correcting the others make them more fun?
Did correcting the others make them more fun?
> Did correcting the others make them more fun?
I don't generally find correcting others fun, unless they don't take it well and make a scene about it in which case that can certainly be some delicious schadenfreude. That doesn't happen with the game group, they're generally receptive.
I think the games probably got more fun though. Presumably those rules are there for a reason, and it's not like I'm staring at the rulebook the whole time. I either had a question come up as a part of gameplay the group couldn't answer confidently or something didn't feel right about how the game was playing so I checked and found what I found. On more than one occasion this has led to someone else in the group pointing out some other related element they had found weird until then.
I don't generally find correcting others fun, unless they don't take it well and make a scene about it in which case that can certainly be some delicious schadenfreude. That doesn't happen with the game group, they're generally receptive.
I think the games probably got more fun though. Presumably those rules are there for a reason, and it's not like I'm staring at the rulebook the whole time. I either had a question come up as a part of gameplay the group couldn't answer confidently or something didn't feel right about how the game was playing so I checked and found what I found. On more than one occasion this has led to someone else in the group pointing out some other related element they had found weird until then.
Rules are generally made deliberately, but I've known more than one game that was made more fun by an accidental misreading of the rules. When a rule mistake is important enough to spoil a game, or breaks the consistency, one generally notices. I guess it's possible for a game to just be silently slightly less fun than it should be because of a rule mistake, but I haven't seen it happen much. Which possibly says something about the value of complex rules with lots of special cases.
Lot of sympathy for this view, too. Risk is long, drawn-out and often awful on board, but can be very pleasant on computer.
OTOH, creating a computer game is not a trivial task, and I don't see a good way to do it for 6 people Face-to-Face with some hidden information like a card hand. Would it be good if a complicated diplomatic game with hidden info like Republic of Rome https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1513/the-republic-of-rom... were available on computer, and everyone had their own device making it easy to see their hand / interact? Absolutely! But that's not a realistic option.
I would agree with "If your game is complicated enough that effectively no one is going to play it correctly as a board game, either simplify it so that's not the case or don't make it a board game." but think you may be underestimating serious gamers' ability to play complicated games correctly and still have fun. Agree that you really want to try to minimize tedious bookkeeping, though.
I may well be an outlier, though - I actually read the rules of Monopoly as a kid and we did auctions and mortgaging...
OTOH, creating a computer game is not a trivial task, and I don't see a good way to do it for 6 people Face-to-Face with some hidden information like a card hand. Would it be good if a complicated diplomatic game with hidden info like Republic of Rome https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1513/the-republic-of-rom... were available on computer, and everyone had their own device making it easy to see their hand / interact? Absolutely! But that's not a realistic option.
I would agree with "If your game is complicated enough that effectively no one is going to play it correctly as a board game, either simplify it so that's not the case or don't make it a board game." but think you may be underestimating serious gamers' ability to play complicated games correctly and still have fun. Agree that you really want to try to minimize tedious bookkeeping, though.
I may well be an outlier, though - I actually read the rules of Monopoly as a kid and we did auctions and mortgaging...
> OTOH, creating a computer game is not a trivial task, and I don't see a good way to do it for 6 people Face-to-Face with some hidden information like a card hand.
I've long thought the "Jackbox Games" model would be absolutely perfect for board games. The board goes on a TV, a tablet, or for the really dedicated a screen built in to their gaming table and each player's hand/deck/whatever displays on their phone through a browser-based client.
If I were a frontend programmer I'd have taken a whack at it.
> but think you may be underestimating serious gamers' ability to play complicated games correctly and still have fun.
My experience fits with something mentioned in the article, a lot of serious gamers are not in fact playing their games correctly but they just don't know it. I said this in another one of my replies but I'll repeat it here, I have rarely played a complicated (read: more than a page of rules to be understood for proper play) game with my partner's board game crew without discovering some way that they were playing it wrong half way through the game. These are people who meet every week at a board game bar to play board games, go to board game conventions, and a few of them even make and sell their own games.
I've long thought the "Jackbox Games" model would be absolutely perfect for board games. The board goes on a TV, a tablet, or for the really dedicated a screen built in to their gaming table and each player's hand/deck/whatever displays on their phone through a browser-based client.
If I were a frontend programmer I'd have taken a whack at it.
> but think you may be underestimating serious gamers' ability to play complicated games correctly and still have fun.
My experience fits with something mentioned in the article, a lot of serious gamers are not in fact playing their games correctly but they just don't know it. I said this in another one of my replies but I'll repeat it here, I have rarely played a complicated (read: more than a page of rules to be understood for proper play) game with my partner's board game crew without discovering some way that they were playing it wrong half way through the game. These are people who meet every week at a board game bar to play board games, go to board game conventions, and a few of them even make and sell their own games.
A few decades ago we did as you suggest. We automated TTRPGs and called them CRPGs, and ARPGs, and MMORPGs. And yet - TTRPGs are as popular as ever, despite apparently being subordinate.
Having lots of rules does not automatically make a game awful. So many people (myself included) enjoy games with lots of rules. Granted, there's an upper limit where a game takes more energy to "maintain" by ensuring the rules are being followed than is spent actually playing the game, but by and large I've found nearly all games fall below this threshold.
There's a certain charm to doing things in person. Same reason as to why some people prefer film photography when digital exists - traveling in person when google maps exists, reading books when movies exist. It's just a different medium of interaction. I personally enjoy it (heavy board games) but totally understand why others don't.
I mean, if you're not in the hobby you probably don't have any insight into this.
It's unfortunate that the author chose such a clickbait name for this essay. It puts me, someone who has seen boardgame rulebooks that definitely aren't awful, in an angry defensive mood when reading this, which is bolstered by the fact that good practices that the author recommends are in fact things I've seen good rulebooks do.
Tangentially: How do y'all approach explaining the rules to a new game?
For the card game Hearts I would say something like:
"I will give a 20 second explanation, and then go into more detail in a second pass.
Hearts is a trick taking game. In Hearts players take turns throwing cards into a pile. Depending on which cards are placed in the pile, one player will take the pile, and that player will get some points. Points are bad, the objective of the game is to avoid getting points. Now let's just play through a mock round, it will only take a minute or two..." Etc.
I've given some thought to this, because I've often had games explained to me and the explainer is going deep into the rules about some game mechanic before I even know what the objective of the game is. I also know that people's minds work differently, and so maybe my high-level-first approach is confusing to others.
Any advice on how to teach the rules for a new game?
For the card game Hearts I would say something like:
"I will give a 20 second explanation, and then go into more detail in a second pass.
Hearts is a trick taking game. In Hearts players take turns throwing cards into a pile. Depending on which cards are placed in the pile, one player will take the pile, and that player will get some points. Points are bad, the objective of the game is to avoid getting points. Now let's just play through a mock round, it will only take a minute or two..." Etc.
I've given some thought to this, because I've often had games explained to me and the explainer is going deep into the rules about some game mechanic before I even know what the objective of the game is. I also know that people's minds work differently, and so maybe my high-level-first approach is confusing to others.
Any advice on how to teach the rules for a new game?
I too find the "dante's inferno method" (i just made that up) effective, in which you start with a high level explanation then progress through deeper details iteratively.
(e.g. turns out I don't know what a trick is, so while you're explaining the nuance of tricks and going into more ad more detail, I'm waiting for you to explain what a trick is getting more confused and frustrated.).
You aren't aware of what concepts are confusing, or how many weird words/concepts you can pile on before someone just disconnects.
* Hearts is a card game
* Hearts is a card game with tricks
* In Hearts, winning tricks is bad, you want others to win tricks.
* In Hearts, you win tricks by...
(e.g. turns out I don't know what a trick is, so while you're explaining the nuance of tricks and going into more ad more detail, I'm waiting for you to explain what a trick is getting more confused and frustrated.).
You aren't aware of what concepts are confusing, or how many weird words/concepts you can pile on before someone just disconnects.
I like the name. :)
I've often thought multiple passes over a topic, beginning with a short pass, and giving more details in each subsequent pass, is a good teaching method.
I haven't done it much myself though, and I haven't seen it done by others very often. I wonder if it really is a good teaching method in practice?
I've often thought multiple passes over a topic, beginning with a short pass, and giving more details in each subsequent pass, is a good teaching method.
I haven't done it much myself though, and I haven't seen it done by others very often. I wonder if it really is a good teaching method in practice?
Unquestioningly a "good" practice, but it takes more time and effort on the part of the teacher, who has to take the audience into account when creating his layers of Hell--err, explanation.
I'd start with the objective before anything else. "In Hearts, you get points - points are bad, and the objective is to avoid getting points." Everything else is framed around that, IMO.
It's astonishing how many rulebooks (and people) leave that for the "scoring" section as if it's an afterthought for when the game is over.
IMO the best way is always to explain as much as you can while actually playing the game. Just accept that there's no way anybody is going to fully learn the game on their first try. Even in a simple game like Hearts there is enough strategy that nobody is going to play very well their first time, so there's no point in trying to make them understand everything
Once people are actually playing the game then 1) They will be having fun, which is the whole point of board games 2) They can ask you anything they don't get, and you can make sure that they actually understand 3) It will force you to explain mechanics in a logical order that gives people information only when they need it and can actually use it
For Hearts I would probably just deal a hand to each player, maybe face up, and go from there
Once people are actually playing the game then 1) They will be having fun, which is the whole point of board games 2) They can ask you anything they don't get, and you can make sure that they actually understand 3) It will force you to explain mechanics in a logical order that gives people information only when they need it and can actually use it
For Hearts I would probably just deal a hand to each player, maybe face up, and go from there
For hearts I'd deal everyone in face up. Then I'd point out "because of X card this person starts" (I don't remember hearts, is this always left of the dealer or is it one where the person with some other card starts. If hearts is a bidding game of course I'd go over each person's bid, but I'd probably just tell everyone what to bid as bids won't make sense until the end when you see the results). That person will probably want to play X because it is the best legal move - of course we know that so and so has a better card and so will win the hand, now the next player has to play, this is why they would choose this card... Then play a game or two to get experience. Then erase the score for everyone and start playing
> Any advice on how to teach the rules for a new game?
It depends on the game and the people involved. IMO it's easiest when you're familiar with the group and can use terminology they can understand. The phrase "trick taking" is a likely no-no, and I'd rather say something like "Spades is like Hearts except blah blah blah" if the group is already familiar with Hearts but doesn't know what Spades is.
And if people don't know what Hearts is, just describe it in plain language. Like for the points I might say something like "higher points are bad, kind of like golf", as most people understand what golf is.
It depends on the game and the people involved. IMO it's easiest when you're familiar with the group and can use terminology they can understand. The phrase "trick taking" is a likely no-no, and I'd rather say something like "Spades is like Hearts except blah blah blah" if the group is already familiar with Hearts but doesn't know what Spades is.
And if people don't know what Hearts is, just describe it in plain language. Like for the points I might say something like "higher points are bad, kind of like golf", as most people understand what golf is.
> Hearts is a trick taking game.
Just as an FYI: from the perspective of someone who very rarely plays card games this sentence is absolutely incomprehensible. The explanation would have been better without it. (For me.) It leaves me thinking what the heck a trick might be. I know card tricks where a magician asks you to pick a card and then things happen and later they magically identify the card. Or i know “tricking” people in the bluffing with card sense. But the heck would anyone “take” any of the above? Maybe the goal is that someone will bluff and we are supposed to “take it” as in believe othes bluffs and that is somehow the game? Oh but now from the description it sounds the goal is to not “take” the points so then isn’t that a “trick not-taking” game? Or a “trick forcing” as in the active thing is to force others to take the “trick” when they would rather not?
Board game geeks do this often. They have seen so many games before that they learned to identify patterns in the rules and they learned names for those patterns. They say something like “this is a pool bulding, hidden movement game with the added twist that your blurbs can smorg on backturns too, let’s play”. Which is fine, as long as they play with other board game geeks. But if they also want to play with us non-boardgamegeeks these sentences confuse more than explain. Because i might be just sitting there trying to figure out where will i find water for my pool, when actually what they meant… i don’t even know what they meant. Same way as i have no clue what is a trick and why would anybody taking it in the game you are describing.
Just as an FYI: from the perspective of someone who very rarely plays card games this sentence is absolutely incomprehensible. The explanation would have been better without it. (For me.) It leaves me thinking what the heck a trick might be. I know card tricks where a magician asks you to pick a card and then things happen and later they magically identify the card. Or i know “tricking” people in the bluffing with card sense. But the heck would anyone “take” any of the above? Maybe the goal is that someone will bluff and we are supposed to “take it” as in believe othes bluffs and that is somehow the game? Oh but now from the description it sounds the goal is to not “take” the points so then isn’t that a “trick not-taking” game? Or a “trick forcing” as in the active thing is to force others to take the “trick” when they would rather not?
Board game geeks do this often. They have seen so many games before that they learned to identify patterns in the rules and they learned names for those patterns. They say something like “this is a pool bulding, hidden movement game with the added twist that your blurbs can smorg on backturns too, let’s play”. Which is fine, as long as they play with other board game geeks. But if they also want to play with us non-boardgamegeeks these sentences confuse more than explain. Because i might be just sitting there trying to figure out where will i find water for my pool, when actually what they meant… i don’t even know what they meant. Same way as i have no clue what is a trick and why would anybody taking it in the game you are describing.
> Board game geeks do this often. They have seen so many games before that they learned to identify patterns in the rules and they learned names for those patterns.
Funnily, enough: <https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic>
You'll find "trick-taking" in that list.
Funnily, enough: <https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic>
You'll find "trick-taking" in that list.
I think it's worth its weight (or rather, with the time it takes to say).
It clarifies a lot for those who know what it means, and for those who don't know, the remainder of the explanation proceeds without assuming they know what it means.
It clarifies a lot for those who know what it means, and for those who don't know, the remainder of the explanation proceeds without assuming they know what it means.
Yes, it's quite important to know your audience for this (also, Hearts is in some ways a good example, because someone who knows what a trick-taking card game is will very likely know Hearts in the first place, it being one of the most well-known examples after probably Bridge).
(and, of course, relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2501/)
(and, of course, relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2501/)
I always follow the same framework -- set the stage (What's the theme or idea?), explain the object (How do I win?), explain the overall structure of the game (How will the game flow and end?), and then hone in on your turn (What do I actually do when my turn comes up?).
The final step should naturally lead you into the finer nitty-gritty as players are ready.
The final step should naturally lead you into the finer nitty-gritty as players are ready.
The problem with 2-4 hour boardgames that require extension rulebooks, launched in the last decade, is that these games are islands. No game can point to another game to offer mental shortcuts in absorbing similar gameplay.
But they absolutely can. Go see Friedemann Freese Copycat, which has zero unique rules: Everything is stolen from a popular game insiders know. Hell, it even has a misprint on purpose, matching a famous misprint! You can teach it in 5 minutes to the right people, just by reference.
The modern, kickstarter heavy 3 hour monstrosity just can't assume that the buyer has played all the games that have the same mechanics they are basically lifting from elsewhere, while only explaining the 2 or 3 places where they are doing anything interesting. But when you go through lives rules explanations among people in industry, half of the rules are really handled by reference, because you know what is going on. With some designers, the rules are almost unnecessary, as the played aids and the graphic design do 90% of the work. I've played that game with a certain designer: He sat there to answer questions, but he didn't even hand us a rulebook, or provide an explanation. Just the components in front of us and 'figure it out', as an experiment on the game's learnability
The modern, kickstarter heavy 3 hour monstrosity just can't assume that the buyer has played all the games that have the same mechanics they are basically lifting from elsewhere, while only explaining the 2 or 3 places where they are doing anything interesting. But when you go through lives rules explanations among people in industry, half of the rules are really handled by reference, because you know what is going on. With some designers, the rules are almost unnecessary, as the played aids and the graphic design do 90% of the work. I've played that game with a certain designer: He sat there to answer questions, but he didn't even hand us a rulebook, or provide an explanation. Just the components in front of us and 'figure it out', as an experiment on the game's learnability
I think Jaws of the Lion broke the rules down for Gloomhaven really well -- it introduced the complexities of the game slowly over scenarios. I would advise anyone who has a game that takes more than a couple of hours to play to have a way to start the game and then add complexity after initial barriers have been met.
Mechs vs. Minions is another one that does this iterative process of teaching.
This article looks great, I'll continue to read it.
Mechs vs. Minions is another one that does this iterative process of teaching.
This article looks great, I'll continue to read it.
I came to say the same about JotL. They got so much right in that game with the way they introduce the rules and the spiral-bound book game board being the most prominent.
Also worth considering - Fluxx https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/258/fluxx where the rules are created during play as you go along. I really enjoyed the first experience of playing this and not knowing anything about it, but have not found anyone else who thinks this way.
IME, Pirate Fluxx is the best of the various themes. A good mix of silliness and solid gameplay.
One of the biggest issues I have is that a good rulebook/teacher should start at the "What are we trying to do?" From there everything else should flow.
I haven't read all this yet, so maybe he touches on it. The point about interconnecting pieces or like "gears" that are all involved is a good thing. Everything is dynamic and in interplay.
A lot of that means these are not linear systems (not in a systems theory sense, but textual sense). Graphics and images do volumes. But only so much as you understand, again, the WHY. Everything has to feed into the "economy" of the game and how all the parts interact.
Rulebooks also need to make sure terminology is consistent. I've played some games where I see a word that's used, and then I try to find the definition and it's just... not there. At least not easily found. An index of some sort is necessary if you're going to use special terms that aren't obvious (and if they are obvious/standard words, but you use them in a unique way, also define that).
I think there should be: 0. Intro/thematic vibe/core concept - the what you are trying to do and possibly why. 1. Component Overview - the what you are playing with. (Include a layout of the setup version of the game). 2. Step by step rules, underlined words that have specific definitions to be referred in the index. 3. Examples are ideal (including images), especially in tricky situations that involve edge cases (or worse, corner cases) 4. Common "edge cases" (oxymoron?) that are trickier should have their own FAQ/addendum for clarification. 5. Glossary/Index
Rules should not try to be cute and invent words for common scenarios unless it's clear what it means in context.
Rules should NOT try to be super thematic. A little flavor text at the beginning is fine, but like the above issue, there should not just be things like "Grippledize the phlumoxor to gain 10 boodiboos" Just say "place your character piece at location 3 in order to gain 10 units of currency" or whatever.
If you're going to use terms like that - use them on the cards as flavor text, not hinge the rules on understanding them; or if you're going to be cute with names, be consistent with it, and constantly use it so it's etched into the brain "OK, Grippledizing means Place at a spot" - if it's just a one off thing there is no need for a "cute" name for it. This is similar to how some science fiction loves just inventing words for things that already have perfectly cromulent terms.
I haven't read all this yet, so maybe he touches on it. The point about interconnecting pieces or like "gears" that are all involved is a good thing. Everything is dynamic and in interplay.
A lot of that means these are not linear systems (not in a systems theory sense, but textual sense). Graphics and images do volumes. But only so much as you understand, again, the WHY. Everything has to feed into the "economy" of the game and how all the parts interact.
Rulebooks also need to make sure terminology is consistent. I've played some games where I see a word that's used, and then I try to find the definition and it's just... not there. At least not easily found. An index of some sort is necessary if you're going to use special terms that aren't obvious (and if they are obvious/standard words, but you use them in a unique way, also define that).
I think there should be: 0. Intro/thematic vibe/core concept - the what you are trying to do and possibly why. 1. Component Overview - the what you are playing with. (Include a layout of the setup version of the game). 2. Step by step rules, underlined words that have specific definitions to be referred in the index. 3. Examples are ideal (including images), especially in tricky situations that involve edge cases (or worse, corner cases) 4. Common "edge cases" (oxymoron?) that are trickier should have their own FAQ/addendum for clarification. 5. Glossary/Index
Rules should not try to be cute and invent words for common scenarios unless it's clear what it means in context.
Rules should NOT try to be super thematic. A little flavor text at the beginning is fine, but like the above issue, there should not just be things like "Grippledize the phlumoxor to gain 10 boodiboos" Just say "place your character piece at location 3 in order to gain 10 units of currency" or whatever.
If you're going to use terms like that - use them on the cards as flavor text, not hinge the rules on understanding them; or if you're going to be cute with names, be consistent with it, and constantly use it so it's etched into the brain "OK, Grippledizing means Place at a spot" - if it's just a one off thing there is no need for a "cute" name for it. This is similar to how some science fiction loves just inventing words for things that already have perfectly cromulent terms.
> One of the biggest issues I have is that a good rulebook/teacher should start at the "What are we trying to do?"
This a million times. It drives me nuts when you're trying to learn a new game, and it's only at the very end that it explains what condition results in winning.
Like, if you'd started with that, reading the rules would have made a LOT more sense.
This a million times. It drives me nuts when you're trying to learn a new game, and it's only at the very end that it explains what condition results in winning.
Like, if you'd started with that, reading the rules would have made a LOT more sense.
> "What are we trying to do?" From there everything else should flow.
Excepting those with particular types of autism, this is the core of how all learnings works. Explain to humans the problem, describe the tools to solve the problem, let humans learn on their own how to overcome the problem.
But the goal of these rulebooks is not to aid the largest number of people in efficient learning, but to draw scrutiny from the least number.
Excepting those with particular types of autism, this is the core of how all learnings works. Explain to humans the problem, describe the tools to solve the problem, let humans learn on their own how to overcome the problem.
But the goal of these rulebooks is not to aid the largest number of people in efficient learning, but to draw scrutiny from the least number.
That works great, except for that genre of board games in which everyone is playing by a different set of rules: "Player 1, you're the cat, and you're trying to get mice and avoid water. Player 2, you're the fish; you're trying to get water and avoid cats.. Player 3, you're the dog, and you're trying to get cats and avoid newspapers, etc...."
The rulebooks are the worst part of the hobby. Some are beyond awful. One Deck Dungeon took me several attempts and a few google searches to figure out.
Another bad one was the travel version of Azul, which assumes you have already played the full size version.
Another bad one was the travel version of Azul, which assumes you have already played the full size version.
I also watched a few videos to understand one deck dungeon, but it wasn't until I bought the mobile game that I really felt like I knew what was intended.
Don't get me started on One Deck Galaxy...
I love both games, though.
Don't get me started on One Deck Galaxy...
I love both games, though.
I tend to agree.
Our first playthrough of a new board game usually ends up being 2x longer than the average game time listed on a box, mostly due to how long the rule book is.
My thought is that you basically need every rulebook to have an MVP - what is the fastest way to get players to start their first game. If that takes longer than 45 minutes, it's a pretty big drawback. If it takes an hour - it's a game design failure.
It's also the reason why we keep coming back to the same classic board games - Marvel, Battlestar Galactica, Carcassonne, Terraforming Mars, Race for the Galaxy. We already know the rules and it's so much easier to pick it back up with a simple refresher.
Our first playthrough of a new board game usually ends up being 2x longer than the average game time listed on a box, mostly due to how long the rule book is.
My thought is that you basically need every rulebook to have an MVP - what is the fastest way to get players to start their first game. If that takes longer than 45 minutes, it's a pretty big drawback. If it takes an hour - it's a game design failure.
It's also the reason why we keep coming back to the same classic board games - Marvel, Battlestar Galactica, Carcassonne, Terraforming Mars, Race for the Galaxy. We already know the rules and it's so much easier to pick it back up with a simple refresher.
Old boardgame (wargame) rulebooks used to have numbered sections and subsections. I often miss that in modern rulebooks, even if some wargame rulebooks still have them luckily. It is so much easier to discuss the rules of a game when you have unambiguous identifiers for every paragraph rather than having to come up with ad-hoc vague references to some page and location below a heading.
The linked article has numbered sections, which is nice, allowing for specific references like "in Section 2.3" or "Figure 14.4", but the example rulebooks discussed from what I can tell do not.
The linked article has numbered sections, which is nice, allowing for specific references like "in Section 2.3" or "Figure 14.4", but the example rulebooks discussed from what I can tell do not.
Yep. I think it's avoided by most modern rules writers because it looks intimidating and technical to many people. Among modern non-wargames, the authoritative rules for Root (Law of Root) do have this feature: http://root.livingrules.io/
I liked how in Exploding Kittens (card game not a board game but similar genre) they basically say - watch this YT video URL + QR code to understand how to actually play.
No thanks, if I wanted to look at a screen I'd play a video game.
They do have a manual, but getting the gist of the game through watching actual gameplay is a lot more intuitive for most people. It's like a 5m video.
I liked the idea so much when I learned Spirit Island with my kids we watched videos first before diving into board setup - which was quite complex.
I liked the idea so much when I learned Spirit Island with my kids we watched videos first before diving into board setup - which was quite complex.
No thanks, I can read faster than they can explain.
I definitely can't absorb the meaning of two pages of turn-order and action-economy description faster than a one-minute demo of someone taking a turn can convey the same information. I can read it that fast, maybe, but it'll take some more reading and maybe some scratch paper to sort it out, or even busting out the game and stepping through it with the pieces as if I were playing. That's all way slower than a video.
I agree that in practice lots of explainer videos waste a ton of time with intros and such, but thirty seconds of good video can easily replace ten minutes of reading and re-reading.
[EDIT] Put it another way: if you're trying to decide whether to get a game, do you read the rule book? I'd put that after videos of play, which are by far the most useful thing for this, followed by written first-time play AARs (a huge step down from a video, but serviceable), followed finally and distantly by the rule book. This is entirely because getting a sense of how a game actually plays from a rule book is hard and slow.
I agree that in practice lots of explainer videos waste a ton of time with intros and such, but thirty seconds of good video can easily replace ten minutes of reading and re-reading.
[EDIT] Put it another way: if you're trying to decide whether to get a game, do you read the rule book? I'd put that after videos of play, which are by far the most useful thing for this, followed by written first-time play AARs (a huge step down from a video, but serviceable), followed finally and distantly by the rule book. This is entirely because getting a sense of how a game actually plays from a rule book is hard and slow.
I guess everyone is just different.
I loath, loath, loath videos, for "teaching" anything. For basically all types of information.
I find the pacing to be terrible, and even if people talk as fast as I read, I absorb almost nothing from watching people play games.
I can't tell if other people are just slow readers, if they absorb visual information much better than me, or what.
Apparently everyone on Board Game Geek agrees with your side of the ledger, in that most board games have ~2 text reviews of the game and dozens of video reviews, but I basically pretend the videos don't exist.
I loath, loath, loath videos, for "teaching" anything. For basically all types of information.
I find the pacing to be terrible, and even if people talk as fast as I read, I absorb almost nothing from watching people play games.
I can't tell if other people are just slow readers, if they absorb visual information much better than me, or what.
Apparently everyone on Board Game Geek agrees with your side of the ledger, in that most board games have ~2 text reviews of the game and dozens of video reviews, but I basically pretend the videos don't exist.
Most of those video reviews exist for the ad revenue first and foremost, and it shows. Aise from superior UI, thats why we prefer text in general.
I like Phil Eklund’s approach for High Frontier. The manual includes example games with every event and move explained, and the game has a solitaire mode that lets you play by yourself. There are small differences in some of the rules, and scoring is different, but the core gameplay is the same. Once you've beaten the solitaire mode you will certainly understand the rules quite well.
I was running with the assumption that we already bought the game and are going to play it.
In both cases, you're trying to figure out what actually playing the game looks like.
> if you're trying to decide whether to get a game, do you read the rule book?
Yes, I bought spirit island since I liked the rules after reading them online. They were so simple yet fun.
> I'd put that after videos of play, which are by far the most useful thing for this
In a video you wont understand what happens though since you don't know the rules, you are just seeing them move around tokens on a board with little context. I don't see how you can understand if the game is fun or not based on that. It is like evaluating a computer based on watching a video of someone using it over reading the specs, nobody does that you read what it does instead.
It takes a hour long lecture to explain a concept that you can learn reading 5 minutes in a book, reading is much faster at getting information, watching takes less effort but also gives you much less understanding.
Yes, I bought spirit island since I liked the rules after reading them online. They were so simple yet fun.
> I'd put that after videos of play, which are by far the most useful thing for this
In a video you wont understand what happens though since you don't know the rules, you are just seeing them move around tokens on a board with little context. I don't see how you can understand if the game is fun or not based on that. It is like evaluating a computer based on watching a video of someone using it over reading the specs, nobody does that you read what it does instead.
It takes a hour long lecture to explain a concept that you can learn reading 5 minutes in a book, reading is much faster at getting information, watching takes less effort but also gives you much less understanding.
Can you read the rules and explain them to others faster than a video?
Yes because I know the other players strengths and experience.
Exploding kittens and their other games are also simple 1 or 2 rule games.
There’s not a lot of rule depth.
You couldn’t do the same with risk or kill dr lucky for instance
There’s not a lot of rule depth.
You couldn’t do the same with risk or kill dr lucky for instance
I'm learning Conquest and Netrunner now. I kind of half-understand Conquest now, and as for Netrunner, lol. One day. So this is very relevant to me.
I would compare the experience to being lost in a class, failing the first test, but just hoping you'll be able to learn enough by semester's end to pass. It's not easy, explaining all the ways things influence each other and cross-contribute. But thinking about it in a structured way can only help.
I would compare the experience to being lost in a class, failing the first test, but just hoping you'll be able to learn enough by semester's end to pass. It's not easy, explaining all the ways things influence each other and cross-contribute. But thinking about it in a structured way can only help.
My nephew and I taught ourselves Netrunner by reading through the rulebook and it was tough. Fortunately we were at Dicetower East and there were plenty of folks who stopped by to ask if we needed help (so many people excited to see Netrunner lol).
Overall if you just run a few games you will pick it up as you think through the implications of rules. My main complaint is that the recommended starter decks hide several mechanics so you end up reading all these rules that dont even apply at first.
Overall if you just run a few games you will pick it up as you think through the implications of rules. My main complaint is that the recommended starter decks hide several mechanics so you end up reading all these rules that dont even apply at first.
We bought Netrunner because it looked amazing, but we laboured through as many of the rules as we could stomach before putting it away without playing. That was 10 years ago. We've haven't had the energy to try again yet.
Piggybacking off what JamesSwift said, Netrunner seems like a game where you try to understand the rules, pause (or give up), go to an in-person meetup, get 'tutored' to really learn, then wait again for however long and try again to learn the rules. In my case it will probably be about 80% in-person learning and 20% on my own studying the rules at home.
Since this is HN, I'm hoping for some discussion of how this could be applicable to software documentation. I've felt similar frustration with complex board games and software, and thought often about crossover in techniques of presentation. At the least, I'd like to see software manuals have a consistent structure, like those of the old SPI wargames.
The issue with software documentation is very different than a boardgame: The boardgame is static, changes to the boardgame are ultimately changes in the documentation, and people will not pay for a game they can't understand, while people end up using systems that are undocumented.
There's good documentation in the software world, but it's always for systems shaped as to have all the incentives align to having good, current documentation. Stripe has good docs, because that's part of being able to onboard people: Bad docs cost money. Postgres has good docs because it doesn't change that much, so the good documentation stays useful, and they have a quick loop between finding errors and fixing them.
Your typical internal project has awful documentation because it's nobody's real job, the requirements change constantly, and not enough people would use the documentation in the best of times to make good documents a worthwhile investment.
And if you ask me, the SPI wargames aren't exactly pinnacles of good rulebook writing. If anything, the similar shape came from the games themselves having similar bones, more than because the system was good, or because standardization helped.
There's good documentation in the software world, but it's always for systems shaped as to have all the incentives align to having good, current documentation. Stripe has good docs, because that's part of being able to onboard people: Bad docs cost money. Postgres has good docs because it doesn't change that much, so the good documentation stays useful, and they have a quick loop between finding errors and fixing them.
Your typical internal project has awful documentation because it's nobody's real job, the requirements change constantly, and not enough people would use the documentation in the best of times to make good documents a worthwhile investment.
And if you ask me, the SPI wargames aren't exactly pinnacles of good rulebook writing. If anything, the similar shape came from the games themselves having similar bones, more than because the system was good, or because standardization helped.
One of the things i find with playing a new board game (as a very casual player), is it usually comes down to someone reading the rules to the group.
This is always frustrating because the person usually drones on about the part you understand, until eventually you stop paying attention,but spends ten seconds on the complex part.
This is always frustrating because the person usually drones on about the part you understand, until eventually you stop paying attention,but spends ten seconds on the complex part.
The group I most often play with has a school teacher in it. Guess who gets to read the rules to the rest.
I cannot begin to express my frustration with rulebooks. At this point, I basically assume that we will always get some rule wrong.
There was a trend 10ish years ago where the best games actually came with two rulebooks. One was a book designed to walk you through your first game, and the other was a reference book. They worked really well, but I can imagine they were a pain to develop.
The hallmark of a good rulebook is that there is a section in the back that has commonly missed rules or details. Besides being extremely helpful, it's a good signal that the rulebook has actually been tested.
Another "green flag" is if the rules include strategy tips - vomiting rules on me doesn't necessarily help me understand how I am supposed to experience the game.
There was a trend 10ish years ago where the best games actually came with two rulebooks. One was a book designed to walk you through your first game, and the other was a reference book. They worked really well, but I can imagine they were a pain to develop.
The hallmark of a good rulebook is that there is a section in the back that has commonly missed rules or details. Besides being extremely helpful, it's a good signal that the rulebook has actually been tested.
Another "green flag" is if the rules include strategy tips - vomiting rules on me doesn't necessarily help me understand how I am supposed to experience the game.
Direct download link that doesn't require any Google js:
https://drive.usercontent.google.com/download?id=1nkHWqYre86...
https://drive.usercontent.google.com/download?id=1nkHWqYre86...
I'm a fan of how the rules are structured in Scythe. Initially it seems very complex, but there's an underlying logic to it and you can figure out most of the rules by looking at the special abilities of each player - they each provide an exception to a rule.
I don't relate well to reading rules although I'm quite good at picking up on the "exceptions" to rules e.g. you can only own two twizzles unless you've unlocked the fandangle. What works for me is playing an example round/turn to see how the various mechanisms fit together. One problem I find with game rules is when they introduce a term without the corresponding picture of the card/token etc.
I don't relate well to reading rules although I'm quite good at picking up on the "exceptions" to rules e.g. you can only own two twizzles unless you've unlocked the fandangle. What works for me is playing an example round/turn to see how the various mechanisms fit together. One problem I find with game rules is when they introduce a term without the corresponding picture of the card/token etc.
> In a talk at PAX, Brandon
DeCoster and Scott Rubin describe how you can ruin Wizard, a trick-taking card game, when someone plays a card that
they weren't allowed to play:
> DeCoster: Now, in Euchre, there's a rule for that. It's called a renege. The other team gets two points, and you just play a new hand. Fine. But, in Wizard, which is my favorite trick taking game, there is no way to handle that situation.
> Rubin: Not, at least, officially in the rules.
> DeCoster: We've been trying to come up with a way, but there's no official way. There's no rule that says if someone reneges, do X, Y, and Z. And, in fact, by the nature of the game, it's very difficult to come up with a fair way to resolve that situation. So the game actually has... It's like a video game that has a glitch: go into this one spot, the game crashes, and your save file disappears. The same thing can happen in Wizard. (DeCoster & Rubin, 2016, 41:33–42:06)
But https://www.usgamesinc.com/Wizard-FAQ.html says:
> 30. What happens if a player reneges (i.e. does not follow suit when required to do so)?
> If noticed before another card is played, no penalty.
> If trick is completed and the mistake then discovered, players automatically make their bids except the player who reneged loses 20 points.
> DeCoster: Now, in Euchre, there's a rule for that. It's called a renege. The other team gets two points, and you just play a new hand. Fine. But, in Wizard, which is my favorite trick taking game, there is no way to handle that situation.
> Rubin: Not, at least, officially in the rules.
> DeCoster: We've been trying to come up with a way, but there's no official way. There's no rule that says if someone reneges, do X, Y, and Z. And, in fact, by the nature of the game, it's very difficult to come up with a fair way to resolve that situation. So the game actually has... It's like a video game that has a glitch: go into this one spot, the game crashes, and your save file disappears. The same thing can happen in Wizard. (DeCoster & Rubin, 2016, 41:33–42:06)
But https://www.usgamesinc.com/Wizard-FAQ.html says:
> 30. What happens if a player reneges (i.e. does not follow suit when required to do so)?
> If noticed before another card is played, no penalty.
> If trick is completed and the mistake then discovered, players automatically make their bids except the player who reneged loses 20 points.
I don’t know much about Paul Grogan but I know he was specifically brought on for the ISS Vanguard rule book and, man, what a piece of fucking trash that thing is. The book dedicates a considerable amount of pages running you through a walkthrough game. Every time I open it I’m reminded that a large portion of the rule book is, in fact, not rules.
My favorite rulebook is Stationfall. There is a dedicated rulebook for fun lore and general tips; a set thing for walking through a game, and two copies of the dry legalese.
My favorite rulebook is Stationfall. There is a dedicated rulebook for fun lore and general tips; a set thing for walking through a game, and two copies of the dry legalese.
> The book dedicates a considerable amount of pages running you through a walkthrough game. Every time I open it I’m reminded that a large portion of the rule book is, in fact, not rules.
What's wrong with that? Genuinely asking. It sounds useful to people trying to learn, and easy to skip if you've already learned.
What's wrong with that? Genuinely asking. It sounds useful to people trying to learn, and easy to skip if you've already learned.
The rules on how to play begin on something like page 29 if memory serves. Personally I find that ridiculous. I believe the glossary also recommends to you pages that cover the concepts in both halves of the book, but the rules in the first half of the book are not written as rules… sometimes. Sometimes they are written like rules, and they’re mostly the full rules but it’s not the rules section of the book.
When I’m reading through a rulebook I want to browse headers to find the concept I want, and then read the text.
Here is the particular book if you’re curious: https://awakenrealms.com/images/download/ISS_Vanguard/Rulebo...
Beautiful book. Needlessly confusing. Shame also on them for spending 3.5 pages on how to roll dice, excluding the example. It’s like an ADHD pit trap. You’re reading it and it’s hard to remember what the hell you’re reading. For example you may find yourself on the example of the track progression call out box. Which was related to what again? You might assume it’s the text above about died with two icons, but it’s actually the higher level header on the previous page. Which was step 7 of the dice roll check, which you could easily be confused by because it sure sounds like it should be part of step 8 of the dice roll check: mark outcomes; which begins by telling you not to do this if you had a track progression.
Ridiculous frankly. Also largely game specific. But screw you Paul grogan. You had one job, whoever you are.
When I’m reading through a rulebook I want to browse headers to find the concept I want, and then read the text.
Here is the particular book if you’re curious: https://awakenrealms.com/images/download/ISS_Vanguard/Rulebo...
Beautiful book. Needlessly confusing. Shame also on them for spending 3.5 pages on how to roll dice, excluding the example. It’s like an ADHD pit trap. You’re reading it and it’s hard to remember what the hell you’re reading. For example you may find yourself on the example of the track progression call out box. Which was related to what again? You might assume it’s the text above about died with two icons, but it’s actually the higher level header on the previous page. Which was step 7 of the dice roll check, which you could easily be confused by because it sure sounds like it should be part of step 8 of the dice roll check: mark outcomes; which begins by telling you not to do this if you had a track progression.
Ridiculous frankly. Also largely game specific. But screw you Paul grogan. You had one job, whoever you are.
It really gets in the way after the first playthrough and it gets especially problematic if some rules are only explained in that section.
I think board games on the more complex end are running into the fact that they're goddamn near impossible to teach, or to learn well enough to teach, without watching a demonstration or playing a couple demo rounds. A book alone is simply not sufficient without, as the linked PDF complains about, something like the effort of studying a textbook, probably with the game-pieces right alongside and working through fake play as you go so that any of it makes sense.
Attempts to translate that into extensive game walkthroughs in manuals (not quick examples of play to demonstrate a rule, which are sometimes nice) are horribly misguided. Just include a damn QR code that points to a YouTube video. Give it an entire page to make it more likely the players find it, that'll still be less space than a walkthrough.
I truly think Monopoly's around the upper end of complexity that normal people can be expected to absorb and apply from a game manual—not from someone showing them the right way, or from a video—which means the vast majority of modern-era games are way past that point. I've known more people who fail to play with all parts of the Monopoly rules than I've known people who correctly play with all of them (or at least know the rules, but affirmatively reject or deliberately modify them) by a large margin. Usually it's auctioning or mortgaging they skip, either because they never read the rules and learned from someone who wasn't familiar with those parts, or because they did read the rules but deemed one or both of those parts too daunting to play and manage without having seen a demonstration of it and decided the game seems like it can run without those rules (yes, it can, but it makes it worse in some key ways—not doing auctions when someone declines to purchase a space is especially harmful, as it prolongs the game without much in the way of compensatory extra fun)
Like, sure, Risk is kinda a shitty grand strategy or area control or war game or however you want to classify it, for demonstrable, if arguable, reasons, but if your answer to that results in more complex rules than Risk... you're gonna need an explainer video, because your rule book is definitely gonna suck. Because that's a game normal people can, just barely, often figure out and run correctly just from the rule book, and yours surely won't be.
Attempts to translate that into extensive game walkthroughs in manuals (not quick examples of play to demonstrate a rule, which are sometimes nice) are horribly misguided. Just include a damn QR code that points to a YouTube video. Give it an entire page to make it more likely the players find it, that'll still be less space than a walkthrough.
I truly think Monopoly's around the upper end of complexity that normal people can be expected to absorb and apply from a game manual—not from someone showing them the right way, or from a video—which means the vast majority of modern-era games are way past that point. I've known more people who fail to play with all parts of the Monopoly rules than I've known people who correctly play with all of them (or at least know the rules, but affirmatively reject or deliberately modify them) by a large margin. Usually it's auctioning or mortgaging they skip, either because they never read the rules and learned from someone who wasn't familiar with those parts, or because they did read the rules but deemed one or both of those parts too daunting to play and manage without having seen a demonstration of it and decided the game seems like it can run without those rules (yes, it can, but it makes it worse in some key ways—not doing auctions when someone declines to purchase a space is especially harmful, as it prolongs the game without much in the way of compensatory extra fun)
Like, sure, Risk is kinda a shitty grand strategy or area control or war game or however you want to classify it, for demonstrable, if arguable, reasons, but if your answer to that results in more complex rules than Risk... you're gonna need an explainer video, because your rule book is definitely gonna suck. Because that's a game normal people can, just barely, often figure out and run correctly just from the rule book, and yours surely won't be.
Which is why many say there needs to be several rule books. You need the quick start summary page. You need the detailed reference book. You need the walk through example game. You probably should have the simplified rules for a quick game (with some limits so that the missing full rules are not needed).
A game that does as you suggest will simply become unplayable once the video is gone.
Then it will be merely as bad-off as most games!
Keep the rules, but ditch any lengthy written blow-by-blow account of a session of the game. They're painful to read and not terribly illuminating. The motivation is to replicate the sort of thing a video's good at, to make the rulebook a self-contained teaching device—"if watching a round of play is so useful, why don't we put that in the book!"—but it's just not gonna work. You need a video, someone to explain it to you, setting up the game and stepping through a couple fake turns with yourself, close reading of the rules with some note-taking and re-reading, that kind of thing. In short, you need a teacher (in person, or video) or good application of study skills. There is a Royal Road, but it's the former options (videos, teachers who already know the game) and you're not going to bring that to the rule book in just about any case that needs such a thing.
Keep the rules, but ditch any lengthy written blow-by-blow account of a session of the game. They're painful to read and not terribly illuminating. The motivation is to replicate the sort of thing a video's good at, to make the rulebook a self-contained teaching device—"if watching a round of play is so useful, why don't we put that in the book!"—but it's just not gonna work. You need a video, someone to explain it to you, setting up the game and stepping through a couple fake turns with yourself, close reading of the rules with some note-taking and re-reading, that kind of thing. In short, you need a teacher (in person, or video) or good application of study skills. There is a Royal Road, but it's the former options (videos, teachers who already know the game) and you're not going to bring that to the rule book in just about any case that needs such a thing.
[deleted]
That's not likely to be a problem since these days every board game has a number of instructional videos (and that's in addition to video reviews, which typically show how a game works, though not in as much detail).
Very interesting and informative read. It's kind of wild that nobody other than this author seems to be approaching this topic from this sort of technical perspective. In fact, it's kind of blowing my mind a bit that the game design program at the school I attended never had any sort of technical writing course at all, despite emphasizing rulebook ease-of-understanding and so forth when grading our board game projects. In hindsight, this is quite the obvious oversight!
I’ve not read the PDF yet (but will), but posting now becuase by the time I have time to finish a 50-page PDF, this thread will be dead.
But I’ve been watching Paul’s Gaming Rules! channel [1] for several years now, and regard him highly for not just writing rules, but also his YouTube content.
Re: On Mars, I’m curious to see what the author points out as critiques, because I felt like it was really well done. The game is a beast, and I think it would be hard to put together a rule book for such a game without it being a complex task.
But I feel like most complex games (heavier weight — 3.5+ according to BGG’s scale) are hard to learn by rules alone, and these days watching a teach on YouTube — or, even better, a playthrough — really helps with these heavier games.
To the OP’s (likely) point, maybe rules alone should be enough? I mean, how else are the YouTube content creators going to learn! :)
But I think for heavier games, no amount of rules wordsmithing will allow people to learn them without some fumbling and in-game rules referencing… and still getting some of them wrong.
Also, if interested, there is a blog on BGG by the OP, with more discussion there. [2]
[1] https://youtube.com/@gamingrulesvideos
[2] https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/13453/blogpost/164134/every-b...
But I’ve been watching Paul’s Gaming Rules! channel [1] for several years now, and regard him highly for not just writing rules, but also his YouTube content.
Re: On Mars, I’m curious to see what the author points out as critiques, because I felt like it was really well done. The game is a beast, and I think it would be hard to put together a rule book for such a game without it being a complex task.
But I feel like most complex games (heavier weight — 3.5+ according to BGG’s scale) are hard to learn by rules alone, and these days watching a teach on YouTube — or, even better, a playthrough — really helps with these heavier games.
To the OP’s (likely) point, maybe rules alone should be enough? I mean, how else are the YouTube content creators going to learn! :)
But I think for heavier games, no amount of rules wordsmithing will allow people to learn them without some fumbling and in-game rules referencing… and still getting some of them wrong.
Also, if interested, there is a blog on BGG by the OP, with more discussion there. [2]
[1] https://youtube.com/@gamingrulesvideos
[2] https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/13453/blogpost/164134/every-b...
Alternate link instead of Google Drive
https://boardgametextbook.com/EBGRIA.pdf
https://boardgametextbook.com/EBGRIA.pdf
The root page is just a landing template... is the author of this paper writing a textbook?
I tried learning to make sourdough bread by reading the Tartine Bread book.
The problem is, baking bread is such a sensual activity.
You need to understand what it feels like when the texture of the dough is right. You need to learn how to fold and stretch the dough and shape it in ways that are very difficult to describe. None of this translates well into English, no matter how good of a writer you are. And photos are of limited utility.
Learning in person from a knowledgeable teacher is ideal. Just as with a board game.
But, since we are talking about media here, what helped me the most with bread baking was Instagram. I watched videos of bakers doing each stage of the process and talking me through it. I saw the texture of the dough they were using, and how they worked it.
I learned by example.
And I wonder if board games are similar to bread.
Would I rather read a 70-page rule book, or watch someone play the game for a while or teach it to me in a video?
I'd prefer the video content, and then I'd want rulebook as a reference guide rather than a tutorial.
The problem is, baking bread is such a sensual activity.
You need to understand what it feels like when the texture of the dough is right. You need to learn how to fold and stretch the dough and shape it in ways that are very difficult to describe. None of this translates well into English, no matter how good of a writer you are. And photos are of limited utility.
Learning in person from a knowledgeable teacher is ideal. Just as with a board game.
But, since we are talking about media here, what helped me the most with bread baking was Instagram. I watched videos of bakers doing each stage of the process and talking me through it. I saw the texture of the dough they were using, and how they worked it.
I learned by example.
And I wonder if board games are similar to bread.
Would I rather read a 70-page rule book, or watch someone play the game for a while or teach it to me in a video?
I'd prefer the video content, and then I'd want rulebook as a reference guide rather than a tutorial.
I suspect it’s a per person thing. I’ve taught myself how to bake sourdough with a book. I’ve taught myself how to knit by reading as well which is also very tactile.
When reading a good rule book/instruction manual I get little moments where the respective explanations click.
But I assume everyone has a preferred method that works for them and has a similar experience when learning.
When reading a good rule book/instruction manual I get little moments where the respective explanations click.
But I assume everyone has a preferred method that works for them and has a similar experience when learning.
I feel like they mostly don't playtest the rulebook very much, and that doing so would get it in great condition.
Watching someone try to learn the rules will tell you exactly where the rulebook is too complicated, doesn't introduce something at the right time, doesn't reiterate something that needs reiterating, doesn't emphasize something enough, etc.
Watching someone try to learn the rules will tell you exactly where the rulebook is too complicated, doesn't introduce something at the right time, doesn't reiterate something that needs reiterating, doesn't emphasize something enough, etc.
It's hard to playtest a rulebook, because you need to get fresh players every time, if you want to optimize for the out of box experience (which I think you should!). But also, I think selection bias for playtesters is going to give you testers who are willing to dig through complex rule interactions, and that might not be everyone.
I've had the best luck with explaining games that have short rule sets. Anything more than 4 pages and you really need the multiple sets of rules paradigm, and a good tech editor to make sure the playthrough instructions are accurate with the reference instructions. It's my personal choice, but I also don't care for the games where there's enough stuff going on that it's easy to skip things that are important to balance the game; but there's certainly a balance --- I want a game where there's enough chance that anyone could win, but enough skill that I feel like I can still do well even if chance is against me, and I strongly prefer games where everyone is engaged until the end.
I've had the best luck with explaining games that have short rule sets. Anything more than 4 pages and you really need the multiple sets of rules paradigm, and a good tech editor to make sure the playthrough instructions are accurate with the reference instructions. It's my personal choice, but I also don't care for the games where there's enough stuff going on that it's easy to skip things that are important to balance the game; but there's certainly a balance --- I want a game where there's enough chance that anyone could win, but enough skill that I feel like I can still do well even if chance is against me, and I strongly prefer games where everyone is engaged until the end.
In my experience, it is not that hard to get a stream of fresh playtesters. Maybe I'm just fortunate.
I also don't think the playtester bias to be particularly bad for this. You'll miss some stuff because your playtesters will usually be a lot better than average at reading rules. But nearly everyone stumbles in visible ways on rulebooks, and the fixes for an experienced playtester stumbling tend to be simplifications / clarifications that are even more useful to inexperienced players.
I also don't think the playtester bias to be particularly bad for this. You'll miss some stuff because your playtesters will usually be a lot better than average at reading rules. But nearly everyone stumbles in visible ways on rulebooks, and the fixes for an experienced playtester stumbling tend to be simplifications / clarifications that are even more useful to inexperienced players.
Fresh players are easy, just go any college and put up some posters. $minimum wage to try a new game - it isn't a good deal if you are into money, but if you ensure they have fun and have some beverages they will do it anyway. If someone is really good at something you know who to make an offer to.
Playtesting, like usability studies, is not really going to solve the problem, because it isn't a creative process.
You need to have a proposed solution in order to playtest or evaluate, and if you start in a bad place you're not going to iterate your way out of it.
You need to have a proposed solution in order to playtest or evaluate, and if you start in a bad place you're not going to iterate your way out of it.
Usability studied are not about finding solutions, they are about finding where your solution works/doesn't work. There are too many places where creative solutions are not usable, and so you need to send your creative people back to the drawing board.
This is my top comment. Some designers I've worked with are so obsessed about playtesting and tuning individual mechanics or systems that the never actually playtest the full game flow with no-knowledge players also _running_ the game.
From a technical standpoint, too many technical writers (much less game designers writing rulebooks) lack the tools or understanding to single-source content and consistently reuse it in multiple places. A lot of rulebooks are written and designed as if repeating content is the greatest of sins, but for a game in play, _the last_ thing you want to do is make someone flip to referenced pages. You know what the text should be, just reprint it consistently where it's relevant.
But then this reveals that the problem is often inherent in a game's physical design. If a game has several discrete rules that must be frequently cross-referenced or repeated, those rules should move out of a physical book and onto cards or discrete handout items. And indeed, in my experience doing that has been the effective endgame of the "rulebooks are reference documents that lack the searchability of a reference document" complaint from this essay's writer: rather than having a comprehensive, organized, searchable reference document, find ways to move the rules into the game. Even better: find ways to move the actions allowed by the rules into the physical actions of interacting with the game, such that you don't need words to describe them.
The essay instead suggests borrowing or informing structures from textbooks and lesson plans, but the pragmatic answer isn't to make a new, better kind of game-teaching book, it's to make the rules more accessible _within the medium of the game itself_, of which the rulebook rarely or never is. The best reference guide is the one that doesn't exist because the designers recognized that it shouldn't and designed the game appropriately. The second-best is one that's integrated into the game or board as a component.[1]
In other words, and against the essay's conclusion, the necessary text to run a board game _should_ fit on the inside of the box lid: who can play, how to set it up, and how the components embody the rules. The board and components themselves should be the best, and ideally only, required documentation after that.
But that's also a fundamental design problem in games. This essay proposes a way to make a better band-aid for that self-inflicted wound, but it would be best if designers thought about how to avoid it, and that can only happen when you have know-nothing playtesters crack the box open for the first time. Alas, much of modern game design is so dense and maximalist that if you shipped a game that didn't require a dense rulebook to play, people would knee-jerk react as if the game was too simple or just awful.
1: One of my favorite recent board games is That Time You Killed Me, a time-travel-themed game with a complex conceit. It incorporates the manual as part of the game's progression, and it's flavorful, tells a story, is aesthetically pretty, and builds its rules upon itself at each step. It does few of the things advised in this essay, and if it did more of them, I think I might like the game less.
https://gamers-hq.de/media/pdf/aa/31/ef/TTYKM_Rules-min.pdf is the reference guide and core tutorial; it's 12 pages long, most of it art. The rest of the rules are in the spoiler-filled chapters not part of that PDF, each of which introduces new rules alongside a separate sealed box of new components.
From a technical standpoint, too many technical writers (much less game designers writing rulebooks) lack the tools or understanding to single-source content and consistently reuse it in multiple places. A lot of rulebooks are written and designed as if repeating content is the greatest of sins, but for a game in play, _the last_ thing you want to do is make someone flip to referenced pages. You know what the text should be, just reprint it consistently where it's relevant.
But then this reveals that the problem is often inherent in a game's physical design. If a game has several discrete rules that must be frequently cross-referenced or repeated, those rules should move out of a physical book and onto cards or discrete handout items. And indeed, in my experience doing that has been the effective endgame of the "rulebooks are reference documents that lack the searchability of a reference document" complaint from this essay's writer: rather than having a comprehensive, organized, searchable reference document, find ways to move the rules into the game. Even better: find ways to move the actions allowed by the rules into the physical actions of interacting with the game, such that you don't need words to describe them.
The essay instead suggests borrowing or informing structures from textbooks and lesson plans, but the pragmatic answer isn't to make a new, better kind of game-teaching book, it's to make the rules more accessible _within the medium of the game itself_, of which the rulebook rarely or never is. The best reference guide is the one that doesn't exist because the designers recognized that it shouldn't and designed the game appropriately. The second-best is one that's integrated into the game or board as a component.[1]
In other words, and against the essay's conclusion, the necessary text to run a board game _should_ fit on the inside of the box lid: who can play, how to set it up, and how the components embody the rules. The board and components themselves should be the best, and ideally only, required documentation after that.
But that's also a fundamental design problem in games. This essay proposes a way to make a better band-aid for that self-inflicted wound, but it would be best if designers thought about how to avoid it, and that can only happen when you have know-nothing playtesters crack the box open for the first time. Alas, much of modern game design is so dense and maximalist that if you shipped a game that didn't require a dense rulebook to play, people would knee-jerk react as if the game was too simple or just awful.
1: One of my favorite recent board games is That Time You Killed Me, a time-travel-themed game with a complex conceit. It incorporates the manual as part of the game's progression, and it's flavorful, tells a story, is aesthetically pretty, and builds its rules upon itself at each step. It does few of the things advised in this essay, and if it did more of them, I think I might like the game less.
https://gamers-hq.de/media/pdf/aa/31/ef/TTYKM_Rules-min.pdf is the reference guide and core tutorial; it's 12 pages long, most of it art. The rest of the rules are in the spoiler-filled chapters not part of that PDF, each of which introduces new rules alongside a separate sealed box of new components.
Just about the only innovations in board games per se that I've seen, that've made them easier to play, are increased focus on helpful iconography, and more widespread use of "cheat sheets" (cards, little cardboard bits with print on them) for each player. Not every game uses them, and not every game uses them well (the iconography, especially) but damn is it ever nice to sit down to a game you haven't touched in a year and find that just glancing over the player cheat-sheet and icons on the games' various bits is enough to refresh your memory of the rules well enough to present it to newbies again, leaving maybe just a few details of initial set-up to be looked up in the rulebook (and sometimes the really good ones sneak those onto the cheat sheets or graphic design of e.g. the board!)
I've been wondering for some time if it would be possible to create a formal way of describing board game rules. Although there is much variety in board gaming, mostly they consist of some sort of state machine, with events that change that state, and usually a clear end game state.
Does anyone know if this has been researched?
Does anyone know if this has been researched?
I don’t think you will be capable of pushing it as a sort of board game protocol. I think the best way to do rules is to have a rulebook where it’s very easy to look up rules as a reference later. Setup, turns and actions are relatively easy to learn, but you’ll often have to look up consequences of actions or specific events over the years. Rulebook which mix in everything in a big mess designed to describe “how to play for new players”, tend to make it hard to look up things. Which is what you’re going to want to do after a few play throughs. Especially if you play a lot of different board games.
I think the biggest challenges you’ll face is that most rulebooks are simply poorly written and that many games aren’t well designed. Add to this that many modern board games are sold on FOMO models, where you get a lot of additional crowdfunding exclusive rule addons, and it’s just a mess.
The best way to get good rules would probably be to get them digitally and have a LLM refine them for you though. Not only could you fix some of the bad writing, you could also ask for things like reference sheets or whatever you want.
I think the biggest challenges you’ll face is that most rulebooks are simply poorly written and that many games aren’t well designed. Add to this that many modern board games are sold on FOMO models, where you get a lot of additional crowdfunding exclusive rule addons, and it’s just a mess.
The best way to get good rules would probably be to get them digitally and have a LLM refine them for you though. Not only could you fix some of the bad writing, you could also ask for things like reference sheets or whatever you want.
> I've been wondering for some time if it would be possible to create a formal way of describing board game rules
There is, it is called computer code. Board game rules aren't written that way for a reason.
There is, it is called computer code. Board game rules aren't written that way for a reason.
> Board game rules aren't written that way for a reason.
Most board games.
Star Fleet Battles is basically a computer game written on paper 10 years before home computers had enough RAM for the rule set.
The result is what you may expect, each "turn" takes 60-90 minutes and the game lasts 3-4 turns, and every box on this ship diagram actually does something: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/camo/45ff4f9cf11f36cafd7768931a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fleet_Battles
Most board games.
Star Fleet Battles is basically a computer game written on paper 10 years before home computers had enough RAM for the rule set.
The result is what you may expect, each "turn" takes 60-90 minutes and the game lasts 3-4 turns, and every box on this ship diagram actually does something: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/camo/45ff4f9cf11f36cafd7768931a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Fleet_Battles
I like zefquaavius' "holistic summary" of the rules for Daybreak [1]. They've published a bunch of others games rules in this form too [2]. They're not sufficient to learn to play the game but are absolutely perfect for remembering the details of how the game works after you've learned once.
1. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1blJZCDK2A8DC6f6akcCcQ9_M...
2. https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/190653/holistic-summaries...
1. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1blJZCDK2A8DC6f6akcCcQ9_M...
2. https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/190653/holistic-summaries...
As with most difficult things, you have to learn by doing.
For well-established board games, the best solution is to watch an intro video and then play a few rounds using an online version like BGA if it's available.
For non-well established board games, someone with some pedagogical chops has to bite the bullet and read the whole manual and then teach it, in little pieces, to folks during an example playthrough.
There is a weird conceit among some board gamers that you can know what the hell you're doing on a first playthrough. For any moderately complex game or beyond, of course you cannot possibly know much about how to play much less what strategies to use. This is why I don't like playing games once or very infrequently.
For well-established board games, the best solution is to watch an intro video and then play a few rounds using an online version like BGA if it's available.
For non-well established board games, someone with some pedagogical chops has to bite the bullet and read the whole manual and then teach it, in little pieces, to folks during an example playthrough.
There is a weird conceit among some board gamers that you can know what the hell you're doing on a first playthrough. For any moderately complex game or beyond, of course you cannot possibly know much about how to play much less what strategies to use. This is why I don't like playing games once or very infrequently.
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Can confirm. I really like the one for Dice Hospital. I learned from that one that Paul Grogan is the best at doing rulebooks. I also don't mind the one for Obsession, but maybe because I just love the game that much
The rulebook is the blueprint for gameplay as the designer intended. The more complex the rules are, the worse job the designer did.
That said, some people love to figure out complex rules, and that can be a part of the game experience.
That said, some people love to figure out complex rules, and that can be a part of the game experience.
Both Pathfinder 2e and the Lancer TTRPG rulebooks are basically software implementation guides.
Lots of use of tags and other capitalized technical terms. Information presented roughly in the order you would program them.
Excellent on the technical end but also understandable.
And a good rulebook has pictures/ examples too.
Lancer does a great job of also presenting mechanics in the order you’ll encounter them. High-level abilities aren’t available till late game and the new mechanics they introduce only become relevant late game. So they’re later in the book.
Lots of use of tags and other capitalized technical terms. Information presented roughly in the order you would program them.
Excellent on the technical end but also understandable.
And a good rulebook has pictures/ examples too.
Lancer does a great job of also presenting mechanics in the order you’ll encounter them. High-level abilities aren’t available till late game and the new mechanics they introduce only become relevant late game. So they’re later in the book.
For a bit of tangentially related fun, I recommend Steven Jackson's Murphy's Rules. It was a book of irrational game rules. I used to have a hard-copy of this. Sorry if this is not an official link. You may have better luck finding it yourself :)
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/download_preview.php?pid=317646
There's a problem which he misses in this which appears in this game and almost everywhere: Games that don't have any useful words on the board, presumably because the game is to be sold in multiple countries. For instance, the question about what the crystal icons mean could have been resolved if the game had had words like "per round" or "additional" on them.
One thing that seems to be a trend recently is replacing a lot of text explanations of things with little pictograms. I understand this is usually some combination of needing to fit them onto the game board + avoiding needing to translate more things (and if you're lucky there's a lookup table of text descriptions somewhere in the manual) but they're usually completely incomprehensible to me.
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5 year old me could understand monopoly's rulesheet easily enough
(and if you actually follow the rules the game ends in a reasonable amount of time)
(and if you actually follow the rules the game ends in a reasonable amount of time)
The video game version of Monopoly is pretty good - you can finish a game in about 20 minutes.
That's why I don't like/play physical board games.
Computers are much better in enforcing every arbitrarily complex rule/mechanic and there is no need to get into any rule lawyering disputes.
Also, I can avoid any boring/time consuming stuff like counting tokens, points, scores, roads etc.
Computers are much better in enforcing every arbitrarily complex rule/mechanic and there is no need to get into any rule lawyering disputes.
Also, I can avoid any boring/time consuming stuff like counting tokens, points, scores, roads etc.
I sponsored Nemesis on Kickstarter. A very good game. But the rules are horribly written. 5 years later I still discover new rules. I didn't even played the extensions I bought because it turns out 35+ years old adults don't have much time.
I think at some point you have to conclude that people want to be confused. That part of the pleasure is trying to internalize a bunch of disjointed nonsense until eventually something clicks
There's a lot to read through here. There have been points I disagreed with, but overall this seems like a very solid overview of basic ideas.
I think those ideas could probably be presented much more tersely. But I'm in the middle of putting up with a 150-page PDF, not so much because I'm engaged with the material, but because I want an excuse to spend a large amount of time thinking about it.
... Which tracks a lot with the start of section 2.2, actually. I could engage on these ideas in my own time and not feel like the author is wasting mine as I read. But the important thing is that I do engage with them at all; they'll stick because I'm actively processing them, just like in the experiment in Spielman et al.'s book.
Another interesting connection I notice here is that Kalb's model of experimental learning seems to map very neatly onto the Diataxis model for writing documentation (https://diataxis.fr/).
I think those ideas could probably be presented much more tersely. But I'm in the middle of putting up with a 150-page PDF, not so much because I'm engaged with the material, but because I want an excuse to spend a large amount of time thinking about it.
... Which tracks a lot with the start of section 2.2, actually. I could engage on these ideas in my own time and not feel like the author is wasting mine as I read. But the important thing is that I do engage with them at all; they'll stick because I'm actively processing them, just like in the experiment in Spielman et al.'s book.
Another interesting connection I notice here is that Kalb's model of experimental learning seems to map very neatly onto the Diataxis model for writing documentation (https://diataxis.fr/).
I've written many game engines (simulations). I've found that parsing the rulebook into code gives me a much clearer insight into the game.
You decide to peruse the History. Settling back under the Willow Tree, you open the book.
(You read the Book of History)
(No, really! Read the Book of History!)
(You read the Book of History)
(No, really! Read the Book of History!)
My first thought when I read the title was "but I play lots of new games all the time and I don't find it too difficult to learn the rules". But then I realise - most of the time I find a learn-to-play video on YouTube and rarely learn the rules from the rulebook itself.
Has anyone ever tried to look something up in a car manual? OMG!
Power tool manuals are the worst.
Often times when I buy a kitchen appliance it has some basic info on all of the functionality and perhaps a nice recipe book. Vitamix stood out here, and Breville is mostly okay but could be better.
Power tools though. Dewalt has a folded up piece of paper in micro-font that has technical diagrams that are hard to read and understand. And forget about something like a "recipe" book for simple projects (even if it could be an upsell for another tool.)
Often times when I buy a kitchen appliance it has some basic info on all of the functionality and perhaps a nice recipe book. Vitamix stood out here, and Breville is mostly okay but could be better.
Power tools though. Dewalt has a folded up piece of paper in micro-font that has technical diagrams that are hard to read and understand. And forget about something like a "recipe" book for simple projects (even if it could be an upsell for another tool.)
My favourite board game rulebook is Pictomania. It starts by giving a very high level view of what the whole game looks like. It's a single page in the rulebook and doesn't get bogged down in details.
Then, it explains the small details of the scoring system. Since you know how the whole game basically works you can mentally hang the smaller rules onto the overall game system.
It reminds me of Jeremy Howards Fast AI course. He teaches "the whole game" with some of the details skipped. Then, he adds details one by one so you never get lost. The analogy often used is teaching sports to children. You start with a simplified version of the sport (For soccer: kick the ball into the other goal) and then you add extra rules (out of bounds, off-side, penalties etc) when they come up.
Then, it explains the small details of the scoring system. Since you know how the whole game basically works you can mentally hang the smaller rules onto the overall game system.
It reminds me of Jeremy Howards Fast AI course. He teaches "the whole game" with some of the details skipped. Then, he adds details one by one so you never get lost. The analogy often used is teaching sports to children. You start with a simplified version of the sport (For soccer: kick the ball into the other goal) and then you add extra rules (out of bounds, off-side, penalties etc) when they come up.
Clearly false; the Dominion rulebook is stellar.
I never got what people like about board games. Studying a manual for hours in order to play a game isn't fun to me but people are wired differently
You have to learn the rules of every game you play, every board game rules are simple enough that you can learn them just by reading, the same can not be said for computer games whose rules often are hard to grasp even after hundreds of hours of having played them.
So if you like knowing how the game you play works then board games is such a breath of fresh air compared to computer games where so many mechanics are black boxes that you have to reverse engineer to figure out what they do because they aren't described anywhere.
Like, exactly how does armor reduce damage? How do defense affect chance to get hit? When does this conditional effect apply? All such things are often very opaque etc in computer games, since they don't have to describe them to you to make the game playable, and that makes it extremely frustrating to try to learn the game, you can play the game but you can't make any decisions since you don't know what anything does.
Even worse, computer game tooltips and manuals often lie to you, giving you the wrong numbers or describe it in a different way than it was coded so it doesn't do what it says it does. A very common example is percentages, what is 150% damage bonus? Sometimes it adds 50% damage, sometimes it adds 150% damage, you never really know and sometimes the same game uses both versions. That never happens in board games since the written text is the implementation.
So if you like knowing how the game you play works then board games is such a breath of fresh air compared to computer games where so many mechanics are black boxes that you have to reverse engineer to figure out what they do because they aren't described anywhere.
Like, exactly how does armor reduce damage? How do defense affect chance to get hit? When does this conditional effect apply? All such things are often very opaque etc in computer games, since they don't have to describe them to you to make the game playable, and that makes it extremely frustrating to try to learn the game, you can play the game but you can't make any decisions since you don't know what anything does.
Even worse, computer game tooltips and manuals often lie to you, giving you the wrong numbers or describe it in a different way than it was coded so it doesn't do what it says it does. A very common example is percentages, what is 150% damage bonus? Sometimes it adds 50% damage, sometimes it adds 150% damage, you never really know and sometimes the same game uses both versions. That never happens in board games since the written text is the implementation.
For most games you _don't_ study a manual for hours. Of course there are some crazy epic games for really hardcore gamers, but rule books for mid-weight game tend to take 5-15 minutes to read through and then you're ready to play, and a lot of people enjoy that time - familiarising yourself with something new, trying to understand what makes it tick. I personally find it an enjoyable ritual. Depending on the quality of the rules / complexity of the game, the first play through might be a bit ropey, but it's usually fine, and after that you're left with something that you can get hours and hours of fun from. Board games are awesome
The point of the article is to explore ways to make it possible to play the game without studying a manual for hours first.
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WTF I am cited in this paper?!?!?!
When I'm explaining game rules to someone new, my goal is to teach them without overwhelming them with irrelevant info, and without boring them into zoning out.
I've found the most important thing to be the order in which I present information, and the best approach to be layered, like an onion. Essentially, I give them a broad overview of everything, then I do it again but with more specifics, then again with even more specifics, etc. Each layer provides context that will make it possible/easy to understand the specific details that I'll be explaining in the next layer.
This runs counter to how most people and rulebooks explain the rules. Usually they try to group related facts together, e.g. "Here's all the rules for movement," "Here are all the rules for scoring," etc. That's great as a reference for people who are trying to look stuff up. But it's horrible for a beginner, because (as the linked PDF explains) it ignores cognitive load. It gives people information that only makes sense in context, but it doesn't give them that context, so they don't understand it. So they're forced to say, "Fine, I don't understand these details yet, but I'll just hold them in my short-term memory while I continue to read the rules until I get some context that helps me understand." But our short-term memories can only hold a few items, and they usually start to overflow pretty fast, long before the rules add the missing context we're hoping for.
It's the equivalent of telling someone, "Hey, remember this number: 1823. And remember this number: 9094. Don't worry, I'll tell you later why you need them. But first, remember 6642, too. And 11456. Got it? Okay, just a few more things…"
Ugh.
Here's how I explain stuff instead:
1. Start with the goal/objective. For example, "The goal is to be the first to get to 10 points." The goal is the most important context there is! Without it, people have no idea why they should do anything you explain, which means they won't fully understand anything you explain, because "why" is one of the most important parts of understanding.
2. Explain the general flow of the game in simplified terms, and connect it to the goal. For example, "It's a free-for-all, not a team game, so you're trying to get to 10 points by yourself. We're going to go around in circles where we each get a turn. On your turn you'll take some actions that try to help you score points, or at least set yourself up to get closer to scoring points. Then once you decide you've done everything you can, you end your turn, and it moves clockwise to the next person."
3. Discuss the mechanics of how to win, i.e. how to accomplish the goal. For example, "So how do you get to 10 points? Mostly, you can build buildings in this game that are each worth points, usually 1 or 2 points. So the most basic way to win is to gather resources and build lots of buildings. But usually that's not enough to get you all the way to 10 points. So in addition to buildings, there are a few special bonuses and cards you get can get that can also give you 1 or 2 points and push you over the edge to 10 points. I'll explain those later."
By now, the players have heard the goal of the game repeated three times, they understand the basic flow, and all they've even been vaguely introduced to some strategies, details, and mechanics. With each step, they have more high-level context that makes the specifics I reveal later much easier to understand. (By the way, the game I'm explaining in this example is Catan.)
4. Keep explaining things recursively. Always explain a goal/strategy, so people know why they're acting, before you explain the mechanics of how to do that action.
This has always worked fairly well for me. It's essentially just respecting the "curse of knowledge," which you do by accepting the implications of the fact that your listeners don't know what you know.
I've found the most important thing to be the order in which I present information, and the best approach to be layered, like an onion. Essentially, I give them a broad overview of everything, then I do it again but with more specifics, then again with even more specifics, etc. Each layer provides context that will make it possible/easy to understand the specific details that I'll be explaining in the next layer.
This runs counter to how most people and rulebooks explain the rules. Usually they try to group related facts together, e.g. "Here's all the rules for movement," "Here are all the rules for scoring," etc. That's great as a reference for people who are trying to look stuff up. But it's horrible for a beginner, because (as the linked PDF explains) it ignores cognitive load. It gives people information that only makes sense in context, but it doesn't give them that context, so they don't understand it. So they're forced to say, "Fine, I don't understand these details yet, but I'll just hold them in my short-term memory while I continue to read the rules until I get some context that helps me understand." But our short-term memories can only hold a few items, and they usually start to overflow pretty fast, long before the rules add the missing context we're hoping for.
It's the equivalent of telling someone, "Hey, remember this number: 1823. And remember this number: 9094. Don't worry, I'll tell you later why you need them. But first, remember 6642, too. And 11456. Got it? Okay, just a few more things…"
Ugh.
Here's how I explain stuff instead:
1. Start with the goal/objective. For example, "The goal is to be the first to get to 10 points." The goal is the most important context there is! Without it, people have no idea why they should do anything you explain, which means they won't fully understand anything you explain, because "why" is one of the most important parts of understanding.
2. Explain the general flow of the game in simplified terms, and connect it to the goal. For example, "It's a free-for-all, not a team game, so you're trying to get to 10 points by yourself. We're going to go around in circles where we each get a turn. On your turn you'll take some actions that try to help you score points, or at least set yourself up to get closer to scoring points. Then once you decide you've done everything you can, you end your turn, and it moves clockwise to the next person."
3. Discuss the mechanics of how to win, i.e. how to accomplish the goal. For example, "So how do you get to 10 points? Mostly, you can build buildings in this game that are each worth points, usually 1 or 2 points. So the most basic way to win is to gather resources and build lots of buildings. But usually that's not enough to get you all the way to 10 points. So in addition to buildings, there are a few special bonuses and cards you get can get that can also give you 1 or 2 points and push you over the edge to 10 points. I'll explain those later."
By now, the players have heard the goal of the game repeated three times, they understand the basic flow, and all they've even been vaguely introduced to some strategies, details, and mechanics. With each step, they have more high-level context that makes the specifics I reveal later much easier to understand. (By the way, the game I'm explaining in this example is Catan.)
4. Keep explaining things recursively. Always explain a goal/strategy, so people know why they're acting, before you explain the mechanics of how to do that action.
This has always worked fairly well for me. It's essentially just respecting the "curse of knowledge," which you do by accepting the implications of the fact that your listeners don't know what you know.
TL;DR? Seems interesting and worth keeping in mind for other types of documentation.
There is really too much here to summarize. It's a 150 page guide to technical writing, as in the writing of technical manuals, using a variety of board game rulebooks the author wrote as examples. I am only 15 pages in, but so far I have to say the boardgame approach with all its images makes this a much more fun read then any other guide I have seen for writing manuals. It is just about writing though. I don't think you'd gain much if you are just a general boardgame fan looking for a behind-the-scenes look at rulebook creation (if that is even something people look for??)
Ironically these two comments seem to indicate a guide to technical writing, that did not view technical writing itself as a technology which they were writing about?
Like, should start with a "quick start overview" about here's how the process looks, etc.?
Like, should start with a "quick start overview" about here's how the process looks, etc.?
For accuracy, it's a 100 page guide to technical writing, followed by a 50 page sample rulebook for Stardew Valley implementing all the ideas :)
Board game rulebooks are documents that need to cater to multiple audiences including both new players learning from the rulebook and experienced players looking to skim through for very specific interactions they have forgotten. They also often refer to a system where there's a high degree of infomational dependence.
Intelligent sequencing of rules and breaking apart chunks with good leading words and provided diagrams allows the second set of users to speed through their skimming while reducing cognitive load to new players.
Intelligent sequencing of rules and breaking apart chunks with good leading words and provided diagrams allows the second set of users to speed through their skimming while reducing cognitive load to new players.
Tldr: it's tl, didn't even load the 32mb pdf before my patience ran out
(I'm in a slow connection and have a fair amount of disdain or something that's probably 20 x the size it needs to be)
(I'm in a slow connection and have a fair amount of disdain or something that's probably 20 x the size it needs to be)
TLDR:
How Do We Fix the Rulebook? My first answer is: I don't know!