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.
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.
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).
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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 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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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
>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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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)
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> "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.
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.
[+] [-] bondarchuk|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] gizmo686|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] nurumaik|1 year ago|reply
Good idea
[+] [-] bombcar|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tristramb|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] almostdeadguy|1 year ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] rootnod3|1 year ago|reply
[1]: https://www.onepagerules.com/
[+] [-] akoboldfrying|1 year ago|reply
Then again, maybe it was just that we were all a teensy bit drunk.
[+] [-] tzs|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bongodongobob|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jncfhnb|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lupire|1 year ago|reply
https://www.catan.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/catan_base...
[+] [-] michaelcampbell|1 year ago|reply
And the "basic" game was pretty damned complex to start with.
[+] [-] jampekka|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jvalencia|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] klodolph|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] amiga386|1 year ago|reply
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?)
[+] [-] mandolingual|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] toolz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] parpfish|1 year ago|reply
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
[+] [-] kelseyfrog|1 year ago|reply
Have you by chance played Tunic? If not, there is a mechanic you may be particularly interested in. :)
[+] [-] blakeburch|1 year ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] snarf21|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] legitster|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] adamredwoods|1 year ago|reply
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-...
[+] [-] wormius|1 year ago|reply
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
[+] [-] zahlman|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] grayfaced|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] popcar2|1 year ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] rtpg|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] causal|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] AceJohnny2|1 year ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] alach11|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mdaniel|1 year ago|reply
1: https://upload.snakesandlattes.com/rules/f/FarmingGameThe.pd...
[+] [-] burticlies|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Pet_Ant|1 year ago|reply
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/gmtwebsiteassets/living_r... [ 5MB PDF ]
[+] [-] empath75|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] denvaar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdjon|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ianferrel|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] joemi|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Buttons840|1 year ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] jarjoura|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] iamwpj|1 year ago|reply
Mechs vs. Minions is another one that does this iterative process of teaching.
This article looks great, I'll continue to read it.
[+] [-] erehweb|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wormius|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] crazygringo|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] legitster|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ThinkingGuy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] imzadi|1 year ago|reply
Another bad one was the travel version of Azul, which assumes you have already played the full size version.