[HN Gopher] Every board game rulebook is awful [pdf]
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Every board game rulebook is awful [pdf]
Author : sgbeal
Score : 143 points
Date : 2024-12-02 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (drive.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (drive.google.com)
| mdaniel wrote:
| 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...
| durumu wrote:
| 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!)
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| 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 ]
| dpc_01234 wrote:
| TL;DR? Seems interesting and worth keeping in mind for other
| types of documentation.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| 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)
| LoganDark wrote:
| It has tons of images, diagrams, charts. 32mb is... sort of
| reasonable in this case. There are 150 pages.
| shagie wrote:
| It mostly finishes on page 93. Pages 94-100 are references.
| The remainder of it is then "Prototype Rulebook: Stardew
| Valley"
| JeremyBarbosa wrote:
| 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??)
| yifanl wrote:
| 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 :)
| crdrost wrote:
| 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.?
| yifanl wrote:
| 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.
| furyofantares wrote:
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| 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.
| furyofantares wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| starkparker wrote:
| 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.
| vundercind wrote:
| 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!)
| andrewla wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| julianeon wrote:
| 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.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| 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.
| Lyngbakr wrote:
| 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.
| r00fus wrote:
| 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.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| No thanks, I can read faster than they can explain.
| jumploops wrote:
| Can you read the rules and explain them to others faster than
| a video?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yes because I know the other players strengths and
| experience.
| vundercind wrote:
| 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.
| db48x wrote:
| 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.
| Symbiote wrote:
| No thanks, if I wanted to look at a screen I'd play a video
| game.
| r00fus wrote:
| 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.
| bena wrote:
| 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
| bondarchuk wrote:
| 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.
| nurumaik wrote:
| 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
| fsckboy wrote:
| "...and one book to rule them all"
| juancn wrote:
| "...and in the darkness bind them"
| ben_w wrote:
| Please. _Ring_ -bind them.
| clown_strike wrote:
| 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.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| This is essentially how we run DnD. Players handbooks, DM
| guide, and some quick reference cards for combat and actions.
| jampekka wrote:
| And quickstart video tutorials please.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Root's is... ok until it isn't with all the expansions and then
| you don't know which book to grab.
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| 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
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| 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.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| 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.
| tristramb wrote:
| This is similar to the four types of software documentation:
| https://docs.divio.com/documentation-system/
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| coherentpony wrote:
| > 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.
| almostdeadguy wrote:
| 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).
| lupire wrote:
| Catan brags about its Overview, Game Rules, and Almanac.
|
| https://www.catan.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/catan_base...
| gizmo686 wrote:
| 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.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > 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.
| jvalencia wrote:
| 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.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| > 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. :)
| jvalencia wrote:
| I did! And I enjoyed the mechanic, it was cute, incremental,
| and terribly fun.
| ziml77 wrote:
| 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.
| vundercind wrote:
| 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)
| mandolingual wrote:
| 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?
| jvalencia wrote:
| 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 :-)
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| toolz wrote:
| 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.
| jvalencia wrote:
| 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.
| clown_strike wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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."
| vundercind wrote:
| I loved my tiny little NES manuals (the artwork!) and big-ass
| PC RPG manuals like the one for Fallout 2.
| amiga386 wrote:
| 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?)
| klodolph wrote:
| 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.
| jvalencia wrote:
| 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.
| lazystar wrote:
| 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.
| klodolph wrote:
| > 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.
| p1necone wrote:
| > 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.
| rvba wrote:
| As much as I love StarCraft, they really could have
| explained this part of the story in a better way inside the
| game.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| lupire wrote:
| Also the manual contained the copy protection "proof of
| analog information" challenge answers.
| ryanchants wrote:
| Yep, LHX Attack Chopper had all the specs of the
| helicopters and weapon systems and would ask you random
| questions about those on start.
| lupire wrote:
| Living rent-free in my head for 30 years:
|
| "The family that transmogrifies together eats flies
| together!"
| imzadi wrote:
| 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.
| debo_ wrote:
| 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.
| blakeburch wrote:
| 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)
| adamredwoods wrote:
| 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-...
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| 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.
| imzadi wrote:
| My group recently played Veiled Fate. Loved the game, but the
| 40-page rulebook was certainly intimidating.
| wormius wrote:
| 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
| legitster wrote:
| 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.
| snarf21 wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| Apreche wrote:
| WTF I am cited in this paper?!?!?!
| jncfhnb wrote:
| 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.
| vundercind wrote:
| 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.
| db48x wrote:
| A game that does as you suggest will simply become unplayable
| once the video is gone.
| vundercind wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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).
| burticlies wrote:
| 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.
| jjice wrote:
| 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.
| burticlies wrote:
| 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.
| mdaniel wrote:
| Please consider including a license in your repo
| popcar2 wrote:
| 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...
| causal wrote:
| 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.
| jes5199 wrote:
| 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
| TeeMassive wrote:
| 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.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| 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.
| empath75 wrote:
| 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.
| joemi wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Alternate link instead of Google Drive
|
| https://boardgametextbook.com/EBGRIA.pdf
| adamrezich wrote:
| The root page is just a landing template... is the author of
| this paper writing a textbook?
| adamrezich wrote:
| 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!
| antisthenes wrote:
| 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.
| blibble wrote:
| 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)
| bentcorner wrote:
| The video game version of Monopoly is pretty good - you can
| finish a game in about 20 minutes.
| wormius wrote:
| 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.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _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.
| legitster wrote:
| > "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.
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| 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...."
| mithametacs wrote:
| 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.
| jordanpg wrote:
| 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.
| iamwpj wrote:
| 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.
| Lyngbakr wrote:
| 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.
| legitster wrote:
| 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.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| 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?
| edanm wrote:
| 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.
| peeters wrote:
| 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.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| 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.
| * 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...
|
| Often it's really hard to see yourself in the newbie's eyes.
|
| (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.
| ryouhander wrote:
| 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.
| bentcorner wrote:
| > _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.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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
| why_at wrote:
| 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
| alach11 wrote:
| 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.
| supernewton wrote:
| 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!
| jarjoura wrote:
| 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.
| masfuerte wrote:
| Direct download link that doesn't require any Google js:
|
| https://drive.usercontent.google.com/download?id=1nkHWqYre86...
| n2dasun wrote:
| 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
| joemi wrote:
| 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.
| barbs wrote:
| 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.
| galkk wrote:
| 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.
| p1necone wrote:
| 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.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| 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.
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