4 ms·

As a technical writer, I often find board game rules suffer from poor writing. They often present information backwards: they start by telling you every thing a

As a technical writer, I often find board game rules suffer from poor writing. They often present information backwards: they start by telling you every thing about every piece and situation before you really understand the basics of play. This makes it difficult to piece together how to play the game. I'd much rather see board game instructions written as starting out with a VERY short summary of the game and its objectives (e.g. for Dominion: "in this game, you build a deck of cards that you use to purchase victory points. At the end of the game, the player with the most victory points wins."). Then you can follow that up with set up instructions, a simple explanation of a basic turn, followed by more detailed descriptions of gameplay and ending conditions, and finally close with detailed reference material.

woeirua 6y ago
Wish I could upvote you more than once. Game designers need to be more focused on getting people into the game, and then progressively revealing more complicated mechanics as the game unfolds. I'd rather play a videogame if I'm going to have to read the manual for an hour before my first turn.
GloriousKoji 6y ago
A lot of board instructions also suffer from poor translations. It's a fun meta game my friends and I play where were try to figure out if it's a German creator based on the instructions. For example "When it is the players turn, the player must immediately draw a card and place it into their hand." compared to "The player starts their turn by drawing a card."
- doeu 6y ago
  >A lot of board instructions also suffer from poor translations. People who haven't tried board game design before underestimate how difficult it is to write the rules they think they're writing - very slight wording differences have MAJOR gameplay implications and will decide games. Here's just one example of two widely different table interactions which result based on the example you've provided. >Scenario: Immediacy Matters >Context: I have just become one point away from victory. I have a card that I can flip over on any player's turn to score 1 point, but my friend is wrapping up their turn, and I'm next. My friend says: "Okay I'm done with my turn", and I now remember I have my hidden flippable one point card, because he said the word "turn". There are two VERY DIFFERENT endings to this scenario depending on which of the two above rules you've written down. In the verbiage, >"The player starts their turn by drawing a card.", If the game doesn't have any other explicit rules about how a player ENDS their turn, there's an ambiguity in the word "by" - it's not clear whether the action of drawing STARTS my turn, or describes WHAT happens DURING my turn (which ALSO ambiguously may or may not take precedence over my ability to flip that card before I draw a card). This difference seems small, but it will decide the game, because if the act of drawing STARTS the turn, then by not drawing, my opponent's turn is still going - so I win the game by flipping on their not-finished-until-I-draw turn. This will become a heated table argument if players are invested in winning, because it becomes a question of designer intent, which will probably dissatisfy everyone because suddenly the game's turned into "guess what the designer meant" and "let's debate the definition of words the author didn't even know were important." In the former verbiage, >"When it is the players turn, the player must immediately draw a card " There's still ambiguity (When did my opponents turn end?), but less: If everyone agrees my opponent's turn ended when he said it did, and it's my turn, because the rules say IMMEDIATELY draw, IMMEDIATELY implies it's pretty explicitly disallowed for me to do something else before fulfilling the thing I need to immediately do, like flip a card on the table. If the card I draw when doing this subtracts points when drawn, I will not win the game when I flip my card. Disgustingly verbose rules like the above are the scar tissue from play sessions where these heated arguments took place and the developer decided that being overly wordy is worth avoiding race conditions and being unambiguous.
p1necone 6y ago
I always have to stop people explaining me board game rules and get them to tell me the goal of the game first. If I don't know that I find it very difficult to contextualize the myriad other rules involved.
eru 6y ago
The 1990s German rulebook to the Settlers of Catan followed the concept you are lining out. The rulebook one an award the Germans have specifically for rulebooks.

woeirua 6y ago

Wish I could upvote you more than once. Game designers need to be more focused on getting people into the game, and then progressively revealing more complicated mechanics as the game unfolds. I'd rather play a videogame if I'm going to have to read the manual for an hour before my first turn.

GloriousKoji 6y ago

A lot of board instructions also suffer from poor translations. It's a fun meta game my friends and I play where were try to figure out if it's a German creator based on the instructions. For example "When it is the players turn, the player must immediately draw a card and place it into their hand." compared to "The player starts their turn by drawing a card."

doeu 6y ago
>A lot of board instructions also suffer from poor translations. People who haven't tried board game design before underestimate how difficult it is to write the rules they think they're writing - very slight wording differences have MAJOR gameplay implications and will decide games. Here's just one example of two widely different table interactions which result based on the example you've provided. >Scenario: Immediacy Matters >Context: I have just become one point away from victory. I have a card that I can flip over on any player's turn to score 1 point, but my friend is wrapping up their turn, and I'm next. My friend says: "Okay I'm done with my turn", and I now remember I have my hidden flippable one point card, because he said the word "turn". There are two VERY DIFFERENT endings to this scenario depending on which of the two above rules you've written down. In the verbiage, >"The player starts their turn by drawing a card.", If the game doesn't have any other explicit rules about how a player ENDS their turn, there's an ambiguity in the word "by" - it's not clear whether the action of drawing STARTS my turn, or describes WHAT happens DURING my turn (which ALSO ambiguously may or may not take precedence over my ability to flip that card before I draw a card). This difference seems small, but it will decide the game, because if the act of drawing STARTS the turn, then by not drawing, my opponent's turn is still going - so I win the game by flipping on their not-finished-until-I-draw turn. This will become a heated table argument if players are invested in winning, because it becomes a question of designer intent, which will probably dissatisfy everyone because suddenly the game's turned into "guess what the designer meant" and "let's debate the definition of words the author didn't even know were important." In the former verbiage, >"When it is the players turn, the player must immediately draw a card " There's still ambiguity (When did my opponents turn end?), but less: If everyone agrees my opponent's turn ended when he said it did, and it's my turn, because the rules say IMMEDIATELY draw, IMMEDIATELY implies it's pretty explicitly disallowed for me to do something else before fulfilling the thing I need to immediately do, like flip a card on the table. If the card I draw when doing this subtracts points when drawn, I will not win the game when I flip my card. Disgustingly verbose rules like the above are the scar tissue from play sessions where these heated arguments took place and the developer decided that being overly wordy is worth avoiding race conditions and being unambiguous.

p1necone 6y ago

I always have to stop people explaining me board game rules and get them to tell me the goal of the game first. If I don't know that I find it very difficult to contextualize the myriad other rules involved.

eru 6y ago

The 1990s German rulebook to the Settlers of Catan followed the concept you are lining out. The rulebook one an award the Germans have specifically for rulebooks.