7 ms·

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 everythi

• nurumaik 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    "...and one book to rule them all"
    • juancn 2y ago
      "...and in the darkness bind them"
      • ben_w 2y ago
        Please. Ring-bind them.
        • KineticLensman 2y ago
          I first read that rhyme 50 years ago and I have never spotted that before. Well played, sir
        • tolciho 2y ago
          The latest edition even comes with token ring wraiths.
        • ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
          It's the only way that they'll lay flat when open
  • clown_strike 2y ago
    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.
    • freddie_mercury 2y ago
      That's not really relevant to board games, though. Rules all free for essentially every board game.
      • d3VwsX 2y ago
        The Fate books (at least several of them) are also free to download, with some Creative Commons license or similar, so you can read the rules without having to buy anything if you do not want to.
• bongodongobob 2y ago
  This is essentially how we run DnD. Players handbooks, DM guide, and some quick reference cards for combat and actions.
• jampekka 2y ago
  And quickstart video tutorials please.
• jncfhnb 2y ago
  Root’s is… ok until it isn’t with all the expansions and then you don’t know which book to grab.
  • Pet_Ant 2y ago
    You can find the latest version of "The Law of Root" on their site and it's update June 2023 with the latest expansion: https://ledergames.com/pages/resources https://ledergames.com/pages/resources
  • Skeime 2y ago
    You always want to grab the Law. I know that there used to be some oversights where things where missing from the Law (like how to distinguish immediate effects from permanent effects on cards based on whether the box is paper or stone) but all of them have been resolved by now.
• bombcar 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      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.
      • VagabundoP 2y ago
        It's iterative. You're not going to learn a full complex ruleset in one sitting.Having a one page quick start of the game structure, allows you to get a feel for it before coming back for a deep dive. Your brain has a foundation to build on when you read the ful complex rules - it wont feel like your brain is maxing out at 100%.
    • zahlman 2y ago
      This is addressed in TFA. In many cases, attempts to create a simplified version of a game just teach bad habits; strategies that work in the simplified game might be not just suboptimal when the full set of options is available, but actively counterproductive. But I dare say many fans of "heavier" games - especially ones with more of a simulationist bent - would disagree that having fun is sufficient.
• tristramb 2y ago
  This is similar to the four types of software documentation: https://docs.divio.com/documentation-system/ https://docs.divio.com/documentation-system/
  • bluGill 2y ago
    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 2y ago
      > 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.
      • bluGill 2y ago
        Did you not read the link? The reference should be obvious. I'm giving the link too much credit calling it 'explanation' but it isn't even an example of what it advocates in any case.
  • zahlman 2y ago
    I'm a little less than impressed by the presentation here. The idea that Divio is describing here is the Diataxis framework (https://diataxis.fr/ https://diataxis.fr/), which "is the work of" (https://diataxis.fr/colophon/ https://diataxis.fr/colophon/) Daniele Procida (https://vurt.eu/ https://vurt.eu/). Who, incidentally, is also giving the PyCon talk in the video on the page you linked (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4vKPhjcMZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4vKPhjcMZg). But I don't see anything resembling attribution for the ideas. They aren't just common industry knowledge or "received wisdom". (And the "quote" from David Laing at the top isn't really accomplishing anything, either.)
• almostdeadguy 2y ago
  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).
  • allturtles 2y ago
    > Root has a major rules sprawl issue IMO. Many rules are spread throughout the cards, the "Learning to Play" guide, the "Law of Root", the player mats, etc. Every rule AFAIK is in the Law of Root. So just refer to that. Once you've played once you should never look at the Learn to Play again. The player mats are player aids to remind you of the rules. The fact that rules are duplicated there is a plus, not a minus.
• lupire 2y ago
  Catan brags about its Overview, Game Rules, and Almanac. https://www.catan.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/catan_base_rules_2020_200707.pdf https://www.catan.com/sites/default/files/2021-06/catan_base...
• gizmo686 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    > 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.
    • arkh 2y ago
      > six hundreds new games being released in a year But many are just variations of a gameplay: Splendor and Century are the same thing (one of some limited actions per turn, most things visible, you buy something to generate resources to buy points). Most cooperative game too: it's either unlock like (escape room) or forbidden island (some objectives and a way to increase the pressure on players).
      • mavhc 2y ago
• rootnod3 2y ago
  OnePageRules [1], a free Warhammer alternative has something like that. They have a short quick version and an extended version. [1]: https://www.onepagerules.com/ https://www.onepagerules.com/
• akoboldfrying 2y ago
  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.
  • dpig_ 2y ago
    Can you remember any examples of the rules questions that came up?
    • akoboldfrying 2y ago
      I'm afraid I can't. In very general terms, I just remember the feeling that I got several times was similar to that of discovering that something that I had thought was a scalar quantity was in fact a vector. Un-thought-of dimensions just seemed to keep popping up. Our bafflement was probably enhanced by not noticing the "Learn to Play" booklet initially. Then each of us trying to read a separate booklet, and disagreeing with the others about how to proceed, etc.
• tzs 2y ago
  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.
• michaelcampbell 2y ago
  I remember the old Squad Leader series did this; a basic game and enormous amounts of "flourish" that could be added as you went. And the "basic" game was pretty damned complex to start with.