Frank Branham: Rules writing Deutschland style

One of the things that came over with the German game invasion was a fairly structured model of presenting game rules.

American and British game rules of the 60's - 80's are an extremely varied lot. They vary from the incredibly formally defined Avalon Hill rules (good for reference, sometime nigh impossible to learn the game from), to the chatty and rambling form that a lot of classic UK games follow.

Nowadays, when you see complaints about a set of rules--it does seem as if they are either full of holes and contraditions, or they didn't follow the clear German form that many of are now quite familiar with. The form is:

Fluff text.
Object of the game.
Component Descriptions.
Setup.
Summary of game turn phases.
Detailed rules for each phase of the game turn.
End of round. (If necessary.)
End of Game / Final scoring.
Special effects of cards and pieces.
Advanced and optional rules.


Fluff Text: This is the part that explains the theme of the game. Just a paragraph or two with lots of adjectives. The kind of stuff that scrolls onto the screen at the start of movies.

Object of the game: You really want to establish what the players are trying to do early on. This way, the reader can apply what he learns from the rest of the rules with the goal in mind. It helps to fix the actual rules in the reader's head if they understand why they care about the rule.

Component Descriptions: Usually a picture of the components, a name, and a BRIEF description of what it does. In older games, this is just a list of parts, but as games get more complex, we really need to see the bits.

Setup is sometimes placed at the end of the rules. I often just skim the setup while reading the rules, so this does make sense. I sometimes find it a little harder to locate when it is presented later on in the rules. And this is the most likely part of the rules that a player will need to reference.

Summary of the game turn: A basic overview of the phases of a game turn. This give you a basic idea what a player will be doing on their turn. This is VITAL, because otherwise the reader could lose focus as they delve into the bulk of the rules. They need a framework to hang all of that information onto.

Detailed rules: Organized using the exact same phase headers as the game turn summary. That way they serve as a reference by looking up the phase name in the Summary, and can then view all related rules for that entire phase together in one place. If a number of various actions are allowed during a player's turn, they should be listed in the summary, and receive a header in this section.

End of Round: Usually this comes down to moving a first player marker, and maybe resetting a few counters. Forgetting this can be bad (Joe H. and I totally missed this section in Scream Machine. The first player marker moves. )

End of Game / Final Scoring: It is usually best to break these up into two headers, just to make it easier to locate. People will often look to the end of game for any special rules like whether or not the game ends immediately upon some condition, or you finish out the round.

Special Effects: These only confuse the flow of the rules if you try to include more than a mention of the special wacky rules in the body of the text. The Twilight Imperium rules are a great example of how to handle this. The base rules themselves are only a few pages--the bulk of the massive tome of rules are the chrome rules and special bits. That keeps understanding the structure of the game simple.

I've been trying to figure out why this model works well, and I'm not entirely sure. I suspect that the appeal is that it teaches the rules by explaining A: what you have to do, followed by a list of what you get to do in order to reach your goal. I've learned to teach games in exactly this manner, and it does seem to work well.

Other models of rules likely work, but I've seen oh so many rules that might have benefitted from the German form. Some examples are:

Nightmare House: This was published in one of the issues of Ares after TSR took over SPI. The rules basically walk through an entire game turn with every single painful detail and special case within the main body of the rules. There is not really a turn summary either. The only way we could try to play the game is to walk through the entire rules on the first turn. We had begun to get slightly used to the game by the third turn. There was also no summary of special powers, so if a player asked a question like "So what can my character do?" we had to scan the entire rules set to answer the question. Interesting idea for a game, in a Fury of Dracula/Black Morn Manor kind of way.

Mine a Million: This is an iconic British game with sheer malevolence hiding within its heart. The game goes through three phases that use variations on the same basic ideas. The rules explain only the very simple rules for each phase, in a narrative style that provides suggested strategies alongside the rules. This approach has something going for it. It is very simple to start the game, but it is baffling to try and understand the full game from reading the rules. You pretty much MUST sit down and start to play, reading aloud from the rules, then stop every half an hour to read more rules.

Hidden Conflict: While the rules on this are very confusing, the game commits the cardinal sin of putting all of its special rules up front. The game turn summary is 2/3 of the way through the rules. This is far from the worst example I have seen. American CCG's and card games often have reams of definitions and special cases that you have to wade through before you find the game turn summary or even find out what the object of the game is.

Bureaucracy: Included a set of perfectly serviceable and legible rules, and then a joke set of rules written in a highly structured "bureaucratese". The frightening thing is that the highly structured but jokingly illegible rules were not that far removed from the style that most Avalon Hill games used.

© 2007 Frank Branham

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Comments:

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Great article--the perfect checklist for new game designers.  In my opinion, it’s also important to make the fluff text and object of the game flow seemlessly together to minimize that “pasted on theme” feeling.  If the object of the game and the rules that you play by are actually alluded to in the opening background text, then remembering the rules and playing the game more intuitively are much easier. Posted by Jeff Allers on Feb 1, 2007 at 12:32 PM | #

I’ve been told that Return of the Heroes has an awful ruleset.  I had the game explained to me, so I missed out on the rules which are told in story format, so you have to wade through dialogue between several people to get through the rules. Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Feb 1, 2007 at 04:43 PM | #

I took a brief look at the RoTH rules once (I have the deluxe German edition with minis). Aside from the dialogue, the rules kind of skip around between concepts. It is fairly difficult to work out what you do when you encounter a tile, although the actual rules are quite simple. When I think about it, the model reminds be a bit of top down design. Specify basic phases and flow of the game, then a turn, and then start into the details. A better phrase might be, don’t talk about the details until you’ve gotten the big concepts across. Posted by Frank Branham on Feb 1, 2007 at 06:15 PM | #

Sandi did point out this evening that the worst set of rules she ever encountered was Avalon Hill’s “Down with the King”. It is a kind of cute game....except that we never played it. The rules explain the turn sequence on like the last page, and the other 14 pages of the rules define a deluge of anacronyms like NARCs, and FARCs, and FNARCS, and all of the FARCs down in FARCsville. They are longer, and even more inscrutable than the now legendary Rose Art Bionicle game. Posted by Frank Branham on Feb 1, 2007 at 11:32 PM | #

Yes, Down with the King--completely dreadful rules.  They really made the game impossible to learn.  Too bad, it might have been a fun game otherwise. Posted by Larry Levy on Feb 2, 2007 at 11:24 AM | #

Very useful, Frank!  Scott Reed linked to this article from a BGG thread.... Posted by Jeffrey D Myers on Sep 12, 2008 at 11:07 AM | #

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