Patrick Korner: Rules Writing 101

Life’s funny sometimes.  Sometimes, you have lots of free time and can devote endless spare cycles to your passions.  Other times, you’re in up to your neck and sinking fast.

The past several months have been more like the latter, which has resulted in my not being able to fulfill my BGN obligations as well as I’d have liked.  And for that I apologize.

However, miracle of miracles, you’re reading these words.  How is this possible?

Simple:

Outsourcing.

Seriously, these words are being written by a teenage resident of Bangalore, India.  Send money, the working conditions are atrocious!

I lie, of course.  Simply a matter of finding (and making) time.  Onwards!

What I wanted to cover today is game rules – more specifically, the fact that about 90% of them, to be blunt, miss the boat in one way or another.

One particularly egregious example comes from a game of Indonesia I played about two weeks ago.  About three-quarters (or perhaps more) of the way through the game, I noticed something important: All goods shipped in a round are removed at the end of the round, not just the ones that result in a city growing.  Well!  This is a huge deal since it changes the game big-time (for those who haven’t played the game: removing the goods each round makes shipping goods far, far easier; this has the side effect of ramping up the importance of shipping lines and turn order).  And yet, I was taught the game by Rick Thornquist himself, a man who not only reads rules in his spare time, he prides himself on being an excellent rules teacher.  So what gives?

Well, the answer is in the rules themselves.  Splotter has been taken to task in the past about the vagueness of some of their rulesets, but in this case it’s purely a matter of formatting.  Who’d expect an important rule about goods to be tucked into the last sentence of a section called “City Growthâ€??  Not highlighted or anything?  More like a ‘by the way’ comment after dealing with how cities get bigger?

Using bold font or some white space to increase legibility would have gone a long way to making things easier to understand.

Another example (more than one, actually) are several of the games published in English by Rio Grande Games.  I think Jay’s done a tremendous service to the hobby by bringing these titles over, make no mistake, but I really, really wish that the rules translations would be proof-read a little more.  It seems that there are an ever-increasing list of little typos, rules ambiguities, and other gaffes that show up in RGG rules simply because the translation effort isn’t quite up to snuff.  Remember the Magic Way rules to Odin’s Ravens?  How about the Expedition Card rules to Goa?  Power Grid’s main rules issues are format-based – show of hands how many of you have missed little things while playing the game because important bits are littered throughout several sections?  Thought so.

Far be it for me to criticize without offering a solution, right?  Here, I humbly present Patrick’s Five Rules For Rules Nirvana:

1) First off, take the rules from the designer and have them edited by a professional writer (technical writer is best but anyone who gets paid to write is a good bet).

2) Second, take the edited rules and have gamers try and learn the game from them blind (a.k.a blind playtesting).  This will iron out any ambiguities the first editor missed.

3) Third, put in at least a quarter more examples than you think the rules need.  Examples are like a universally understood language.  Don’t underestimate them.

4) Fourth, lay the graphics out with plenty of white space and bold / italic font changes to emphasize which parts of the rules are important, which are clarification etc.  White space adds to scannability, making the rules more user-friendly during play, too.

5) Fifth, if the rules are to be multilingual, hire a native-speaker in each of the languages to, at the very least, review and edit the text to make sure it’s grammatically, logically and idiomatically correct.

And there you have it.  Simple, no?  And yet it so often doesn’t get done this way – mostly for schedule constraints which eliminate much of the blind playtesting, production issues which make translators have to work of text only (no graphics or other aids to make sure the wording fits the game), etc.  But there are a number of companies heading in the right direction, which is encouraging.

That’s it for this week – next week I’ll pass judgment on Tempus, which I got to play thanks to Rick dropping in on a Terminal City Gamers session again.  Advance hint: No, it’s not the greatest game since sliced bread.  But it’s better than Manga Manga…

See you next week!
pk

© 2006 Patrick Korner

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Comments:

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I couldn’t agree more about your five rules, and one thing that bugs me is when there are too many revisions and alternate versions of rules.  Do I go with the publisher or the designer version? This is my favorite quote from your article, speaking of proof-reading: “I really, really with that the rules translations would be proof-read a little more.” I with so, too. :) :) Posted by Ogdred Weary on Jul 13, 2006 at 05:49 PM | #

David, I guess you couldn’t know, but Patrick has a really bad lisp.  We thought he had the problem licked, but now I guess it’s even starting to affect his typing! Be strong, Patrick.  We’re here for you. Posted by Larry Levy on Jul 13, 2006 at 06:28 PM | #

Thmartathes. I’ve corrected the, um, boo-boo. pk Posted by Patrick Korner on Jul 13, 2006 at 08:00 PM | #

Great article, Patrick. But I do have some issues with the first of your rules. 1) Using a professional writer that isn’t a gamer is something that may lead to even more unintended issues. In rules writing, words that many writers interchange to make text read better can hurt rules, such as adding a “may” into a sentence where an action is actually not optional. A technical writer would be much better, but the writer and editor need to really understand rules. Other than that, great ideas...however I wouldn’t expect to see this sort of thing addressed any time soon, as costs are always an issue (examples and white space make the rules longer, requiring more of everything, cutting those tiny profits even smaller. The one thing you mentioned that’s more important than anything else that I would love to see all publishers do is blind playtesting after the rules are finished, but not yet localized or sent off to press (typically rules are much easier and faster to complete than other components, so they could possibly squeeze some extra time there). One other thing that happens to rules as they go from designer to publisher to gamer is that key concepts and clarifications can get lost in the multiple rewritings that occur. I personally think that Jay at Rio Grande has done an incredible job, and oftentimes the English rules have clarifications that the German rules didn’t have at all, making the games much clearer than the German versions. The oddest thing about rules is that they seem to have little long term effect on the success of a good game. Settlers has one of the worst rule book(s) ever, and the Carcassone farmer “debacle” hasn’t really dissuaded all that many gamers from recommending it. Posted by Ted Alspach on Jul 13, 2006 at 08:11 PM | #

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