[blakeburch]

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)

[snarf21]

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.

[pcblues]

I loved playing games I was familiar with because the rules had been finalised with the people I played with, and we had agreed on the ambiguities (they became house rules). We then developed our strategies based on a known and "complete" understanding of the rules, and the fun came from winning based on the mutually understood set of rules, not a strategem that a player extracted from an unread part of the manual. On the other hand, learning a new game is fun when no-one has played it before, and part of the process was agreeing on the rules after a few run-throughs. Illuminati was great like that. Yet so was the Game of Life card game. A complicated game/rulebook is a different beast. I believe it also needs a person willing to teach the game, or learn it on their own, then teach it. It needs a person familiar with the game, and new players willing to invest in the game knowing they will play it together A LOT. That will exists.

[zahlman]

>It is also why party games and simple card games stay so popular because the rules are always less than 5 minutes.

It's worth noting that "simple" games are not always simplistic, especially when they're head-to-head. I've played thousands of games of Haggis (which for two players could be played with an ordinary deck of playing cards and a notepad to keep score) online, and I can tell you that expert-level strategy gets into some pretty deep thinking.

I've also played thousands of games of Dominion online, and got to a level that I'd consider competent - above what almost any casual player would ever reach, but still awful next to real experts. A lot of people seem to hate that game in the board gaming circles I used to hang out in - a lot of players get the impression that simple strategies beat more complex ones, and the endgame is boring because you most often acquire victory points via otherwise-useless cards that clog your deck. But on a large fraction of possible "kingdoms" (and the random choice of card piles adds a huge amount of variety to the game), there are complex "engines" available that crush the simpler strategies. It's just that you actually have to learn how to implement them, which simply does not flow directly from a mechanical description of what the cards do no matter how well you teach it.

Which is to say, yes, card-driven games have some huge advantages - both when the cards define new rules space (the Dominion / Fluxx / M:tG way), but also just when they're a relatively simple component of an abstract, heads-up, imperfect information game (the Haggis / poker way). The latter benefit, I think, from a higher level of general expertise: children are commonly taught to play various sorts of card games, so they're a very familiar implement that can draw on a lot of powerful design language (set collection mechanics, numerical "ranks" vs symbolic "suits", etc.).

[vintermann]

Spiel des Jahres quality games always have great rulebooks. Dominion, for all its complexity, has a very simple rulebook, and even all the corner cases you can run into with the countless expansion cards, have pretty neat "from the basic principles of the game" resolutions, usually obvious in retrospect. It is a very clean, rigorous design.

The same can't be said for games like Root. Which may have become more common in recent years, it's about 10 years since I was really into modern board games, so I don't know. But I suspect it's still the case that good designers and experienced publishers write good rulebooks.

[zahlman]

As it happens, I was taught Dominion by other players, but really learned it from online play and other such resources. It's the sort of game with depth that exceeds most players' patience - extremely replayable, but only if you don't really care about the fact that the theming is paper-thin (literally, in a sense) and happen to get captivated by the core mechanics (and the variety offered by the expansions).

This was way back in the Isotropic days, before there was an official client. So you could play games very quickly without any of the physical card manipulation at all, never mind shuffling. (It was a very minimalist client that didn't try to simulate any of that card movement with animations; it just immediately updated hand and pile contents and resource counts.)

I guess it's really just not for everyone.

(A story: years ago I tried to design my own deck-building board game which borrowed several Dominion mechanics - but you would play out your cards physically like tiles; instead of an action-counting mechanic or an Action/Treasure dichotomy, there were restrictions on what cards could be adjacent to each other. The feedback I got was overwhelming in its consistency: the more it played like Dominion, the less people liked it. But without that anchor I was lost in terms of designing something that made sense and had anything like game balance, and eventually I gave up.)

[vintermann]

My opinion, maybe unpopular, is that if you really want to feel like you're managing a medieval kingdom (or whatever) then computer games are just better anyway. For anything that gets the slightest bit like a simulation, you want to let the computer do the bookkeeping.

But even for computer games, after you've played for hundreds of hours of say Civilization, and especially if you approach it competitively, you hardly feel like the Hittites anymore. By then, it's just an abstract game for you, and you're OK with it or you'd have quit long ago.

[snarf21]

I would say (largely) even good designers don't write great rulebooks. It is a total different skill set. The best analogy is that Publishers are to Rulebooks what Software Releases are to QA. It is always left to the end and rushed out the door. There is an assumption that between social media and BGG and How to Play videos that people will figure it out.

[vintermann]

Well, there's two steps. To write a good rulebook, you need good rules first. You need to really think about it like a programmer, in terms of procedures, invariants, completeness etc. So that when you, when you play your own game, you don't constantly run into rules questions that you have to stop and settle. If you do have clear and consistent rules in your head for your own game, then writing a good manual is just craftmansship, that you can even get in a professional technical writer to do for you.

But as all programmers know, your mental model of your program is probably full of holes and dubious logic. And so it will often be for board games. Then a technical writer can't save it.

[snarf21]

Playing Dominion online is a LOT more enjoyable in person. The constant shuffling wears pretty thin pretty quick! :)

[bluGill]

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.

[legitster]

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.

[sgbeal]

> If you blink and miss something, hunting around a video is much worse than scanning a rulebook.

Not only that, but very nearly every one of them has rules errors. There is exactly one YouTuber (from Watch It Played) who consistently puts out rules-error-free videos. Any and all other video playthroughs, i take with a huge grain of salt.

[stevage]

I really like a 5 minute how-to-play before either reading the rules, or having them explained to me. It gives me all the context and makes the other information sit much better.

[adamredwoods]

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]

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.

[wormius]

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

[zahlman]

>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 get the sense from the comment section many others here are reacting to the article title and sharing their thoughts on board game rulebooks generally, rather than critiquing the article.

Which is to say, I think you're right. The linked PDF is 150 pages and I think that's discouraged many people from trying to consider the author's ideas. Even though they're presented in a way that seems intended to benefit from (and demonstrate) those very ideas and make the material easier to read, the sheer volume discourages many readers before the first word.

There was a part earlier where Johnson argues:

> That's about 60 years of rulebook design. The 2023 printing of Acquire's rulebook is more readable than any previous printing's rulebook. But each printing of Acquire's rulebook has the same basic structure. The 1960s printing had sections for: objective of the game, game terms, setup, play (playing tiles, buying stock, merging chains), end of the game, and edge cases. The 2023 printing has more detailed rules, more example images, and more tips for new players, but the order and presentation of rules is roughly the same.

... but the 2023 printing apparently runs to 16 half-size pages, where the original rules fit on the underside of the box top. (And from the photo, it appears to make some use of bullet-point lists, too.) And this is apparently a relatively light ruleset compared to the others discussed in the article.

Surely there's some compromise to be made here.

[grayfaced]

I agree it's intimidating. I think the way to counter that is good player aids. If you have a really well designed reference in front of each player, then the teach is often "see that second line, well this is how that works". Also the teacher should read the rules ahead of time, so they can can summarize or go in more details depending on the comprehension of players.

Those videos often gloss over a lot of specific details (e.g. round-up or round-down) and thats fine to gloss over in teaching also. If the first game runs smooth and gives the game experience, they're more likely to play again than if you have to stop and dig through reference multiple times. You can always look it up after so you do the second game more correctly.

[pimlottc]

> 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...

Do what the author did and start by writing a new rule book for an existing game. You can upload it to BGG and get feedback from players. After doing a few of those, they got contacted by a designer to write one for a brand new game.

[globular-toast]

> I find that many people are so afraid of reading game rules that they'd rather watch 15-30m how to play videos.

I find this goes for everything. People are so afraid of reading they'll watch a 10 minute video for something they could've read in 5. Trouble is reading is something you need to practice and ability will fade away when not used.

[imzadi]

My group recently played Veiled Fate. Loved the game, but the 40-page rulebook was certainly intimidating.

[smcin]

For medium/heavy-complexity games, it's essential to have a glossary (preferably with pictures), either/both at the start/end of the rulebook or the complete reference. And the glossary should have (clickable) section/page references for where to read more about a concept (and the glossary should be complete (but not nitpicking or pedantic), which sounds self-evident yet is not the case a shocking amount of the time). And the glossary should also be referenced by/ have consistent terminology with the quickstart/reference card.

It's not that I'm "afraid" of reading game rules, just that I know from lots of experience how rare it is for a (8-25pp) manual to balance explaining the minimal set of mechanics in a fast, comprehensible, logical order, also giving a feel for typical gameplay (even just 2P), and toss in some basic remarks about strategies and tips. Many times my friends and I have invested 1-3hrs in learning something, only to find the gameplay has gotchas by rewarding/punishing quirky things, or is simply broken. Or we have to go to BoardGameArena.com to find basic errata/clarifications/houserules for ambiguity, or the designer's own semi-official clarifications/ version 1.1. So, one guerrilla way to estimate how good/bad the official rulebook is to count the number of (and frustration level in) clarification threads on BGA, or whether an updated rulebook is downloadable, or how many unofficial fan cheatsheets or guides there are on BGA.

One infamous example was the 2010 version of 'Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game' (complexity 3.17/5, rating 7.3) where the physical boardgame implementation was so complex as to be unplayable (6-12+ hrs for a 2P game, I was told); it made the case why the computer version was better for implementing all the bookkeeping; my friend showed me multiple ringbound manuals of gameplay and reference guide and I simply said no (even though I loved the software versions). [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/77130/sid-meiers-civiliz...]

(Then they overreacted too far in the opposite direction with 'Civilization: A New Dawn' (2017) which simplified tech, combat, terrain way too much, down to 5 values each; it gave a huge advantage once you knew which civilizations were OP and which techs sounded useful but were a productivity trap and worth skipping. Like, Aztecs with nuclear weapons (special ability is to reuse that attack every other turn)).[https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/233247/civilization-a-ne...]

[vintermann]

It's so classic that board game adaptations of computer games are bookkeeping extravaganzas. I don't understand why people want to "replicate the computer game experience" in a board game, why not just play the computer game then? There are so many games that play to board games' strengths, instead of trying to be cut down computer games.

[smcin]

Sid Meier's Civilization is pretty much the poster child for an outstanding online game that cannot be converted to a (physical) boardgame without either super-heavy mechanics and bookkeeping, or huge simplifications and compromises that take all the interesting nuances away.

One example of many was the corruption calculation in each cilization every turn based on how remote each city was from the capital, the city population, tax-rate and luxury-rate, the number of military units garrisoned there, modifiers for wonders etc.