Brandon the Game Dev

The quickest way to turn a brilliant game into a mediocre game is by botching the rule book. The game itself may not be ruined, but the experiences of the players will be dramatically altered for the worse. At first, the purpose of a rule book may seem deceptively clear: it’s supposed to teach players how to play the game. However, anyone who has struggled to create game rules that players can follow with no input from the creator understand that this can be a difficult task. Even as a raw knowledge dump, creating a good rule book is not unlike teaching a computer to make a peanut butter sandwich.

Many people see game rule books as a way to transfer information to players. I think this is short-sighted. Rule books should go beyond teaching information. They should teach intention as well.

A good rule book uses two techniques to teach intention in addition to information: context and guidance. Context can include a story that explains how different rules fit together. A lot of thematic games use story as a form of context to teach rules. In Twilight Struggle, you know, just from history, that when you’re playing as the USSR, your mission is to screw over the USA whenever you can. Context can also include examples of gameplay. Examples provide excellent context for players to understand how a game is played. In my own game, War Co., I extensively use examples to explain the trickiest concepts.

Guidance goes one step further: it provides practicable advice that players can actually use in the game. For example: “we recommend that you draw as many cards as you can, unless you have a reason not to” OR “try to keep cities from getting more than two disease cubes.”

Rule books need to be thorough, accounting for as many possibilities as they can. Yet they need to remain concise in order to be usable. Some would even argue that the presence of gamers like Rahdo or Watch It Played render traditional rule books obsolete. Yes, it is tempting to create a rule book that provides all information, abundant context, and lots of guidance for strategy and tactical decisions. However, if your rule book is too long, outside sources will end up explaining your game for you. 

Likewise, you want to leave much of your game a mystery. A lot of the appeal of games is that their secrets are slowly unlocked as players discover more tactics and better strategies. By spelling out everything through abundant examples and highly specific advice, you may reduce your game’s longevity!

It’s a tough balance. Yet if you strike this balance, the reward is precious: you can prime a player’s experience. Your rule book is your best chance to not only teach players how to play the game, but to teach them how to have fun playing the game. The purpose of the rule book is to make sure the player has the most fun possible. The tools – information, context, and guidance – should go as far as they must to ensure this, but not any further.

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As parting words, here’s six pieces of advice for you when you create your rule book:

1. Make sure the player knows enough to play the game.
2. Make your rule book concise.
3. Leave a little room for mystery.
4. Make it visual.
5. Make sure it’s skim-able.
6. Make sure it’s still useful even if players halfway read it.

It seems like every other day there’s a new thread topping Reddit or BoardGameGeek talking about the intricacies of accessibility in the board game community. This is also, bar none, the most controversial subject in gaming right now. In fact, this very controversy has discouraged me from covering this already.

So let’s talk.

It’s a simple concept with profound implications. Accessibility affects the size of the font on your cards, the texture of your tokens, the ways you track information in complex games, and how comfortable women feel at your gaming table. For this reason, I’m splitting my definition of accessibility into three categories: physical, mental, and social.

Before I explain what I mean by each of these three categories, I’d like to point out that the nexus for the vast majority of controversy in accessibility of board games is social accessibility. It’s the behemoth concept with which so many people tango on a day-to-day basis on forums and social media. That’s just one small part of overall accessibility, though, and a focus on that alone would be myopic. I reiterate: accessibility is about making games appeal to more people.

Physical Accessibility

A lot of really great games have physical barriers that exclude potential players. Small font is hard to read if your vision is poor. Small pieces are hard to pick up if your hands are shaky (or if you’re just plain clumsy, like me). It’s hard for a lot of people to tell green and red apart. It sucks for physical barriers to prevent people from enjoying games, so we should do what we can to help.

Developers, physical accessibility is often a matter of trade-offs: do what you can do and still meet cost and logistics concerns. Here’s some relatively easy, high-value rules of thumb you can follow:

• Make font as big as you can. I suggest 12-16 pt, but be realistic about what you can achieve. War Co., my own game, uses 9 pt. font in a genre where 6-7 is fairly standard.
• Watch out for color-blindness. If you want to color-code components, add a differentiating symbol or some text as a back-up identifier.
• Make pieces as big as you can. Don’t go below .5 x .5 inch (1.25 x 1.25 cm).

Mental Accessibility

There’s a lot of things that can make it harder to perform the mental functions needed to play games: memory issues, a questionable grasp on English, fatigue, stress, and so on. When we develop games, we need to be mindful about how information is tracked and maintained during the course of the game. “Make sure that you have elegant ways to keep track of different game events, especially if these ways are physical.” Don’t make playing a game harder than it has to be. That unintentionally excludes some people and simply frustrates every one else.

Social Accessibility

This is the form of accessibility where -isms and -phobias come into play: sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia. Hell, social accessibility is such a complex issue that it’d take years to disentangle the various ways in which people are scared off of gaming. I generally keep my opinion to myself on social issues, but there’s some things that need to be said. Like it or not, there’s some game groups that scare off everyone who isn’t a very specific kind of person. Read between the lines.

As developers, a concern for social accessibility can show up in a few ways. Games need to be designed with the understanding that they may be played in many cultures where social norms are different. Women are not arbitrary sexualized (borderline NSFW example). For that matter, women are actually depicted every once in a while. When it’s appropriate, depict people who aren’t white or even straight. Accessibility isn’t about shoehorning people into a game where they don’t belong, but it is about showing the world for what it is, in all its complexity. Remember that people like seeing people in games that remind them of themselves.

The second part of social accessibility is trickier: we need to make our game groups more inclusive. Honestly, I don’t have a magical answer to how we do this at a big level. But I know how it starts: you and me treating everyone we meet with basic respect and dignity. Accessibility is about making games for as many people as possible AND making game environments for as many people as possible, too.

Our hobby is getting big, folks. A lot of people are getting into board gaming, so we want to have games and game communities ready for newbies. If you’re interested in learning more, check out Meeple Like Us. It’s a fantastic blog that covers accessibility issues in an academic amount of depth.

Ever since I failed to fund my first Kickstarter campaign for War Co., I’ve been very involved in the board game community. My personal favorite hang-out spots within the board game community are Twitter and Meetup groups. That doesn’t even scratch the surface, though. There’s conventions, Instagram, Facebook, the thriving /r/boardgames subreddit, Board Game Geek, and so much more. I’ve noticed that no matter where I go within the community, though, there’s a subject upon which people love to pontificate: what is the board game community?

The board game community is huge. If you’re new to design, it’s bigger than you can understand. It’s a billion with a “b” dollar industry, and indicates millions with an “m” individuals who are committed enough to board games to put down dollars. The board game community spans hundreds of websites and social networks, knowing no geographical bounds. It contains people of different ages, genders, religious beliefs, political affilitations, and nationalities.

The board game community is diverse in interests, too. “Board games” is a catch-all term for board games, card games, collectible games, dice games, miniature games, RPGs, and – goodness – I don’t even know what else. The board game community is very loosely defined. It’s you. It’s me. It’s the crowd in the photo above. It’s every board game backer on Kickstarter. It’s everyone who buys Exploding Kittens on Amazon.

The community is tied together literally by a single broad interest.

We all like to game. (Whatever that means…)

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The board game community is comprised of tons and tons of small, slightly related niches. If you’re creating something, if you’re selling something, you have to understand this on a gut level. There is not a single game in existence that would please every person in the crowd above. Nor is there a game that could be created to please the entirety of /r/boardgames or every single Kickstarter backer.

Everybody has preferences. Some gamers like short, light games whereas others like heavy, multi-day ones. Some people love elaborate themes (Ameritrash) and some people don’t see a point in having a theme at all (Euro). Some people like certain themes and not others. Hell, you’ll never catch me getting into a Medieval theme, but I’m a sucker for sci-fi. There’s people who feel the exact opposite. Some people game to work out their minds. Some game to socialize.

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You are the community.

See the whole as a series of parts.

Imagine others complexly.

Find your niche.

Make something perfect for them.