Brandon the Game Dev

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the thirteenth of a 19-part suite on board game design and development. This week, I want to zero in on the subject of making the perfect board game rule book. To help understand this subject, I’ve brought in Chad of the Writegamers.

This guide comes in seven parts:

• Who is Chad?
• Why writing rules is different than other kinds of writing
• How to structure a rule book
• Making rule books clear and concise
• Your player’s first experience and your rule book
• Dealing with rule book skimmers
• Parting advice

Below is a transcript of our conversation over Discord DMs. It has been lightly edited for clarity and flow.

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Who is Chad?

Brandon: Tell me a little about yourself and your projects.

Chad: I’m an entrepreneurial sort; I’ve spent my life building experience in a variety of fields and industries to keep things fresh…starting in my teens with profitable web and Teamspeak hosting. Right now I work from home (the dream, right?) for a cloud consulting firm leading their application development resources. I also work with indie dev companies on a more casual level discussing challenges, goals and brainstorming solutions. On a more personal level, I publish an episodic webcomic for free, and paid novels (with periodic studio grade music to go with them) to market; currently my children’s book and my wife’s fantasy novels and children’s books.

Chad: The goal really is to make the Writegamers a platform for bringing experience and support to other startups – we already live in a future where everyone can create their own story. I want to help them succeed at telling it well.

Brandon: It’s fantastic that you’ve been able to succeed with a business you started in your teens!

Brandon: Both in consulting and in creating books, you’ve done quite a bit of writing. Spec docs, business rules, literature for a general audience and for children as well.

Why writing rules is different than other kinds of writing

Brandon: How does writing a game’s rule book differ from other forms of writing like blogging or literary writing?

Chad: With blogging, the content often comes across in an informal, personal tone. One can use slang and speak a little more freely – thoughts can diverge, merge, and take sideways jumps because the speaker is conveying what’s on their mind. The message is their own.

Chad: On the other hand, literary writing is storytelling through prose; the rules are quite different. The writer must create a world and entrap the reader so they can become immersed. The message must speak to a variety of people, so that ideally, there’s something for nearly any audience if they read long enough. The sentence structure must convey emotion and meaning on a personal level for the characters involved. However, typically in both formats, the tone and structure are consistent throughout the material.

Chad: With a rule book, the format is often more formal and factual but I believe it can have fluidity in terms of its structure. Specific rules/information may be conveyed in bullet points and/or through specific technical paragraphs. There may even be some storytelling to convey the reason or meaning behind a particular series rules and mechanics.

Chad: The reader must have an unequivocal understanding of what the rule means and why it’s important. However, it cannot read like an encyclopedia all the way through! It must be memorable and keep the reader’s attention so they can connect to it. I believe it can be conversational and engage the reader from section to section – with a block for the actual specifics in plain, clear writing.

Brandon: I definitely agree with that. You want to strike a balance between being specific and deliberate, but also human and approachable when writing rule books. They’re more formally constructed than blog posts and I’d argue even the prose you would see in literature.

How to structure a rule book

Brandon: With that in mind, what is the purpose of a rule book? What is the ideal structure of a rule book?

Chad: The rule book serves as a guide to teach new players and to act as a quick reference for experienced players. Even for the game designer, it’s easy to forget your own rules for a living, breathing project! Typically, the rule book has an introduction/overview, components list, setup instructions, gameplay, end game rules, and appendix. It isn’t limited to this, though. To make a game truly unique and engaging, a writer has room to play!

Chad: This is where hybrid writing comes into play. The introduction recaps the background story and thematically sets the tone for the game. Why are we here? Why is it important? This is conversational storytelling and there is freedom to explore.

Chad: The components, setup, gameplay sections, and appendices should be in unambiguous, clear language. The components should simply and plainly list which items in the box are required to play. The setup instructions may include diagrams explaining how the board should be laid out. With gameplay rule writing, it’s important not to diverge into edge cases and one-off situations. The gameplay section should focus on round mechanics. How does each player complete and round and what must happen? If special events occur, refer players to the appendix.

Chad: This ensures the guide is clean and easy to read for new players and doesn’t require experienced players to run around trying to find information. Similarly, the endgame section must explicitly define what constitutes as an endgame and refer players to the appropriate appendix. The appendix is the encyclopedia of the game. Is there an edge case? One-off conditions, special events? Icon glossary and card definitions? Put it here…don’t clutter the gameplay mechanics.

Brandon: A handful of best practices come to mind right now. I’m a fan of starting with the components list, objectives, and overview…in that order. The components list helps by letting people know immediately what everything is called, then you can launch into the purpose and the basic concepts of the game. After that, I agree, it does get a little fuzzy. Clarity and concision become the most important values, and how you meet those goals is up to your tastes and those of your play-testers.

Brandon: I agree on keeping an appendix, too, I feel like that should be more common in games. Just about every game will have some bizarro edge case/corner case come up. And if you get too big of an appendix, that’s a sign you need to do some redesign. So in that way, it also acts as a canary in the coal mine for bad game design.

Making rule books clear and concise

Brandon: How do we make rule books both clear and concise?

Chad: The first thing I’d want to do is make sure I can actually play and understand what’s going on.

Chad: In terms of making the rules clear and concise, I think it’s useful to have a group of beta readers with different backgrounds, skills, and traits. As well, having people in different countries with different cultures to ensure you’re communicating clearly with them and not using an offensive stereotype by accident. This could be done through a Discord chat, Reddit, or social media. Don’t just give them the book and take their advice right off the bat – vet them, and find common trends among your readers. Don’t try to fix one-off issues unless you also see a problem and have a resolution. This can be democratized with a summary of proposed changes that can be shared with the group.

Chad: It’s important that the readers consist of both experienced and inexperienced members of the community, and even other creators. This provides a three-pronged approach to getting balanced feedback on the writing. This process begins with the first draft – write your thoughts down and format them generally how you’d like them to be read in the final product, then ship it off to get outside input.

Chad: We can write, edit, and review ourselves all we want, and we’re our own greatest critic – but we’re creating for an audience that spans the world and I believe that outside feedback is paramount in this case.

Brandon: The more readers you have, the better. I think it also helps to get a mix of different writers like bloggers and technical writers. It’s also a big bonus to get readers for whom English is their second language. This is a very iterative process.

Brandon: I think it’s important to realize that the way you structure your guide and the way you share information will prime players’ first game experiences.

Brandon: People tend to judge a game by their first experience – fairly or unfairly. The rules play a big part in that.

Your player’s first experience and your rule book

Brandon: How can we make rule books that prime game experiences?

Chad: I think a big part of it is structure and formatting, along with the actual quality of writing. The writer needs to put themselves in the shoes of a theoretical new player and think “If this was NOT my game, what do I expect to be able to succeed and enjoy my first experience” – and similarly, approach each review and draft of the final book with the same “fresh” perspective. Read it through the eyes of another audience member and see where something doesn’t feel right or doesn’t make sense.

Chad: The key, I think, is to avoid droning on or diving into abstract lore. Make it bullet point or keep the paragraphs short so it’s COMPLETELY clear what needs to be done. Avoid overly long sentences and repetition and immediately get to the heart of the matter. Use a clear, non-script font that is easy on the eyes. Whatever the message, I should read “point the glowing red end at the other person and press the button,” not “in the name of darkness, cast thou staff upon that villainous opponent and use the unholy rune stone while making three turns on your heel!” – that’s the backstory.

Brandon: It also helps to make the important stuff the first sentence of a paragraph or the first paragraph of a section. Images help.

Brandon: Basically prioritize very, very clearly what info needs to go to that theoretical new player. Then hammer that home.

Brandon: (It helps if your mechanics can gracefully degrade when rules are skipped, but that’s a whole other lesson.)

Dealing with rule book skimmers

Brandon: What do you do about players who jump right in after only skimming the rules?

Brandon: Or, for that matter, having the rules read partially to them by the gaming group’s leader.

Chad: As you noted, the important things have to be shown first! Players who skim and jump in will start “flailing” around in the pool otherwise. They have no idea what they’re doing and have to keep going back to the guide or miss important and fun mechanics by improvising. Similarly, by only having the rules partially read to them – you’ve now got a group going off the cuff without a plan. What happens then? The rules are given ad-hoc and someone gets frustrated because they couldn’t plan or strategize?

Chad: Shorter is better, not everyone has the patience or inclination to read an overly long manual. In this sense, it might also be valuable to have a quick cheat sheet of how to play the round with page references for further details. It keeps it short but allows players to quickly find their way if they have to get clarification on a specific line item.

Brandon: Reference cards go a long way. Even an eight-page rule book with big text is usually too long to get the full read. That’s why it’s very important to put the most important points in highly skimmable spots: the first sentence of the paragraph, bold font, in an illustration, etc.

Parting Advice

Brandon: One last question.

Brandon: As a gamer and as a writer, do you have any last parting advice for game developers?

Chad: I really enjoy complex challenges and innovative ideas in games, but it’s not for everyone. It can be easy to say “I really want to do something really cool” for the first game and immediately take the brand out of reach of any future audience. I’d recommend a compromise during your first project to ensure the player is met halfway. As well, you learn a LOT from your failures so don’t be afraid to fail – and to go back and “redo” a part of the project because you’ve learned something new that increases the polish on the final product.

Chad: In terms of writing a rule book, this is important because odds are you’ll start with a vision and have to scrap and restart a few times before you find that balance where you feel “this is mine and I’m proud of it”, and the audience picks it up and says “this is honestly one of the best rule books I’ve ever read.”

Chad: Always, it’s important to have fun and play – people can sense when heart and passion have been put into a project.

Brandon: Getting to any vision that’s worthwhile usually takes a ton of iteration and experimentation. Right there with you on that.

Brandon: Thank you very much, I can’t wait to share all this on the blog!

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Creating the perfect board game rule book can be a balancing act. You want to give players a good first game experience through clear, concise, easy-to-understand rules. At the same time, you must cover all the important housekeeping tasks that make your game tick. It falls in a strange place where prose, technical writing, and marketing copy overlap. On top of that, you have to make your rule book work for those who barely even read it!

Keep them clear, keep them concise, use lots of visuals, make them skimmable, and play-test a ton. If you do these five things, you’ll be well on your way.

Are you working on rules for your game? Share your experiences in the comments below 🙂

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the twelfth of a 19-part suite on board game design and development.

Accessibility is a big issue in board gaming. It’s also a very complex issue that is hard to talk about succinctly because it covers game design, product testing, individual behavior, and group behavior under a lot of different circumstances. To help understand this subject, I’ve brought in Dr. Michael Heron of Meeple Like Us.

This our third accessibility article. I recommend you read the first one and the second one as well.

But first, let’s go ahead and define accessibility, using Michael’s own words (paraphrased):

Accessible games are ones where people can still play your game even if they have extraordinary usability needs. An inaccessibility is any feature of a game that presents a barrier to enjoyment. Mostly it’s about how information is presented and how the game is manipulated, but I also include aspects of cultural inaccessibility and representation.

This guide comes in three parts:

• Socioeconomic Accessibility
• Intersectional Accessibility
• Parting Words

Below is a transcript of our conversation over Discord DMs. It has been lightly edited for clarity and flow.

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Socioeconomic Accessibility

Brandon: Now what about socioeconomic accessibility? What is that and what does it entail?

Michael: For this we need to recontextualise the discussion a bit – this kind of work is often characterised as being about disability, but it really isn’t – disability is just the most obvious “use case” for the findings. As such, when this category comes around people tend to be a little quizzical because it doesn’t look like it’s in scope. But if we go back to the earlier discussion about accessibility, I said “an inaccessibility is any feature of a game that presents a barrier for someone when it comes to enjoying the game you’ve designed.”

Michael: Sometimes those barriers are in terms of how a game presents itself to gamers that don’t fall within the usual stereotype bracket of what a gamer involves. Here we tend to discuss issues of representation and inclusion. I firmly believe, and the research backs me up, that people need to see people like them reflected in a cultural product before they see it as being for people like them.

Michael: When under-represented groups look at a shelf of board games and see only white men staring back at them, that creates an accessibility barrier – one that exists before you get into the interaction model used for the game. It’s not something that stops someone from playing a game, but one that puts a psychological obstacle in place. Boys don’t play with Barbies very much because Barbies are “for girls.” Lego, until very recently, had a reputation for being “for boys.”

Michael: You see this divide in any toy shop – boys’ toys versus girls’ toys. Play isn’t gendered though, and these are artificial distinctions. They keep kids from playing outside of their expected sociological role. Board games do the same thing when they don’t have women in the art, or have a sea of white faces, or portray ethnicities or genders in careless ways. Scantily clad women, stereotypical Middle Eastern cultures, the reductive portrayal of complex and sophisticated cultures… all of that is a sociological accessibility issue.  It makes people less inclined to play even if there’s technically nothing actually stopping them.

Michael: And this is bound up in an economic context too because the groups most impacted by all the categories we discuss on Meeple Like Us are the ones that, statisically speaking, are the ones most likely to have economic considerations that prohibit full and unconcerned engagement with the hobby. But the issue is further interlinked by the way in which many games handle diversity in their representation, especially in licensed properties.

Michael: The “big names” in a franchise are overwhelmingly likely to be white men and they’ll be the ones most prominent in the game that you buy. Other characters, if they’re available at all, are often offloaded into expansion packs. So there is a kind of economic tax you pay just in order to see “people like me” reflected in the game that you want to play. Any game that is lazy about its representation, or is lassiez-faire about the implications of its business model, or how those intersect, are going to have that discussed as part of a Meeple Like Us analysis.

Michael: Coupled to that is the issue of “value for money” which is somewhat nebulous but also bound up in a socioeconomic context.

Michael: Buying a game for £100 that only supports two players is a hard sell for someone that might only have £20 they can spend on games in a month and have to make the game cater for a large family with varied patterns of work and availability.

Brandon: To sum it up, socioeconomic accessibility goes beyond simply making games that work for people with disabilities. It goes beyond even using good game design practices and simplifying game processes and experiences. It’s about making games for more gamers.

Brandon: Cultural sensitivity on board game boxes and in art goes a long way – no chainmail bikinis or offensive stereotypes of other cultures. Something as simple as including people of different genders and ethnicities in prominent art can make a difference. Everybody likes seeing people who look like them in the media. It’s just a cool feeling. Why not share that with people who don’t get that as often?

Brandon: It can make somebody’s day, you know?

Brandon: As for cost issues, strictly the “economic” part of “socioeconomic” – that’s complex for game devs. It’s a fact that hobby board games in small print runs have to run a bit expensive compared to what’s in Walmart or Target. That is unavoidable. You can, however, reduce cost problems for both you and your players by researching manufacturing and fulfillment in great detail.

Brandon: This is one of the critical things you have to get right if you want to make it in this industry.

Intersectional Accesibility

Brandon: Now you briefly touched on intersectionality – the last of the accessibility categories that we listed a bit earlier.

Brandon: Intersectionality is kind of a complex subject. How would you describe it in a nutshell?

Michael: Occasionally there are issues that manifest not because of one condition or another, but because of how they come together. For example, a hidden hand of cards might be fine for someone with visual impairments if they can bring them up close for examination. It might be fine for someone with physical constraints because their card holder is holding them in place without discomfort. However, if someone has to take into account visual and physical impairments there’s a problem that comes from that intersection. It’s about dealing with the fact that accessibility issues are often cross-category and there are implications with that.

Brandon: Any really good, familiar examples come to mind?

Michael: Verbalising instructions might be fine if someone has physical restrictions, but that compensation may not be feasible if paired with a communication impairment.

Michael: It’s also something that covers factors that don’t belong to any one individual category. For example, many conditions have modulating severity – you might be fine at the start of a game but experience discomfort as time goes by. Game length, and intensity of the game, becomes a factor there. If things get too difficult to bear a player might want to drop out of play – some games permit that without too much difficulty, others basically needed to be ended when a player drops out. Time limits in games cause accessibility issues for almost everyone, as does intense competition where players are looking to benefit from informational asymmetry.

Brandon: So it’s best not to see intersectionality as strictly corner cases where multiple unlikely things converge at once…

Michael: That’s definitely part of it, but not the whole of it.

Brandon: It’s also a matter of regular accessibility issues being exacerbated by time and intensity.

Michael: But it’s also one of the things you need to consider generally – one of the most common causes of visual impairment is diabetes. That often comes with nerve damage in the extremities, which in turn makes physical interaction more difficult. It’s often not the case that there’s just one accessibility complication to consider – they often come in sets.

Michael: And that’s especially true when you consider accessibility as a function of age. We all suffer various physical degradations as time goes by, but not uniformly. And it happens so gradually that often we don’t even think of ourselves as needing accessibility support.

Michael: Everyone is a unique data point – a highly individualised blend of individualised considerations of varying severity.

Brandon: Just to drill your diabetes point home, a quick Google search on my end shows that 9.4% of the US population has diabetes.

Brandon: That’s about 30 million people here. So this is not some academic issue. This is a practical issue for game developers.

Brandon: Also, wow, that is a much higher number than I thought it would be.

Brandon: Plus just about everybody will have some sort of accessibility issue as they age. It could be as simple as “I needed reading glasses once I turned 40.”

Michael: Definitely. The number of people who are actually impacted by these issues is massive. Around 8% of the male population in the west has some form of colour blindness. About 10% of the population in general have some form of self-reported disability, and it’s probably closer to about 20% given that many people don’t consider themselves to fall into that category even if they would benefit from accessibility support.

Michael: In fact, I just checked and the CDC says one in five.

Brandon: So with all this in mind, what is the best approach to handling intersectional accessibility?

Michael: I think by far the most useful tool for this, and all accessibility categories, is just designing with empathy in mind. Consider what you’re asking people to do and where the stresses in your game system are. We’re working on formal tabletop accessibility guidelines to give some actionable advice in each category, but in the end it’s always going to be down to the unique combination of your game and someone you likely don’t know out in the world. Simply trying to consider your game from angles you may not have considered is incredibly valuable, although if you can actually test with people with disabilities that’s obviously so much better.

Brandon: If you try to cover all the other areas as best you can, it tends to alleviate some of the worst intersectional issues too.

Brandon: And as always, play-test, play-test, play-test. That’s the best way to identify problems. The more people the better. In fact, I bumped up Byways font from 9 point to 12 point because I saw somebody squinting at the card text.

Parting Advice

Brandon: Any last parting advice for game devs hoping to make games for more gamers?

Michael: It’s great to make games accessible because it’s the right thing to do, but that doesn’t have to be the reason. It’s also good business sense – the competition out there is fierce, and there is a massive and largely untapped market out there for a game designer with a focus on accessibility. It’s a selling point – it’s good marketing, and every time you show people that you’re taking accessibility into account you show more people that this is a hobby that’s for them. You’re designing for yourself in the future, but you’re also expanding your own brand and your own audience. Morality is a great motivator, but there’s nothing quite like self-interest to really seal the deal. 🙂

Brandon: Forget economic good sense and ethics, I’m in it for the self-interest! 😛

Michael: So say we all.

Brandon: Thank you very much, this has been great and I can’t wait to share this online!

Michael: Fun chatting with you as ever.  🙂

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Often times, small tweaks and a general sense of awareness go a long way toward creating professional and polished board games. By exploring some of the ways we can make games more accessible, especially socially, we can create games that more people can play. More fun for everyone!

Here are some key takeaways:

• Don’t stereotype your players.
• Represent women and ethnic minorities in box and game art.
• When representing women and ethnic minorities, do not stereotype in the art.
• Make sure you represent all kinds of players in your base game – not just expansions.
• Don’t make your game super expensive.
• Use gender neutral text in your written materials.
• Realize that sometimes multiple accessibility issues happen simultaneously, creating intersectional accessibility issues.
• Be careful about your game’s run time.
• If possible, make a game where people can drop out without breaking the game.
• Make games that you’ll still be able to use as you age.
• Accessibility isn’t just about morality or cost – it’s about making something you and others will be able to use for a long time.

Got any questions or comments? Leave them below, I’d love to read and respond to them 🙂