Rulebook testing

[Radar]

Caveat: I'm not, and don't wish to single any rules writers out for criticism, I hope that this is more of a generic 'how rules are written' discussion.

There are some excellent rulesbooks out there, the efforts of their authors are to be commended. But, unfortunately those rulesbooks fall into two camps: those that can be picked up, read and played straight from the book; and those that require a veteran of the game to teach you how to play, or a series of explanatory videos explaining mechanisms. Too often I read a new set of rules and my overriding impression is that I am sure that they make perfect sense to the group of mates who wrote them, and that, having read the book, I am still none the wiser.

So, with that in mind...

Writers of rulebooks usually enlist a group of playtesters to iron out problems with their rules. Once the rules are finished should they engage rulebook testers - can the rules be learnt and played from what is written in the book (and nothing else)?

Do any rulebook writers/groups use rulebook testers already? (Or do some rules work from the book purely due to the skill of the writer?

[fred]

I know what you mean, and understand the question.

Some rules are very difficult to pick up from the page. Even some that are reasonably easy to follow, often have a set of assumptions (often around movement) that come from games the author typically plays.

Having a video that shows the key mechanisms can be really useful - and this is probably not just a play though video. A play though while interesting in its own way, often isn’t great for showing the details of the rules. Partly as a play though is quite long, so finding the relevant bits can be tricky, and sometimes in the midst of a play through rules mistakes are made. A nice snappy video focusing on the key mechanisms is really useful.

A lot of board games are very good at explaining the game off the page, and providing instructional videos.

I suspect for many wargames rules time and availability of players is tough for checking the rules work as written. But I’ve been involved with some rules (through LAF) as a naive player, and have often been able to provide feedback about something that has been hard to follow off the page - which once explained slightly differently is clearer and makes sense. Which lets the author adjust their wording. 

[Mammoth miniatures]

Writers of rulebooks usually enlist a group of playtesters to iron out problems with their rules. Once the rules are finished should they engage rulebook testers - can the rules be learnt and played from what is written in the book (and nothing else)?

Do any rulebook writers/groups use rulebook testers already? (Or do some rules work from the book purely due to the skill of the writer?

I do - Initially I would ask my partner to read through the rules and see if she understood what they meant as she was unfamiliar with wargaming conventions. Unfortunately I've done that enough now that she now knows how games work and knows how I write rules which doesn't help. As a back up I ask my random family members/work friends to read through the books and see if they get what it's asking. It's not fool proof but it helps.

The issue may be that whilst playtesting is fun for gamers, reading what is essentially a technical manual is rather boring for a non gamer ( I have found that jam doughnuts help in that regard.)

Games workshop have really gotten writing for the beginner down to a fine art at this point so prospective writers could do worse than copying the style in which their rules are laid out/broken up and explained.

The worst example I have come across is still de bellis antiquitatis - I have the strong suspicion that the game could fit into two sides of A4 paper if it was written well.

[Elbows]

Welcome to why I have five games....four of which are stalled at the rules writing process.

By far, writing rules for a "stranger" (and possibly someone who has never played a miniature wargame before) is the hardest part.  It's phenomenal how a quick 5-10 minute explanation in person can cover 20-30 pages of written instructions.

I can actually whip up a game pretty quickly (maybe not with all the bits and bobs), sometimes writing a game in an evening...which then becomes a 1-2 year process of ironing it out, getting it down on paper, etc.

Do you write technically?  That's a big deal for a lot of people.  Do you write more casually?  Sometimes that's more fun to write/read.  I learned really quick to establish a "style manual" the same way you do in a journalism setting.  What is a "model"?  What is a "unit"?  I read a ton of rules which are loosey-goosey with their terminology which can really aggravate rules issues.  I have included a "new to wargaming" style section in the beginning of my rules lately.  Explaining what "D6" means, and how to measure distances, etc. etc. etc.

I think most rules writers need a technical editor or similar.  I also think you could worse off than having a solid table of contents or easily identified sections/areas.

I still suck at rules writing, but they seem to be useful for the customers who have bought my games in the past.  It is definitely a struggle.  I re-read my own rules numerous times.

I will say it's far harder to find people who test-read your rules (particularly when they creep up to 40-50 pages) than to test-play.  Everyone wants to play a game, not everyone wants to read/edit a large manual

[Major_Gilbear]

I would also add that in addition to how rules are written/explained, plenty of rulesets I read are not great at laying out what you need to know in a comprehensive order.

For example, it could be that something like artillery is mentioned in the section on shooting, further explained in another section on vehicles, again where weapons that use templates are described, and finally at least one/twice more in special abilities or unit entries. Then, in game, you remember reading something about what your artillery unit can supposedly do, but the rules are scattered across the book, and even a good index makes it very hard to piece them all together.

This sort if thing (to different extents of scattering/complexity) is quite common unfortunately, and is one of the reasons why release-week errata seems to be a frequent occurrence. I often thought that writing down a precis of each rule on an index card, and then arranging these cards around to get the best "flow" might be (1) a good way to ensure rules are properly organised before they are written up into a draft of the ruleset, and (2) ensure that bits of rules or their outcomes don't get missed.

The worst example I have come across is still de bellis antiquitatis - I have the strong suspicion that the game could fit into two sides of A4 paper if it was written well.

I couldn't agree more! Disappointing that the 3rd (current) edition was released in 2014, a time, when rulesets in general were much better at explaining things clearly than older games did, and yet this essential element of editing was apparently missed. I have no doubt that the game is simple enough to play, but I do struggle to read and understand it each time I've tried. 

[vexillia]

I think most rules writers need a technical editor or similar.  I also think you could worse off than having a solid table of contents or easily identified sections/areas.

All good stuff.  I have copy edited quite few rules sets, usually outside my own interests, and have found that authors have a clear view of what they mean but lack the rigour to structure it for the uninitiated.

I've written a few blog posts, with tips & examples, about editing rules:

• https://work.vexillia.me.uk/2020/09/rebels-yankees-v20-released.html
• https://work.vexillia.me.uk/2020/09/editing-wargame-rules.html
• https://work.vexillia.me.uk/p/editing.html

The last link is for paid copy editing; rates on request. 

[Dentatus]

I'm terrible at it - despite the best efforts of editors, proofreaders, and play testers - but I'm getting a little bit better each time. So I keep at it, hopefully making mistakes in the right direction.

It's also very odd when 9 strangers will grasp a concept/mechanic/example but the 10th comes up with a completely different reading. Or misses it completely. 

[SteveBurt]

Strange that DBA gets singled out as unclear. It is certainly densely written, and you have to read it carefully, but it is unambiguous, and you can play it correctly from the book. What it is not is easily approachable, but that is a different thing. The rules that annoy me are the ones that leave out swathes of stuff or make assumptions never spelled out. Neil Thomas does this with his rules (never saying how units turn, whether by pivoting or wheeling for instance). Well written, easy to follow, but with key stuff missing. The worst example I can think of is Megablitz, where having the author present is probably mandatory. The best rule writers I can think of are Sam Mustafa (Lasalle, Maurice, Longstreet, Boucher, Rommel) and Rich Hasnenauer (Fire and Fury, Battlefront:WW2). Rules which are both approachable and clear.

[Elbows]

I also find that writing rules for certain games is far easier than other games.  Board games, hex games, etc. can be far easier because of the reduction in complexity, etc.

"A unit may attack one enemy unit within an adjacent hex" tends to be far less ambiguous than dealing with line-of-sight, measuring ranges, etc.

Another weird caveat is; some games need to be read then played...while others need to be played while being read.  That may sound confusing, but some games I can read the rules and "get it", while other games, I need to put the models on the table, go through the motions of the rules and it'll click.  For example, in the early days of running Furt's "Blood on the Sands", I was reading the rules but wasn't really grasping it.  My buddy and I just put some minis on the table, and went step by step and suddenly it was clear.  It all clicked.

So sometimes, you just gotta play the game.  When I lived in another city there were four of us who tried to play new games together - because we tended to work really well as a group, figuring out new games.  We had the right combination of patience, attitude, and curiosity to break down new games - even complex board games which were often translated from a foreign language (and thus murky).

[TheDaR]

Strange that DBA gets singled out as unclear. It is certainly densely written, and you have to read it carefully, but it is unambiguous, and you can play it correctly from the book. What it is not is easily approachable, but that is a different thing.

I think DBA (and Barker rules in general) gets a lot of flack because it's almost too legalistically precise and concise.  The author goes to an almost excruciating level of effort to avoid ever repeating things. And as such a lot of the sentence construction is complex and ends up relying on an academic level of knowledge of exact rules of punctuation and grammar to interpret that many average gamers can't take for granted.  Which actually ends up making them wrap around to unclear.

Which comes back to the original point in a slightly different direction.   There's an inherent tension between laying out and organizing rules to be referenced versus learned.   Concepts that you want to link temporally while learning might not be linked that way when you want the best possible reference for resolving minutia during play.
 Consider explaining movement, which is a great time to at least mention the effect terrain has on it, and then later when explaining how terrain and cover affects shooting.   But for pure reference you might want all terrain rules in one section and not interleaved with movement, shooting, routing, etc.

DBA skews all the way towards the reference side of things, which makes it very hard to pick up and learn from scratch on your own.  You have to have the entire ruleset nearly memorized to be able to spot all the linkages of some rule interactions, so without an experienced guide to give you a mental framework, they're bewildering until you reach that level of familiarity.  In these days of instant gratification, that can be a lot to ask of a reader. 

Conversely, Games Workshop rules are usually an example of very conversationally oriented, easy to learn on your own without expert guidance, building up incrementally as you go, but thus things are scattered about and it can be nearly impossible to remember whether some interaction between concept A and B is explained with A, with B, or somewhere else entirely when a rules conflict comes up during play.  And sometimes it's more than once, and the conversational wording is imprecise meaning the multiple ways its explained can be interpreted differently.  Which is why these sorts of rule sets tend to be notoriously awful for serious competitive play.

Edit: An example for me is DBA itself.  I bounced hard off of DBA 2.2 multiple times.  My group started trying to play some historicals, coming from a background of GW games.  I just could not read DBA 2.2 and understand what was supposed to happen.   It wasn't until I managed to find a copy of the WADBAG "Unofficial Guide to DBA 2.2" that I was able to understand how the game was played.  That guide was literally 4 times the page count of the actual DBA 2.2 rulebook, but it had a ton of pictures and diagrams, an uncramped layout, a more conversational approach and a bunch of sidebar commentaries explaining special cases.  Once I had read that once or twice, I had enough of a mental model that I could then read the actual DBA rules and not just get a brain cramp.

I've often wondered, especially in this age of digital documents, if it wouldn't make sense to have this sort of completely separate versions of the rules.  One version laid out as pure reference, with section header numbers and cross referencing and indexing, all very like rules written by Phil Barker or Arty Conliffe.  Then another version explicitly written as a learning document, building up from zero knowledge to playable, mixing concepts as needed in a conversational fashion, walking through the game procedure by procedure, like the Unofficial Guide.

[Kelly_]

I've often wondered, especially in this age of digital documents, if it wouldn't make sense to have this sort of completely separate versions of the rules.  One version laid out as pure reference, with section header numbers and cross referencing and indexing, all very like rules written by Phil Barker or Arty Conliffe.  Then another version explicitly written as a learning document, building up from zero knowledge to playable, mixing concepts as needed in a conversational fashion, walking through the game procedure by procedure, like the Unofficial Guide.

The best example of split books that I have seen were the Fantasy Flight Star Wars rules for Armada and Legion whose starters came with both a Learn to Play and also a separate Reference book.
From the Armada Rules Reference introduction... "This document is a reference for all Star Wars: Armada rules queries.  Unlike the Learn to Play booklet, the Rules Reference booklet does not teach players how to play the game.  Players should first read the Learn to Play booklet in its entirety..."

From the Legion Rules Reference introduction... "This document is the definitive source for all STAR WARS: LEGION rules.  Before using this document, players should read and understand the rules presented in the Learn to Play booklet.  As questions arise during gameplay, the players should refer to this document."

Fantasy Flight changed how they broke up their rule information as they developed various games, and while I did not totally agree with how some of the example sections were separated, I can realize and appreciate how much thought they put into producing two books for the games whose complexity they felt warranted it.  The Quick Start / Learn to Plays that Fantasy Flight produced go far beyond just linked keywords you may find in a rules pdf, as they were designed separately from the base rules package.


Another approach on splitting rules was taken by Catalyst in the recent BattleTech renaissance.  They did not produce a standalone learning document like Fantasy Flight for their starter boxes, but rather a stripped down version that still contained examples, but only a fraction of the rules in the two model Beginner Box that were described as Quick Start Rules.  Interested novices could then move onto the larger box set A Game of Armored Combat that came with a larger rulebook and covered more aspects of the game.  And after that block of rules, of course Catalyst would hope you would move on to the fullest experience of the game with their other supplementary hardback rule books that cover every possible event on the table.

[Elbows]

I am actually doing that for two of my current projects.  These are sister projects, but both feature the rulebook (about 45 pages), and the appendices (about 45 pages) with the intention that after reading the rules a few times and playing a few games, the actual reference material in the appendices will be the "game" reference.  All the weapons, skills, locations, NPCs, events, etc. will be covered in the appendices.

The appendices are broken into easily readable tables, charts, bulleted sections on quick reference rules, etc.

[fred]

Good discussion chaps. I do think the point between reference and learning is key, and Elbow’s point about having a mental model to hang the rule concepts off, rings very true to me. And I think each player’s mental model of the game starts from a different point due to their prior experience, and what they think / expect the new game will play like.

I don’t think I have seen the full on separate intro book in a TTWG. But I have certainly seen intro chapters that attempt to place the key concepts for the player (Billion Suns very diliberatly did this). I think the most typical method in TTWG rules is to have small examples through out the rules as a separate way of showing how each part of the rules play.

For most games once the core is known, most players just use a Quick Ref sheet to play, which suggests that the reference part of hte rules can really be condensed down!

[Easy E]

Typically. my play testers are using the rules from the rules lay-out I put together.  Therefore, they are play testing and rule slay-out folks all in one.  However, most Indie folks like me have a very small group of people they can tap to do this type of work, and they typically are not random folks; they are people you personally know. 

Here is some discussion about Play-testing here:

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2019/05/wargame-design-playtesting-only-strong.html 

Now, how to lay-out a rulebook is a different discussion.  There are a lot of approaches to this task.  I am by no means an expert, but this is what I put together on the topic:   

http://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2022/01/wargame-design-rules-lay-outs.html

[Radar]

Thanks all for some very interesting contributions.


My background is mostly ECW with a token nod to Napoleonics, so my knowledge base is somewhat narrow.

I like the idea of a learn to play booklet/section. Makes a lot of sense.

I understand Easy E's point that there might be a limited pool of talent to test. But that is sort of my point, playtesters inevitably have a greater understanding of the rules (due to having taken part in the discussion that takes place during the rewriting and evolution of the rules). This out of rulebook discussion, whilst very helpful for the testers, isn't usually in the rulebook.  I can think of one rulesbook 'house' that have some really great mechanics but their rulebooks are incredibly difficult to follow (and play) without a tutor.