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Every day, rulebooks destroy my soul a bit more

Shelfside

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We have to rant about rulebooks again, this is not a joke. After decades of board gaming, rulebooks continue to be the #1 enemy of enjoyment, and haven’t gotten better. So what are some very common structural issues? We don’t want to talk about translation issues or writing styles, even though flavor text usage is both a structural and writing style issue. Even big publisher games like Stardew Valley are victim to problems! It’s good to have a separate reference that can be a glossary and/or index like mansions of madness and Eldritch Horror! After all, the rulebook should help you learn the game not just reference rules.

BGG Article: https://boardgamegeek.com/blog/13453/...

Games mentioned: Brass Birmingham, Radlands, War of the Ring, Star Wars Rebellion, Mammothodus, Grimcoven, Last Word, The Resistance: Avalon, The Elder Scrolls Betrayal of the Second Era, Scythe, Coup

Table of Contents:
Overview - (0:00)
Structural Issue #1 - (1:16)
Structural Issue #2 - (2:13)
Structural Issue #3 - (3:44)
Structural Issue #4 - (4:45)
Structural Issue #5 - (6:27)
Final Thoughts - (8:16)

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Stuff Used:
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watchv=etz2m2zm3vy

Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors - Track 7
watch
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Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors - Track 8
Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors - Track 8
Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors - Track 2
Age of Empires 2: The Conquerors - Track 2

#boardgames #tabletop #tabletopgames

20 Comments

@ScytheNoire 4 weeks ago

As much as Fantasy Flight has their issues, I've always appreciated their extra books that useful for referencing terms.

@p0ck3tp3ar 4 weeks ago

This is my biggest gripe in the hobby. Another issue is keeping games memorized is extremely difficult. I honestly could probably only run 5 games max in my collection without a rule book right now.

@jeremyfrost3127 4 weeks ago

Board game companies are so terrible at writing rule books it honestly boggles the mind. It’s like they never bother to have playtesters learn the game from a draft rule book alone (and then have them take notes on all the rules they couldn’t find or were otherwise unclear).

@Amogousnoususer 4 weeks ago

See those tired eyes. Those are the eyes of a man that is submerged in rulebooks

@TabletopTurtle 4 weeks ago

As someone who writes manuals professionally, board games have been awful for rules for decades and will never get better. There are no dedicated technical writers in the hobby because everyone thinks they can write and so the designers write it themselves and then have random publishers on staff take a look and do editing and formatting. Now with the advent of AI, you'll get designers or publishers feeding their notes into Chat GPT and then getting whatever the end result is. It's already happening in tech and the end result isn't particularly good, but you can't put a dollar figure on how many people purchased a game BECAUSE of the good rules and so there will never be any money for writing.

@BoardsandBrews 4 weeks ago

All of us have gone through this. This can really come out when you're trying to learn a game and record a video because you think you have it and it makes sense. Only to find out from the comments that there was an important rule buried in a sentence, inside a paragraph, in a different section not directly related to the rule. Sigh, the struggle is real

@robertthurman9866 4 weeks ago (edited)

My pet rule book peeve is referring you back to a huge chart you have to search through rather then just reprinting the one rule that is required for the example (asset card). I've also learned you really need a searchable rule book open on your computer/tablet while you try to learn a game. It's a lot quicker than searching a poor rule book by hand.

@hadzhere 4 weeks ago

i've been reading rulebooks since the avalon hill 36-50 page no-examples, no-illustrations days. (my favorite rulebook is Imperium Romanum II, not AH but West End Games, that's just a baby though, at 28 pages IIRC with 8 pages of charts and 48 pages of scenarios)
never had a rulebook that has stumped me. i basically teach a game every session i play, as well.
when reading, i skip all flavor text and all examples (unless the text is so bad that the example is needed to explain it further, but that's rare for me).
when teaching, i teach nothing but an overview, and fill in other rules as they are about to happen.
i also give strategy hints and let one of the other people at the table win on first play.
i love reading rulebooks, i read at least 2 a week just for fun. :D
YMMV. ;P

@willtuck 4 weeks ago

Paul Grogan just stopped mid-Jaffa Cake bite and furrowed his brow, feeling like someone is watching him.

@barkgav499 4 weeks ago

Unironically GMT makes amazing rulebook formats for finding information. However they commit the sin of typos in first prints to the point many 1st to even 5th playthroughs are unclear as hell on edge cases. If fact, it is to the point that they seem to be so common its hard to call them "edge" cases anymore...

@GamebooksGuide 4 weeks ago

I have mixed opinions on this. I don't constantly buy boardgames, which means I don't read a lot of rulebooks. But I have experienced a bad rulebook. However, most of the rulebooks, they just felt fine to me... like, I rarely go back to a rulebook after I learned how to play the game, just the glossary if I forgot a keyword or something.
The best experience I've had with learning the rules was with Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, I never ever forgot how to play Gloomhaven after those 5 scenarios. I guess I would suggest boardgames to guide you through a dummy scenario, so you can learn all the core rules, and then let you play by yourself.
Another good example, similar idea, was the Dized tutorial I used for Dragons of Etchinstone... damn, was that good, never opened the rulebook and never had any issues remembering the game, it guided me through every single step, and asked me which moves I did, and adapted to it... amazing.
But overall, I have yet to burn out from reading a rulebook, usually I just read in downtimes, instead of reading a book (or a Gamebook.. ah!), I read the rulebook of my new game.

@TheBoardGameBeard 4 weeks ago (edited)

#2, Earthborne Rangers was literally the worst. They expect you to build a deck for a campaign game without you know anything about playing the game or how good cards are. Then they have pre-built decks they put online that should have added to the rulebooks. It was one of the worst experiences I have ever had trying to play a game.

#3, BOTSE has an index but a lot of the time it doesn't even cover all of the places the term is at. I had a question about skyshards and went to the index and read every page referenced and my question wasn't answered on any of those pages. I had to find some random other spot that had the answer.

@Quincy_Morris 3 weeks ago

One thing I like in asymmetric games is when the rules have color coded text so you can easily hunt down the rules that apply only to that faction. This is especially useful when different factions have similar but not identical actions and abilities.
Fire & Stone does this a bit and it’s very appreciated.

@HaakonGaarder 4 weeks ago

As a rulebook writer, this a great video, thank you!

@namelessfire 3 weeks ago

Anytime I teach a game I always establish four things:
- Theme (who are we and what are we doing?)
- How is the winner determined?
- How is the endgame triggered?
- What does a turn look like?

Everything that comes after that is centered around reinforcing those four points. Rulebooks should really mirror that approach.

@Gamebent1 4 weeks ago

The Odalin: Dungeons of Doom rulebook is guilty of just about every issue you stated. It even references the "quick guide" many times despite the fact that Dragori decided not to make a quick guide.
In fact, the rulebook is so poorly-made that Dragori Games sent out a sticker pack for immediate fixes, and then decided to completely remake the rulebook.
The terrible rulebook is just one of many issues Dragori created with the Odalin campaign. I'll never back anything again from that amateurish company.

@RichardArpin 4 weeks ago

Just going to throw this out here; Scarface 1920 is a brain burner of a game because of all the myriads of card effects (skills), how you pair those to orders and your thugs going places (think sending your agent out in Dune), and how the game systems interact (area control AND reputation AND engine building AND asymmetric powers).

The game has a fantastic rule book that breaks down everything.

The only issue is that with ~40 associates to hire with different card effects, and 40 jobs (think Dune Imperium intrigue cards that can be one off or permabuffs like Techs), there's lots of edge cases about how cards interact - and they don't fit the full rules onto the card because then there'd be so little room for any art.

@freakyzed8467 4 weeks ago

Old wargamer here. I wanna say "you damn kids don't know how good you have it now" but I can't disagree. Trying to get into Grimcoven now myself. YouTube and BGG really do turn the difficult into...... less difficult.