How to Write a rulebook - Designing a New Board Game is a video by game designer Jesse Ross discussing how to start writing a rulebook while designing your game.
Jesse starts the video by showcasing Ticket to Ride’s rulebook that is praised for how to captures the simplicity of the game while also being easy to understand and short. If a game can be explained in shorter rules, it’s often a testament of its good design.
Bad rulebooks can cause players to lose interest in the game if they are often confused by the rules or have to scour the internet for answers mid-game.
Jesse shares a common structure of a board game rulebook:
- Introduction
- Objective
- Setup
- Gameplay
- Game end
- Player aids / reference
His advice is to start at the core gameplay portion of the rules — introductions, components and details are easier to add once the game is at the end of its design phase.
Writing down the rules can be like journaling. When you’re forced to put ideas into words then you start to understand things better. And it often leads to more ideas in the process. - Jesse Ross
Five quick tips for writing rules
- Tip 1: Rough ideas now, clean up later. Don’t optimise too early: you can always polish them at the end when you know they are gonna stick.
- Tip 2: Think of the beginners. As a designer, you know way more about your game as any of your players when they start playing it. Do your rules provide everything they need to know to learn how to play the game without you present? (sidenote: Nintendo has a similar principle when they make their Mario platformers: a player needs to be able to complete the levels without running because running is an advanced player mechanic. This forces them to design the levels in way that progressively scale towards all sorts of player skill levels.)
- Tip 3: Example turns are great. I love this tip. Some of my favourite rulebook sections are when mechanics and rules are explained through a full example of a turn. This helps players to get the big picture of how individual mechanics play together.
- Tip 4: Clarity in language is key. Sam Pearson talks about this for a full video in Technical Writing In Tabletop Games by Sam Pearson. Be consistent and clear!
- Tip 5: Use player aids (index, reference sheet, glossary etc). There’s often just one rule book per game so offering each player their own cards that go through the available actions or what they can do in a turn are effective help.