Garden of Learning

Writing board game rulebooks

(modified: )2 min read

Writing rules for games is a science of its own. When I discuss “rulebooks” in the context of this note, I mean anything in the game that creates or explains a rule: rulebooks, reference guides, FAQs, cards with rules (like Magic the Gathering or Pokemon TCG cards) and such. Don’t get too hang up on the “book” part. And it includes all sorts of non-digital games: board games, card games, wargames, social games and so on.

I haven’t (yet!) designed my own game to the point where someone else would need to read the rules, I have written many tiny, simplified rulebooks for games that I have shrunk into more travel size or built from scratch as PnP and every time, I keep thinking how I could get better at picking the essential rules and explaining them in concise but accurate way.

In Technical Writing In Tabletop Games, Sam Pearson goes through a couple of key areas where rules text writing can fail and cause confusion. Namely, ambiguous rules and inconsistency in terminology and phrasing. He explains them through great examples and offers tips for fixing some of the shown examples. In addition, he provides a great checklist for common pitfalls to avoid.

In his talk ‘Magic the Gathering’ 20 Years, 20 Lessons Learned, Mark Rosewater mentions a couple of rules writing related lessons. Piggybacking (or the “use of pre-existing knowledge to front-load game information to make learning easier”) can help the designers and the players both in making the rules and mechanics easier to grasp but can also become a challenge if there are competing or conflicting interpretations across different cultures.

Jesse Ross in How to Write a Rulebook - Designing a New Board Game talks about where to start writing your rulebook and what to focus on (and what to leave for later) when you’re early in your game design process.

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