How to Make a Board Game: The Rules
Rules are one of those things that every person has a different relationship with but, each person must interact with and typically in the case of board games must adhere to. While creating Card Bard we set out on creating the rules very early on, and just KNEW we had a rock-solid system. While I think we had done a great job of creating a fun and unique system, we have since found few holes thanks in part to our playtesters and to the kind folks over in the Board Game Geek forums. When board game players first set out to play a new board game, there generally are two types of people.
There is Aaron:
“OK! Let’s crack open that rule book and read it cover to cover!”
Savoring it like an excellent meal, and referencing it like a bible.
– Aaron Griffin
And there is me:
“OK! Let’s crack open everything BUT the rulebook and see how much we can figure out on the fly!”
Shunning the rulebook as long as possible and eventually referencing on the fly.
-Keyan Kenney
But Why Though?
There are several reasons why I (and many, many gamers) am not too keen on digesting the rulebook in its entirety. Some of which, admittedly, are character flaws (see: lack of patience) but many of which are the rulebook writer’s shortcomings — Which as it happens in the case of Card Bard… are, at times, my own shortcomings, again. But we have grown in our journey to create Card Bard, and writing and perfecting rules have been a significant growth area. I’ll walk you through some of the challenges we have faced, what we’ve done to fix them, and give some guides on how to improve your rules as you make your games.
Where The Magic Happens
In a way, board games are nothing but rules — without instructions and controls on how to move, place, and interact with the pieces, all you have is a box full of cardboard and bits. The rules are where the magic happens! Nowhere is that more true than in a card game, like Card Bard. A card game is fundamentally a set of rules that has been busted up into bite-size chunks. The good and the bad of a system like this is that you can write rules that are contradictory on purpose. However, you can write conflicting rules on accident as well. Sometimes they work out: happy accidents if you will. But often, it’s just a recipe for disaster.
The Rules of The Rules
Here is a quick overview of what we have learned on our journey of making Card Bard.
- Preciseness
Being precise is vital when writing rules. If anything can be understood in more than one way, it WILL be understood in more than one way! If the rules do not expressly forbid or require something, players will undoubtedly have disagreements about what they can do.
- Consistency
If you are not consistent with the way that you use your terms in your rules, you’ve invited more tension and confusion into your game. Make sure that if you call a component or concept in your game a “Destruction Doohicky” in one section, you name it that every single time it is referred to throughout the rules. Ideally, for specific terms, you would make sure that your capitalization is identical throughout as well. An excellent example in Card Bard’s rules that we recently audited was our use of the word action. In a consistency audit, we make sure that Action is always talked about the same way but also uses an uppercase “A” each time. Doing this is considered making it a “reserved word,” meaning it has a fixed meaning. This is standard practice in programming.
- Conciseness
Conciseness is something (as you can probably tell) I struggle with! Personally, I enjoy writing and can let it get away with me as I try to pack as much punch into what I am writing. But there is a magic to being concise, a zen-like clarity that comes from being able to describe something in as few words as possible. And with fewer words to interpret, there is less chance for misinterpretation. Under conciseness also falls repetition — If you have described something in one of your sections, don’t re-describe it in another. Going over topics repeatedly not only can be tiresome to read through but introduces more opportunity for confusion.
- Logical
Being logical SEEMS like it would be a cakewalk for most game designers, masters of breaking things apart, and building systems of logic in their own minds. But therein lies the pitfall, in your own mind. It’s effortless to make logical leaps and not even see what you’ve done. An elementary logic mistake is to name two things too similarly. Calling something an Equipment and something entirely different an Accessory could lead to confusion.
Further, if something is called something, for instance, a Composition, it should behave like one. You wouldn’t equip a Composition. Compositions are not consumable, nor would they be permanent. Compositions are pieces of something — make up a whole, and it should be clear that is how they function. We certainly hope that is clear in Card Bard! - Structured
The core of any good rulebook is a good structure. Make sure that you have a right and logical place for all of your information, and you have presented it in the correct order. Here is a typical flow of information:
1. Components
2. Terms
3. Objective
4. The End
5. How To Play – Generally
6. How To Win
7. How To Play – Specifically
8. Reference
9. Lore + More
Ordering your information like this will introduce players slowly but logically, and will be familiar to them if they have read through other board game rules.
While this is by no means an exhaustive list of how to write rules when making your game, I hope that you’ve learned from our journey here and can go forward just a bit more confident and create amazing games with the clearest most logical totally super concise (I’m doing it again aren’t I…) great rules.
If you are still designing your board game make sure to check out my last article on how to quickly combine artwork and card info or take a break from game crafting and play our print and play!
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