Hello Everyone and Welcome
Apologies if this topic is out of place but I cannot help but feel that the process of designing, organising, editing and re-editing of the instructions form the spine of any game and its development. It is inherently intertwined in the process of nurturing a game from its idealistic infancy to its lean, streamlined maturation. Essentially, there are two types of game instructions: the simple one page rule sheet and the thick rule booklet.
Some games require a simple and concise set of instructions for a simple game where the majority of game play relies on pre-established or simpistic mechanics. The instructions are more a guide to the player. Clarity, concision and succinctness form the hallmarks of good instructions for such games.
{Note please that while I title these games as simple, this only refers to the instruction set and not the game itself. Go and Chess are "simple" games in terms of instructions yet their elegant complexity is certainly their hallmark.}
Other more complex games present a game with either original or less well known mechanics and so have to "teach" the player rather than simply guide them as in the former situation. In addition to the mechanics of the game, the game turn may consist of a number of phases that further complicate gameplay. The important note here for the game designer is that you cannot expect all, one or even any of the players to understand how to play your game. As such, the designer has to nurture players into their game. How do we do this? That is what this topic is all about. The following are some basic ideas to get some conversation happening.
Pre-established Game Schemas
The use of Victory Points, Money, Life and Experience Points form their own connotation. If you use these terms, your player will most likely have experienced these terms before and so already have a schema as to how these work in a game. In terms of instructions, work with these schemas rather than against them. They are the scaffolding you use to guide your player through the playing of your game.
This is fine as a general guide but what if you need to differentiate certain mechanics from the pre-conceived ideas that players have? What happens when you need to teach?
Teaching Methods
Perhaps the most simple way to teach something is using an example. In-game examples clarify a situation for the player. However, what the game designer has to be aware of is all the ways that a player may interpret a given rule - particularly incorrect ways. The use of incorrect examples (what not to do) is perhaps just as important as correct examples. Used together, they provide a good and meaningful basis in assisting your players understand your game.
However, what happens when the game is just too complex?
Really Complex Games
I suppose the classic example here that hopefully most of you will be familiar with is Magic: The Gathering. For those that have only ever played this casually, you may be surprised that the official rules are over the 100 page mark and are incredibly dense. Interpreting these rules is an artform in itself and can even be thought of as being part of the game - exploiting the rules for advantage.
Essentially, the difficulty with these complex games is a cycle of understanding. You have to understand A to understand B which in turn needs an understanding of C. However, C requires an understanding of A. As such, trying to work out where to start teaching A,B and C is very difficult.
I think it is safe to say that a spiral approach works well in these circumstances. By a spiral approach, I mean that you cover elements A, B and C lightly before looking at them again A, B and C in greater depth. How many required rotations of this spiral are required depends upon the complexity of the game.
Magic uses a simple tutorial to give players a feel for the game before letting them loose on each other. The game itself also backs up varying levels of play: Basic, Advanced and Expert. Obviously not all games need to have this inherent in their structure but the principle behind it should be followed with such games through the instructions.
Some questions for thought
{Question One}
What are some basic ideas you can expect most "players" to know?
Note that by "players" I am talking about players who have ventured past scrabble and monopoly into some of the more popular "German Games".
{Question Two}
Does writing a set of rules for your game help you guide your thoughts and thus assist you in putting the polish on your game?
{Question Three}
What difficulties have you had teaching your game to other players - or having them teach it to themselves?
{Question Four}
What techniques can you use in your instructions to help players teach themselves?
What other thoughts do you have on this topic? Are there any sites on the web that talk about writing clear instructions? Feel free to add any links that discuss this.
If anyone wishes to provide a link to instructions they feel are good or poor , feel free as well when making your point.
In conclusion to this quick introduction, I feel that Instructions and their design is one of the key considerations in developing a game from inside the head to inside the local games store. It should not be an afterthought but an intrinsic part of the game development process.
Great topic and great intro!
Writing rules? It's not that hard, every game has them. Writing good rules, that can be hard! I have bought many games that don't have them!
I will agree with what other have said in that I feel that rules can be very hard to write.
I couldn't agree more. I have never written out rules for a game before design and playtesting have moved beyond the "I have a thought" stage into the "wow, this works pretty well so far" stage.
I think that there are some concepts that all players should have an intuitive understanding of. I always leave it up to the players to choose a starting player with something like "One player is chosen at random to begin." If that leaves them scratching their heads then I can't help them much.
I tend to write rules that are geared towards the lowest possible denominator of understanding. Doing so forces me to look carefully at a game to see how someone may misunderstand a rule or concept central to the game. That often helps me see possible misinterpretations that could lead to bad player experiences due to incorrect play. Of course there's no way to make anything fool proof, especially in the writing of the rules. The best I can hope to do is to make it reasonably fool-resistant.
I tend to be over sensitive to the players' ability to absorb information. Usually I assume that they can handle less information at one time so I typically only describe the basic mechanics in detail. I them give rough overviews of other possibilities for play, mentioning that I will talk more about them as the situation arises in the game. I try to keep the description phase of a game down to less than 10 minutes. Players seem to grasp more complex rules and ideas better as they seem them in play.
My issue with writing rules is that I tend to fear the same thing in writing the rules. Therefore I tend to write more disjointed rules, favoring the basic mechanics first and only mentioning more complex situation. I provide enough for players to get going, then have another section to answer more detailed questions of handle more complex situations. As a result, the rules tend to seem repetetive.
Good question. I don't think I have an answer for that one. I try to give players a good understanding of the concepts of the game so that they will be able to intuit more from the rest of the rules or from playing the game. This partly returns to the issue of a proper marriage between theme and mechanics. Mechanics that properly and intuitively reflect the theme (or are described in such a way as to make the connection more intuitive) make it easier for players to learn and understand the rules. This is especially true with more complex games in which the players have more to do or more decisions to make.
Greg Aleknevicus wrote a great piece on game design principals with a good section at the end about writing game rules. It can be found at The Games Journal here