Richard, Jeremy, and Brian talk about writing rules. Here are some of the topics we cover:
- Different styles of reading and writing rules
- Rules layouts
- Managing versions of rules
- Rules editors
- Sanity test
- Reference cards vs. rules
- Rules for an expansion
- Blind playtests
Podcast/Audio: http://traffic.libsyn.com/theforbiddenlimb/FLP026.mp3
Resources:
– The Game Crafter Sanity Tests
Board Game Business 
Great podcast. Couple questions. Do you think it’s a good idea for designers to create ‘Let’s Play’ or tutorial videos as well as written rules? Do you think player’s prefer one over the other? I seem to jump on youtube right away when learning a new game, so I appreciate having ‘official’ videos available. Thoughts?
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Great question! We always do a How to Play video for our games and they are quite popular. We are now integrating them into our rules as well so that on the first page, it has a QR code and URL to the official How to Play video. Another option is to send your game out to reviewers as there are tons who specialize in making How to Play videos for games. You could let a “professional” do it and then just link to it — many of them are even free. I think a How to Play is more useful than a Let’s Play video as most people don’t want to sit through a very long play video, but I don’t have any data on that – I’d love to hear others’ opinions on that. I’ll try to think of a way to do some kind of poll to try to see what most people prefer. Which do you prefer?
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A Let’s Play would probably be able to capture the spirit of a game much better than a How To Play, but I think the How To would be preferable in most cases. As far as a preference between videos and written rules are concerned, I have to admit I find video learning much easier. Good ideas, thanks for the reply!
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