Nuts & Bolts - How to Write a Great Rulebook
[Read our full Nuts & Bolts series]
I hate reading rulebooks. If I have the opportunity, I almost invariably will hunt down a how to play video or hassle a friend for a teach before I’ll crack a rulebook.
But, I actually kind of like writing our rulebooks.
It’s not the kind of thing I’d want to do constantly, but there’s something fulfilling about once or twice a year writing the rules for our games, in a way, that I, someone for whom rulebooks are a misery, can survive.
So, let’s dive into my best practices.
For reference, here is Nut Hunt’s rulebook, and the current draft of Sigil’s (without figures).
Make Sure to Accommodates the Use Cases
A rulebook has three uses:
To teach the rules
To refamiliarize a player with the rules
As a reference
Keep the use cases in mind when writing the rules. Make sure they are well organized, easy to flip through, and easy to find information in.
If it’s long this may mean an index. For most games this means a FAQ… and lots of callout boxes.
Be Consistent & Clear
There is nothing worse than a rulebook which contradicts itself or contradicts the player aid. Make sure that it is consistent and clear. And when there are confusing situations or corner cases, call them out.
Copy Edit It
Part of clarity is consistency in terminology, writing and even capitalization. Spend some time copy editing your rules (Sigil needs a bit more of this), and get other people to read your rules. It’s amazing what some more sets of eyes will uncover.
Have Personality
Rulebooks aren’t machine code that you feed into a bank of 1970s IBMs. And, their goal isn’t just to communicate rules, but to excite players.
They should have personality, and they should avoid dry technical speak.
Don’t Make it Too Short
Occasionally I see a game promoted as having a short set of rules, “Only one page of rules!”. This is an immediate red flag for me that the rulebook, or rulesheet is probably pretty terrible.
In my opinion a rulebook should be as long as it needs to be. It doesn’t need to ramble. But the text should be well spaced, it should have figures, it should have examples and a FAQ. You should not sacrifice clarity for brevity.
Have lots of Figures & Callout Boxes
I am a huge proponent of figures and diagrams in rulebooks, callout examples of rules in action. A lot of people are visual learners, and often a picture will clarify any confusion of written rules.
Similarly, callout boxes act as an exclamation point to drive home key concepts. They’re also great for holding key information that players might be searching through the rules for.
Say it Three Times
Before I’d written either of our rulebooks, I’d already taught our games 100+ times. That might be ambitious for designers who are writing rules for blind playtesting (after teaching their friends and family), but you should have a very good sense for what rules are unintuitive, or where people have common questions.
I like to call those pain points out at least three times, usually:
In the rules
In a callout box or example
In the FAQ
A Rulebook is Not a Live Teach
When giving a live teach you can often circle back around on rules. You don’t need to give a linear method for how a game plays. But, a rulebook isn’t a live teach, and in my experience it should be written differently than a live teach.
It needs to be more structured, and clearly organized. And it needs to be accommodative for its use cases.
How I Structure Our Rulebooks
This is personal preference for how I structure our rulebooks, but I think it works well.
Brief overview of the game with the goal and end game trigger
Components & set up
Definitions of key terms
Structure of a turn
Each potential turn action in sequential order
End of the game & scoring
Alternate or solo rules (if applicable)
FAQ
Which games have your favorite rulebooks?
