Deep Regrets
Published 2025
Shallow Regrets
Published 2025
Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon
Published 2024
Dragons of Etchinstone
Published 2022
SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
Published 2024
Galactic Cruise
Published 2025
Rebirth
Published 2024
Flip 7
Published 2024
Arcs
Published 2024
The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era
Published 2025
Chronicles of Civilization
Published 2025
Ark Nova
Published 2021
Brass: Birmingham
Published 2018
Harmonies
Published 2024
The White Castle
Published 2023
Symbiose
Published 2025
10 Lessons From Messy* Manuals
I'm an editor by trade and a poet by poor choice, so I'm very invested and interested in how language is used to communicate complex ideas in simple and novel ways. Board game manuals are a genre of writing I've long been intrigued by, being someone who's able to read and visualize rules without necessarily needing visual cues. Not everyone is able to do that, though, and that's partially to do with different folks simply having different learning styles, but it also has to do with board game manuals often being ... less than helpful for actually learning a game. And that's something that is simply not acceptable.
Maxim one: Players should be able to understand a game with nothing more than the manual. Sure, there will always be edge cases and weird situations that crop up that can use clarification by experienced people on the worldwide web, but such cases should resolve with, "Ah, got it. I was 90% sure that's what the rulebook was saying, but I just wanted to be sure because I have this one friend who's uptight about these sorts of rules, and I value our friendship more than being right even if this particular quirk of theirs can sometimes get on my nerves." Rulebooks ought to be a helping hand for players, rather than a starting point for the journey to 10-year-old forums or the help section of a company's website.
This leads to my second maxim: Making a good rulebook is by and large a problem for publishers. A designer is the one wot first births a game system into the world, but it's rare that they're the ones doing all the graphic design and editing for their own rulebooks. And that's how it should be! Designers are so close to the game that they have trouble seeing knowledge gaps that will be big hurdles for new players. Publishers, whether they be a big ole company or one other person, have the primary responsibility to make sure that someone who (1) buys their game can (2) understand and enjoy the game without having to resort to eleven different threads on Reddit and some weird site called BGG. Were Rodney Smith and his catalog to suddenly vanish from existence, players should still be able to figure things out on their own without resorting to profanity.
These two maxims are the foundation for everything else I'll be going into in this list, but I also have some disclaimers that are important to note as well:
1. Criticism is always easier than construction. Making any sort of technical manual is a difficult balance between clarity and particularity, and I don't want to discredit solid effort even if I think its end result isn't perfect. I'm not putting myself forth as an untouchable font of knowledge; I just wanted to try and sharpen my own skills by looking deeper into this genre.
2. All these points are for English-language games, though I believe the principles are generally language independent.
3. The games I've selected are all designed by Reiner Knizia, for two reasons: one, I had enough of his games on hand to do this exercise; two, I know that he provides publishers with English rules that they then polish and make a manual of, in line with maxim two above.
4. This exercise is meant to be informative and possibly even educational, not diatribic (had to make that into an adjective) or condescending. Obviously, there's a certain amount of arrogance since I'm enamored enough with my own opinions to share them on the internet, but I try my best to be constructive after destruction.
5. If I get anything wrong or am unaware of additional context surrounding a game, let me know! I'd love to learn more about everything I'm only touching on here.
Onto the lessons.
1. Res Publica
Lesson 1: Have an editor for the language you're publishing in.
2. Qin
Lesson 2: You can't rely on digital errata.
Again, this is a niggle, a quite small, rare case with a clarification that could be intuited, but the clear clarification currently only exists in one little corner of the internet. If you've ever had the thought, "We can just patrol the forums or provide corrected rulebooks later," think of the poor schmucks who are buying copies of the game 10 years later when you (and your servers) have moved onto other projects.
Lesson 3: Write rules with the most common play states in mind.
The rulebook for Yellow & Yangtze is one of my most hated manuals I've ever had to read and reread and reread.
Grail Games had a hot streak with Dutrait and Knizia for an amazing run of games, but that consistency was matched by the relative mediocrity of the rulebooks of those same games. And my vote for the most frustrating would be this one.
A specific rule sticks out (and was the impetus for this list), that being how to resolve wars, or external conflicts. The description is a bit rambling and imprecise, and the example given isn't the most helpful, but the biggest problem is with how it is explained because it is written to describe how a war happens between three city-states joined together (rare, in my experience) rather than when two are joined together (much more common). This decision baffles me because it takes a rule that is already strange and unique and explains it in its most niche application, leading to confusion over and over again about exactly how wars are supposed to be resolved. The rule should have been written to explain the common occurrence and then had a note at the end explaining the more rare application, not the other way around.
I'll let my thoughts lie there in order to preserve caveat 4.
Lesson 4: If you're making a "The [xxxx] Game" of another game, use similar language for similar rules.
Again, I think my brain is mostly to blame for the mistake, but there's something to be said for the differences between how a central mechanic shared between a spinoff and its parent are written:
[...] On their turn, players must draw the top card from the draw pile and place it face up so all the players can see it. After examining the first card, the player may draw a second and a third in like manner; placing any drawn cards next to the previous. The player may stop drawing cards after one or two, but cannot draw more than three. [...]
5. King's Road
Lesson 5: Rulebooks ought to be made after everything is finalized.
That being said, the rulebook really ought to be the last thing finalized for the production process. Making sure rules are all complete and reviewed is one thing, but you also want to make sure that the renders or photos of components that you're using in the rulebook actually line up with what's in the box. Both the manual and box for King's Road use the same rough rendering of the final game that was used in the Kickstarter campaign. Card backs don't match, player tokens have different proportions, and the king token is completely different from what you actually get. This isn't a game-breaking deal, though a bit odd and unprofessional, but after the pictures of the cards in the rulebook, there aren't any more graphical elements at all: no examples, no illustrations, just big blocks of text. It feels like a symptom of a workflow centered on pushing the game out as fast as possible, without the time and space to bring the rulebook up to where the game actually was.
6. Palazzo
Lesson 6: A sidebar is a beautiful thing.
Palazzo is a slick auction game with a fairly straightforward ruleset (with some Knizia spice, of course) and a really solid rulebook. What makes it so solid, I believe, is how it utilizes the sidebar. It's primarily a reliable and succinct reference for those who already know how to play the game and only need a refresher on a few rules, but it also transitions to examples, pictures, and additional explanation as needed. It serves to make jumping back into the game easy, but it also nicely breaks up the text of the main rules, helping to avoid the problem of huge chunks of text page after page. It's really well done and warrants a closer look for anyone wanting to do a similar structure.
And those deep purple header strips? Ooooo, those are lovely.
Lesson 7: The manual doesn't always have to be the same size as the box.
The rulebook is bright, linen textured, and lavishly illustrated with art from the game. But as a reference tool, it's frustrating to use. Trying to find a rule or section means a lot of flipping because of how many (vast) pages there are and because many of those (mammoth) pages contain huge illustrations or swathes of empty space. There's so much wasted space between all the 28 (floppy) pages, and it leaves me wanting a smaller, more concise version that would be easier to read and reference.
If you want to show off the gorgeous art made for the game, maybe include that as a separate booklet? Or take a note out of the CMON Modern Art and include it in a section at the end. I'm all for more detailed copies of shiny artwork, but usability is always going to edge out appearance for me.
Lesson 8: Keep in mind how you can help experienced players get back up to speed.
One of my least favorite things I have to do when setting up a game I already know how to play is having to pull out the rulebook and check on some granular tidbit that's impossible to remember. How many cards do I leave out? How much money do people start with? What exactly do I do with these starting cards again? Amun-Re's quick reference gives me exactly what I need without making me flop it open and comb through the setup pages. A good rulebook should get out of its own way and help not only those who are learning a game for the first time but also those who haven't played in a while and only need to be reminded about 3% of the rules.
Lesson 9: Multiple rulebooks might not be necessary.
I can understand wanting to apply this same sort of structure to Blue Moon Legends. This box pulled together a bunch of different decks with different mechanics and various expansion content with its own specific rules, and much of that isn't necessary for someone wanting to just jump into the game. But it feels unnecessary. The clarifications in the front section could have easily been folded into the initial explanation of each concept or condensed into a general FAQ section, and the two quick references that aren't equally useful are annoying to juggle when both players could use the same reference information. It's not terrible, but it's feels like a situation where a standard was applied to a game that really didn't warrant it.
10. Whale Riders
Lesson 10: Learn from your mistakes.
Ya love to see it.
