A More Honest Rulebook

**HEY! This is SATIRE. But also, don't do these things, and hire a rulebook editor. **

Theme: Here's an overly long story that is only very tangentially related to gameplay. Someone on the dev team always wanted to write fiction and now this novella stands between you and finding out how to play. Characters in the story will not appear in the actual game. 

Components list: You had better not lose any; replacements aren't easy to get anymore. Just sharpie over anything that reads "Kickstarter exclusive." There are no instructions for how to put components back in the box. Everything fits if you throw out the expensive insert. 

Set up: Could be just a blurry picture with no labels OR just text with non-obvious names for components. No one knows which deck is the energy deck yet, and there is no symbol glossary. Hopefully, Rodney Smith has covered this game. 

Objective: The goal of the game is to get so involved in crafting and executing your strategy that your friend wins while you aren't paying attention. Most experienced player wins.

Determining first player: Come on now, this is the 21st century. Use an app and stop pestering designers to come up with something cute. 

To start: Did you read the rules before inviting people over? No? Bad news, you won't learn how to start the first turn, because instead you will first learn what every line of text on each card refers to. There is no quick start guide in the manual; the back page covers special edge case rules. Check BGG in a few weeks for a revised rules pdf. 

Order of play: Listed at length starting on page six. There is no turn summary in the rulebook or on the player aid (which is the only place the symbols are defined). 

End of game: Refer back to "Objective." End of game triggers listed at length in BGG errata. There's a round track and marker, but they're not listed in the components or set up. The game is over when the players give up in frustration. 

Scoring: Here's a bunch of numbers not listed anywhere else or very well explained. Hopefully someone recognizes the term triangular scoring. Bonus scoring conditions are only explained on the event cards. Most people just download the fan-made app. 

Variants: Read all the other rules. Now forget half of them and play this way instead. The fan-designed two player mode is better, but Rahdo didn't cover it. 

Card glossary: Just images of every card. Nothing is explained in depth. Still takes up the majority of the pages in the manual. 

Designer's notes: Cut due to lack of space. 

(Merry Christmas) 

The Other Complexity Creep

Complexity creep is the concept that over the course of development designs will take on more and more complicated mechanics (and edge cases) than would be suitable for ease of play or to attract new players. Designers, who know their own game very well, often do not notice how difficult a game is to learn until they play it with new players. Complexity creep is not a positive trait in design. 

And yet. 

As we build this hobby industry, I see complexity creep everywhere and not all of it is bad. Consumers are becoming more sophisticated in their gaming tastes. Publishers are taking on ambitious projects. Genres are blending together. I want to discuss some of the types of complexity creep I see outside of a design with too many mechanisms. 

The first is the rise of expansions. Expansions are essentially a way to introduce complexity in a controlled manner to players: "Here learn this game. Now learn a bit more for a new experience." Expansions allow designers to design games that are accessible to new players but also introduce additional depth down the road. However, too many expansions (and FOMO) can lead to a game feeling bloated or like the players are having to design their own play experience because playing with everything isn't feasible. 

I want to pivot a moment and talk about wine culture. Most people (in the USA) start drinking wine with wines that are light, simple, and cheap. Many people never move on to more sophisticated wines. People who are really into wine buy wines that are complex, bold, single estate, small batch, or otherwise more difficult to approach than a bottle of Barefoot. 

I hope the parallels to hobby gaming are obvious. Few hobby gamers start with A Feast for Odin. As the board game industry has developed, so have the tastes of the players. Some gamers will always prefer to stay with gateway games. But few players skip gateway games and go straight to heavy games. Instead, they experience their own version of complexity creep as they learn the language of board games and become able to easily parse more complex rules. There is nothing wrong with this tendency to drift toward more complex games. The difficulty comes when more complex tastes are seen as better, much like wine snobs. After all, few people would be playing complex games if they hadn't started with simple games. Getting people excited about something cool does not require tearing down something else.

I have seen some of this same complexity creep among reviewers, though to be fair most reviewers continue to express appreciation for gateway games. Instead, the struggle appears to be recommending new games when there are older games that are still in print and are better designed or cheaper. This complexity creep comes from having played 6,000 games and using that mental database as a standard to determine if a new game is good. This means the bar for a 'good' game rises for many reviewers over time. I'm not sure this is a bad thing either. As I wrote before, I think we need high quality criticism in order to progress as an art form. Your mileage may vary depending on what you see as the purpose for game reviews. (I like viewing detailed critiques of games because they makes me a better designer.) The biggest drawback that I see is reviewer fatigue from playing hundreds of games of varying quality. I doubt gaming fatigue produces better reviews. 

Complexity creep is something that happens in your brain before it happens in your design. Familiarity breeds boredom which leads to complexity creep. It happens in other areas outside of design in much the same way. However, just because more hobby gamers are buying complex games doesn't mean all hobby gamers are in the same stage of complexity creep. Where consumers are on the complexity scale has to be taken into account when designing games. Your target audience may not be ready for that unusual auction mechanic. Publishers, players, and reviewers need to continue appreciate gateway games as the building blocks of the hobby while also continuing to raise their standards for what 'good' design looks like. These expectations are vital to me as a designer because they create the loose framework in which I design. Games don't look like they did twenty years ago and that's great. But it is also (kind of, sort of) complexity creep. 

Design Schedules and the Creative Process

Every so often, I see discussions about how to build and maintain a design schedule as a freelance/hobby designer. A lot of that advice doesn't work for me, so I thought I would take the time to discuss a different approach. At the end of the day there is no right way; there is only what works for you. 

First off, I avoid a lot of activities in the design community that don't mesh well with my creative work flow. For example, a lot of time is spent in design communities on brainstorming design ideas. I am very selective about brainstorming. I usually try to only have three designs in progress at one time. If I have three in progress, I avoid brainstorming new ideas or any other similar activity that might result in a new design. My goal is to conserve my creative energy for the games I have in progress. When I do brainstorm, I usually spend some time quietly mulling over areas of design and/or themes that interest me until something sparks an idea. My version of group brainstorming would look more like a debate about mechanisms rather than throwing out a bunch of generic categories to see what sticks. While it may seem odd, my driving goal is to not get new ideas very often. 

If I do get an idea 'out of season,' I write it down, possibly even making a quick rough prototype, as soon as possible. I want any new ideas out of my head right away. I put these aside for when I have room for them. Usually I revisit promising ideas when waiting to hear back from a publisher on a design that's mostly finished. Then I shelve the new design again when I start working on revisions for the game with the publisher. The best way to stop working on an idea is to write it down. 

Similarly, I don't like game jams. I have a pretty specific process for generating ideas that focuses on emotions and themes I want to explore. Game jams are largely mechanics- and components-driven. Plus if I do end up with a good idea, it takes up creative space in my brain that I may not want to give it. I like some aspects of game jams, but I don't seek them out. If you aren't interested in design on demand, it's ok to skip game jams. 

Side note, along with brainstorming and game jams, I tend to avoid forum posts asking for thematic input on someone else's games. I will gladly give feedback on a game I have played. However, the brain space required to imagine the problem and then come up with a solution is not something I'm usually willing to do on social media. I don't want to deplete my creative energy, especially in a format where my feedback is less useful since I don't have all the context I need. I do respond if it's a problem I have wrestled with in my own designs, because I can respond from a shared experience perspective. I never respond to posts asking for help with names. 

Some people like contests because the deadlines help guide the creation process. I only enter contests if I have something in my queue already that seems like it would be a good fit. (Sometimes, that is just an idea of a game depending on the submission rules about how long the game is allowed to have been developed.) Mostly, contests have very specific rules about what type of games they are looking for. Given that I'm only ever working on three games at a time, I'm not very likely to have something for a contest. And as previously stated, I may not have room to add another game. The other reason I don't submit to contests is that, in my observation, contest judges expect more polished looking games than publishers do. I would rather spend time perfecting the rules and experience of gameplay than the graphic design. Plus, publishing pays more. One of the reasons people suggest entering contests is to be active and visible in the design community, but in my experience you can skip contests and get involved in other ways if contests aren't your thing. 

Speaking of contests, some deadlines are what I call 'good deadlines' and some are 'bad deadlines.' Good deadlines propel your design forward in a productive way. Bad deadlines result in rushed work or a creativity block or just too much stress. For me, most contests and game jams are bad deadlines; most conventions and playtest nights are good deadlines. I like the accountability of showing progress to playtesters more than the need to have a finished product by a certain time. 

So far I've been outlining activities I avoid in my design cycles. My weekly schedule (as of the pandemic) is one day writing for this blog, four to five working on existing projects, and one to two days off. Time dedicated to design looks like solo playtesting, designing components in Affinity, building physical prototypes, learning TTS, researching a theme, researching games with similar themes or mechanics, researching publishers, and making sell sheets and videos. I very much consider research and learning new software parts of the design process. I generally consider non-solo playtests as taking place outside of my regular design schedule. What I do on a given day depends on where I'm at in the process. However, all of that goes out the window when I'm finishing something up for a publisher. During crunch time for a deadline, I skip the writing day and the days off and just work through until I have what I need to send to the publisher (usually this is an updated prototype). 

Part of the reasoning behind my regular design schedule is avoiding creative burnout. I find that alternating language-based tasks and visuals-based tasks helps me maintain a more regular schedule. The reason this blog updates so frequently is that I need to work on something design adjacent that is purely language-based in order to not get fatigued when working on my games. Alternatively, I use rulebook writing as a break from the more visual aspects of design. 

Creating time for your existing projects and working on them sustainably is the only way to finish anything. Finishing one project will teach you more than beginning a hundred projects. I manage this by avoiding spending my creativity on things that aren't my main projects and alternating my work to engage my brain in different ways.