I recently had an epiphany of sorts about the rules of writing rules. Not the usual stuff about where things go or what tense to use, but something more macro. As usual, I’d like to explore that epiphany by speaking to you all here.

The three things that rules need to be are thorough, navigable, and clear. As thorough as an owner’s manual, as navigable as an encyclopedia, and as clear as a LEGO instruction booklet.

Thorough

What are rules if not a series of explanations of how things work? Rules need to be thorough, and explain how everything works. That means everything. Nothing can be skipped or ignored if it could come up in a game. Not necessarily every situation needs to be explained, so long as the outcome of the situation can be discerned from the rest of the rules. I compare this to an owner’s manual because, much like an owner’s manual, every single thing that exists within the associated product should be brought up. If something is going wrong (or right), it needs to explained here. It should explain what is happening, what should happen, and what you’re supposed to do next. If you’ve ever written your rules as a series of steps to be carried out in a process, then chances are you’ve written rules with this as your primary pillar. This is both the simplest pillar to define and hardest to complete.

Navigable

When a player pulls out rules, they need to know what to do with them. If you have a piece of rules with every relevant piece of information in it, that doesn’t matter if they can’t get to it. Your rules need to have structure and clear communication with the reader. Yes, that means your instructions may need instructions on how to read them. Some publishers will even have “highlights” that point out where specific rules are, or give abbreviated summaries of each section (Ravensburger has a few rulebooks like this). You want to make it so that a player will be able to find a specific rule with as little difficulty as possible. My comparison point here was an encyclopedia, mainly because you’ll always know exactly where to look in an encyclopedia for something specific (even if we don’t get the luxury of being able to just list out rules alphabetically), but also because they know when they’re being redundant and to just point to some other entry and page number.

Clear

Make your rules readable and understandable. I wish I could provide more specific advice here, but this is one of the harder pillars to nail down how to succeed at it. I said it should be as clear as a LEGO instruction booklet, and that’s because LEGO will literally just directly show you what to do. You can always see exactly where you came from and where you’re going. The clearest translation to rulebooks is examples, of which there should be as many as is necessary. Don’t get stingy on page space! This is also where shortening and abbreviating language is both useful and dangerous. “Draw a card” is certainly clearer than “Put a card from your deck into your hand” even if the second is more precise or thorough.

The Missing Piece

You may have noticed that there’s something missing here. A lot of people would probably say that story/flavor is an important pillar. I would disagree. I think it’s additional. If you can add story by removing thoroughness, navigability, or clarity, then you shouldn’t do it. If it’s free, sure, why not. This is why it’s often at the very start of the rules: so it doesn’t get in the way of anything else. Adding story can mess with thoroughness because you’ll never be able to be thorough with the story, it’ll always have a detail missing. Adding story anywhere but the front or end of the rules can interrupt navigability, since it will put an aburpt stop to the rules. The one thing story can help with is clarity. If you describe something using story terminology, it can sometimes make instructions more clear. Launching a ship to a planet is clearer than relocating a pawn to a location. However, this can go both ways, as discarding a card is clearer than trashing an asset. So you can add story and fun to the rules, just not at the cost of others.

Application

So now that I’ve explained the three pillars, what can you do with this information? Well, when you’re writing rules, see if what you’re writing adds thoroughness, navigability, or clarity. If you are making a change, chances are it is removing one to add another. Is it okay to remove clarity to add thoroughness, such as by adding a clarification to a specific rules interaction? Probably not, since it will disrupt the structure of the rules as well, therefore reducing navigability. However, if removing from one can increase the other by a greater amount, perhaps the change will be worth it.