 http://bit.ly/294serh Good Day Internet! Today we’re going to discuss some of the things you may do during a regular game night that you should avoid when playtesting and explaining your game. We’ve already covered explaining your game to playtesters and preparing for external playtesting, but with us getting into the heart of convention season (Protospiel, GenCon, and so many others) we thought it would be a good time to revisit these topics from a slightly different perspective. So this week we’re talking once again about presenting your game to playtesters with more of a focus on how it’s different than a normal game night: a semi-formal presentation with a purpose compared to playing with friends at home. 1) Avoid Discussing Tactics or Strategy During a regular game night, you may help new player(s) by giving them some tactical and strategic tips as well as suggestions to help them contend with the rest of the group. When playtesting though, you need to avoid this at all costs: you’re not interested in how “well” your playtesters play the game. What you are interested in is seeing how your game performs under as many different circumstances as possible, including different tactics, strategies, and player experience--which in turn may reveal why certain players do well. You also need to recognize that not every playtester is going to be clueless on what to do. Experienced board gamers and playtesters will usually figure out a strategy or potential way to break your game quickly and put it into action--your job is to let them figure that out on their own and stay out of their way. You’ll get way more useful feedback by observing how they play and manipulate the game rather than by telling them how they should play your game.  http://bit.ly/290dAiB 2) Don’t be an Alpha Gamer You should always be available and willing to help with rule clarification and interpretation. However, under no circumstance should you be playing the game for your playtesters. The decisions should always be in the hands of your playtesters without any interference from you. You should do your best to tell playtesters what their options are as they would be described in your rules. Don’t give them examples of plays they can make, like you might do during a regular game night. Let the playtesters ask questions and figure it out themselves. Part of the data you want to collect is how easy your game is to learn and how intuitive it is; the only time you want to step in with what a player can do is if they literally are doing nothing and have no idea what is going on. Sidenote: if this happens during your playtest there’s a good chance you have something to fix either in your game or explanation. Try not to look at this as a negative though; rather, look at it as a learning experience in improving your game and/or explanation.  http://bit.ly/292oCoC 3) Avoid Discussing Other Playtesters’ Feedback Until After the Game Gamers usually love discussing how previous games and situations have played out as well as previous players’ plans and thoughts on/for the game. Although a big part of the social aspect of board gaming and playtesting, it can be detrimental during playtests. You want to avoid influencing your playtesters’ feedback before they’ve made their own conclusions. Hopefully your playtesters will think for themselves, but you don’t want to take a chance that they’ll just agree with what you’ve told them a lot of playtesters have said before. Besides, you’ll most likely have the chance once the playtest finishes to let playtesters know you’ve had similar feedback before and are working on solutions. Before you do though, listen attentively to your playtesters feedback, ask followup questions, and don’t shut down ideas. Then you can talk about the feedback you’ve had before and have a discussion around those points.  http://bit.ly/296Qjwc 4) Be Helpful, Kind, Happy, and an Active Observer
Okay, you probably want to be some of these things at your regular game night, but they’re even more important during playtests. You should make your playtesters feel comfortable even while you’re attentitively watching them play your game. It’s important to remember that your playtesters aren’t machines or guinea pigs--they have feelings and want to be heard too. Appreciate and accept incoming opinions, and keep an open mind when it comes to feedback and critiques you receive. The only thing you don’t want to do in terms of attitude is bring in artificial enthusiasm for your game. Part of being an active observer is being involved in the playtest--give the group your time and attention, even if you are not playing. Pay attention to aspects of the game you did/didn’t expect, think about those moments and ask questions about them. Playtesters will only comment and give feedback on what stood out to them in the experience. By being observant you can ask questions and get feedback on other important aspects of your game that may not immediately come to mind for your playtesters. That’s it for this week. We hope this helps you as you go around playtesting your game during convention season. Speaking of which, due to our participation in Protospiel, GenCon, and helping to organize ProtoTO (plus other commitments) we’re going to have to take a small hiatus from the blog for the next month. If we get a chance though, we’ll post some content on our adventures at Protospiel and Gencon. We will also still be active on our twitter and facebook--so make sure to follow us there. Along with moving, and travelling for Allysha’s work, we’ve got lots to do to get Pulled into Darkness and our island survival game: Swept Ashore updated and ready for critique. However, we’re getting pretty confident with the play of Pulled into Darkness, and depending how these events go we hope to start working towards getting Pulled into Darkness published! Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin
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 Good Day Internet! Today we’re going to discuss what to keep in mind when creating your own Print and Play (PnP) for blind playtesting. For those who have never heard this term, a Print and Play is a set of electronic files that allow willing playtesters to print off (almost) everything they need to play your game at home. This would include the rule set, and files to create paper copies of all components. Many PnPs are available online on various forums and websites, but you also have the option to email your files or grant access to them on platforms like Google Docs to select personnel. Through creating our own Print and Play for Pulled into Darkness and playing multiple Print and Plays from other creators we’ve learned a lot of tips and tricks on how to make a Print and Play more playtester friendly! 1) Provide a Theme and Mechanics Overview in Your Post You need to be able to catch potential playtesters’ attention before they even open any of your files. Therefore, it’s important to have a short, well-rounded overview of what your game is in your post. That way potential playtesters can get an idea of if your game is for them and worth looking into more. Furthermore, most playtesters aren’t going to click through to your PnP files unless you give them a reason to; they’ll most likely skim the overview and decide whether or not to from there. So only cover the basic theme and mechanics, and keep it short. As an example, take a look at our original post for Pulled into Darkness on boardgamegeek.  http://bit.ly/28Lq7oG 2) Provide the Basic Board Game Stats Number of players, play time, and type of game should be prominently shown near the top of your post. Some of these should also be included in your post title if posting your PnP on a forum. These stats let your potential playtesters know at a glance if they can play your game or want to. However, don’t deceive your playtesters. If your game doesn’t play 2 players and takes 2 hours, don’t say it plays 2 players and only takes an hour just to get more interest. It’s hard enough to get people to play Print and Plays, don’t chase them away with lies. 3) Be Upfront About Required Additional Components Whether you post your PnP on your own site or on a forum like the boardgamegeek Works in Progress forum, part of your original post needs to tell players if they will require any additional components not provided in your files. There is nothing more frustrating than committing to printing off a PnP only to find that you don’t have all the components you need to play the game. Let your players know upfront in the post (not just in the rules) if they will require extra components. Additionally, you need to be practical about how many extra components you can reasonably expect your playtesters to have on hand. If your game requires 150 tokens in 10 different colours and shapes you’re probably going to want to provide files for those in the PnP. Even if it’s not that many, you could still provide them on their own sheets in the PnP and then if a playtester happens to already have those components they simply don’t print off those sheets. Again, if you do such a thing, remember to explain that in your original post.  http://bit.ly/28MKuB0 4) Avoid Round Components if Possible For your first PnP, you want to make it as easy as possible for players to get up and running with your game. Round components are more time consuming to cut out than triangle, square, or rectangle components, so you should eliminate round components wherever possible. Also, when it comes to cards most playtesters won’t cut rounded corners, so don’t waste your time putting those in. When you have a game that has proven to be good, and art that brings out the theme and looks aesthetically pleasing your playtesters will be more willing to spend the time cutting out components. 5) Provide a Black and White Version Not everyone wants to spend the money or has the option to print in colour, but there can be information loss printing a coloured version of a PnP in black and white (the amount of information loss depends on the number of similar tones and how they’re combined). Therefore, you should provide a black and white version of your game for those people, but remember to keep colour variants where it matters. For instance, unless your game is strictly solo or 2-player, you should keep colour in player pieces. You could also use symbols instead which is more friendly to colour blind players. Although you may not have any colour blind playtesters for your game, it’s always a good idea to keep them in mind and be inclusive when choosing player colours or by utilizing symbols for player pieces instead.  http://bit.ly/28MxuO1 6) Appropriate Access
If you’re granting access to your documents online be careful to make sure your playtesters don’t have full access to edit your entire documents. Chances are they won’t destroy everything you’ve worked so hard on, but they might (even if only accidentally). If sharing access on a PDF or Google Docs use ‘Can View’ on your share settings to make sure your playtesters can’t do anything to your document. You may also want to use a watermark on your documents to prevent any fraud or theft (although I’ve been told removing a permanent watermark is easy if you know what you’re doing). The other option on Google Docs is to use the ‘Can Comment’ share setting to allow your playtesters to put their feedback directly into your rules without finalizing any changes. This is extremely helpful for applying your playtester feedback afterwards, but it will make your rules messy and harder to navigate for later playtesters. If you looked at our PnP you may have noticed that we didn’t follow all of these tips and tricks. All of our spaceships are circles, we didn’t put a mechanics description on our website, and we didn’t provide a black and white version (although that would have required some creativity on our behalf). In retrospect, we probably could have made the spaceships triangles, and it would have been easy to include a mechanics description on our website. The reality is that you’ll probably never create an initial PnP for a game that everyone loves, but there are ways to make it stand out a little better. We’ll definitely be trying to improve our PnP for the next version and apply what we’ve learned so far. After we return from GenCon we’ll be working hard to get that up and running so check back soon for updates! That’s it for this week. Next week we’ll put out a last minute, scrambled blog post after a week of packing in preparation for moving! Perhaps the packing will inspire us to write about organization of mechanics and making a working ‘turn order’ in game. We’ll see. Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin  http://bit.ly/1UQ3tdm Good Day Internet! Today we’re going to discuss our top 7 tips on editing your rulebook. We’ve tried to tailor this list to focus on tabletop rulebook specific editing, but of course we can’t ignore good old editing practices. We’ll go over what to look for, and what you can do about it to make sure these mistakes don’t make it through to your final rulebook. Use Board-Game-Specific Terminology While trying to be as specific and detailed as possible, new(er) board game designers sometimes forget there’s common board game terminology they can use to simplify their rules. We’ve seen designers write multiple sentences on the step by step procedure on how to shuffle cards when the deck runs out. This, of course, is unnecessary. You need to recognize what common terms in board gaming players are going to understand without further explanation and then only explain what differs from that standard. To give a clearer example of what simple board game terminology is think of the games you played when you were little: Candy Land, Connect 4, Chutes and Ladders. Those instructions are simple enough for kids to learn (roll and move, shuffle, tallying methods) that they became common board and card terminology in later years (they’ve also been around forever), so remember to consider this when writing your rules.  http://bit.ly/1UQ4q5D Avoid Unspecific Pronouns You need to be absolutely certain when using pronouns (you, it, one, that, they, each, few, many, who, whoever, whose, etc.) in your rulebook that they can only be interpreted as referring to a single noun. You should always identify which nouns are within the sentence with the pronoun and in the previous sentence to make sure that pronoun can be used without confusion. Remember as well that one type of component (for instance, a particular type of card) can have multiple locations in game (in hand, in a market, on the board, in the discard pile, etc.). So even if it’s clear that the pronoun refers to a single game component, it may not be clear in what location that game component is (see our Tsuro example from last week’s blog). In general, it’s usually better using the noun or proper noun instead of a pronoun because then there’s no confusion or room from misinterpretation on behalf of the reader. Also, don’t forget about those old editing techniques you learned in high school or other secondary institutions--don’t start a sentence with “and”, “this”, “that”; never use the word “thing” or “something”; that sort of stuff. Appropriate Tone In general, we suggest that you don’t use comical or conversational writing in your rulebook. It usually unnecessarily increases the length of the rules and can decrease clarity (both bad things). Of course, it depends on the type of game you’re making though. Your rulebook should be written more as an instructional so that it gets the point across clearly in the fewest words possible. The only time you may want to include something like a comical tone in a rulebook is if it adds to the theme of the game. Even so, writing in a comical or conversational tone usually works better when you have a shorter rulebook. Players want to play your game, not read your rulebook. If you increase the time between learning the game and playing, your players won’t be impressed. Therefore, it’s best to stick with a tone that informs and instructs with authority to get players up and running with your game as quick as possible.  http://bit.ly/21joqlU Write in Second (not Third) Person You should be writing as if you’re speaking directly to the reader; using terms like “you” and “your” instead of “a player” or “their”. It makes the rules more personal and assists in reader comprehension and retention. If players actually see themselves playing the game when reading the rules, they’ll be more interested and involved in reading them. Formatting Consistency The general rule for formatting is if you’ve done it once, you need to do it all the way through. If you put a component in quotations, you need to do it for every other component throughout the rulebook. Your formatting consistency is going to assist in players understanding what you’re talking about in addition to making your rulebook easier to read. The same goes for overall rulebook format--group things together (or put things near each other) that are connected to one another. Part of editing means considering flow of the rulebook, how much you have to flip through pages and how many questions can be almost immediately answered by the rules. Have Multiple Sets of Eyes Edit This is mostly to make sure that mistakes aren’t missed, but it’s also important for making sure the style and tone (as previously mentioned) is appropriate. Different editors like certain things done different ways, and you want to make sure that your editor’s bias or preference (or your own) towards a certain style or tone doesn’t conflict with what’s best for your rulebook. Every single person interprets every single thing differently--so although you might think you’re being professional and forward, others might think you are being passive and not explaining things fully. Basically, two editors is better than one.  http://bit.ly/1Uh1MbJ Print It Out and Read Aloud
Both of these steps help to ensure you don’t miss anything in the editing process. As humans, we have a tendency to skim over words when we’re editing a familiar piece and that is magnified when you read off a computer screen and in your head. When you print out your rules and read aloud, you may notice you’ve left out a word that hasn’t been caught the first ten times you went over your rulebook. Other things you may want to consider when reading aloud: does it flow? Does the order make sense? Can you actually read this without tripping over the words? Other tips to help ensure you don’t miss anything are reading your rulebook backwards or changing the font. These tips trick your brain into thinking you’re reading something new so you don’t skim ahead. By following these 7 tips, you’ll be able to greatly improve the quality of your rulebook, as well as constructively critique other rulebooks. That’s it for this week. I’d like to thank Allysha for telling me what I was supposed to include in this blog post (and for editing my occasionally lackluster writing every week). Next week, we’ll do a post on things that don’t require me to bother Allysha so much as she’ll be studying for her Summer exams ;) Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin  http://bit.ly/214DN1r Good Day Internet! Today we’re going to discuss what to do, and what not to do, when writing your rulebook and why. Go ahead and grab a drink and a snack--it’s gonna be a long one (we examined sections of 7 different rulebooks all for you)! If you haven’t been following us for that long, or don’t remember, we did a blog post before on Intro to Rulebook Writing. If you haven’t read that post, we suggest you start there before continuing on. We have a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get moving with our first topic: TOPIC 1 -- Order of Operations/Consistency in Train of Thought Our first blog post on rulebooks focused on what the layout of a rulebook should be. This first point focuses on making sure that layout is followed, the sections themselves flow well, and that the transition between sections is smooth. Dead of Winter - Thumbs Up We recently played Dead of Winter and were pretty impressed by the rulebook. Overall, the game was easy to learn because the rulebook was easy to navigate and reference in game. The layout and flow were exceptional, as best illustrated by the “Rolling For Exposure” section (page 11) and related sections. "Rolling for Exposure" occurs after attacking a zombie or moving a survivor to a new location. The section is located after explaining both the “Actions that require an Action Die” (including "Attack") and the “Actions that do not require an Action Die” (including "Move a Survivor"). Both the "Attack" and "Move a Survivor" sections reference "Rolling for Exposure" (including the page number in the "Attack" section), which is fantastic for navigating the rulebook. Attacking examples are done immediately after the "Attack" section and partially show how "Rolling for Exposure" works. Although it jumps ahead, it makes complete sense to put it there instead of waiting to explain "Rolling for Exposure" and then showing an attack example. The "Rolling for Exposure" section reiterates when the roll is made (making it easy to reference in game) and lists the 4 possible results/effects. The last one mentioned is “Bitten” in which “the survivor is killed and the bite effect spreads”. The next subsection immediately after that line is “Spreading a Bite Effect”. You may be thinking that’s not a big deal, but we’ve seen rulebooks where the one action/effect etc. that requires further explanation is in the middle of the list and it disrupts the flow and train of thought of the reader because it leaves a question unanswered. Having an unanswered question creates noise in a reader’s mind which may reduce their understanding of the rules. Placing the “Bitten” effect at the end of the list to make the smooth transition into “Spreading a Bite Effect” does wonders for the reader’s train of thought. It doesn’t give space for the reader to ask any questions and gives them instant satisfaction, which in turn gives them peace of mind.  http://bit.ly/1tdI5cu Last Night on Earth - Thumbs Down The Last Night on Earth rules are probably some of the most frustrating I have ever read. Rules and entire sections are consistently misplaced and out of order, things that don’t need further explanation (like how you should thoroughly shuffle the cards before each game) are reiterated multiple times while more complex situations are explained once, page references are non-existent, the “Game Components” and “Card Types” sections aimlessly blab about different components (often saying they’ll actually explain them later), and there are a high number of grammar and punctuation mistakes. For the sake of this blog post though, we’re going to focus on the inconsistency of language, train of thought, and proper order of this rulebook. On page 9 of the rulebook, the second and third sentences of “The Game Round” sections read: “During the Zombie Turn, the Zombie player(s) get to move and attack with their Zombies as well as possibly spawn new Zombies. During the Hero Turn, each Hero gets to take their actions, in any character order they wish.” The first sentence describes what the Zombie player(s) get to do on their turn. The second sentence describes how the Hero player(s) takes their turns. These are two completely different thoughts and sections. The what belongs there since the first part of “The Game Round” should be an overview of the turns. On the other hand, the how belongs later under “The Hero Turn” when describing the specifics of a turn. As we can see, this inconsistency in train of thought is actually a result of improperly dividing up rulebook sections and subsections.  http://bit.ly/28gQxaN TOPIC 2 -- Being Assertive with Word Choice When writing rules you have to be a straightforward and clear. The reader must understand exactly what you are talking about without question. There is no room for interpretation in rules so word choice must be assertive as to remove all doubt. Shadows over Camelot - Thumbs Up The second paragraph of “Moving to a new Quest” (page 12) in the rules for Shadows over Camelot reads: “To travel, simply grab your Knight’s miniature and move it to any destination Quest of your choice. The distance between your Quest of origin and the destination, and the relative position of these Quests on the map is irrelevant. Each move always requires a single Heroic Action”. This language is clear and there is no room for misinterpretation. As a player, you know how to move, where you can move, and how many actions it costs. The second sentence is a little unnecessary, however, it removes any doubt that distance matters in determining how many actions it takes to move and it goes along with conversational tone of the rulebook. Still, the rule would have been clear without it. But the first sentence is an excellent example. Clear, concise, to the point. For an even better example, take a look at the first couple paragraphs of the “Make an Attack” section (page 13) in the Betrayal at the House on the Hill rulebook. We didn’t include it here because we wanted a more condensed example, but it’s top notch in terms of writing and word choice.  http://bit.ly/1Yca33z Tsuro - Thumbs Down In the rules for Tsuro, the first sentence under the “Draw Tiles” section states: “For the first few turns of the game (or throughout a two-player game), only the active player draws a path tile from the draw pile, replacing the one he or she played that turn”. The ending of this sentence “replacing the one he or she played that turn”, can be interpreted two ways: The drawn tile replaces the played tile’s spot in the active player’s hand, or; The played tile is removed from the board and replaced with the newly drawn tile. Most players will assume the first, but they shouldn’t have to assume what the rules are. That ending is completely unnecessary and the rule would be clearer without it. An even better option would be replacing it with “at the end of their turn” to reaffirm when the action takes place, adding clarity to the rules.  http://bit.ly/1UDaHEg TOPIC 3 -- Properly Grouping Information (Especially Edge Cases) We’ve kind of gone over this already in the first topic focusing on Order of Operations. However, this is section is going to focus more on where the information is put rather than how it’s divided up and the flow of the rules. Relevant information all in one place ensures navigating the rulebook during play is simple. Bora Bora does a good job of this in their “Expand action (via land path or water path)” section (page 4). Bora Bora - Thumbs Up The “Expand" action section not only explains the action, but also how it ties into the “Woman/Man” action, what other action is only available when you expand, and the edge cases (we should also mention that on the side of each page is a rules summary--an incredible reference tool during gameplay!). Scoring victory points for the adjacent fish tile (the other action only available when you expand) is the only part that requires you to look in another section. However, if you went to refer to the “Expand” action section in game, you would see this is the only time you can score fish tiles and that it has something to do with the “Red God” (that section and associated page number is referred to in the paragraph), which should trigger your memory. If it doesn’t, the page number is there for you so you can easily flip to that section and figure it out. Additionally, having the edge cases included, telling you what happens when a hut is already on the region you expand to and that no player can have more than one hut per region adds to the section’s comprehensiveness. Beyond the “Red God” section there is no question players could have about the "Expand" action that isn’t covered in that section. That’s exactly as it should be because if a player wants to look up what a certain God does, they should be able to refer to a God card section and not have to guess what that God could possibly do to figure out what action section to start skimming.  http://bit.ly/214EBDB Axis & Allies: WWI 1914 - Thumbs Down
An example of why not putting all the relevant information for an edge case in one place is a poor choice is the “United States Isolationism” rules (page 12) in Axis & Allies: WWI 1914. "United States Isolationism" rules state that for the first three turns of the game the United States is neutral with Allied sympathies and on the 4th turn they enter the war as part of the Allies. If attacked before the 4th turn, they enter the war on that turn. Basically, they can’t be the aggressor until they are attacked or until the beginning of their 4th turn. Until then they are “neutral with Allied sympathies”. Those rules are fine and dandy, but it doesn’t explain at all how the Central Powers are to treat the United States during its isolationism time. What happens if before the 4th turn a Central Power wants to move through a space solely occupied by United States units? The United States is technically not hostile towards the Central Powers yet so can the Central Power pretend they’re not there? Or is that considered an attack? And what about if an Allied force wants to move into that space? Technically the United States isn’t friendly towards the Allied forces yet either so are Allied units allowed to move into that space at all? These questions come down to figuring what “neutral with Allied sympathies” means in terms of hostility towards the Central Powers and friendliness towards Allied Powers. Somewhere from page 11-23 of the rulebook lies the answer, and quite frankly, our group still debates this topic. To make matters worse, the answer changes depending whether the units are located on land or in sea because they have different combat and movement rules. Despite this, some of the information is combined in sections and others are separated. Needless to say, it’s a helluva annoying experience not being able to make it past the third turn without having to stop play, thoroughly analyze the rulebook, and debate the interpretation(s). If the "United States Isolationism" section was expanded to include all of that information, there would be no problems, and we would be easily able to reference it in game (instead of gallivanting around the rulebook). Although we’ve pointed out some flaws in a few rulebooks, we still play and recommend these games to others (Tsuro and Axis & Allies: WWI 1914 are some of my favourites). A flawed rulebook doesn’t mean a flawed game. It just means it sometimes causes frustration and confusion when first learning and playing a game. That’s it for this week. Join us next week when we most likely don’t talk about rules (no guarantees). By the way, did you know editing is kind of what we do? Well, it’s what Allysha does and Kevin dabbles. If you’re only looking for some quick tips though, feel free to ask :) Thanks for dropping by! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Take Care! Kevin |
Kevin CarmichaelBoard game designer and developer discussing the ins and outs of game design. 
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