The Rulebook on Rules

In my experience, the hard part about creating a game isn't figuring out the concept, or the mechanics, or even coming up with the specific rules. It is writing them down. Putting pen to paper isn't the challenge, but explaining the rules to somebody who isn't as intimate with them as I am is often quite difficult.


Starting in the fall of last year, I began designing a tabletop roleplaying game system. I explored several other systems, took the parts I liked, tweaked the parts that I didn't and put together Rise of Champions, which I 'marketed' for lack of a better term as a simple, modular and deep RPG. After working on it for several months, I sent it out alongside a survey, asking for feedback on the text of the rules and character creation.

One of the questions I got back was "What is a character?". The question stunned me. I didn't understand why I would need to explain such as basic concept. Because I have been playing RPGs like D&D and Burning Wheel for over a decade, the answer to that question is obvious. A character is a character. When asked what "d6" or "d8" meant, I realized that I had to go in assuming that my players knew absolutely nothing.

It is not that your players are dumb. It is not that you are particularly clever (I am, but you're not). It is that you have worked with this material very closely. Even in a game where you treading new ground for yourself and you have had next to no experience in the genre, understand that by the time you're done designing the game, you will know it better than easily 95% of your player base ever will. If you've fallen asleep thinking about your game, gotten lost in a conversation when a thought popped into your head, you're way past where your players will be. When you're done, you don't need the rules to be able to play. For me, with Rise of Champions, you could describe a character or archetype and within two minutes, I could easily have filled out a character sheet. For other players, even those with RPG experience, it would take them five times longer. For new players, it could take fifteen to twenty minutes. The intimacy I had with the project, spending dozens of sleepless nights with it, allowed me to understand the game in a way that nobody else could. So just be wary of that.

In my revised rules I explained what a character was, I explained the shorthand that I used, I explained everything. And when I sent out that version, I got back feedback that it was overwhelming for new players and boring for old players. Part of writing the rules is a balancing act. You need to distribute the information only as it is need, and in its entirety without boring the experienced player. The way I do that is by inserting snark, sarcasm and other assorted variants on high humor to the rules. Not only does it (potentially) entertain the player who already understands the core of the ruleset and is just looking for a particular ruling or definition, but it also provides breathing space for a new player, so that they aren't overwhelmed by dozens of instructions that they need to follow.

However, it is possible to fall into the trap of trying to spruce up your language in a rules document. For ease of understanding, it is important that words that are tied to mechanics have as few meanings as possible, preferably one. For example, characters had levels, skills (abilities belonging to characters) had levels and tiers, spells (magic abilities belonging to characters) had levels and ranks, and weapons (equipment belonging to characters) had tiers and ranks. I was trying to make the rules more interesting by altering my word usage, so that the player wouldn't read "rank, rank, rank, rank, rank, rank etc..." in a paragraph, but would instead get "rank, level, tier, level, tier, rank, rank etc..." Of course, as you might assume, it was difficult to follow. I eventually made it so that characters had level, skills had ranks, spells had degrees and weapons had tiers. You'll note that there, I kept the (arbitrary) ordering the same (characters, skills, spells, weapons) so that it is slightly easier to follow. Humans are exceptional at picking up patterns, and if you put them into your rules, it helps with retaining them.

Each word had a particular meaning. If I said "rank" you knew that I was talking about skills. If I said "level" you knew that it was character level and not something else. Imagine the rules as a recipe book. You wouldn't switch from measuring the milk in cups to measuring in liters then to tablespoons and then back to cups. It would confuse the reader and the cake would likely be awful.

You also want to keep everything else as consistent as you can. If you decide, for example, that the act of casting a spell is important and should be capitalized, say "Casting" everywhere. If you would write casting where it should not be capitalized, find a different word or phrase, so that the game term has a very specific and particular meaning.

Feel free to make arbitrary decisions about what needs to be capitalized, or what goes in what order, or how you reference other rules, but keep it consistent with the rest of your writing. If you aren't arbitrary, you're going to bog yourself down in figuring out how everything should come together when you already know the important part.

So, keep it concise and consistent. If you can, add humor. If you can't, find a poor, unemployed stand-up comedian to write some jokes for you. Then fire him, so you can feel some satisfaction in your life.