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Abletop – Episode 1 – Rulebooks & Learning a Boardgame

Laura Dale

Abletop Episode 1 Quick Points:

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro

01:48 – Online Rulebooks & FAQs

07:20 – How Rules are Written & Reference Cards

15:19 – How to Play Videos & Objective Context

20:12 – Learning, Teaching & Co-op Games

23:18 – How to Play Video Availability

26:19 – Player Strategy Guides

32:35 – Learning Asymmetric Games

44:22 – Game Phases & Changes

48:15 – Closing Thoughts

53:00 – Outro

Transcript

Laura:

Hello and welcome to Tabletop, a six part mini series focused on teaching boardgame accessibility concepts that you can put into action when designing your future board games. Over the course of roughly six hour-ish long videos, we’re going to try and cover board game accessibility from a number of different angles with each episode focusing on a different aspect of board game design.

In this week’s episode, we’re going to be focusing on board game rulebook accessibility, and ensuring the board games can be taught to players in an accessible way. I’m one of your hosts, Laura. I go by Laura K Buzz here on the Internet. I am a disabled web and video game accessibility consultant and educator with a big old board game collection! I host a couple of series here on YouTube, one called Access-Ability and one called Ctrl Alt Access, which are both focused on video game accessibility. And I am joined today by my wonderful co-host, Cari Watterton. Would you like to introduce yourself, Cari? 

Cari:

Yes, thank you. So I’m Cari Watterton. I’m a game accessibility designer and board game enthusiast, so I’m always keen to overlap my video game accessibility knowledge with the world of tabletop. And I’ve worked on a couple of board games, but only a little bit, so I’m excited to bring that knowledge to the table in this mini series. 

Laura:

Wonderful. So with that out of the way, we’ve got a lot of stuff that we’re going to try and wedge into today. So we’re going to jump into discussing board game rulebooks and accessible game teaching. Of note, I did want to mention that there are some aspects of rulebook design, such as things like font choices and iconography that we’re not going to be discussing today because we’ve got an episode on visual accessibility coming up. Don’t worry if there’s anything that feels like we haven’t thought about it today, it’s probably because it may be fits a little better into another episode we’ve got coming.

Anyway, that’s all of the fancy scripted intro done. Let’s jump in! Where do we want to start talking about board game rulebook accessibility?

Cari:

Oh well, we could start with some of the formats of the rulebooks. There’s different kinds of things in terms of you can have PDF versions which can be screen reader accessible and those can be really helpful for people who are low vision or if or if you just want to hear it through audio as opposed to just reading it from the page. So, yeah, I don’t know if you’ve come across any good examples or?

Laura:

Yeah. So in terms of thinking about like online versions of rule books, I’ve always really appreciated anytime that I pick up a board game via, say, Kickstarter and PDF versions of it are made available in advance, even if that’s just so that I can get a head start on reading and internalizing those rules before the game shows up. So I’m not trying to, in a bit of stress, internalize the rules for the first time when those people sat around the table eagerly waiting to play.

Cari:

Yeah, absolutely. I found the same thing. I’ve had it before with, like tabletop RPGs as well. I’ve been able to have player aids that I’ve sent out to people ahead of time. And it’s like these are, this is the key information that you need to know. And then we can do a little shorter recap at the table. So, yeah, just having the online version is also helpful from an approachability point of view. 

Laura:

Definitely. Sometimes as well, you get online FAQs that can be updated, which can be another useful version of like a benefit of having online versions of rules. The number of board games in my collection that have like revised editions where the rules have been fixed and updated and tweaked and manufacturer advice is just like, Oh, go on the website and print this out and add it into your rulebook or whatever. But having online FAQs or online versions of your rulebooks means that you can just update and fix those things and have them fixed in real time.

Cari:

Absolutely. I found that. I mean, a couple of examples. I know that the Wingspan and Wyrmspan get like FAQs which are updated quite a lot because there’s a lot of cards in the way that they interact. And just having a clear reference of this is the way that this rule is supposed to work is really helpful. And it’s the same for the tiny epic games. They pride themselves a lot on having very, very small compact games, but sometimes there are things that arise that aren’t covered in the rulebook and so those FAQs have been invaluable in terms of like, okay, cool, I’ve got the link here in the rule book. I don’t think it’s covered. And you can also Ctrl + F anything online. So you can’t do that with something on paper. So that’s so much easier as well. 

Laura:

And I’m a really big believer in having official developer produced FAQs as well for those kind of things. Because granted, even if that doesn’t exist, an official one, you start googling, Oh, how does this one ruling work in this game? The problem is you’ll often end up on like a forum, like board game geek with a lot of people guessing at what the answer to the ruling is who don’t necessarily know. And I’ve had experiences where I’ve Googled a ruling, found a forum post, used that as the ruling, and then something official has come out later and it’s like, Oh, we weren’t supposed to be playing it like that. Someone else with the same issue was me made the wrong guess of how to solve it, and having an official forum or an official position where like, hey, someone can bring up to you: I don’t understand this ruling, and you can clarify it in an easy to find central place could avoid unintentionally reinforcing some bad practices in how you’re playing a game.

Cari:

Yeah. Misinterpretations. One big example for us is like we play a lot of Frosthaven. The amounts of times that we need to like Google something and we always end up on Board Game Geek, and then hopefully – usually – there’s people there that know the rulebooks inside out and they’ll find that one paragraph and that 70 page rule book that explains how this thing works. But like a lack of more official FAQs sometimes it can just kind of rabbit hole and we have a forum where we, we assemble the council because we’ve got four of us. So if, if one person has like a rules issue, the other three people do like a vote on which way it goes. So we have that with Frosthaven and I’m sure it’s not very official, but, but sometimes we have to because we just don’t know. 

Laura:

But again, I think that goes back to talking about the benefits of having a digital version of the rulebook is, you know, you talk about like searching and ending up a board game geek and someone is like: oh, I’m aware of that one page somewhere in the rule book that says what the answer to this is. When it’s when you’ve got a digital equivalent to the rulebook, you can just Ctrl + F and search for that word and click through a bit. And you will probably find that answer a little more quickly yourself. 

Cari:

Yeah. I think in some of the larger rule books, they do have indexes which can be helpful. But even so, when it points you to like loads of different pages and you’re flicking through that, it can be a lot less useful than just using something online.

Laura:

It’s not nearly as cognitively accessible as literally. Just quickly, flick me through the references. 

Cari:

Absolutely. 

Laura:

So another aspect of overall books, and I think this was a big one we wanted to talk about when we made this episode of it’s own was how rules are written in rule books, because this is, I think, a personal bugbear for both of us. There are a lot of really badly written rule books out there that make learning a board game way more difficult than it needs to be.There’s a lot of places we could start on this, but I’m just going to jump in with. Please. When you’re writing your instructions for how to play a game, we use real world terms that are easy to understand, and we all know the meaning of rather than your in-universe alternatives that, yeah, maybe they fit the flavor of the world, but sometimes it can just really hinder ease of understanding instructions or make it difficult to communicate what you mean compared to another player when. Yeah, what does that word mean? Is that that does that mean discard pile? Does it mean banished? Like, what does this in-universe term mean? Off the top of my head. 

Cari:

Absolutely. Like having, like, looking at what consistent terminology is used in board games, and like sticking to those trends and those kind of predefined terms is really helpful and speeds up learning so much. I think something else for me is like if you do have unique terms or you have a term that you’re using in a unique way, like making those keywords and highlighting them, if you have a little icon that goes with them, then that’s great, you’re dual-coding as well. So that’s amazing. And like having a glossary of those key terms and being like, this is what this means.

Laura:

Yeah. Make making sure that if you’re using custom words, the things at the very least they’re really easily at hand so that a player can double check them without having to flick through a book, like have a card, have something in front of you that’s just like, I can see what that means at a glance. 

I think about one of the examples of this that frustrated me the most was a game called Steampunk Rally Fusion, which is a board game about assembling these giant, intricate mech machines for racing. Not only did the rulebook use a lot of those like in-universe terms for things that aren’t intuitive necessarily to what they’re referring to, but the how to play video that the developers put online was all done in a fictional accent and dialect. It was as if they were sort of steampunk characters talking about this in an in world setting. And I just completely mentally tuned out, I took nothing in from that how to play video because it just was too focused on being something set in the world and not in terms of this is a game and the priority right now is understanding how it works.

Cari:

Yeah, 100%. I think one of the examples I think of with rulebooks, the are on my list of rulebooks that haunt me is Celestia. It’s a really simple game, and it’s a really cute little game. A little game of chicken, basically, like you’ve got someone captaining the ship and you’re seeing how far you can go and it’s really, really good fun. But that rulebook from like a cognitive standpoint, I just- it was overwhelming in terms of the way that it was laid out, the way that they have really. Well, they’ve got lots of the text is really small from a cognitive perspective. When you’re looking at this, it just becomes this massive wall of text. The way they’re highlighting keywords, they are doing it, but it doesn’t. Those it’s just, it just overwhelms me. And I’m trying to find references like you’ve got this like one page. And I would love to just have a really simple reference card of like this is what the special items in the game do, but I always have to open the rulebook and I always have to lay it out. And then people are like, Where is this thing? There’s not enough in terms of like the iconography, guiding people to places, and it just all blends into one. It became, became very, very difficult for me to like, learn that game the first time that we played it. 

Laura:

I think a big part of like, not only is it important that your text not, your rulebook not just be dense text, but be laid out well as well. So that like it’s intuitive to know where in the rulebook you’re going to find an answer to what you’re trying to learn. I think about games that stand out to me as ones that I had a difficult time with the teach. Spirit Island is a game that feels way more intimidating than it needs to for a couple of reasons, but I think the big parts of that are its manual is very dense and is not structured in a way that sensibly lays out like I can flick to a page and go, This is the page that shows me turn order, this is the page that shows me set up. This is the page that is dedicated to the enemy turn order and how that plays out. It’s not structured in a way where I can go: This is the phase of the game I’m in right now, and the answers to any questions about that phase will probably be in this one location. And something like that can take a games that shouldn’t need to feel that difficult and make it feel like a very draining initial teach.

Cari:

No, absolutely. I think some rulebooks that do it really well, like I’m going to say, I’m probably going to mention The Fox Experiment a million times. That’s one of our newer games of this year. And I’ve loved it. But it breaks down the different stages that you go through in the phases of the game. And if it’s talking about something, like there is an action that you can do in two parts of the of the round and it says: there’s more information on this particular thing over here. So like, even if you’re looking at it in, say, phase two, but you can do in phase four, I’ll say go check out phase four. There’s more detail there. And that’s just nice in terms of like having a bit more clarity and structure. I think the Flamecraft rulebook is something else that I liked. There’s actually quite a lot of that rulebook that’s dedicated to nice art but actually makes it way less overwhelming when it’s like you’ve just got the bottom third of the page that has the information and you’re like, this feels nice. It’s approachable, like, yes, it’s physically, it’s big in terms of the size. It doesn’t have too many pages. But when you actually open up and you see how much text there is, you’re like, okay, cool. And then again, this has like glossaries and FAQs at the back. So it’s very much what’s the core information that you need to know to get to set up and get into it? And then if you need more detail later on that’s available. 

Laura:

And I think on that topic, it really helps to not necessarily need to reference the rule book itself for the basics of your turn. Like I think as much of the turn to turn important specifics of what you can be doing and what the turn order is that you can have available to players without them needing to go. Can I check the rule book again? That really helps you look at something like Pandemic, where you have your these are all of your ten actions and they’re just on a double sided card. There’s a little sentence of explanation for each one of them. You’ve got that without needing to ask for the rule book to check it. I like board games that will. I’m struggling for examples off the top of my head, that will have the turn order printed on player boards so that you can follow along turn order, down like somewhere on your personal play area. I think things like that that allow the player to double check information when it’s not their turn without having to raise to the group. I’ve forgotten something, I’m… because I know that when I ask for someone to hand over the rule book, everyone stops to go. What rule are you clarifying? Is it something we need to know? It can feel a little all eyes on you, whereas if you have your own personal reference for the basics of what can I do and what is the order of turns that can answer a lot of the questions moment to moment, I think. 

Cari:

Absolutely. Fort would be an example of that! They’ve got little player boards that have got the turn order written on it and the sort of stages that you take and everything’s nicely labeled on it as well. So it’s like if it’s talking about your stash, for example, it says the stash is over here and things like that. 

I think the other thing we’ve kind of mentioned a couple of times, but one things that can help is having a video format for rules or explanations.I know for, particularly for complex games, I like to go to a watch it played and figure out how it works, or even when I’m just trying to decide if I want to get a game, I’ll go find a watch it played because I’m more interested in seeing how these play out and how overwhelming it might be rather than just like reading what’s on the back of the box or exploring the Kickstarter. I want to know how it plays: is it going to be good? I think Villainous is quite a good example of that. They’ve got like a how to play video, but again, the rules – because it’s asymmetric – you’ve got like special little rulebooks for each character that you’re playing in Villainous. So it’ll be like, here’s the basic rules in the rule book and then if there’s anything specific to you, you’ve got your own reference card for it. And that helps in terms of again, because it’s asymmetric, if someone’s just double checking, like what are they supposed to do here? Or what is this card that they’re looking for? They’ve got that agency to look at it like whilst the game turns are going on. 

Laura:

And I want to talk about something that I feel like I really appreciate in Well-structured How to Play Videos, which is I’m someone that really struggles with. If you explain to me the rules of a board game without giving me the context of why I’m doing the things up front, I can really struggle to follow along with that. I this is a rulebook issue. It is an issue that comes up in a lot of, of how to play videos is: well, you do this and this gains you this resource and this gains you this resource, without a big picture of what you’re building towards. And I don’t know how much of that is because I’m autistic in the way that I process instructions very much is I need to understand the why to follow the how, and that’s just something about how my brain works. But I really appreciate it a good watch it played or how to play that will go: your end goal is this. What you’re trying to work towards is this and here is your big picture of like what a victory looks like. Now let’s go back to the start. And as I explain steps and rules, you can sort of see how they’re building toward that end point. For me, I find that just really helps to internalize on a first lesson. 

Cari:

Oh, I 100% agree by having a little like this is the objective of the game and it is so, so helpful or even like example strategies for larger games is like if you’re looking at like a tech tree game where they’ve got things like science and economy and combat and all that kind of stuff, having a little bit of a breakdown of if you want to achieve this victory condition, this is the kind of stuff that you can work towards like 100%.I agree with you because otherwise it’s just like you’re doing these things out of context, like why? Why do you try to do those things? 

Laura:

It’s because I know there are some board games like Oath, where they will in the instruction booklet show you like, Hey, maybe try playing this opening set of rounds as a group and follow these instructions and play these cards to sort of get you going. But without explaining in that rulebook why you would be doing those actions. And it’s what always really frustrates me about example turns, is you’re not telling me why on this turn I’m going to play this card in the example. Like what that what the strategy is, what that would be leading to move towards a victory, what the rationale behind it is. And without that, I’m learning what to do. I’m not learning how to think about successful play of the game. 

Cari:

Oh, exactly. And it’s it can be something, especially if you’re looking at like engine building games as well. Going back to the Wingspan example of like how are you setting up those tracks so that they’re going to be effective? Like you’ve got a choice of two different birds you can play in here. Is there a benefit to playing one before the other and explaining sort of like why you might want to do things in a certain order to get the most out of it? It’s something when I know that I have players at the table who might find the games that we’re playing to be a little bit more overwhelming, or they might take they’re not as familiar as board games as some of the other players. I like to try and be like, we’re going to play a game that’s like no stakes and like, if you want, I can help you and I can tell you about like why it would be beneficial to do this thing. Because at the end of the day, like, I don’t want to play board games to, to win and to like have a competitive like edge. I want to be able to make sure that everybody is having fun. It’s more like I’m going to share this board game with you because I love it and so can on a first teach, or next teaches if it’s been a while. Can, like, are there things I can do to help fill in that context that I have from playing the game? That maybe just explaining the rules on the surface level doesn’t have. And I think the watch it played videos have a lot of potential to be able to do that in terms of saying: these are strategies, these are things you might want to look at. So yeah, I’d love to see that. [editor’s note, Cari meant to say ‘how to play videos’].

Laura:

I’m a big believer in the consequence-free first game and encouraging, like, an open-handed first play of a game. I think about games that have consequences built into them for this and things like the a lot of the legacy games that exist now. I know I brought pandemic up a moment ago, but Pandemic Legacy, the version of that game that makes changes to the board permanent changes to the cards as you’re playing encourages you to play its first mission a couple of times over, not making any changes to the game or to the board, just going, Is everyone comfortable with these rules before anything consequential happens? One thing I think is important to discuss while we’re talking about the idea of playing those open handed tutorial games, and there is only so much that a designer can do to encourage this, but I think that having rulebooks address it is an important thing we should be thinking about. Is discouraging quarterback play in co-op games. The idea of someone at the table in a co-op game that is starting to go plan other people’s turns that aren’t theirs because they’ve got some grand strategy. And: “if you just all do what I say, this will all work out”. And obviously rulebooks, you know, you can’t mandate someone out of doing that with rulebooks. But I think if you have rulebooks be very clear about: each individual players turn is their turn in a co-op experience. Make an effort as a group to make sure that the person whose turn it is, is the one ultimately making the decisions. I think can be really important to remind players because there’s so many players at tables who just don’t internalise that something they might do. 

Cari:

Oh, 100%. Like making sure that everybody at the table has agency, especially in those kind of cooperative games. We literally, I had, I was playing X-COM with a group of mine and it was the first time they’d played X-COM and we changed up the roles a little bit as well. And so we had someone playing is like the squad leader, and it was like trying to make sure that they understood what they were doing and helping them, but not like not taking over. Like my partner usually plays as the squad leader. So I was very much like, okay, like I don’t know the intricacies of how putting the shooty boys on the map works, but you do so you can be there and you can help a little bit in terms of that. But making sure to like leave space for them to consider the actions. And sometimes that can be difficult in a game where there’s a timed element, like with XCOM, you do have the first section is timed, but you can play the tutorial which isn’t. And then that means that like you’re making sure that you’re not just going, this is the best play and you should do it this way. At the end of the day, like if we all made the most strategic plays ever, we’d kind of lose something from board games. It’s kind of why we add in flavour and things so that like, yeah, this isn’t the most effective card to play right now, but it’s pretty and I want to play it so yeah. 

Laura:

But yeah, on the, on the topic of how to play videos that we were talking about before, there is a trend I’ve noticed recently that I just want to talk about being like a real negative that I hope doesn’t grow within the industry, which is how to play videos being paywalled. There are companies that are starting to crop up who will produce how to play videos on behalf of developers that are paywalled apps that you pick up your board game, it’s like: Oh, go to this website or download this app to see the how to play video. And you do that and suddenly discover it’s a couple of quid to actually see the how to play. And I can, I think that that kind of approach fails to understand quite how important as an accessibility tool how to play videos can be like from a cognitive accessibility perspective. It allows someone who might prefer listening to the rules to be able to take them in. It helps if you’re someone who needs a visual accompaniment to alongside the words. If you’re someone that struggles to take a concept and keep it visually in mind while it’s being described to you. There’s so many use cases where, how and like a video is going to be more accessible even in terms of just sometimes the people at your table will be great to play with, but not confident at the teach and having a professional do how to play video is going to help people learn if no one at the table has the particular skill of confidently teaching. And I just really want to make sure we don’t see accessible versions of instructions become something that’s an optional paid extra. 

Cari:

I think like, yeah, 100% all of that, like providing that information because you’ve already bought the game, you’re like, you’ve already bought into the game and it is just another version of the rules, but it’s being presented in an audio visual format instead. Like it can feel a little bit. Yeah, like unnecessary to have an additional pay on that. I mean there are examples of things which are sort of like optional that you might want to engage with, like again, going back to Frosthaven, we’ve recently got an app where we have voice actors read out the cards for us instead of to ourselves.

Laura:

I do love that app. It’s a little buggy. It’s not always great at playing the right audio. 

Cari:

Oh yeah!

Laura:

But it is. It is very nice for adding theme and tension. 

Cari:

Exactly. But that was like a sort of, not a necessary component. It’s like, you know, we didn’t need to get that in order to enjoy it. And we, you know, we made a commitment by paying that extra to get that experience. But when it’s just like learning the rules, providing different ways for people to learn the rules and appreciating that like text and text and static visuals is not always going to be the best way. Like, yeah, how to play videos for free! 

Laura:

On, while you were talking about Frosthaven, I was just thinking about something as well in terms of a lot of the ways that rulebooks are designed is to mechanically tell you like these are the things you can do and how they work, and that’s sort of about it. But I think about a game like Frosthaven where every player at the table is playing a different character that plays in a fundamentally different way and that has paths for how you can sort of spec them so that you might be playing that character completely differently to someone else playing that kind of character. I think there really is room for more rulebooks for games like Frosthaven to go: Here is a character. Here is some ways you might build that character out and some ways that they might be effectively used and what they might be good at. And giving, like, room for things like strategy concepts for a character. Even if it’s not very much, but to go: this is what playing this character might look like. That’s not fundamentally rules, but that is something that can make picking up a new element of a game strategically a lot more approachable.

Cari:

Oh, I would 100% agree with that. Like I’ve been playing as the claw crusher and I’m not. I am 100% convinced that I’m not playing him properly because I’ve got my friends here who are also playing very tanky characters and they’re dealing like 12 damage in a hit. And I’m like, something is… one of these things is not like the other, you know? I’m just putting, like, puddles of water everywhere and having a fun time, but like having, like you say, even if it’s sets of like, you know, we recommend using… Because all the cards are labelled by level as well. So you’ve got cards in sets of like one, two, three. You could have like an extra thing there where it’s like we recommend for this kind of build, you can have like one A and two A and three A together will make a build that’s more this kind of focused. Like there’s a lot of flexibility but it’s yeah, the complexity in those characters can sometimes be very overwhelming.

Laura:

I’ve been playing a character I think called the ice dancer that, if I’ve been told upfront: like, hey, you can either spec this character out to be very good at moving people around the board and manipulating positions, or you can spec them out to be about summoning creatures and having these little summons you fight with. And here’s how you spec it that way and here’s how you spec it that way. It would have made knowing, like. For a game like Frosthaven, you’re committing to playing a character for quite a long time. It would have made deciding to play that character a commitment I made with more information and allowed me to better specialize into a consistent way of playing that character. And that’s the kind of thing that that game’s rules don’t really teach you. They tell you mechanically, these are the actions. It doesn’t give you that big picture view. 

I know I brought it up earlier and this is an example of a bad instruction manual, but I do want to bring up Spirit Island again here because I do think it is a game that does a better example of teaching you how to use it’s different characters in that the various gods you’re playing as in that game. Each have a player board where the rear side is: Here is the how you set this character up, and a brief explanation of like what they’re good at and which cards from your starting hands are working you towards a victory condition. And then on the front you have like all of your abilities laid out in a way that is specifically designed to go: This shows you how it is building towards that victory condition we told you you’re good at. And it’s a pretty well laid out game in terms of giving you: Here is an idea of the win condition you could achieve well and the cards that will get you moving that way in the abilities that’ll start shifting you that way. Again, it’s not rulebook specific, but that does really help to make learning a new character not feel so intimidating.

Cari:

100%. I would love that. I think like again, that can be applied to a lot of different things in terms of I’m thinking about, well, not to go back to engine builders, but engine builders typically have lots of different ways that you can kind of go thinking about the way that Fort has lots of different classes of cards, and those classes do different things. And like typically now when I when I’m telling- when I’m teaching someone Fort for the first time, I’m like, realistically, you want to build a deck that’s maybe just focusing on two of those kind of suits of cards or classes of cards, because that will make it more consistent and you’ll be doing kind of more similar things. It’ll be easier to kind of just like pop off in terms of having really effective actions that you’re taking. Yeah, I think like a little bit of a strategy guide would be great, and especially for the larger games having a larger strategy guide, I know that Frosthaven does have like the cards for the characters and it gives you a little bit of like you’ll be using, from my example, like tides to be able to have longer term abilities. And the only other clue that I get from Frosthaven is the mastery is that you do. But like I’ve looked at some of those mastery and I’m like, I have no idea how I’m supposed to do this! 

Laura:

Exactly, I think Frost Haven’s a good example of that, to learn from. That it uses like the entire back of the card to give you flavour about like the lore of the character, which is nice to have, but it is not functionally useful for learning how to play them well. Like that back of the card is prime space that could have been used to go. This is the kind of ways this character can be specked out. And from your starting cards, these are the cards in your starting deck that are leading you towards one kind of character. These are the ones leading you towards another kind. As you level up, consider which of these paths you maybe want to focus on.

Cari:

Exactly, yeah, that’s always. And it’s optional. Yeah, you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to but like it can really help. And like we have a huge range of like board game literacy in our Frosthaven group and so like yeah, we do have, we have someone who likes to play more complicated characters, but, but it will take the longer to process what they’re doing on their turn because there’s lots of different things that they’re having to do.

Laura:

But yeah, no, sorry. No, no. I think I think this maybe is a good point for us to move on to another bit of this, which is talking about asymmetry of rules, because like any time that you have a game where you have, like Frosthaven, different characters that can be played, or something like Root, where each player is going to be playing a unique faction. I think that in those kind of cases, having a clear rulebook becomes all the more important because it’s not like everyone at the table can have one teach of the game or one set of rules and can openly ask for clarification about rules without making it obvious what they’re planning to do on their turn. Any game where you are playing fundamentally different rules to people at the table, you need to make sure that every person at the table can confidently go through the teach process relatively solo if they need to. And for those kind of games, it does become all the more important that your teach, not only is your teach approachable, but that you understand as a designer which of your factions or characters are going to be the easiest to learn and communicate that to the player. Whether it is going, you know, medium, high, medium and low complexity rating or if it’s saying this faction is very has a very simple thing it’s aiming for. This character is very high risk, high reward. Explaining what kind of thing the player is going to have to wrap their head around per faction. 

Cari:

Absolutely. Root’s a really good example because like the characters all play fairly uniquely. Like you’ve got the way that the birds and you’re laying out the bird cards to be able to do different things. And I, if I remember correctly, Root does have those little like guidebooks for the first time that you play, however. Yeah, however, yeah, they were really overwhelming for me. And I was, I got really excited when I saw them and then like actually trying to go through them, I found it a challenge. Like I just needed to kind of like play the game a couple of times. It’s one of the ones I’ve said, there’s a digital version of Root on like that you can buy from a video game perspective, and I would love to get that because I feel like I would feel more confident going through the rules like the video game world. Of you cannot possibly do this wrong, like it won’t let you do it wrong. Yeah. To gain more confidence with the game. 

Laura:

Root is one of those games that as you say, it does have that explainer of how to play your character and despite that can be a little overwhelming. Root is a game that I think I don’t think needs to be as difficult of a teach as it is in that, like you can boil down a lot of those factions to: As the cats you’re trying to be as aggressive in expansion as possible. Quickly, quickly, quickly. Push forward units you lose will go back to the base. Don’t worry about losing units. Just be really aggressive. The birds you can teach as you’re creating an elaborate house of cards. The more times you put your wild cards in, the more flexible you will be. But the more the thing will crash down on you if it fails. Risk Reward. None of these are like hugely difficult concepts to teach, but they are… They lack that, here is a very basic two sentence: Here is what you’re aiming for. And here is the most basic explanation of how you get it. I think more game designers could benefit from. Can you boil down what this faction does to like a two sentence explanation? And it might not give them all the context they need, but if they’re like: What am I supposed to be doing again? Let me read that two sentences that puts me in the tone of how I play exactly aligns you on the path that you’re going to be kind of going down.

Cari:

I mean, I do need to caveat this massively with I don’t remember the last time I got Root out, so there may well be things in some of these games that we’re talking about that do exist, but we just haven’t noticed that or we just haven’t found them. So like, yeah, any time that I’m giving constructive criticism, it may well be there, but I don’t have an eidetic memory.

Laura:

You know how it is. Yeah, I’m always a fan of games that have asymmetrical rules that aren’t too asymmetrical. I think there is a value to a little bit of asymmetry in a game where everyone’s largely symmetrical. Going to Pandemic as an example again, everyone fundamentally has the same rules except for one thing they do uniquely. And I think something like that can be really good for making it clear what someone’s role at the table is, particularly in cooperative games going: What is that one thing you’re really good at? It’s not going to be too difficult to know on your turn what to do because you’re like: Well, there’s the thing I’m best at. I should probably check if I can do that on the board. Can really help to make your role at the table feel approachable. 

Cari:

Oh, absolutely. I think Villainous could be quite a good example here as well. And actually going back to what we were saying about that, like one or two sentences of what they’re trying to achieve, the Villainous boards each have your objective on the board and it is just a sentence that’s like, this is what you’re trying to do. So you’ve got that reminder. You don’t need to delve into your little like personal manual to get to it. And again, it’s very much similar access to the same actions. And everybody’s got those things in terms of: You can do the fate action, you can you can draw cards, discard cards, you can play the cards, you can gain… I’ve forgotten what it is… influence. You can gain the money to spend the cards. But there is just like a little bit of asymmetry there. I think pandemic is a really good example is a nice, approachable, like first cooperative with that bit of asymmetry and understanding because it is only one piece of information, you know, different from everybody else would be like, okay, cool. So I can I can do this thing more effectively or I can set this thing up here I think can be really good. And then that will also play into when you play the game, like which characters are the best to be playing against. I think from a Villianous perspective I have, we have like all of them, we have all the expansions. And I think there’s like one time that we’ve run into problems where people have like reaction cards and it’ll be like when your enemy takes this action and like, I’ll play it like as a two player, like versus my partner. But then the character that he’s playing doesn’t actually have that action on their board at all. They just don’t use it. And then it’s like: Oh no, what do I do in this situation? Like, you know, there’s cards in my deck now that I can’t use because I’m never going to be able to get that reaction off. So yeah, there’s loads of interesting layers of like asymmetry. But yeah, I agree with you, like having a nice approachable level of similar actions that you can do. Not too much. There’s different clear understanding of like how you something different to the table either in a cooperative or a competitive setting. 

Laura:

Yeah, I do have an example of an asymmetry one that I think is a really a really hard game to recommend because of its asymmetry, which is Betrayal Legacy. Because this is a game where you start off playing cooperatively and at some point during your playthrough something will be triggered and one player at the table will now have a different role. And largely, you will be you are now the villain against the remaining people at the table who are playing their previous existing roles and that player will have to go away to another room, learn a secret secondary ruleset that has to be kept secret because it’ll probably detail things like, this is how the rest of the table defeats you. This is your condition you get defeated on. And because of that you have to make sure that that player who goes away to another room is able to quickly and effectively internalise a new set of rules that are not what they’ve been playing in a setting where they cannot get help from other players to clarify rules to better understand their rules set in a setting where specifically, if they’ve misunderstood a rule because of a lack of clarity in the rule book, it might not become apparent until after the game has ended and everyone’s talking about it later and you realise you were playing it wrong that whole time. That is an example of a game where I really think that it would have benefited that game’s creators to be much more simple and to the point about their rulesets for that player that goes out of the room. Going, simplify it if we must, but make sure that whoever we send out to that other room is going to be confident when they come back in in a way that you don’t. 

You can be a little overly complex in a setting where people can work out the rules together in a way that you can’t when you’re sending someone else away to go: understand these two pages of rules right now. 

Cari:

I think, like, I haven’t played the Legacy version, but I played a lot of Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate and I did start with House on the Hill. I got Baldur’s Gate because it was like a reprint and I felt like some of the rules were a bit more like they’d learned a lot from the first version that they’d done. But the amount of times, I cannot tell you, the amount of times that we’re playing Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate, and then the person goes away, who’s the traitor. And then they come back and then it’s, we’re playing through and we’re like: What’s? And they’re like: Oh, what’s going on here? Like, are they supposed to understand that? Are we supposed to? And then we end up just like telling each other what our rules are, because… Just to try and get on the same page with where we’re at, like sometimes that clarity just isn’t there. And like 100% like you say, if someone’s not very confident with what it is that they’re supposed to be doing, or at least like, yes, you can have different rules and you can have like this is a secret thing that you’re doing versus this person. If you at least give them a heads up and say there is something that the other players are going to be doing, you don’t need to worry about it. Like, you know, like, here’s a vague gist of what you will see and like that. That’s nothing to be panicked about when you come back. You don’t need to understand it. 

Laura:

Yeah, trying to give a bit of a sense of how confident should you be about what the other side is doing and is it okay that we’re both unsure right now? Like what? What should… what should a turn or two of this probably look like? What? Even if I don’t understand why, what are they probably going to be doing when I come back? And how worried should I be about what they’re doing when they come back? Just to give a picture of what this new game is going to be. 

Cari:

Exactly. I mean, it’s a great game. I love Betrayal. I think it’s great and we have lots of people that really enjoy playing it. But I think that like, yeah, is that kind of… it’s one of those hidden role games that because it’s not quite as fast as some of the other ones, it’s not like you can do like a practice run. And because they have all of these dynamic scenarios, which is great for replayability and it’s great for doing something different, it means that there’s a lack of consistency there. And, you know, you sit down for a game of betrayal and you know that somebody is going to go and they’re going to have a different ruleset to learn and it’s going to be something completely different. And there may be a little bit of similarity in the way that things have been played before, but you kind of learn more about the game as you play it. But yeah, I agree with you that like it’s a really, really good example of asymmetry, but it’s not necessarily the most approachable. 

Laura:

Yeah, as we’re sort of working our way through this hour, we’ve got a few more things we want to talk about on this first one. One that I wanted to jump over to because I think this is really important for board game designer is rules consistency. And not even necessarily that your rules have to be consistent, but being aware of this question. Do the rules for how the game plays vary depending on when you’re attacking versus defending or in different areas of the game? I think a lot about Lord of the Rings War of the Ring, the rules for attacking an enemy army and for being attacked by an enemy differ. And you have to hold in your head like, okay, am I am I able to use cards in this scenario whose cards are activating first? Is it mine or theirs? There’s lots of things that are going to differ depending on which side of seemingly a symmetrical action is happening. Or I think of something like Brass Birmingham, where that game is very explicitly split into two halves and half of the printed connections between cities on the boards can’t be used in half of the game. And you have to not accidentally start looking at the border going: Yeah, those places are connected. Nope. Despite the fact there’s a connection printed between them, that’s not the era where they’re connected. And making sure that if you have these kind of things in your game that you really go out of your way to give your players as many reminders and references as possible to go, this is going to be different from how it was a second ago. Remember which of these is applicable right now. 

Cari:

Absolutely. I mean, like I think one of the biggest examples I can think of of a game that like flips halfway through is Jaws. Literally, you flip the board as well, like and, and it becomes a different style of game to what you were playing before. But I think that because that’s kind of one of the USPs of that game, they do a really good job of like setting up and saying this is essentially a game of two halves and they offer things like you can stop halfway through if you want to, and you can take a break and you can come back and do the other half later. And, and so I think that there’s something to be learned there from the delivery of like this is a change that is happening and how to kind of go about that. 

Laura:

It’s one of those, I think, about a game like Brass Birmingham and go: Is there some way that you could incorporate into the rules a reminder, let’s say three or four times before the era changes? That’s like, hey, this is a good point to remind everyone at the table, all of their level one structures are going to go away at the end of this era. Maybe you want to build over them, so you’ve got something that survives into the next era. Going: here is a reminder that the rules of this are about to change, and this might be a good point to remember what’s about to happen and have a few turns in which you can still course correct about that. Even if it’s not, like, formally a rule having things like this set up to go, like, maybe on your reminder of actions card have something that says, Hey, a few turns before the end of era one, maybe think about, remind yourself that your level one things aren’t sticking around. Having player aids that give you a point of like, this is a point where you might want to remember that this is a rules change coming up, rather than just when the rule change is actively happening. 

Cari:

And there’s so many games as well that have like round trackers, like either on the board or as another component. And I think that that kind of thing could be like nicely brought into there of like, okay, you got a couple of rounds and then this thing is happening. And is there something that we can add as a reminder in beforehand, like could the round trackers be used to kind of help with that, sort of, longer form teach, like you say?

Laura:

Yeah, we’re coming up toward the end of our hour. We’ve got a pretty strict time limit, this is a show that we are doing very much in lunch hours. So it is we’ve got a firm time limit for recording these. Are there any other things that we haven’t talked about today that you want to make sure we get in here while we’re talking about rulesets and learning? 

Cari:

Um, I don’t think so. We talked a little bit already about cooperative and competitive play and we talked about quarterbacking as well. And the kind of difference between like cooperative play is easier in terms of asking for rules, clarifications, the things we talk about in competitive games where you’re playing with open hands. Yeah, I think I’m trying to think if there’s anything else that I want to like, really, I think just like, sorry, go for it. 

Laura:

Oh no, go ahead. 

Cari:

I think like just the usability of your rule book is something that I think is sometimes overlooked. Like there’s so much user experience design in a board game like because unlike a video game you don’t have something guided that people can’t possibly break the rules. Like think about how is that you are, that someone completely by themselves is going to take this out of the box and it’s going to play through it. I think a lot of board games do it really, really well. They’re very, very good with user experience design. But I think if it’s not something that has been considered before, or maybe there are other examples you can look at in terms of like what are going to be the biggest barriers or pain points for my players as they’re going through this? Are they going to find, they’re going to find it overwhelming to look at the asymmetry of things? Are they going to want reminders of stuff? And where are those reminders going to come in? I think that’s kind of a big takeaway, that I would say. 

Laura:

I think my last thing I would throw in on this is I think there is a real benefit to being clear in a rule book about where rules can maybe be tweaked if they are inaccessible for someone. Let’s say someone is perfectly happy playing your game. But time based elements in that game are causing too much stress and anxiety, or someone just doesn’t have the cognitive processing speed to do the actions required in a certain time limit. Saying in your rule book, it’s okay for you to just put aside be the egg timer that this comes with for actions, if that works better for you. Saying: there is room for breaking the rules if they are inaccessible for you. I know that there is a guilt associated sometimes with asking for accommodations and for things about a game’s rules to be changed as a disabled player. And, you know, hopefully this won’t be a situation. But I’ve been in situations where someone has actively said, no, that’s not what the rules say. The rules say that we do it like this, and having something in the rules says these rules you are they’re allowed to be malleable. You can change them if they are not accessible to someone at the table. These are a guideline of how we expect the game to be played, but that might not be what’s best for you at the table. And that’s okay. I can give space to go. It’s okay for me to ask for accommodations, I think. 

Cari:

Yes, 100% like having accommodations in your rule book is fantastic. And like saying there are bits here that can be omitted. Like if this is too complicated, then you can take this away and don’t always say like for your first game, like it may not be your first game, it may be for a significantly longer until you feel confident with the game and just be like, you know, these are things that you can add in or these are different ways to play. Hand-to-Hand Wombat is a really good example by Exploding Kittens, where they’ve got like it’s all to do with closing your eyes and trying to build towers. But they looked at how they could build a variant for deaf and hard of hearing players, where instead you put a blanket over and you play it like that. So you can kind of see a little bit of what’s going on and it’s variants like that. Like that is very, very specifically like accessibility coded, but there’s lots of other things that you can do in terms of just being a bit more flexible and saying, you know, you’ve built this ruleset, but you can bend it this way and you can change things here. And it’s not like you have to play this to the letter kind of a thing. 

Laura:

Exactly. And we’re going to talk about all sorts of other specific applications of accessibility and board games as we go through these future episodes. Every time we talk about these things in future weeks, think about are there ways where I could make optional rules variants and talk about them in the rule book that would allow an inaccessible point in my design to be worked around and still have a version of the game that can be played.

Cari:

100% because like, Yeah, well we’ll touch on this way later, but like it’s a different challenge with board games versus video games because you don’t have a Settings menu, you can just tweak. So how, how can you be effective with the things? Can you identify the biggest barriers that might exist or the biggest things that might make the game a little less either accessible or approachable? And how can you provide accommodations and changes for those. 

Laura:

Wonderful! I think that’s going to be it for our first episode of Abletop. I thank you everyone for joining us! Cari, if people want to find more of what you do on the Internet, where can they find you? 

Cari:

Oh gosh, I’m afraid of social media, but I use Bluesky. I stalk people on there. I look at what everybody else is doing. But Bluesky is a good place to try and find me. I think it’s just at Cari Watterton on Bluesky. If you look for a game accessibility groups, then I think I’m in a couple of them. So you should be able to find me there. 

Laura:

Lovely! I can be found at Laura K Buzz pretty much everywhere that people find people on the internet.

Look forward to the next episode of Abletop, where we will be talking about mobility and dexterity in board game design, talking about such things as packaging, set up and tear down, motion, dexterity in games, all that sort of stuff. Look forward to it. We’ve got another five of these coming. Thank you so much for joining us. We hope this was informative and we’ll be back with another episode soon. Bye!

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