Editorial: Bad Rules

Last night we finally got around to bringing Victory and Honor to the table. The designer of the game had kindly sent me a prototype a couple of years ago which we'd played a few times, and we'd all liked the game quite a bit. But it hadn't been pulled out in a while, so I was a bit rusty on the rules. No big deal-- I remembered the gist, so it would be a breeze to skim the published rules and teach the game.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

I like everyone involved with this product-- Jim Dietz, Frank Branham, Ty Douds-- all great people. But the rules for Victory and Honor are a nightmare. They read like someone squandered a DeLorean on a trip back to 1980 just to hire someone from Avalon Hill to convolute their rules.

The rules go to great lengths to define meaningless but thematic terms. The cards you collect are Spoils of War. Playing cards face-down is Sacrificing. Cavalry performs a "flanking maneuver." And so on. It's a freakin' trick-taking card game. The rules work far too hard to dress it up in military clothing. The liberal use of special terms winds up obfuscating rather than clarifying. Sacrifices, you see, always lose-- unless they're trump, in which case they win. Not much of a sacrifice, then, is it? Terms are defined before we know how to apply them. The rules tell us what to do with our won cards (Spoils of War) long, long before they tell us how to actually win them. I thought I'd missed something or skipped a section. The rules describe exceptions to the normal rules of play (such as for turn order) before they tell you the normal rules of play. Here's a great example. Rules for "End of Phase" include the line, "The general rules of play are still observed," before the general rules of play are described. This higgledy-piggledy order makes the rules a maze of twisty little passages, all alike-- impossible to navigate or learn from.

I practically threw the rule book across the room three times while explaining the rules. It took us MUCH longer than it should have to get going. The rule book actually stood in the way of us having a good time. Our initial enthusiasm was much dampened by the time we actually began play. Writing good, clear rules is not easy. Rule books are often one of the last things completed in the production of a game, sometimes going to print without being tested. Bad Idea. Publishers, please take the time to blind playtest your rules with multiple groups who have not played your game. Your players will thank you.

Posted by Peter at February 16, 2005 11:17 AM