I've written a lot of rulebooks lately. Why do I think I'm any good at
it, and what are the guiding principles?
Well, the first part is that I do it because I find it useful,
and other people seem to find it useful too. I've even seen one of my
rulebooks in the wild, being used by someone who didn't know I was the
author. But as for the rest:
I'm writing reference guides, not teaching guides. You can learn the
game from one of my rulebooks, and that may suit some people's style,
but where there are conflicting demands, reference wins. The user for
whom I'm writing is one who's a little tired, maybe a little drunk, or
maybe just with their head full of what's happening in the game but
wants to find and check a particular rule right now so that they can
get on with the fun stuff. And any background detail that's not
relevant to the game gets removed completely, unless it's helpful to
remember a rule: for example in Flash Point Fire Rescue the Fire
Prevention Specialist can only move hidden victims towards the nearest
door, not out through a breached wall, because conceptually they're
following the evacuation route signs that were put up before the fire
started.
I'm writing a single rulebook for the game including all its
expansions, while the original publisher had to have a separate
rulebook in each box. So I can put all the things that happen in a
particular context together.
The rulebook should not be written by the game designer. Contentious
perhaps, but I feel that knowing the game and all the changes it went
through during the development process bone-deep is actively unhelpful
for this purpose compared with having recently learned the game as it
is now. What's confusing to a new player? I have recently been a new
player, so I can highlight that. (Also, because I tend to be a game
teacher too, I can emphasise things that I know have caused confusion:
for example in Nokosu Dice the way that any trump card or die
effectively becomes "trump colour", not the colour that's printed on
it.)
As far as is reasonable, things should happen in the rulebook in the
order in which they happen in the game. At the very least, all the
things that can happen in the same phase of a turn should be listed
together.
This is technical writing, and I think the same princples apply to
software documentation, though in that case I generally don't enjoy it
as much.
Everything I've done is freely available at Roger's
Rules. As I write there are 81 games
with mini rulebooks, and eight games with more complex rules that
don't fit in the Pocketmod format. I am prepared to take requests!