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Wind Tunnel - Too Many Rules
- oliverkinne
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- D4
- All things tabletop.
Nobody likes a game with more rules than necessary. The more rules there are, the longer it takes to learn a game, especially if there are also a lot of edge cases or exceptions. Too many rules can lead to confusion and slow down the flow of a game and consequently increase playing time. In this article, I want to look at streamlining games and how it can affect the playing experience.
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If a rule book has a "frequently forgotten rules" section, it's a red flag for me. It often means they had to tweak something in an arbitrary, gamey way that is not intuitive to make the game work.
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I find when games have an aspect of theme or something they really concentrate on, and abstract the rest away, I find it more immersive theme wise than if the game tries to do everything - they can't do everything, and so the bits they then miss simply highlight that it's not complete, like an uncanny valley effect. Whereas if the game leans in to what it is - a really big abstraction. - it just works better for me.
That's not to say a game with lots of rules can't be good - but like uba says those rules need to be intuitive and fade away as quickly as possible.
On top of that I really hate rules that are clearly there to balance the maths. If the game needs to do that, there's a bigger problem in my view.
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That all said I'm reading the rules for The Ravens of Thri Sahashri, a much smaller game in comparison, and I can't wrap my head around them.
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- Erik Twice
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I've played this game several times with my girlfriend and I still can't understand how the game quite works. I don't think the game itself is complex (Draw cards, put them in the middle overlapping each other, the girl takes one and adds it to the score pile) but somehow it doesn't get into my brain.DavidNorris wrote: That all said I'm reading the rules for The Ravens of Thri Sahashri, a much smaller game in comparison, and I can't wrap my head around them.
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- Sagrilarus
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ubarose wrote: The number of rules are less important to me than whether the rules are easy to remember. I can remember a lot of rules if they are relatively intuitive and make sense within the game world. Like, games can have several pages of terrain rules, but typically they all make logical sense, so remembering them requires almost no effort.
If a rule book has a "frequently forgotten rules" section, it's a red flag for me. It often means they had to tweak something in an arbitrary, gamey way that is not intuitive to make the game work.
I'll add presentation to the list as well, i.e., how the rules are presented in the rule book and whether they flow with the action in the gameplay. A game like Arkham Horror is complex, with blocks within subsections within sections and the like, but the rule book is laid out in a just-in-time fashion so that complexity is mitigated by simply moving from one paragraph in the rule book to the next. For Arkham in particular I can tell you where on the page some rules are because the layout is so tightly grafted to the gameplay.
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On a superficial level anyone can jump in and play relatively quickly. And two newbies will have a decent time (even if the USSR trounces the USA) but through repeated play and memorization of the events it jumps to a whole new level.
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