How OFten Do You Refer To a Rulebook?

[irishserb]

A couple of Ochoin’s recent posts got me to wondering.  How often do you refer to the rules during a game?  I don’t mean refer to charts or combat tables, but actually look up and read a section of the rules.

It has been rare for us over the years.  Usually there is reading and studying of the rules when new, and some reference during the first couple of games, but not so much after that.  During the majority of games, we don’t actually get a set of rules out for reference.  I’m guessing that maybe this is not the norm.

[Mike]

irishserb wrote:

Usually there is reading and studying of the rules when new, and some reference during the first couple of games, but not so much after that.

Mostly this.
Though currently I am playing some new (to me) fantasy rules.
To keep it simple the first few games ignored shooting and magic.
Then once I was confident I knew what I was doing I introduced shooting into the games so referred to that a few times.
Then once I am happy I know all about shooting I will move on to magic in games.
This will possibly involve some referrals..

Etc..

[Norm S]

As something of a gaming butterfly, I would say historically ….. a lot! however, in my revaluation of hobby, I want to go with fewer rule systems that I know better and for boardgames, make more use of ‘series’ rules, so that overall my familiarity with rules gets stronger.

[Deleted User]

The definitive answer to the OP’s question….it depends.

Clearly with new rule sets, you dive into the rule book many times in a game. Unless it is a “simple” set such as ‘The Men Who Would Be Kings’. We found ourselves barely looking at it by the second game though the Unit Cards, laden with data, get constantly consulted.

A denser set such as ‘Field of Glory’ meant the rule books needed to be handy for many, many games.  This was not helped by the rules themselves which are badly assembled in the rule book. Stuff all over the place. To be honest, if I’d have known the burden of these rules when we started, I’d have never used them. Now that I’m an “expert”, the rule book is far less in evidence.

And our newest set (2017 has been “Year of the New Rules ” for our little group): ‘General D’armee’. Two games & they’ve been used surprisingly little for what is a medium difficulty level set. I’m not exactly sure what “intuitive” means but evidently these rules are it.

For the future, once we integrate an ACW set, I expect we’ll stick with what we have & get more proficient.

 

donald

[irishserb]

Oh, I think Norm hit on something.  As a group over the years, we adopted very few sets of rules, finding one we liked and then sticking with it.  So, we didn’t have to learn multiple rules for multiple periods.  For example, we used 10 sets of miniatures rules for our eight core gaming periods, spanning 36 years.  The newest one of those is 17 years old and is homebrew.

We bought and read lots of rules over the years, but didn’t play the majority of them, or played one or two games and went back to our regular set.  Not having to learn many new sets would explain the lack of needing to refer to them often.

[Cerdic]

Too often!

My fault for not gaming enough and getting distracted by other rules and periods.

http://28mmreview.blogspot.co.uk

[OB]

What Cerdic said.  All to often I find myself scrabbling for ‘what happens now?”

OB
http://withob.blogspot.co.uk/

[Guy Farrish]

Yep- me too.

Apart from Volley and Bayonet which I have been playing for about twenty years (and even then, different groups I sometimes play with use original VnB, Roads to Glory, and various home tweaked variants so  there can be a bit of scrabbling!)

Otherwise organised(?) chaos reigns – currently using three different Ancient sets – Impetus, Sword and Spear, L’Art de la Guerre (occasionally DBA – 1st edition!) and valiantly fighting off Hail Caesar (sorry – it suffers from the bizarre lack of organisation of all its stablemates – give me the rules – put the waffle somewhere else – I like the waffle but not droning on in the middle of the rules for goodness sakes).

Also play Mediaeval (early and late – different rules), Great Italian Wars period, Thirty Years War, ECW, (Imagination 7YW), Napoleonics, ACW, WWII and post WWII. All with at least two rules sets and some home distilled versions- which I am always tinkering with.

Yes, I refer to the rules quite frequently!

[Grimheart]

Like Cedric, too often due to too many rule sets covering too many types of games!

I am currently trying to down size though, honest!

Interest include 6mm WW2, 6mm SciFi, 30mm Old West, DropFleet, Warlords Exterminate and others!

[PaintingLittleSoldiers]

I do not play very often so need to refer all the time.

[MartinR]

I usually try and transpose all the relevant information onto a QRS as it helps me to understand the logical structure of the rules. So having done that, we hardly refer to the rules at all, although keeping track of the nuances of the various Command and Colours games does need some reading!

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[Phil Dutré]

I also try to capture the entire rules on a single A4. If there’s something we can’t figure out immediately, we improvise on the spot (and look up the rules and alter the A4 after the game). The only exception might be a new set of rules we are trying out for the first time.

Too much time is lost with a player insisting “Hang on, I know it’s in this section somewhere”, and then concluding “No, it’s as we thought it was”.

[Ivan Sorensen]

Well, that depends doesn’t it 🙂

If it’s a game we don’t play a ton,then somewhat frequently at least when something like assaults come up, where it doesn’t happen every turn.

For long term games, just for things like random tables that nobody wants to memorize.

[Author]

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