Reading rules, and playing them correctly. Eventually.

[Tony S]

So, my friend offered a game of Hugenots versus Catholic last Sunday, an invitation that I happily accepted.  Although I’ve played many, many games of DBR ever since they appeared, I thought I’d reread the rules before the game, just to refresh my memory, as it has been a few months since my last foray into DBR.

I was quite startled to discover a rule that we had never used, and a rule that I hitherto would have denied ever seeing!  But there it was – right in print!  Admittedly Barkerese, but undeniably plain.

A trifle humbling – makes one wonder how often rules are ever played exactly as written.  Or indeed, does it really matter?

[Andrew Beasley]

Barkerese

Surely that makes it impossible to get wrong – plain, succinct, perfectly clear English! [end sarcasm]

For us, the classic has to be Monopoly – we have played it incorrectly for at least two generations!

On a good day I’m happy to get close to the meaning of the rules and TBH I’ve always been relaxed over the odd mistake unless my opponent ‘deliberately made mistakes’…

I have found with my mind that getting close is good enough and being mainly a solo player I do find that both sides make the same errors in the game 🙂

 

[kyoteblue]

I understand, I had just got the hang of FOW V 1 when V2 came out then made the transition to V3 but when V4 came out I just stopped playing. Never mind DBZ barkerese!!!

 

[Whirlwind]

Tony S wrote:

I was quite startled to discover a rule that we had never used, and a rule that I hitherto would have denied ever seeing! But there it was – right in print! Admittedly Barkerese, but undeniably plain. A trifle humbling – makes one wonder how often rules are ever played exactly as written. Or indeed, does it really matter?

I would imagine that lots of games aren’t played with the exact rules, either through not seeing/remembering the rule in question or misunderstanding/misinterpreting it.

In the first case, although it is always possible to mess things up and forget/miss out something important, I would guess that the most ignored rules are the most marginal and the game does not always become worse by their omission. I think Bob Cordery has made this point before: if you can forget a rule and still get through the game, how important could it have been?

On the second issue, I have a friend who calls Phil Barker “the greatest prose stylist of his wargame generation” (or something very close to that) and TBF I do see his point – for all the criticism he is obviously trying to convey precisely what he means; and under-written rules are just as much as a pain as over-written rules, or more so, when you are actually trying to play them.  But I think that overall rules have gotten a bit better over the years, in terms of writing them in such a way as to aid human learning and memory. Nuts! is quite good here, as are some of Sam Mustafa’s rules.

[Guy Farrish]

I think we should have a world symposium on rules writing to agree proper standards.*

Nothing about mechanisms allowed. Just how to set the things out and the style used.

I always liked the US boardgame approach to rule writing. Numbered paragraphs with easily understood sub headings and sub paras with an index. You could find stuff in seconds – what’s not to like?

I loved reading Charge! and Grant’s rule books too. Hardback goodness with witty (not whimsical) explanations of why and how. Not always the best to find things again – especially as sometimes the rules were spread throughout the other writing.

Barkerese like all language developed through use, and in many cases abuse. Not by Phil but by the competitive obsessives who actively tried to misread the intentions to gain an advantage in the quarter finals of the Penge Wargaming Collective World Ancients Championships. He simply responded in an attempt to convey the original intent. I suspect he should have shrugged his shoulders and accepted you can’t please all the people all of the time. Especially competitive wargamers.

As for whether you can ignore (intentionally or otherwise) large chunks of rules and still get a result – probably, but will it be the same result and would it be the one the writer intended?

*My Chat Bot informs me that irony is still recognised by 35.76% of the English speaking world in most circumstances and said I should risk this.

[Not Connard Sage]

I’m not completely sure I’ve ever played any rules ‘properly’.

As for Grant’s ‘Battle’, the hardback had me wondering for decades why it just seemed to come to a .
Until I discovered that MAP, the publisher, had left the final chapters out in the interests of brev…

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Mike]

I am getting back into WFB and was surprised to discover there are rules for how you set up.
As a kid we always did what we thought was a fair way, turns out there are proper rules for it.

They seem sensible too, so best start using them.

As for boardgames…

[Jim Webster]

Is it just me, but I find that I only read and understand the rules after playing a game 🙂

I have been accused of not so much writing rules as an essay suggesting how a game should be run. But in my own experience, the more precisely written the rules, the more numerous the loopholes.

But then it was Tacitus who said — ‘The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.’
I suspect it holds good with wargames rules as well 😉

Jim

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Whirlwind]

Jim Webster wrote:

But in my own experience, the more precisely written the rules, the more numerous the loopholes.

think this is true that more rules = more loopholes, but under-written rules have equal and opposite problems (more instances of “we don’t know what to do here”, equal instances of ‘gamey’ tactics being obviously optimal)

[Tony S]

Is it just me, but I find that I only read and understand the rules after playing a game 🙂

Nope.  You’re not alone. You’d think after years of playing many, many, many different rules (I’m afraid part of my hobby fun is reading rules, and desperately browbeating  victims friends into trying yet another new set) that I’d have somewhat of a grasp of how a ruleset will play out on the table.  But I admit many times, that there’s a synergy in the rules that only appear after actually pushing lead around a table.  And vice versa – there have been a few rules that I think will be great…but turn out to be awful once the dice begin rolling.

By the way, my original terrible with discovering a “new” rule in a set I was reasonably experienced with, wasn’t the Barkerese.  It was the fact that an entire phrase seemed to have suddenly appeared in my rules!

But perhaps my brain was overloaded by the time my eye reached that final phrase and was unable to parse any more dense information!

[Sane Max]

I am one of those peeps who cannot* learn a set of rules by reading them. that sort of stuff just won’t stick.

Like most here, I have often read rules while sat on the toilet and discovered we all have been playing them wrong for YEARS.

Worst are those sets where the succesful set ‘Death to Cicero!!’ is used as the basis for ‘Death to Napoleon’ and then ‘Death to the Martians’ which contain the same basic rule but with subtle tweaks to help differentiate Northern Italy from.. well, a different Northern Italy, or Mars.

I remember three or four of standing round quoting different rules at each other for Horse with Pistols based on three different but similar systems.

I really envy people who can read a set of rules, say ‘yup, got it’ and then play them.

* while writing this I suddenly remembered the one system I DID learn by reading them – the Original and Best ‘Blitzkrieg Commander’. I don’t know what it was about the writing, but it just worked. I understood them right away. Agreed with them? …some. but understood them, yes.

[Jim Webster]

Sane Max wrote:

I remember three or four of standing round quoting different rules at each other for Horse with Pistols based on three different but similar systems.

 

We have the same problem at our club with Dragon Rampant, Lion Rampant, The Men who would be King, Xenos Rampant etc etc.
What makes it tricky is that there are some second editions, but also we’ve got our own versions and workarounds, because the rules engine has a lot going for it for a club pick up set and we use it a lot and like it 🙂

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[OotKust]

Sane Max wrote:

I am one of those peeps who cannot* learn a set of rules by reading them. that sort of stuff just won’t stick.

Well, by my life experience, the following is true:

Descriptions of learning modalities
Visual             Kinesthetic/tactile             Auditory
Picture/Text    Gestures/Doing                Listening

Like you appear, I am 80% or more Kinesthetic- means I also have to play. However, from poor high school student unable to cope with analysis of words under Shakespeare, phone tech, digger operator, truck and rig driver, QA analyst and Implementation Manager- my low level maths evolved with science and stats have been most of my useful life.

“Training” to learn is a good thing. I try to teach young kids the same way, find what their triggers are, and enhance, but never disconnect the other modes in their learning.

So no, out of the book doesn’t work a lot of the time, but adding tactile movements and ‘logical’ visual aids does. So, no, we are not alone…
d-

[Phil Dutré]

It doesn’t matter. It’s not as if wargaming rules are holy scripture, or wargaming rules writers are demigods that communicate their holy wisdom to us through their rules.

To be honest, I find many wargaming rules are not very elegantly designed and a mishmash of various mechanics and procedures. That’s also the reason few rulesets really do become very popular – these are usually the very well written and/or designed ones 😉

[vexillia]

In the light of the current direction of the discussion, this may be of interest:

[H]ere I’d like to: muse a little about how I approach editing; show some pages before and after editing; and finish by offering a few tips for would be authors.

—

Approach
—
I believe wargames rules are essentially technical documents. They can, and probably should, be approached in a user friendly way but to work as rules they have to have a sound structure and provide a consistent framework for players.

Editing anything is both subjective, as in this doesn’t look right, and objective, as in this doesn’t work. Throw in a need to apply some consistency in layout etc and you get the basics of my approach to editing. In essence it’s a lot of copy editing with a bit of sub editing thrown in for good measure.

Fresh eyes always see things as they are, not as they are intended to be. So when editing there’s a lot of tidying up and moving text around but I try really hard to capture the author’s intentions. After all they are not my rules. My job is to make sure they are as easy to understand as possible.

However, there always comes a point where I uncover something that is either illogical, far too complex, or doesn’t fit with the intent of the author. Then I have to define the problem and come up with options to fix it.

Full article & tips – https://work.vexillia.me.uk/2020/09/rebels-yankees-v20-released.html

Martin Stephenson

[Darkest Star Games]

Whirlwind wrote:

But I think that overall rules have gotten a bit better over the years, in terms of writing them in such a way as to aid human learning and memory. Nuts! is quite good here, as are some of Sam Mustafa’s rules.

  Whirlwind, do you mean the Two Hour Wargames game “Nuts!”?  A friend gave me a copy and said “this is perfect for you” and I couldn’t parse it at all.  The very next week the author was running some games at a Con and I was able to actually play the game and had the epiphantic moment (there was probably an audible *DING!*) of when it all clicked into place.  I saw happen to a lot of other people too.  I felt silly afterwards as it seemed like it shouldn’t have been so hard grasp the written rules.  Liked them so much I let him talk me into writing the Vietnam version.

But indeed, over the years and editions Ed has gotten much better at presentation and “learning in bites” type of layout.  Another thing that I have found helps me understand rules, especially for unfamiliar periods, is if there is a little bit of explanation as to the rational or even history for the rule or why it works the way it does.  For instance: playing a Vietnam game and a player was upset that he couldn’t just immediately stonk an enemy with artillery because *he the player* could see them, so we explained about RTOs, artillery, spotting rounds and adjustments and how historically it gave the enemy the chance to try to get out of the way of the fire-for-effect by getting close enough to “friendly” forces to keep them from stoking themselves, etc.  Once he understood that he was able to much more effectively employ his supporting fires.  Made a world of difference.

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

[MustPlayThat]

I think rules are made as a base for interaction with others, so we are all doing one thing. its for multiplayer that rules exist. if you were playing a game you would study a battle and make your rules as an original to what your trying to create. its only when you want to share it becomes like a ruleset. if eg you land a transport in normandy in ww2, a ruleset will give you a procedure, but you may have your own method eg roll when exiting, roll to crawl, roll for cover, roll to move, a ruleset is just so you can pplay others, nothing beats your own recreation of a battle scenario, but you def get ideas from rules to then create your own

[Author]

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