Read the Rules: What technical writers can learn from board game design
summary
Compares rulebooks like Wingspan that separate a short how-to-play and an appendix reference and teach from general to specific, shows step-by-step setup images and one-page turn summaries, prescribes blind playtests to find missing assumptions, recommends quick-starts with runnable commands or copyable examples, favors calling things by their common names, suggests icons and accessibility alternatives, and cites Tapestry’s player-submitted data that produced a balance patch.
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chapters (27)
- 0:00Introduction
- 5:53Information Architecture
- 6:35The Big Picture
- 9:48The Overview
- 11:45The Details
- 13:20The Appendix
- 14:49Best Practices
- 15:30Learn by Doing
- 18:10Call Things What They Are
- 20:26Define Your Terms
- 22:33Add Images
- 24:17Include Examples
- 25:50Point Out Frequently Overlooked Steps
- 27:17Whats New
- 28:49Consistent Layout
- 30:41Fill in the Details
- 32:15Make it Accessible
- 33:28Blind Play Test
- 34:56Tapestry
- 35:33Data collection
- 36:46Recommendations
- 37:35Questions
- 39:38Feedback
- 41:34Documentation is living
- 43:18Examples of board game documentation
- 45:00Best practices in documentation
- 46:28Marketing and documentation
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