Cult Of Games XLBS: Write Better Rulebooks!
November 7, 2021 by avernos
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![Warcradle Studios Reveal TINY New 10mm Festive Marker! [Updated]](https://images.beastsofwar.com/2025/11/christmas-kyle-main-600-338.jpg)
It the XLBS Show………Happy Sunday Fellow CoGs!
Well Earned Golden Buttons!
Nice dry brushing @brennon the brushes I use for dry brushing are makeup-style brushes, with a rounded end.
I do want the Harrowdeep box set. I’d like the minis for Soulbound. But, I’ll be staying tuned to see how the game goes for you @fcostin
@avernos The Mantic paper starter mat, reminds me of the Priveteer Press ‘War Machine’ instructions. They told you how to get started quite well and you were told how to place things and move and such. Third edition if I remember right. (I could be wrong, it’s been a little while since I cracked open a started box from ‘War Machine’)
Am I first? Woohoo! Happy Sunday!
Done by the deadly, Dennis de Dimanche! 😉
Happy Sunday folks!
Greatest movie ever made
Thanks a million for the Golden Button. Completely stoked.
Gerry, the image on my laptop is just a Weird World War Two US model from Westwinds Secrets of the Third Reich range. The wall is a model I made from plaster and painted up years ago. My wife liked the photo so it ended up as my background on my laptop.
Excellent show as always. Just the thing to watch while cracking on with more stuff.
Happy Sunday everyone.
cheers, your very own personalised desktop looks fantastic. Also I’m easily distracted ^^
Welcome back, I missed you guys last weekend, I sat down to do more to the Elf Lords Hall for my Middle-Earth SBG table, and remembered no weekender. I did get more done, and should update the project.
This weekend was more about adding a bodyguard unit to my Dark Angels
A lot of rulesets run into problems in their layout and wording because they are either written specifically for competition gaming or the writers know they will be used for competition gaming. Given the nature of a lot 9f competition players who look for every loophole and examine the placement of every comma to try and gain an advantage it inevitably leads to rulesets being over wordy and too descriptive
Totally agree. What FFG got right with the Star Wars Games was that they understood they needed an encyclopaedic rules reference for the serious gamer, but also a standalone “how to play” that covered all the rules, but without all the ifs, buts and edge cases getting in the way of the learning process. Not saying they were perfect, but exactly the right idea to make the game accessible to casual and competitive players alike.
It’s a problem with manuals in general though.
Not just rules for games.
And that’s before you get to the simple fact that not everyone has English as their primary language or (for extra difficulty) the manual itself written in Engrish ..
Was I missing something with that deadzone mat. How to set things up and rules are on one side but you play on the other. Or was that square in the middle big enough to play a game on.
the square in the middle is the teaching game that all the rules around it are for. The other size is the standard mat for regular games once you’ve got a grip on it
I see. Makes sense. It is a good idea
Happy Sunday everyone.
Here’s a quick urban basing tutorial for Ben
https://www.beastsofwar.com/project-entry/1552207/
Much appreciated – thanks!
I introduced my teenage niece to Flames of War and she loved how easy it was to pick up. We don’t really it much beyond the Hit the Beach box. I added another starter box and a few new units and that’s it. So we have enough on both sides to just field tanks or play slightly larger games. By doing that she’s learnt the rules a lot quicker and I think enjoys not having an overly complex game.
On impenetrable rules: I agree completely on @fcostin calling out Gloomhaven. Even watching a couple of “how to” videos was no help; so naturally it went back on the shelf. Bought Jaws of the Lion in the Xmas sales last year, watched a couple of “how to” videos and played a bit. Thoroughly more enjoyable. Wanted to get *immediately* back into Gloomhaven-proper. Also now very much looking forward to diving into Frosthaven when it arrives. Happy Sunday!!
I had the luxury of someone teaching me how to play Gloomhaven but they did clean things up a lot with Jaws Of The Lion etc – about to start that in a couple of weeks!
So in order to ‘fix’ the ‘problem’ of no Free in the trailer we’re getting Free in the images for the XLBS ?
I think that is a brilliant fix 😀
Happy Sunday.
Sci-fi basing.
I made some industrial looking basing.
The only thing I would add regarding my texture added to the base, would be that the side you stick down should perhaps be roughed up with sandpaper to encourage a good bond and that the pieces need to be as flat as possible before gluing down. Adding urban / black grey flock here and there can make things look more realistic. The idea to add Kipling cake container texture to the bases to give a similar space station / shuttle floor look might work in a similar way. You might even be able to use cake type containers as a mold and either plaster or greenstuff some interesting textures to bases.
https://www.beastsofwar.com/project-entry/1646291/
Some games are just not user friendly, but rules need to be easy if we’re going to “snag a normie”.
E.g. The Guild Ball game rules are written in a fairly good way, but when you introduce a person and explain that without reading the info card for each player and understanding them fully there is no easy way to come up with a game plan and make their first move… this slows things up and perhaps advising them to watch some Let’s Play videos first is the best way forward.
I like shadespire, but the release schedule was far too excessive and I was never going to be able to keep up. I would only play this game casually for fun and if I played someone buying everything and making a perfect deck it would make for a very boring one-sided experience.
See you at Salute!
Much appreciated – thanks for sharing the idea 🙂
Ooh the XLBS Show.
Nay bother Gerry I’m Boris Johnson 10 Downing street London.?
Thank you for the Golden Button! Great work everyone
Them new dry brushes look like make-up brushes may be worth checking out the aisles in the pound shops for way cheaper for them?
Happy Sunday.
Regarding printing your own bases, I guess you could find a high definition image of your gaming mat and print parts of that out for your bases so they’d blend into the actual surface you’ll be gaming on.
I took a few new players of Frostgrave through a game or two last night and one of them commented how, although the rules are fairly simple, the book is written in big large paragraphs with no bullet points, so finding a specific rule can be a bit of a search. I think this example was more a frustration due to him being new to the game rather than complicated rules, but we’ve experienced similar problems in the past with much more complicated systems and trying to find a particular rule during the heat of battle due to poor layout.
Some books do actually read quite well while in an armchair (and I think Frostgrave is one of these), but during the heat of battle some books can be a nightmare (older editions of Warhammer Fantasy & 40k certainly).
One book I found great for learning the game was A Billion Suns at it give you the rules in layers. First it would give you the general summary of how a turn would go, then it would repeat that with more detail before giving you everything.
Happy Sunday wonderful people! Congratulations to all the Botton winners! Fantastic work.
Happy Sunday!
00:00 “Coffee”…. @avernos meant to say “coffee”….
01:50 “And wasn’t picked because it hand Gandalf in it..” Sure mate. *sips coffee*
06:00 Said Christmas thread: https://www.beastsofwar.com/forums/topic/christmas-secret-santa-2021/
09:40 “zapp”… catchy name… not XD
11:05 MY EARS
18:00 the uHH is the place where everybody is allowed to vent stress… sound of in the twitch chat! Win prizes!* (*no really giving away things)
19:45 Happy trees… or a very happy builder? 😉
25:00 @brennon tarmak. grates. grey rocks. lava. Dead bodies of your enemies.
35:00 googling words to learn a game? oO What hell is this?!
44:00 Gloomhaven? Is that still a game? Judging by the box size that’s a living room decoration!
45:15 KITTY!!!1!11!1
52:00 You all remember the videos FFG did when Star Wars: Legion was about to launch? Those kind of videos help greatly in getting into the game. I wish more companies could afford to do that.
53:45 …and also what @brennon says about the “entry rules” 😉
55:00 Gerry very far away… not small
57:03 MY EAAARSSS!
1:00:00 the first thing that came to my mind with the “get started mat” was: people giving demos for games would love these!
1:08:00 Dungeon Saga looks like some good source for miniatures for “Reign in Hell”
1:17:00 at 500 he wants to give away all of his FUGOU! 😉
1:25:00 what? Already over?
Nice show guys 🙂
@brennon For your ruins you may try rattle cans that have a granite effect from Montana.
I will have a look at that!
Regarding sci fi bases for Ben, Customeeple make base toppers. They’re flat, etched card and barely raise the height of your mini. I don’t have a picture to hand from where I’ve used them.
https://www.customeeple.com/?s=Base+top&post_type=product&v=0f26a103da90
Kujo painting made a really good video about painting Mars bases. You don’t have to preshade like he did. Just give the base a light colour and run two colours together from opposite sides. Here’s the vid:
https://youtu.be/l5SB54QeCSM
I’ve used it several times. Here’s an example.
https://www.beastsofwar.com/project-entry/1686236/
Choice of colour will affect how sci fi it looks. I’ve been thinking about using it to do something like this. Add a bit of colourful flock / grass and you’re done.
Dugthefug’s piece about using a textured topping is a good idea. I’ve used green stuff rollers but never been totally happy with the result. You can use cable ties, bits of wire, leftover bits to add extra detail. One of the bases in this project used just that.
https://www.beastsofwar.com/project-entry/1664303/
Hope that gives you some ideas.
Thanks for the help – going to do some research based on this 🙂
Ooh a fab show guy’s.
I had literally ignored the cardboard tokens, because I had ordered the acrylic tokens so wasn’t going to use them.
And guess where this ‘manual’ was ?
In between the token sheets that I had tossed in the bin …
Mantic could learn a thing or two from GW’s packaging.
The manuals may be overly wordy and crap, but there’s no way you’re missing the build-instructions in the average GW boxed game.
I can see free start a cat channel full of cat video’s doing daft funny stunts thay all do?
He is a DEMON!
Lol Aren’t they all.?
I’m absolutely gobsmacked to receive a golden button and to be in such esteemed company. ? To be also called a “legend” by the real legends of the community is such an honour… l’ll have to go and finish painting those Dunkeldorf bar flies now. ? Similarly to @ninjilly this project was inspired to reduce my pile of shame and the opportunity to give away some minis to a young lad I coach in inclusive football and is getting into D&D was the perfect incentive. Getting to my 50th mini – the Dunkeldorf scribe with the Dark Sword Greyhounds was a bit of a slog, but so enjoyable and has spurred me onto the next 50 including all the tavern stuff. You are quite right, the scribe alongside the tavern scenes would be cool, and I slightly regret not mounting him on a 50mm square base for the sake of modularity… but hey ho I didn’t really plan ahead for that as I continue to unearth boxes of unpainted minis in my pile of shame and think ‘what shall I do with this?’ Even for someone long in the tooth like me, I’m always learning and taking inspiration from this community and it’s phenomenal. Anyhow, thank you again for the recognition. ???????? It’s made my Sunday (and 2021)… indeed it’s even impressed my kids (which is not easy when my other label is ‘embarrassing dad’!) ?
Well deserved button 🙂
The Infinity starter sets are great as well.
It does a great step by step way of explaining the rules.
This is great because it’s is a complex game.
Good to hear – one of the things about Infinity (before CodeOne) is that it felt a little much. Glad to hear that has been tweaked.
Over-wordiness seems to be endemic to GW’s writing style. I read the fiction more than the rules and it’s a problem there. It’s not affecting my ability to play a game but it does affect my will to finish the damn book. There are exceptions but of my they seem rare.
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion is an example of a great rulebook/game that eases players into the mechanics. It starts with a stripped down ruleset, and adds in more concepts and complexity over five games so at that point you are well versed in how everything works.
Closest equivalent I’ve seen for a tabletop game is Test of Honour. The core box has a 6 game mini-campaign included, which again starts with ignoring certain rules, and then building them in as the campaign progresses.
I think this style of including a beginner mini-campaign within a starter set is a great idea. Start off with a small number of models from the box contents, preferably ones which don’t have complex stat lines or abilities. Ignore certain concepts for the first couple 9f games. Then start to add in more of the full rules, and build up the forces on the table.
As Ben said, the GW partwork magazines do this to some extent. It might be interesting if they captured some of those concepts for their starter sets too.
Will the puss get a by-line.
Aye I reckon we’ll have to include the kitty in the credits…maybe before Free haha
I love Deadzone’s how-to-play on the mat but if the instructions to set up the game are on the underside of the mat, doesn’t that make it hard to read if you are actually setting up the game?
Great show and well done to all the golden button winners, excellent work.
On the subject of dodgy rulebooks I did wonder if Underworlds is suffering from 2 problems, the first is this is the 4th big box for it and each one added something to the system and second problem is this is supposed to be a tight completive system and they had gone into the rules in so much detail to stop people interpreting in a way they were not intended?
I do have a copy of the both shadespire and harrowdeep and the rules have gone from 31 pages in the original to 51 pages in the latest.
On learning to play, I received my kickstarter copy of Magnate: The first City, and that had a tutorial deck of cards. Each card told you what to do and when to turn the next one over and the rules even had a big notice on it saying start there. I haven’t seen that before any board games.
Thank you very much for the Golden Button and the lovely things you said about them. I am really touched and honoured to be chosen and it wasn’t even for the castle or the battle reports, wow.
I think all the winners did an amazing job and all the projects should get a mention for there hard work
Thank you once again
The kitten needs more screen time.