Writing Rules

I'm proof reading the rules for my latest board game design "Galaxy Conquest". It's actually hard work. I've heard around the web that writing board game rules IS hard work. I wasn't convinced.

I am now starting to believe it. When I started I just rushed down all of what I thought were the pertinent points and walked away for a ,well, a couple of weeks and now I've come back to it.

I'm amazed at how poor that first draft was. I included a reference to something called "fortification" which doesn't actually exist within the game! I was inconsistent with the terms that were there. I'd left out the entire Combat Results Table!!!

Add to that the number of typos and bad syntax. It was frankly, dross. So I've just spent another hour going over the rules searching fore these mistakes, things left out, incorrect references etc and I'm bushed, it's given me a headache.

I know it's not over yet, I'm going to recheck the rules again later in the week then see about giving them to some alpha testers and thats going to bring back another whole swath of rules questions and problems that I've missed or just haven't even thought about. I'm really not looking forward to that, and I'm supposed to be doing this fun!