FFG Rulebooks

edited. not worth it.

I think those comments are in reference to the Myth rulebook.

EDIT: I will also add that I do think they get too wordy, but that said, I've learned more games from FFG rules and by and large I haven't had problems until it came time to reference a rule and the it felt a bit like a scavenger hunt. I've struggled many times with the GMT/AH/SPI style trying to learn a game, looking up a rule is a breeze though. So my preference is to learn the game easier and then struggle to find a rule later meaning for the most part I don't mind the FFG rules.

black inferno wrote: What do you notice? That's right: you. You notice clear, conversational instructions that are directed at you because they're expressed in second person indicative or imperative. And, in English, instructions written in the second grammatical person have some key features:

1) The instructions directly address you.

2. When the instructions directly address you, rather than "the player" or a gendered pronoun, you envision yourself performing those actions rather than an abstracted third party ("he" or "she") performing those actions. As the audience, you develop an associative relationship with the rules that's immediate and personal. This helps your brain process the instructions faster.

Eh? I don't think you've looked at a Hasbro rulebook in a while. I just looked up Monopoly's rules on Hasbro's site, and it's an arguably worse mixture of both second and third person, and it absolutely uses "the player" and the ever-awkward "him/her."

"Place your token on the corner marked 'GO,' throw the dice and move your token in the direction of the arrow the number of spaces indicated by the dice. After you have completed your play, the turn passes to the left. "

”Each time a player’s token lands on or passes over GO, whether by throwing the dice or drawing a card, the Banker pays him/her a $200 salary."

"Whenever you land on an unowned property you may buy that property from the Bank at its printed price."

"The 'Get Out of Jail Free' card is held until used and then returned to the bottom of the deck. If the player who draws it does not wish to use it, he/she may sell it..."

And here they over-complicate the concept of bankruptcy with clumsy language, including using banking terms such as creditor, principal and penalties. Additionally we have what I would consider to be run-on sentences, with a few instances of "he/she" for good measure:

BANKRUPTCY… You are declared bankrupt if you owe more than
you can pay either to another player or to the Bank. If your debt is to
another player, you must turn over to that player all that you have of
value and retire from the game. In making this settlement, if you own
houses or hotels, you must return these to the Bank in exchange for
money to the extent of one-half the amount paid for them; this cash is
given to the creditor. If you have mortgaged property you also turn
this property over to your creditor but the new owner must at once
pay the Bank the amount of interest on the loan, which is 10% of the
value of the property. The new owner who does this may then, at
his/her option, pay the principal or hold the property until some later
turn, then lift the mortgage. If he/she holds property in this way until
a later turn, he/she must pay the interest again upon lifting the
mortgage.
Should you owe the Bank, instead of another player, more than you
can pay (because of taxes or penalties) even by selling off buildings
and mortgaging property, you must turn over all assets to the Bank. In
this case, the Bank immediately sells by auction all property so taken,
except buildings. A bankrupt player must immediately retire from the
game. The last player left in the game wins.

They sure are great for reading on the john, amirite?

And that's why nobody plays Monopoly with the real rules.

dragonstout wrote: I never got the complaint until I bought Wiz-War. With their other games, there were a bunch of rules, so I thought the long rulebooks were warranted. Wiz-War, however, is incredibly simple; there really should be about four pages of rules for that game. Instead the rulebook is huge and it's bizarrely difficult to find the rules you need to find.

I do love that they mostly include lots of visual examples, though. I don't need it most of the time, but every once in a while I'll read another non-FFG rulebook and come to a point where something seems ambiguous and REALLY wish there were a good explanatory example.

I thought the Wiz-War book was one of their better books. I think the page count is because of the visual exaples, and a bit of over explanation of such things as the component list, etc.

It was one of the first that I recall that had a glossary and an index.

That said, they did flub it a bit as I too, have a difficult time finding relevant entries when attempting to review a rule during play. In this case, I think it was two steps forward, one step back.

As to the topic at hand, I had a great deal of difficulty trying to learn how to play Kniizia's Lord of the Rings game. That was a truly obtuse book. It was my first taste of the infamous "horribad FFG rule manuals". I hear its improved now since the release into silverline status, but havent read it yet.
Another example is arkham horror. It was rather unintuitive in it's approach for me. I played numerous practice games before inroing it to anyone else, and the only way I got through it was the Universal head play aides.

Speaking of which, FFG needs to hire this guy. It's rather telling when many of their games in the FFG library at the FFG event center has his play aides included in them.
This simple thing speaks volumes as to the quality of their manuals overall.

But thats not to say they are all bad. I own several other games like LotR confrontation (also a knizia) that is a breeze to understand, as merely one example of a decent rule manual. They have been making attempts lately to rectify this, yet, Im not sure if the split manual approach is the best. Or less confusing.

Sagrilarus wrote: I could very easily see three people in a meeting room at a game publisher, one making the observation, "someone will do this for us and post it on BGG." It just makes good business sense to not pay for something that will happen either way...

S.

Two words: "Universal Head". Poor guy.

I agree it makes great business sense in the short term, but it doesnt help their products in the broader sense.

Requiring secondary materials to play their games wont help their products enter mainstream appeal of big box shops where consumers rightfully expect to get a complete game in their single purchase. Which may be why I do not see many FFG titles in Target anymore. (just a guess from the hip)

FFG arent as tiny anymore. They could easily enter the big leagues and make a good product that people will cherish for years, instead of a short sighted product that people still like, yet make threads like this to bitch about or defend them.

The rules to the third edition of Twilight Imperium are short and to the point, aside from the visual examples, especially when you consider the complexity of the game.

Reading through this thread, I think it's reasonable to say that some FFG rulebooks are a lot better than others, and that a blanket dismissal of all their rulebooks would be unwarranted.

Too late for you to edit Scissors, I caught you. Blaming the ERP for everything is becoming like conservatives blaming Obama for everything.

THANKS ERP

I think people have to acknowledge the improvement over the years. FFG did hire an editor and technical writer (I know, because I applied for the job) and the effect is noticeable. The difference between, say, Fury of Dracula's book and that of Battlelore 2nd Ed. is pronounced. What annoys me about the Fury style is the two-part rulebook: "basic" rules and then everything else. So they tell you how to move around the map and how Dracula's trail works, but they say nothing about all of the essential cards of Dracula's deck (animal forms, etc.) until the second half of the rulebook. Knowing the "basics" of Fury won't help you at all, because all of those "extra" things are, in fact, essential parts of the game.

Now, they tried to address that with Battlelore in that there is a simpler way to play the game (i.e. without Lore) for people first learning... except that it's ridiculous to play that way and no one will ever do it, which makes it a form of overproduction and needless complication (in an attempt at simplification.) Mad Dog's point rings true here in that splitting the game into "Basic" and "Advanced" becomes annoying when you're trying to find the "Basic" rule about forest terrain and you're looking in the rules summary in "Advanced."

I think part of the problem with Wiz-War is that the game has been through so many versions and there are so many possible weird interactions that they did make a serious attempt to cut down on the confusion by trying to lay the groundwork ahead of time. I can't fault them for that, especially given the audience. To use Battlelore 2nd Ed. again, the number of ridiculous questions on BGG for stuff that is written in plain English was pretty astounding.

All of that said, I've never had a big problem with their rules format but, then, I grew up with Avalon Hill...