FFG Rulebooks

ThirstyMan wrote:

Msample wrote:

ThirstyMan wrote: Triumph of Chaos

.it's a mess and spread over two booklets rather than just the, traditional, one booklet which means constantly leafing through both of them.

IIRC the second rulebook is purely the political rules. The main rulebook goes sections 1-18. Section 18 is the political rules, which start in the main rulebook, then get finished in the separate rulebook. Then sections 19-whatever are back in the main book. Totally slapped together it seems.

Yet the people I know who have played it a more than I have like it a lot. I think its so dense its defied the repeated plays that ferreted out the whacky things you see the sharks do in PoG for instance ( like defend the Rhine ) .

Now I look bad for taking the bait!

THANKS REPOMAN!

scissors wrote: stratergizer

I believe the correct spelling is Strategerizer.

This whole discussion is due for retirement anyway. ERP is valueless if it includes 150 games, and FFG's rule books aren't any worse than anyone else's. They have their own personal foibles, but they don't hold a candle to Sierra Madre's stuff, and more or less hold their own against everyone else's screw-ups. As often as not it's the writer not the company that calls the tune.

S.

Sagrilarus wrote: This whole discussion is due for retirement anyway. ERP is valueless if it includes 150 games, and FFG's rule books aren't any worse than anyone else's.

Eh...I took the shotgun approach to the ERP throwing a bunch of titles out there to see what stuck and garnered feedback. All told of the discussion there were only 10 or so titles that interested me and about half of those are ones I traded away and decided to go on the hunt for them again.


My vote for the worst rulebooks on the whole are 3W.
Raid on Richmond was a hot mess.
Aces High and American Aces though I really wanted to learn, I never could.
Tarawa: Bloody Bieto had missing pages that I had to receive via fax from Decision Games.
I did keep Scratch one Flattop around hoping that oneday I could figure the rules out because that seems like the ultimate game of Battleship.

Sierra Madre rulebooks should not be part of this discussion. Phil Eklund doesn't write rulebooks. He writes white papers; those who buy his games are actually "peer reviewers," not "customers."

Triumph of Chaos, on the other hand, reads a bit more like someone simply transcribed a tape of Dave Doktor describing how to play his game....right after he did two or three biiiiiiiig lines of crank and shotgunned a couple of beers. Too many words, none in the right order, and random non-sequitur interspersed for good measure...

It's primarily an organization problem. It took me 2 weeks to learn how to play Arkham Horror, and that was primarily due to not really having an easily referenced index. The big bitch I have there is that ALL rulebooks should have the last 2 pages be a full "Universal Head" type reference of turn order, monster movement, things of that nature.

I must be in a minority here, but I've never found anything from Universal Head useful...I firmly believe that you have to play a game a lot to know what is forgotten/missed/overlooked/helpful and needs to be included on a summary sheet. Just reading the rules and condensing them, by way of tiny font, doesn't help me much.

I've never used Universal Head's materials either. Fundamentally I don't trust them, not a measurement of him, but a general distrust of things that aren't from the actual rulebook.

Arkham Horror's rulebook is almost completely in narrative order, presenting the rules for each phase in its order in the game. There's two or three turns of the page that implement the entire main part of the game, and I don't understand how people get confused when you can just follow along with the steps. I used to set a die on the part of the game that we were currently in and move it as we progressed. That does require a space on the table for the big rule book though, an even bigger challenge considering the size of the game itself.

S.

Dogmatix wrote:
Triumph of Chaos, on the other hand, reads a bit more like someone simply transcribed a tape of Dave Doktor describing how to play his game....right after he did two or three biiiiiiiig lines of crank and shotgunned a couple of beers. Too many words, none in the right order, and random non-sequitur interspersed for good measure...

Kind of like his podcasts.....

Bowen Simmons was mentioned above...his rulebooks are quite possibly the worst I've ever read. I remember reading the Bonaparte at Marengo one and afterwords I thought "I have absolutely no idea how to play this game." I convinced myself that it was really good- and it may actually be really good- but the truth of the matter is that I'm not sure if I ever played the game correctly. Napoleon's Triumph was somehow even worse. I remember my pal Billy and I trying to play it and re-reading sections and just having no fucking clue what he was saying. It was like a doctor explaining brain surgery to you and assuming you already know everything. "You know, like this!" And you just kind of shrug and and shake your head.

Guerilla was really bad too...we used to joke that it required both Robert and I to be there to play it because we each understood half the rules.

Return of the Heroes was truly an abomination in rules writing...that damn storytelling thing, good gawd.

Ooh, another really really bad one. Age of Napoleon. Most Phalanx games from that period, actually.

OK, maybe the FFG rulebooks aren't THAT bad...