"Reading the rules" Topic

Question, can you read a rulebook and then be able to understand them well enough to understand and review/critic them as well or better than somebody who has played them several times?

I usually put some pieces on the table and walk through

I don"t think anyone can do that. If they tell you they can, they"re either lying or delusional

I'd say no. For me I need to play them a few times and reread them each time to understand them. Alot depends on how well they are written and organized. I doubt there are any who can give an accurate review with having played them.

Depends on the rules…
Neil Thomas rules, yeah probably
Phil Barker rules, not a chance

Sometimes the rules read very well; but it is not until you start actually playing them you begin to see where they fall apart.

There is no substitute for actual empirical data. Think Galileo's famous experiment.

I can read a Rulebook well enough to know that I don't want to waste any more of my precious time by play testing them.

Presumably the person who has 'played them several times' has also read them, so it will be hard for the reader-only person to be in a better position, all things being equal.

So it depends on the experience and skills of the two people, a veteran might spot a rule's failing by just reading and a tyro not spot them after several games.

Many rules have similar mechanisms which means you can tell how they will play without busting out the figs – if you've got experience with those same mechanisms.

Regards

David F Brown

No.

No.

I can read a rulebook and understand if I am interested in putting more effort in to actually playing them, but it is when the toys hit the table that I actually start to get a feel for for the rules that makes me confident enough to offer an opinion / review of them to other gamers.

You can't judge a computer game based solely on reading the code.

No
I've yet to fully understand some sentences in DBA.

As long as the review is caveated that it is an initial look based on a read through then can do a decent job. As some have said here an experienced player can many times spot truly terrible rules from ones that hold promise. Also many authors provide not only examples of specific rules but sometimes a mini run through of a game illustrating play.

For a comprehensive review, however, you do need to play through to give a balanced look. Sometimes rules dont seem to hang together until the whole is put into motion. Other times mechanics that look fine on a read through prove to be other than that in practice. For example I have read through rules where certain die rolls are required for say command and control. On paper they read fine. Only during play do they reveal themselves as tedious and with little added to the game.

No.

@jdginaz

Let it go dude. Life is too short. Don't let this/him get under you skin.

No.

I have a large collection of overviews of rule sets. But I do not call them "reviews" because they do not assess play. So I call them "overviews." Instead they simply answer common gamer questions: what is the scale and basing? How do the mechanisms work? Is the writing clear? How long are they? Are army lists included?

link

I often find rules at first blush appear "unrealistic" until you learn how to translate real tactics to their game system. Once that is done, they may suddenly feel *very* realistic.

Normally I would say no.

But the answer can be yes under a certain scenario. So a person who has read the rules may be in a better position to understand them than a person who has played them a few times, _but_ has not read them all the way through….

I was in this exact situation years ago when I went over to someone's place to try a rule set. I'd read them through over the previous week. So we start to play and he is doing something and I look at him oddly. I then flick through the rules and turn to the page where it states that he _can't_ do the thing he is doing. He starts to mumble and I realise we are playing a Monet version of the rules and he literally had no idea how to play. He'd read the rules once and the rest of the time he'd been playing only using the charts and making everything else up.

Cheers,
JohnG

If well written and play tested there's no reason rules can't be understood enough to review. Unfortunately most rules at some point will leave you wondering what they intended.

So I guess my answer is it depends.

Playtesting should help--once you've read the rules carefully and you're sure what you're doing is what was intended.
My own system these days is to glance though the rules and see whether I can locate and understand the fire, movement, melee and morale rules--and the activation system if there is one. If I can't find them, or if they're so long and jargon-filled I can't immediately see what I'm supposed to do--the rules go back on the rack immediately. This saves a lot of time and money.

No. You need to play them. How many times, depends on your experience and the rules themselves.

I can read a set of rules and (usually) toss them aside w/o ever getting to a playtest stage. Many times I don't even make it through the entire rules set. You just kind of realize at some point that this was a mistake. I have learned to look for online reviews first before buying,

@PrivateSnafu nothing I need to let go, just interested in the opinions of other members.

I am a rather visual person. I can get an pretty good image in my mind of something that is being described to me. It gives me a head start for when I actually start to play the rules. That being said, I am not above screwing up something visually just as easily as when doing it on the game table. Nothing like going through several turns and figuring out that I've been doing something the wrong way repeatedly.

You can tell by a quick look whether it's worth looking further. I look at the number of pages on each critical aspect. A big imbalance like minimal on terrain and command and control then it bin time.
Similarly lots of IF THEM in morale, bin, buckets of dice requirement leads to manic depression on why I wasted my money.
However if it gets past that then it has to be play time. That throws up things you would not have thought of in a read through.

Not me.

Sadley, "What do I need ?" Will be engraved on my tombstone. So no.

I can usually get a good impression of how a game plays and what you're trying to achieve by reading the rules. Where this fails me is rules with lots of cards where the rules only describe when cards are used and everything else is written on the card itself.
However I wouldn't say I'm ever ahead of someone who's played multiple games. My visualising whilst reading does mean I often do well in early games until everyone else catches up!

There are differences among the ideas of "I can tell I won't like this", "I will probably like this", and "I can write a review of this that is useful to others".

I read rules all the time for ideas and I generally have "go to"s depending on period. The mechanics of combat are not that complicated to replicate and understand a system so it doesnt tend to be combat and firing which make or break a game.

e.g. ww2 is Recce, Command, spotting.

If they are there or I can read that they are abstracted into firing or something else, I can generally get a good heads up if they are pith Helmet or not.

In terms of ww2 rules, I can only think of one which had seriously freaky effects in combat and firing (It was combat action command)

For Napoleonic's it's "battalions" and "squares" and "2 deep/3 deep line"….and obviously command.

Ancients is "command" and melee interaction.

Ww1 is one which is difficult. Generally it's bombardment and command. a little bit of terrain and technology

AWI is militia, terrain, skirmishing and troop balance.

ACW is close to napoleonics but the troop balance is even finer, yet more charactoristic

Air combat and to some extent ship combat is Chaos….and randomness.

At the end of the day, people play rules which they have found for themselves have beleivability and instill in them a faith in the system.

After all, Bland nothingness isn't likely to grab the imagination much