I fully agree about the prep side of the rule book needing to be air tight. As I do more and more solo rpging and the like, having good tools for both prep and improv is becoming more important to me.
Admittedly, with some work you can cobble together your own prep tools from a mirage of different rule books, but that almost reaching the point of making your own rule book at that point.
Though I’ll slightly push back on the importance of art. Having looked at Mork Borg, from an artistic view, the book and its siblings are great. But they somewhat fall down on usability at the end of the day with a too deep of a commitment to the art side of the rule book that hurts usability somewhat as a first time player and reader.
However, I think it's important to remember the differences between various play cultures: there are people for whom studying the manual for a month and taking notes, then mastering the game through long months of iterations of playing, feedback, reflections, and developing a deep understanding of the rules is the main pleasure :)
Practically everyone I know who loves Burning Wheel seems to have this approach.
I think it's fun to note that neither of your three examples in the GRAB stage are eligible to be good example for PREP stage.
Nowadays many games suffer from focusing 95% of their attention on GRAB, because that's the think that got them sales. And then, when the buyers open the book and read it back to back without getting how to actually PLAY the game, not even speaking about PREPping it, they are reluctant to acknowledge they paid $$ for a pretty coffee table book so they pretend it's all fine... Only to throw the book on the shelf and never play it twice.
I fully agree about the prep side of the rule book needing to be air tight. As I do more and more solo rpging and the like, having good tools for both prep and improv is becoming more important to me.
Admittedly, with some work you can cobble together your own prep tools from a mirage of different rule books, but that almost reaching the point of making your own rule book at that point.
Though I’ll slightly push back on the importance of art. Having looked at Mork Borg, from an artistic view, the book and its siblings are great. But they somewhat fall down on usability at the end of the day with a too deep of a commitment to the art side of the rule book that hurts usability somewhat as a first time player and reader.
Great post!
However, I think it's important to remember the differences between various play cultures: there are people for whom studying the manual for a month and taking notes, then mastering the game through long months of iterations of playing, feedback, reflections, and developing a deep understanding of the rules is the main pleasure :)
Practically everyone I know who loves Burning Wheel seems to have this approach.
This is such a good article. I might distill this down to a check list I use for my own work.
This is really helpful. Thanks so much!
I think it's fun to note that neither of your three examples in the GRAB stage are eligible to be good example for PREP stage.
Nowadays many games suffer from focusing 95% of their attention on GRAB, because that's the think that got them sales. And then, when the buyers open the book and read it back to back without getting how to actually PLAY the game, not even speaking about PREPping it, they are reluctant to acknowledge they paid $$ for a pretty coffee table book so they pretend it's all fine... Only to throw the book on the shelf and never play it twice.
This is awesome. Im re-looking at my game now... to ensure Im hitting these things.