Game Design #107: Weird Concepts = Simple Wording

I recently read my daughter The Vagrant. It's pretty weird sci fi for an 11-year-old, where demons have broken through a rift and are kinda possessing/interacting with the human populace, whose empire is led by mysterious angelic beings. 

However. It had short, punchy sentences. Which made it easy to interpret. Kinda like a noir detective novel. Or a comic. Or Lee Childs. 

The short, simple sentences (often quite cleverly chosen) made a difficult book digestible.

So the (perhaps obvious) message here is: The more complex your topic/rules (or unique your mechanics) the simpler your wording and the more illustrations/examples you need.

Here's the rulebook example that made me also think of the topic and prompted this post - I discovered it in my recent exploration of my pdf rules folder:

Killwager. Blomkapfesque sci fi. I loved the idea of it - the rules gave me a feeling that guys who had played Infinity wanted to simplify things, trim out the bloat and make the gameplay flow, with less IGOUGO and more integrated actions. To focus more on gameplay and choices than stats and special rules. My kind of thing. The models are also very cool, if rather pricey for 3D prints.

But it kinda suffered from unclear rules, not helped by renaming common wargaming terms so you had to translate them in your head. Take these passages, which is the very start of the rules:

For a miniature to influence the battlefield it must perform. When a Model performs it may declare Measures and have Measures declared against it. The results of these declarations are called a “performance.” A performing Model may only declare one Measure, or two Measures chained together per performance unless noted.

Each Model may have a maximum of 4 Flow at any time. Flow is a resource. Models spend Flow by declaring Measures. You know how much Flow each opponent’s Model’s have spent. Different Measures spend different amounts of Flow.

First you need to figure out performance = activation, measure = action (not distance), flow = action points....  ^Extra translation stage

....Then grasp how the measures (aka actions) are resolved in a particular order: Automatic -> Direct -> Trained -> Technical. (There's also reactive measures!). Each class of measure (action) has its own sub rules. While there isn't many stats or special rules, there's ~25 actions (measures, I mean!). It certainly needed a lot more illustrations and examples than it contained. Rather like a Steven Eriksen Malazan book, there seemed a kinda assumed familiarity.

The ideas behind Killwager are great. It's certainly different. It's the sort of game where if you are willing to spend time on Discord or watching how-to-play videos, or have an enthusiastic friend to teach you, it's probably great. But the rules should not be reliant on outside sources. As an early adopter, it is very offputting.* Also, paying $35+ AUD for a pdf (which doesn't actually do its job fully) then being asked to pony up for army lists seemed a bit GWesque to me...

*I'm using this as an example, not attacking the author/s - I'd recommend a gander at their latest (free!) rules, BLKOUT (sounds like a musician? like Weeknd!) which has a very tidy layout with rules labelled old-school style like 1.2, 1.3 etc and uses conventionally named Actions, Activations, Initiative etc. It's 100x easier to read and understand - so they obviously have fine tuned things a lot! I wouldn't be surprised if these new rules replaced Killwager altogether.

TL:DR

The post title seems kinda self evident, but the folk who visit this blog seem to be dabblers or even creators of esoteric indie rules and mechanics so I thought it worth highlighting - for example Killwager has great concepts but may not 'stick the landing' or get the widespread play its cool concepts deserve....

Also as a side rant, renaming commonly understood wargaming terms and stats is not creative or innovative, it's f****g annoying.

....Whereas a boring 40K clone like Bolt Action or (surprisingly dense rules) Flames of War needs little explanation/can get away with sub-par examples as I can extrapolate from previous knowledge.

Perhaps as a somewhat isolated gamer in a small town, this is something I notice more than others (as the rulebook is often my first exposure to the game). On the other hand I am an avid PC gamer and tend to also avoid games where you need to spend hours on Youtube to grasp the basic gameplay. (X4: Foundations is an amazing game but the fact is has 120+ keybinds kinda speaks for itself!)

Have you ever come across interesting rules whose rulebook (and layout/explanations/lack thereof) actually was the barrier to playing?