A Guide to Writing a Good Rules Document

The key to writing a good rules document is simplicity. It should be easy to follow and the rules themselves should be easy to find.

Have sections for: materials, images, set-up, RULES (AKA your game loop), and game over conditions (win, lose, draw)

Materials:

Include your minimum to maximum number of players Be specific here! If a game component is considered common (52 deck of cards, chess set pieces, …) then its good on its own. But if your components are unique to your game (tiles, chips, dice), then include the color, shape, number of sides on the die, etc. Some Examples:

• 16 tiles (4 red, 4 blue, 4 green, 4 yellow)
• D6 / D10 / D20

Set-up:

List all the required materials and how they should be placed to start the game. Include who starts the game and how that decision is made, and what the play-order will look like. Include images of the start-game set up as well.

Rules:

This is where you walk through the core game loop. Is the game turn-based? What happens when it’s my turn? Does anything happen when it’s not my turn? Is it points based? How can I win points? Make sure to include any weird edge cases. If there are events that can happen, no matter how rare, PUT THEM IN YOUR RULES.

Game Over Conditions:

How does the game end? How can I win? How can I lose? Can there be a stalemate? Include all your game over conditions after your rules.

A rules document shouldn’t be more than 3 pages. Keep it concise! No one wants to read an essay before playing a game.

Below is a rules document that the TA’s created for our final project when we took this course. This is meant to be used as an example to inspire the rules documents for your games!

Flower Bomb Rules Document