Rules Glorious Rules

All games have rules, and it is these rules that inform us of what we are able to do and how we go about doing them. The problem with rules is that they tend to either promote complexity or intuitive timely play, with very few games achieving both. Even the most simple of games often can have quite convoluted rule sets when you try and take them to a more competitive level, or more often they create complexity by omission, that is the designers don't include details relating to borderline cases or what to do when a conflict arises between two game actions. The other thing that can make things more troublesome and confusing is the implementation of house rules, the most well known house rule is the Free Parking square in Monopoly being used to pay some form of jackpot to players who land there (this rule is so well known that many people don't even realise that it is a house rule and not part of the official game). House rules are even more problematic when players wait until halfway through the game to mention them.

The main area where I think most games rulebooks let themselves down is around the issue of timing, if players are permitted to carry out actions outside of their own turn there needs to be clear guidelines about when and how they go about it. Is it simply a chaotic free for all, do the actions form a stack or chain with the last card played being the first to be resolved, or do all players say what they intend to do and then those actions occur in the order they were announced? If the rules do not provide a clear description of how to handle two players trying to carry out conflicting actions at the same time then eventually a disagreement will occur, Munchkin's disagreement resolution system of the person who owns the game gets the last say is cute but not exactly free from potential abuse.

Another source of conflict can be the precise measurement of distance, especially in situations where parallax can be an issue. A classic example of cheating in Warhammer was to measure from the front of the miniatures base to the back of the miniatures base during movement. When playing Pirates of the Spanish Main, which involves using small pieces of card to measure distance, I like to use the system of players measure their opponents distances which usually removes any disagreement about what is in range; as I have only played this game in a casual setting with friends I also like to point out that if two friends can't agree on what is in range and what is not then they have more problems than their lack of ability to measure. Actually as a result of the measure your opponents ranges system, I found that far more things were considered in range than I would have initially thought.

So how do games provide a fix to the issue of rules needing to be simple enough to be fun but complex enough to resolve potential conflict? Obviously if it is just a fun game between friends you can simply rely on them to sort it out, but what if you want to take the game to the next level and have a competitive game? For example in a game of Chess at what point is a players move considered final? Is it when they take their fingers off the piece they moved, when they press the clock, or when they say 'your move'? Further more, should a player be required to move the first piece they touch, even if it was by accident? Questions such as these tend to result in the creation of a second more in depth rule book. In  Magic: the Gathering the basic rule book is 34 pages long with lots of pictures, while the comprehensive rule book is 192 pages long and has no pictures.

This large rulebook means that every possible action and response that can arise through the interactions of the 12246 unique card is covered, there are even some rules that relate to events that are not currently possible. These rules also force the cards to follow strict formatting guidelines so that their abilities are only activated or triggered at the correct time, which has cause one or two problems. For example in Alpha (the first set) the card animate dead looked like this:

This seems simple enough, you take a creature from the graveyard and put it into play, except as the rules evolved the term 'Enchant Dead Creature' was no longer permitted and so in fifth edition the card was changed to:

Then the enchantment subtype Aura was created, for cards which enchant other cards, so Animate Dead had to be updated again, the modern version of the card now looks like this:

First thing you notice (after the new picture) is that there are a lot of words in the text box, also exactly what the card does is now less clear than before. Especially the part where 'if it's on the battlefield, it loses "enchant creature card in a graveyard" and gains "enchant creature put onto the battlefield with Animate Dead."', which by the way is a triggered ability so can be countered causing the card to do nothing. So why does is need to be worded this way? Consider the first printing, the line Enchant Dead Creature is no longer a supported card type, also when the creature enters the battlefield it is no longer dead so how is the card enchanting it? In the fifth edition printing the card doesn't have the correct modern subtype of Aura and also puts the card into play before changing into a creature enchantment, so there is a period of time where the card is on the battlefield with full power being targeted by animate dead, the card also uses the now obsolete term bury. So we have to use the modern wording, even if it seems like a confusing way to say put this guy into play, it is the only way to generate game states that are in accordance with the comprehensive rules and have a similar effect as the original card. It is worth noting that a card like animate dead would never be created in the modern game precisely because of the 'wordyness' of it's rules text. So while a comprehensive rules set can result in some complicated situations, it more importantly provides a way to work through all possible conflicts and makes the overall experience richer for it.