“Talon Tuesdays” is an article series appearing on InsideGMT periodically on Tuesdays.  It features articles from the Talon development team regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.

Issue #12: The Rulebook

This isn’t my first board game project but it is my first time as a developer. Composing a rulebook is a real challenge. They serve two diametrically opposed purposes: 1) Quickly introduce you to the game and 2) Act as a reference when rules questions occur. The challenge is to get players into your game without overloading them with rules they may not need: rules for things that may occur at the fringe of gameplay.  Working on a rulebook can be tough. It’s this (figuratively) huge, living document. A slight change to one rule can ripple out and lead to changes in other rules. You really need to understand your game in order to express it to a total newbie. Fortunately, I earned a ton of valuable experience working under Oliver Upshaw on Space Empires: Close Encounters.  He was definitely a big positive influence on me as a developer.

Game designer Rob Daviau once said in an interview that the peak excitement when getting a new board game occurs before you open the box. Things can quickly peter out if the players get mired in a rulebook.  I don’t actually think I’m one of those people: I actually like reading rule books. I read rule books for games I don’t own or don’t even plan on owning just to get ideas about how these guys might be organizing their rules.

We were really lucky that Jim designed a really simple system to be Talon’s core. All of our core gameplay mechanics could be summarized in a few pages of rules and, once you have a game or two under your belt, you pretty much never had to reference the core rules again.  This was underscored by the fact that at DiceTowerCon we actually had a one sheet (front and back) that included the summarized rules for the entire game. Naturally, a few things were omitted, since Patrick and I would be refereeing the games and could answer questions. We just included enough info to get players’ feet wet. I almost included this sheet in the game box but our testers talked me out of it. It was better to just get to the meat of the rules. I may upload the sheet at a later date, but I don’t want to distract from the main rules.

The base game rules are less than 10 pages. On top of that we included two extended examples of play (see previous Talon Tuesday articles) since this is the kind of game that is sometimes best observed first, particularly if you’ve never played Star Fleet Battles. If you are a visual person and want to see the game played, that’s there, if you’d rather just read the rules, that’s there too. The Playbook also includes a Frequently Asked Questions section that our play testers assembled to help quickly answer questions that might come up during games.

So what’s in the Rulebook? Just the rules. All of the scenarios, game modes, story, and setup are in the Playbook.  This way we were able to keep the Rulebook short, to get you playing, and the Playbook long, because that’s where all the game content is.

Talon Rulebook

Please enjoy reading the rules; they were a labor of love. We hope they allow you to make an informed purchase if you are still on the fence. The Playbook will be posted in a couple weeks. If you live in the US and you’re like me, the rules will definitely give you something fun to read over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Previous Article in the Series: Talon Tuesday Issue #11: Needing Bigger Guns

Next Article in the Series: Talon Tuesday Issue #13: Empire War

Author: Bob Seifert