Designing a board game rulebook – It is harder than you would think

Abstract: This thesis has explored how to create a board game rulebook, for the board game Curators, in order to facilitate learning the rules as well as reminding players of the rules. This was done via research through design. The design of a rulebook incorporates many parts of design theory, from layout and typography to the use of color, gestalt principles, and images. All these were combined with knowledge about how existing rulebooks convey rules and the way board gamers use rulebooks, gained through the pre-study, in order to create a rulebook for the coming board game Curators. The analysis of this study shows that the resulting rulebook was successful in both teaching the game and helping players look up rules, though improvements could still be made to make it better. It was concluded that the use of many iterations of designing and testing is ideal for creating a rulebook with as few issues as possible.