Calendra, Part #25: Rule Book, Take Three!

Calendra - Rule Book

❖ Version History ❖

24th of May, 2022
I’m not sure how many times I’m going to have to say it before I feel justified, but man, rule books suck to write. I think by this point in the month, I have gone rightfully insane… like truly, a total loss of sanity. Between rereading every single letter of every single word that I have written, changing around elements, changing them back, changing them again, and just feeling like there is always something lurking in the background that feels to be wrong… I’ve really lost a bit of my well being, and some sleep too.

When it comes to the final product though, I care so much about making absolutely sure that there is nothing left to fix… or as close as possible even if I don’t like it. By now there isn’t even that much that I think needs to be changed, but I cannot rest until it is as perfect as I can make it. So, lets do just like we did last time and compare the covers to start our talk about where we are going today in the Design Journal:

  • Iteration #1
  • Iteration #2
  • Iteration #3

Upon first glance, you can probably once again identify some aspects of the newest design that have changed:

❖ The Celtic knot border has been completely removed from the edges to provide additional border space for more words and images in the rules themselves.

❖ There has been a texture added into the background of the image to make more of the graphics pop out a bit without taking away too much from text legibility.

❖ Certain areas have gotten more of a color-lightened highlight than they had previously.

❖ And there are already even less words, even in just the title page.

Now, each of these bullet points of edits has had an impact on every page of the design. On the cover pages these details are the obvious ones to study. When it comes to the other pages in the book though, the changes are far more subtle (mostly wording or some simple graphical changes). As a result, to even compare the old and new editions of the book is a little more challenging than our previous major edit. None-the-less, I think it is neat to compare the details of these pages, and unlike the other individual cards in the game (which I prefer not to post artwork of publicly everywhere), the rule book will inevitably be a public file for anyone to investigate, so lets take this opportunity to observe all the minor changes!

  • Iteration #2, Page: 1
  • Iteration #3, Page: 1
As you can see with the first page, there is good deal of extra space on the page layout now that the Celtic knot has been removed from the edges. This leaves more space on the page to give graphics a little bit of breathing room, and makes the page feel both less cramped and less cluttered even though it is pretty nearly the same amount of information on the page.

  • Iteration #2, Page: 2
  • Iteration #3, Page: 2
With this second page, I found that it was easier to not try and describe how players should sit at a table, but rather focus on how their place at the table should be set up. Describing the look of the table is much more of a visual learner process, which will be covered when it comes to the videography process of the rule book later on. Once again with this page, the extra space around the edges of the page allows there to essentially be the same amount of text on a much more even spread, letting the eyes rest while reading.

The most important change to this page is the fact that it is now also treated like a table of contents, where the player can identify what page they need at any point in the rules by referencing the page numbers on the bottom half of the page.

  • Iteration #2, Page: 3
  • Iteration #3, Page: 3
Now this page was an interesting change. For a very very long time I had felt that the order of learning in the rule book made it so that one must understand the cards before they understand the field of play… but after extensive attempts to explain the rules, I found that it is mentally easiest for the player to identify where cards are kept during setup and where cards are played when game begins first. This gives them a frame of reference for when we begin talking about the layout of the cards, which is then also the focal topic of the rest of the book from that point forward. (This change also turned out to be really useful when it came to organizing the page numbers in a logical way for the previous page’s table of contents layout).

  • Iteration #2, Page: 4
  • Iteration #3, Page: 4
The details of this page are almost entirely unchanged. The most relevant element to this page’s layout is that the additional space on the page allowed the graphics to be spread out a bit more evenly to help prevent that cramped feeling from the original design.

  • Iteration #2, Page: 5
  • Iteration #3, Page: 5
This page is also mostly the same from the previous design with expanded borders… but there are a couple of wording changes that took place on this card that are very important. The language used is more clear, and the direction of how one interprets those sentences is more organized than it used to be.

  • Iteration #2, Page: 6
  • Iteration #3, Page: 6
This page has one really important difference in the language used. It is specifically how the last card ability is titled and described. Previously, the title of this ability was “score-enhancing” which was a bit misleading, as there are some abilities (like that of the Plague or the Mist) which actually decay the value of other cards rather than ‘enhance’ them. This lead to a lot of unnecessary confusion that was fairly easy to reword and solve that issue.

  • Iteration #2, Page: 7
  • Iteration #3, Page: 7
The back page has had a pretty dramatic reformatting. In the previous iteration of the book, I had been keeping the ‘Special Thanks’ little category because I thought it looked nice and I didn’t honestly have something better to fill that 2″ space that had any relevance to the rules. But then something really crazy happened.

One night in the middle of the past month we had scheduled an evening for play testing to just recap the conversation about the rule book for new players to see how people were faring with it. Unfortunately we had someone cancel at the last minute, so we decided to try playing the game with a group of three by trying to rebalance the deck with one less season in it. Though it took a little bit of tweaking over a week or two to find the right balance, the three player format was actually surprisingly well received and made for an absolutely brutal strategy in the gameplay that we wanted to foster. Unfortunately it isn’t as functional as a 2 player game, but long story short, the fact that a three player format was even possible instantly found itself as a critical rule to include in the final design.

At long last, I finally finish updating each and every single element of the rule book to the very best of my ability. I think that the layout is concise, informative, and clear. It gives exactly the information needed to get started in the game, and it gives us the QR code outlet to provide players with an even greater wealth of potential helpful information if so needed.

The final product is also visually satisfying and has the fully professional look that I have sought ever since beginning this rule writing project nearly two entire years ago. At this point I clock out for the day and walk away from the computer, telling myself that I am not allowed to look at it again for any reason for a whole week… just to make sure that I have a clear mind and fresh pallet perspective when I come back to it later. In doing this, I do return and have almost nothing that I am disappointed about, and so we conclude the epic journey of hammering the rules of Calendra down for life.

And so also concludes the process of designing new graphical content for Calendra. At this moment we are very nearly production ready, and it is high time that we begin the brutal conversations that go into the final boss: Manufacturing. Stay tuned for some more, next time on the Libarium Games Design Journal!

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