Welcome to this Before and After, today we'll be covering Beneficiary, a game in which you play as prominent political figures in Nigeria sending emails to find US bank account holders in order to transfer inheritence money your dead father had left for you that is currently being held by the greedy US government. If you've ever opened spam mail, you'll get the joke. Beneficiary at the time of writing is currently participating in the BGG 2 player PnP contest, you can check it out here if you'd like to print and play the game.
The first time I sat down to help edit the rules, the designer, Weston, was working on rules version v0.2 while I was editing his first version of the rules so I wasn't able to see the fruit of my labor until rules v0.3. Today we'll be seeing how my suggestions changed his rulebook and show how much a rulebook can evolve to get better.
I'll provide pictures of some particularly good improvements to illustrate, but if you'd like to get a look at both rulebooks and get the most of this review, you can see v0.2 here and v0.3 here.
One of the biggest changes is how many pages were used, the rulebook has been condensed from three to four pages. This is awesome! It tells me that a bunch of unnecessary fluff that could be taken out was taken out, and everything was organized for brevity and clarity as well as possible. If you can trim a rulebook without destroying it it is always worth it to make your rulebook better, the smaller your rulebook is the less intimidating it will be to new players, and especially for his current PnP market it means printing less if you decide to print the rules which is a huge bonus.
Here is a perfect example. If you check out the second page you can see the sidebars. Not only did he improve his Token Explanation adding pictures and having clearer descriptions but also took two sidebars and made them fit into one while even adding MORE in the Token Chart. He used his space wisely.
On the topic of the sidebar, he also was sure to place the relevant information that needed to be checked right next to the sections of the rules for better reference.
You can also see in the section for Resolving Counties how he seriously cleared out the fluff and gave better structure to the paragraphs. He also rearranged things to make his rules have better flow. Originally he had a large chunk of text explaining everything the rules were about to teach before he went to teach them, it's better to show a process step by step in small chucks to let people slowly digest the information.
The first time I sat down to help edit the rules, the designer, Weston, was working on rules version v0.2 while I was editing his first version of the rules so I wasn't able to see the fruit of my labor until rules v0.3. Today we'll be seeing how my suggestions changed his rulebook and show how much a rulebook can evolve to get better.
I'll provide pictures of some particularly good improvements to illustrate, but if you'd like to get a look at both rulebooks and get the most of this review, you can see v0.2 here and v0.3 here.
One of the biggest changes is how many pages were used, the rulebook has been condensed from three to four pages. This is awesome! It tells me that a bunch of unnecessary fluff that could be taken out was taken out, and everything was organized for brevity and clarity as well as possible. If you can trim a rulebook without destroying it it is always worth it to make your rulebook better, the smaller your rulebook is the less intimidating it will be to new players, and especially for his current PnP market it means printing less if you decide to print the rules which is a huge bonus.
Here is a perfect example. If you check out the second page you can see the sidebars. Not only did he improve his Token Explanation adding pictures and having clearer descriptions but also took two sidebars and made them fit into one while even adding MORE in the Token Chart. He used his space wisely.
On the topic of the sidebar, he also was sure to place the relevant information that needed to be checked right next to the sections of the rules for better reference.
You can also see in the section for Resolving Counties how he seriously cleared out the fluff and gave better structure to the paragraphs. He also rearranged things to make his rules have better flow. Originally he had a large chunk of text explaining everything the rules were about to teach before he went to teach them, it's better to show a process step by step in small chucks to let people slowly digest the information.
Now to that third page, see that awesome setup for the OR there? That's really nice in the graphic design department, it keeps them separate and is much better then stacking them one on the other. It creates a real distinction in the choice you made unlike the previous rendition.
You can see overall how the the rulebook has a much tighter design, the pictures for explanations are better, the writing is much more brief and concise, and the layout is stronger. Plus, he now has room to put in a proper credits section something EVERY rulebook should have.
Now is this new version of the rulebooks perfect? No. If you'd like to see my comments on how this design can be improved you can see my post on BGG. A huge thanks again to Weston for allowing me to use his rules for a Before and After, maybe we'll get to do a Rulebook Review of his finalized rules here in the future when they are done!
Was there anything I missed? Do you have suggestions on how the rules could be improved? Let me know below! Also don't forget to like us on facebook, follow us on twitter, and join our mailing list to be sure to keep up with Rulebook Review.
You can see overall how the the rulebook has a much tighter design, the pictures for explanations are better, the writing is much more brief and concise, and the layout is stronger. Plus, he now has room to put in a proper credits section something EVERY rulebook should have.
Now is this new version of the rulebooks perfect? No. If you'd like to see my comments on how this design can be improved you can see my post on BGG. A huge thanks again to Weston for allowing me to use his rules for a Before and After, maybe we'll get to do a Rulebook Review of his finalized rules here in the future when they are done!
Was there anything I missed? Do you have suggestions on how the rules could be improved? Let me know below! Also don't forget to like us on facebook, follow us on twitter, and join our mailing list to be sure to keep up with Rulebook Review.