Hermanni Karppela Interview

Hello, everyone! If you are still interested and want to acquire Heroes of Might & Magic III: The Board Game from the previous campaign faster, there are only a few hours left before we close the pledge manager for legacy orders.

Now, let’s return to the topic of this blog. We are excited to introduce Hermanni Karppela, the author of the fan-made Revised Rulebook, a technical writer, and the co-writer of HOMM: The Board Game Introduction Supplement:

https://archon-studio.com/files/manuals/homm/ENG%20HoMM%20-%20Rulebook%20Supplement%20-%20WEB_EN.pdf

as well as the Stronghold, Conflux, and Cove Expansion mission books. We asked him many questions, and you can find his answers below. We hope this will help you get to know him better.

Archon: Can you tell me about your background and how you became a technical writer for board games?

Hermanni Karppela: Hi, my name is Hermanni and I live in Joensuu, Finland. I’m 32 years old and live with two rascally cats, and my not-as-rascally fiancé.

I play board games every week and want to constantly learn new games. I'm interested in discovering new clever mechanisms and seeing how board game designs keep developing over the years. I naturally have to read, understand and research tons of different sets of rules. It's a realm where teaching yourself something new is fascinating. I also love to teach games to other people.

I studied English translation at the University of Eastern Finland, and for my Master’s Thesis I analyzed the rulebook of a game called Arena: Gladiator League. This was the jumping point for developing interest in trying my hand at writing rules myself. I had deliberately chosen a game where I’d personally observed that many of the rule descriptions were problematic (in order to produce more varied and interesting research results). This incubated the idea that maybe I’d be able to do a better job at it.

Reading the Heroes III rulebook made me snap. With all due respect I wasn’t incredibly happy with it, so I started to write it again from scratch. This led to creating the Rewrite Project which is a complete rewrite of the whole rulebook. The project quickly gathered steam with many contributors and a team formed around its further development. Writing and iterating on it taught me a whole lot about this particular aspect of board game design. It really isn’t as easy as it might look.

What is your process for understanding the gameplay and mechanics before starting to write the rulebook?

The processes for learning a game and then writing about it or teaching it to someone else are very similar. First, you’ll want to understand the goal of the players. In most games you are usually either gathering points, trying to reach a goal space, or perhaps trying to have another person try to guess the word that you’re thinking of. Understanding this goal is imperative, as everything concerning the rest of the game builds around it.

Everything else about the game should then be broken into smaller chunks. Usually, you’ll have a number of building blocks that construct the flow of the game, such as rounds, turns, and actions. These typically have a hierarchy (a round might consist of everyone taking a turn, during which they take a number of actions). Once you’ve understood the game’s structure it’s easier to shift into the smaller details that make up that particular game, such as what all the possible actions you can take are.

How do you balance technical accuracy with readability for a broad audience?

The expected target audience of a game could slightly shift my usage of language, but rules explanations should always be similarly straightforward. A simple family game will naturally have short and easy to understand rules where you don’t need to use any modern board game terminology. If it’s a complex game then I’ll be more willing to also include more jargon (such as deckbuilding or worker placement).

There are some games which attempt to lighten up the rules explanations by injecting humor (such as Munchkin and Galaxy Trucker). I don’t have much love for this when it gets in the way of telling me how the game works. It’s much better to place such remarks at points which do not interrupt the text body (the beginning, the end, or as part of a picture’s caption).

What tools or software do you typically use when creating a rulebook?

For the Rewrite Project for Heroes III I learned a markup language called LaTeX. It’s free to use and allows you to place and manipulate elements such as images and paragraphs in a more deterministic environment when compared to, say, Microsoft Word. LaTeX allowed us to both work on the text body and the visuals at the same time. To my understanding the industry standard is to work on a plain text version with the visuals being added afterwards in Adobe Illustrator (or similar software).

How do you handle incorporating feedback from playtesters or developers into the rulebook?

Feedback for the Heroes III Rewrite was easy to process near the beginning since most of it consisted of mistakes, simple clarifications, and missing rules. So far I’ve found that people usually have genuine criticisms when discussing how to improve a rulebook. When it comes to game design itself, to me it seems that people are usually good at identifying problems with a game’s design, but aren’t always sure about the cause or how to fix it. A misplaced rule is much easier to point out.

What challenges have you faced when explaining complex game mechanics in a simple and engaging way?

People will find ways to misinterpret any rule, even if it’s very simple in practice. For Heroes III I think the one to take the cake would be how a unit gains a defense token. If a player’s unit doesn’t attack, it can instead gain one of these tokens until its next activation and it cannot gain another one immediately afterwards. That’s basically all there is to it. Simple rules can become confusing when any kind of exceptions or special circumstances are introduced. For example, does anything change if a ranged unit wants to defend?

Complex rules can be difficult to teach since they will inherently likely contain many such relationships between different parts of the game. You usually want to break them down into small individual pieces before finally explaining how everything interacts with each other. This is effective both in-person and from the perspective of writing rules. Vlaada Chvátil’s games such as the aforementioned Galaxy Trucker tend to hide all kinds of small rules that are easy to forget initially. Such rules always have strong ties to the game’s theme however, which make them easier to remember. It can be correct to sometimes explain that a rule represents something thematically to make it more memorable.

Can you share an example of a section that was particularly difficult to write and how you overcame it?

The combat section in the Rewrite Project for Heroes III was hard to write and it’s one of the major sections that I think could still be somewhat improved. The combat in this game isn’t overly complicated, mostly consisting of activating and then attacking with your units in order, but there are many small details surrounding it that can make it cumbersome to adequately cover effectively. How does combat start? How do you set it up? What happens during a combat round and what can you do besides just activating units? When does it end and what happens then? Oh, and also combats which take place in towns can have these wall cards which have their own rules.

All of these nuggets of information had to be broken down into concise subsections. These attempt to explain only the rules relevant to a given subheading. The fact that we can use hyperlinks within the LaTeX document to refer to other sections and rules helped here immensely. We created examples with pictures that effectively cover multiple different situations.

What strategies do you use to ensure that instructions are clear and prevent player confusion?

Use direct and simple language as much as possible when explaining a rule. Exceptions and special cases should then be explained outside of that original rule. This is the same method that you’d use when teaching a game in-person.

How do you approach the visual layout and formatting of the rulebook to aid comprehension?

The structure of any rulebook should follow the formula to which everyone is used to by now. There’s an introduction, followed by a component list, set up instructions, main rules explanations and finally any appendices such as a list of symbols in the game. Visually you’ll want to keep the reader interested with the use of art and pictures without sacrificing readability. Please use a standard font for rules explanations. A thematic old timey cursive font might be thematic for a fantasy game but if I can’t read it then I’ll give up. Sections and the order of paragraphs (left side to right side, top to bottom etc.) should be clear. Examples of gameplay should be clearly labeled as such. I enjoy it if the rulebook tells me that specific sections (examples, exceptions, optional rules etc.) are clearly indicated by a specific color of background for example.

What are some common pitfalls you try to avoid when writing rulebooks?

The first draft of the Rewrite Project was horrible. The biggest pitfall there was that I’d over explain everything that I knew about a specific rule, including niche situations that would be much better answered by a FAQ or a clarifications section. These days it’s common to see that symbols, specific card interactions etc. are only explained at the back of a rulebook or on reminder cards. These strategies allow you to move the information clutter somewhere else.

How do you test the effectiveness of the rulebook before the game goes to print?

The correct method for this is so called blind testing. People who you don’t know (and aren’t directly meeting) are provided the game and its rules and are tasked with reading them and playing the game. The materials for my Thesis were gathered in a similar manner.

What role does collaboration play in your process, and who are the key stakeholders you work with?

The Rewrite Project would have crashed and burned without all the help from the community. I would have run out of steam immediately if I didn’t follow their constant suggestions for improvements. I’d like to especially thank Andrzej Wiącek for suggesting and subsequently teaching me the use of LaTeX and GitHub (and his constant involvement in further developments of the project’s repository). The project has also been translated into multiple languages by some very talented people from the community which is just mind blowing.

How do you keep the rulebook engaging while maintaining a professional tone?

Engagement can be generated in a number of ways. The overall visuals and an interesting introductory blurb are a good start. I’d prefer that the rules explanations themselves are wholly “dry and professional”, but this doesn’t mean that they can’t engage the reader. A reader that’s interested in learning a new game should be engaged by default. A well designed game will then keep that engagement as the reader discovers how the different elements of the game combine. I love if a game has me thinking “oh that’s smart” when I start to see its mechanical depth.

What considerations do you make for translating the rulebook into other languages?

Overall, a game’s design plays strongly into how easy it is to translate. If none of the components contain any language, then you only need to translate the rulebook. The translation process becomes easier by using common idiomatic expressions which should have equivalents in any given language. In English we always talk about drawing and discarding cards, for example. In Arena: Gladiator League a less idiomatic expression “throw away onto the discard pile” was used instead of just instructing to discard a card.

In your opinion, what makes a great board game rulebook stand out from the rest?

There are two problems that I’d like to see the rulebook solve. The first problem is that it can be difficult to imagine how the game plays from text alone. You need to use pictures to show examples of playing the game. I can forgive ambiguous rule descriptions if these examples show me exactly how the game is supposed to work. Secondly, rules need to be able to be found quickly during play. If I want to find what triggers the end of a game for example I’d hopefully find it under a heading called “game end” or such.

Some publishers (mainly Fantasy Flight) split their rulebooks into two halves. The first is a “learn to play” with many pictures and a walkthrough for setting up and playing your first game. The second is a “rules reference” that’s just a list of all the rules in alphabetical order. I think this is a fantastic approach to solve both problems. It can still be difficult to place every rule into a spot where you imagine most people would find them, though. Flipping through multiple books also isn’t much fun.

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We know we’re repeating ourselves, but if you’re still interested in receiving the game faster, there are only a few hours left before the pledge manager for legacy orders closes. However, it’s not the end—the pledge manager will remain open until March 1. And remember, not all heroes wear capes! 

Pledge Manager:

https://gamefound.com/en/projects/archon-studio/heroes-of-might--magic-iii-the-board-game---stronghold-conflux--cove-expansion