My UNPOPULAR Opinion: Wargames Rules

I have just finished reformatting a popular set of rules (which I won't name) from PDF to a Word document which has taken me the better part of a few days. Why would I bother?

These rules (which I love) are published with a dreadful amount of blather. To be specific, blather is best defined as 'long-winded talk with no real substance'. A lot of this excessive verbiage is cute or witty or at least trying to be.

To be sure, it makes for pleasant enough reading when you first sit down to read through these rules and I do feel they convey the intent and approach of the rules writers. The problem for me is that once conveyed, they just take up space from thereon. Like an allegedly humerous bumper sticker or like any joke - how many times can anyone laugh at it before it becomes tiresome?

The additional problem with this style of writing is that it's laced throughout the whole text which pads the reading out significantly and unnecessarily. For me, it's got completely out of hand and that makes it a real issue. The whole release becomes less effective as a working set.

Like most of us (I imagine) I find myself flicking through and referring back to the rules during every game I play - quite a bit. There's not a quick reference guide or cheat sheet yet created which prevents a return to leafing through the pages of the rules proper. Not in my experience.

In my profession we put a lot of emphasise on what we term 'effective writing' with a focus on clarity and efficiency of expression. I have to say this is not in evidence when it comes to a lot of rules out there. On top of all that, they are also shot full of colour photographs and historical sidebars which more than doubles the volume and makes it even harder to search.

My reformatting has taken a rule set of a little more than 200 pages and condensed it to 80. I'm sure you will agree that's quite the difference. I have retained the formatting when possible and it largely conforms to a three column spread. In fact, my font is slightly larger than the original which for my ageing eyes makes life just that little bit easier.

I haven't yet gone back to edit the content but I feel that's next. There's much which is pitched at novice wargamers and is therefore superfluous to me. I have also ignored scenarios which generally take up space and are used infrequently at best. In fact, I've never used them myself.

I truly believe that more is actually less when it comes to this approach and layout of rules. Nevertheless, mine is the unpopular opinion and this is a trend which people really seem to have gone for ... regrettably for me.

Now that I have formatted the rules I've placed them in a ring-bind folder. I can divide sections, colour code them if needs be for ease of referral and even insert agreed house rules into the body of the rules - perhaps in a different colour or bold ... or something. I think I will highlight the specific rule segments for rapid referral whilst leaving the surrounding explanatory text.

The only thing I have lost is the indexing and I did do some obvious edit deletions when the text refers to page numbers which I knew wouldn't transcribe.

This is a rule set I use a lot and for multiple armies over multiple periods so it is well worth my investment in time and effort. I regret I can't share or upload them as I'm certain it would infringe copyright in some way or another.