Asmadi Games - Chris
CREATOR
5 months ago
Project Update: Rulebook + Reference Cards: Proofreading
Greetings and happy Tuesday! Today we are pleased to share with you all the rulebook for Innovation Ultimate, along with the Reference Cards which will house the many points and achievements (plus forecast/secrets1) that you'll be accumulating in the years to come.
Rulebook Organization
This document is a rulebook for the entirety of Innovation Deluxe - both the base game and all its expansions. We've built it with the goal in mind of being useful both for folks teaching/learning the game, and also as a reference while playing. The rulebook is split into three parts:
Pages 1-4 (Introduction and Teaching/Learning)
In addition to basic introduction (and a "what's new" section), we've included a section each on how to learn the game for newcomers, and advice on how to teach the game for folks about to introduce their friends to Innovation. We hope these pages are useful to folks in those situations!
Pages 5-19 (Core Innovation Rules)
This is the bulk of the rulebook, and everything you need to play the base game. While these sections are largely devoted to base innovation, there are a handful of notes for expansion play that're in clearly marked boxes with expansion icons attached. We considered a variety of approaches ranging from "absolutely zero expansion content in the core rules" to "fully explain all expansion mechanics where relevant".
Ultimately (heh), we decided on the approach you see in the rulebook - trying to explain every bit in the core rules resulted in bloated pages and a lot of repetition in the expansion sections.
Importantly, there is a full spread (p12-13) listing all the Dogma Keywords (including the new junk, self-execute, and super-execute) that should be a good reference during play.
Pages 20-32 (Expansion Rules)
Five full expansions requires a lot of extra rules pages! This section is organized to begin with an overview of the expansions with one page(p21) devoted to general expansion rules that affect all expansion play (Bonuses, for example), and then 2-page spreads for each of the five expansions. Figures gets 3 pages, Unseen gets 1, reflecting their levels of complexity.
Plentiful Diagrams
If we squeezed, we probably could've trimmed a few pages off this rulebook, but we decided to err on the side of more examples, diagrams, images to break up the text. Rob has been hard at work over the past weeks translating all my notes and partial images into what we hope is a rulebook product you all will appreciate and enjoy using!
The PDFs!
Rulebook (PDF, 24 MB)
Reference Cards (PDF, 2 MB) (5 of each of the 2 reference cards will be included with game)
No restrictions on sharing info on these. As they're not finalized, we'd ask that you refrain from posting them to, say, the files section on BGG. Please wait for the finished docs for that sort of thing. This rulebook will be printed at 8.5"x11", and will be 32 pages. We've kept the font sizes at what we hope are reasonable levels.
The text on the Reference Cards is a bit smaller to fit more stuff on it - especially the expansions. You'll be happy to know that we did find a way to include all the special achievements on the backside of the expansion Reference Card!
Feedback
Commenting on the rulebook will be open from now until Sunday Night, June 9. What does Night mean? It means Monday morning when I wake up, I'll close the form.
Feedback Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfo48nbOqFa7D71M_V2bk51i_u-n1hSwhhcEAbg-KaOs1DfgA/viewform?usp=sf_link
You can submit via the form an individual issue, with page # and description, or use the long-form text box. You can submit the form multiple times. If you have questions, you can post here, or email me directly at [email protected].
What are we looking for? (in order of priority)
Rulebook Organization
This document is a rulebook for the entirety of Innovation Deluxe - both the base game and all its expansions. We've built it with the goal in mind of being useful both for folks teaching/learning the game, and also as a reference while playing. The rulebook is split into three parts:
Pages 1-4 (Introduction and Teaching/Learning)
In addition to basic introduction (and a "what's new" section), we've included a section each on how to learn the game for newcomers, and advice on how to teach the game for folks about to introduce their friends to Innovation. We hope these pages are useful to folks in those situations!
Pages 5-19 (Core Innovation Rules)
This is the bulk of the rulebook, and everything you need to play the base game. While these sections are largely devoted to base innovation, there are a handful of notes for expansion play that're in clearly marked boxes with expansion icons attached. We considered a variety of approaches ranging from "absolutely zero expansion content in the core rules" to "fully explain all expansion mechanics where relevant".
Ultimately (heh), we decided on the approach you see in the rulebook - trying to explain every bit in the core rules resulted in bloated pages and a lot of repetition in the expansion sections.
Importantly, there is a full spread (p12-13) listing all the Dogma Keywords (including the new junk, self-execute, and super-execute) that should be a good reference during play.
Pages 20-32 (Expansion Rules)
Five full expansions requires a lot of extra rules pages! This section is organized to begin with an overview of the expansions with one page(p21) devoted to general expansion rules that affect all expansion play (Bonuses, for example), and then 2-page spreads for each of the five expansions. Figures gets 3 pages, Unseen gets 1, reflecting their levels of complexity.
Plentiful Diagrams
If we squeezed, we probably could've trimmed a few pages off this rulebook, but we decided to err on the side of more examples, diagrams, images to break up the text. Rob has been hard at work over the past weeks translating all my notes and partial images into what we hope is a rulebook product you all will appreciate and enjoy using!
The PDFs!
Rulebook (PDF, 24 MB)
Reference Cards (PDF, 2 MB) (5 of each of the 2 reference cards will be included with game)
No restrictions on sharing info on these. As they're not finalized, we'd ask that you refrain from posting them to, say, the files section on BGG. Please wait for the finished docs for that sort of thing. This rulebook will be printed at 8.5"x11", and will be 32 pages. We've kept the font sizes at what we hope are reasonable levels.
The text on the Reference Cards is a bit smaller to fit more stuff on it - especially the expansions. You'll be happy to know that we did find a way to include all the special achievements on the backside of the expansion Reference Card!
Feedback
Commenting on the rulebook will be open from now until Sunday Night, June 9. What does Night mean? It means Monday morning when I wake up, I'll close the form.
Feedback Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfo48nbOqFa7D71M_V2bk51i_u-n1hSwhhcEAbg-KaOs1DfgA/viewform?usp=sf_link
You can submit via the form an individual issue, with page # and description, or use the long-form text box. You can submit the form multiple times. If you have questions, you can post here, or email me directly at [email protected].
What are we looking for? (in order of priority)
- Omissions: This is the absolute top priority. If there's a rule that is incomplete/missing information, or missing outright, we want to fix that! In particular, the Keywords spread should be complete but it's always possible we've forgotten something.
- Errors/Contradictions: If you think a rule is explained wrong, or if there're two sections in the rules that present what you consider to be contradictory explanations, this is useful to know! Especially true for rules that are stated far apart in the rulebook (expansion interactions, etc).
- Typos/Egregious Grammar: These will not ruin the rulebook if not found, but we'd like to avoid them!
- Small Grammar: Listen, we know, that, we, sometimes use,,, some more commas than other folks do in rulebooks. If something's clearly wrong, let us know, but a lot of it is stylistic - I tend to write with more pauses in mind. The aim is to help someone reading it out loud to others. What I do not want is a feedback that is 87 commas that you would remove from the rulebook, and 36 that you would add, plus a small cadre of 5 Top Locations For Semicolons.
- Confusion: If something in the rulebook confuses you, visually or textually, let us know!
What are we not looking for:
- Game Balance Advice: This ship has sailed, and it has drawn and melded a 1. Unless you come to the realization that, due to a rule as written in the book, something is outright broken - we're not looking to change any cards/rules at this time.
- Re-naming: We are happy with what all the keywords and expansions are called. Part of the unique charm of Innovation for me has always been that it uses unique words. Dogma, Meld, Splay - when I hear those words, I pretty much immediately think of this game. New keywords we're using like Parley, Auspice, Junk - they are fun, and we like them :)
Overall, we thank everyone for all the effort they put in to help out the game (it's this game!) they love. We received a lot of feedback on the cards, and were able to make many changes based on the things folks shared. Not every suggestion was taken, but we read through pretty much everything that was sent in. I apologize if I didn't get to send a direct reply - moving was hectic and soaked up a LOT of time over the past 3 months. We're now all moved in and happy with the new place!
We are very much looking forward to getting Innovation Ultimate to print and out to you all, this editing is one of the last hurdles to clear to press the print button. Hurray!
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