Lauren Woolsey: 00:09 Hello, welcome back to Playability, where we hold conversations at the crossroads of gameplay and accessibility. I'm your host Lauren Woolsey, and I'm here today with Dustin Schwartz to talk about his role as a rule book editor and game producer through the Rules Forge. Welcome Dustin. Dustin Schwartz: 00:26 Thanks Lauren. Appreciate you having me on. Lauren Woolsey: 00:29 So can you give our listeners a bit of a rundown in what you do for the community and the different services you provide for rule book editing? Dustin Schwartz: 00:39 Certainly! I tend to work on all facets of a rule book, really rule book editor is the term that most commonly gets used and so I, I tend to use that because people understand that, but I do a lot of rule book writing and rewriting. That's probably more what I do than, than strictly editing. And usually I, I'm involved in some capacity with whoever's doing the layout graphic design because that all ties together. So I like to kind of consider it a team effort with the writer, the editor, the graphic designer, all coming together to try and make that rule book the best teaching tool. It can be. Lauren Woolsey: 01:12 Perfect. What got you into that role? How did you find yourself in that position over time? Dustin Schwartz: 01:18 It was a couple of years into me being interested in how the board games. It wasn't that I necessarily was reading rule books and thinking, oh these are terrible. It's simply - got involved with the tabletop community on Twitter I think. As a matter of fact that's how I met you. [Lauren: yep!] And you know there's, there's great people there. And I think one time I saw like a kind of community call for help, almost like a crowd sourced quick edit of a rule book before it went to print. And I had some extra time that day. So I hopped on, gave some thoughts and the, the designer who had asked me to do that said that he thought my feedback was great. And so I thought maybe I could do this some more. And long story short, it went from there. And here I am 150 rule books later. I'm doing this full time. Lauren Woolsey: 02:03 Perfect. So before we get into more examples of what you've done, I think we should just go ahead and ask the question we ask all of our guests: what does accessibility mean to you? Dustin Schwartz: 02:14 Accessibility. Um, particularly with what I'm doing professionally with rule books. I think of accessibility in terms of really interrogating and questioning the assumptions that we are making about the person playing the game. And a lot of that comes down to if we're trying to make the rule set understandable, you got to think what are we asking this reader to understand about games that's sort of implicit in the language and how do we not introduce artificial barriers with how we teach the game or present the game visually or all those sorts of things. You know, if we can make it more accessible to more people than once do that. And a lot of that, I know you guys have done episodes relating to colorblind friendliness and you know more of the visual side, which I sometimes offer commentary on that if I'm working with a publisher, but generally that's not my lane in my lane is more how do we make the rules more accessible? How do we teach that in a way that, you know, people aren't left scratching their heads unnecessarily. So I think, you know, in terms of what I think about daily when it comes to that, that's more of the angle. Lauren Woolsey: 03:21 Yeah. That's excellent. What you noted about our previous episodes, a lot of game designers when - their first thought is when we ask about accessibility is colorblindness. 'Cause it's easy to recognize, it's easy to see when a game does it poorly. And it's easy to see when a game does it well. And I think not enough people realize that the rules are probably more important in a lot of ways to making a game accessible. I really liked your phrase interrogating our assumptions 'cause that's something that I think a lot of people don't recognize is just this kind of background bias that we have from living in the culture that we do. And you kind of have to actively fight that. Dustin Schwartz: 03:59 Yeah. And you know, you can't always take it back to ground zero that and that's where you do have to, like I say, question it and make sure that you're making intentional decisions with what you're doing. I think for example, of, you know, maybe a very complex Stefan Feld game coming out as the publisher or people working with the publisher, you got to understand that this game has a specific audience that is probably not the same audience for a game like 7 wonders or you know, games that are much more accessible. And so maybe you have to make certain assumptions about the knowledge that your player base has. But as often as possible, we try not to do that. But you know, occasionally and a game, for instance, if it's a game targeted at kind of Alpha level consumers, a big $80 a game that has all mechanisms stacked upon mechanisms. You probably don't go out of your way to explain what a hand of cards is certain, right? But maybe like title that is more geared at mainstream accessibility. Something's gonna show up on Barnes and Noble shelves or Target shelves. Maybe you do throw a little bit more effort at that so that you know you're not leaving people who haven't played anything but traditional card games and might wonder about that. You give them a little bit more to hang their hat on. Lauren Woolsey: 05:14 So you mentioned defining jargon that comes up. What would you say are some of the biggest improvements that can be made to rule books on like the first pass with accessibility in mind? So some of the simplest changes that can be made across the board. Dustin Schwartz: 05:30 Yeah, that's great. And this is something that I, that I tend to do when a rule book first comes across my desk, so to speak, is you kind of identify those quick and easy fixes that can be done. And if you have time or you know, the publisher has more resources to commit to more granular changes than, than certainly we go for that. But some of the big ones, the big hills that we tend to shave off, one of them has to do with simply making sure that you're using consistent terminology and it's maybe harder to do this than you think just because if a designer's writing a rule book and that's who tends to do the first pass, the stuff that arrives on my desk, you know, maybe in the, in the course of iterating their game, they've used five different terms for the same thing and Lauren Woolsey: 06:11 Sure, and it all makes sense to them. Dustin Schwartz: 06:12 It all makes sense to them and most of it's only existed in their head. And so you get five different slight variations on the same keyword. And of course that's not ideal. So if we can pull it back to a single keyword, that means all these things and we never vary from that. There's no need for synonyms when you're doing technical stuff like that. So that, that's a big one. Usually try and hit that one really early on. Another one, and this is sort of kind of straying into like a, a visual design lane. And it's not that I make prescriptions about the visual design, but I tend to ask a lot of questions about what the game does physically on the table. Because if you get someone who's explaining the game to you in person or by a video tutorial, they can do a lot of things. Dustin Schwartz: 06:56 There's a lot of affordances with visuals that you can't get necessarily from a text document. [Lauren: right.] You can be pointing to an area of the board and say these cards go here or place your token here and that lets you take this tile from over here and I want to know those things as I'm working on the rules because one of the things I find usually most lacking in kind of like Alpha level prototype rule books is that they don't do a great job of explaining that. And that's usually because designers don't put too much thought into it at that time because they understand a lot of those decisions will ultimately change or be finalized at the publisher level. But you know, knowing where stuff happens on the tabletop, you don't have the designer who can pop out of the, you know, the box and teach you the game. And not everybody is going to be the type of person to subscribe to tutorial channels on Youtube or, or even want to look them up if they're sitting down to learn the game at their table. The rule book should do the best job it can. And so that's usually what I ask. Lauren Woolsey: 07:56 The rule book is the first line of defense! Dustin Schwartz: 07:57 Oh, it sure is. And so I ask a lot of questions to the publisher and the designer making sure that I understand because if I don't understand as someone who's read countless rule books, if I don't quite understand how these elements of the tabletop are supposed to work together, how it all, you know, how the physical experience of the rules manifests on the tabletop then the reader probably won't either. And that's another area where we can do a lot of major improvements on kind of a first pass. Lauren Woolsey: 08:24 And then for the other side of things that we focused on at playability inclusion, what are some of the things that you've seen become part of the bigger conversation with rule book editing that have to do with making wording more inclusive? Dustin Schwartz: 08:38 Oh yeah, there's definitely things that can be done there. I've been a proponent of using singular they for a long time. [Lauren: excellent!] I think probably the first handful of rule books that I did that was kind of before I was aware of that conversation. So we did use gendered pronouns and then once I kind of saw that there isn't a need for that. And I realized, uh, the funny story is that I think I came to singular they simply from, from a different angle, I came to it from the angle of it's language that we use every day. And I think people who get up in arms about not using singular day, they don't realize that we use singular day every day in conversations. [Lauren: constantly, yeah.] Yeah. And, uh, because you know, we're, we're so used to following the prescribed rules of grammar and those sorts of things and we don't realize that oftentimes our everyday speech varies from those rules and we got along just fine. So maybe the rules don't need to be there. Dustin Schwartz: 09:27 So I came to singular they from there and then when I realized the benefits that it affords in terms of inclusiveness, making large proportion of your audience too, like they can see themselves reflected then of course there's no reason not to use it. So I've been using that for oh, a long time now in terms of text, which is usually what I work with. One of the other areas that I've tried to do, my small little part I suppose to, you know, help players see themselves reflected in a game is when examples crop up in a rule book, which happens, I'll oftentimes you just get run in the middle names that sound like your average white male I suppose. Like, oh Henry does this and then Joe does that and Bob and you know, of course they're just hypothetical. So that has made sense for a long time. But then I realized what if they're just hypotheticals why couldn't we use names that might reflect a more diverse audience as well? So I started doing that and that's kind of a fun thing too. Usually if I'm working on a rule book, I'll throw it out to Twitter and say, hey, give me four names that sound like a diverse cast of characters, just sat down to the table and are playing a game together. And um, so that's kind of a fun way that I crowdsource that element. Lauren Woolsey: 10:37 What's your favorite part of the rule book process? Dustin Schwartz: 10:41 Favorite part? Yeah, I think it's making sure that the book itself has a, a strong outline. That's my favorite part because oftentimes when I come to a rule book for the first time, it doesn't have a strong outline and it's the major challenge in understanding the game and what the game is trying to do. You got to get past the barrier of understanding how all these separate rules that are just, you know, conglomerated into a document where they all are supposed to hang on the skeleton of this rule book. So making sure that I always get a strong sense of satisfaction and once I've finished with the kind of the big first pass and have the outline in a shape that makes sense to me and you know, have run it past a couple of people to make sure it makes sense to them too. And there's, there's a strong sense of accomplishment when, when I feel like, okay, all these disparate rules, oftentimes there's a lot of them, they're all where they're supposed to be in a way that makes sense. So that's one of my favorite parts. Lauren Woolsey: 11:37 Nice. Have you ever in conversations back and forth with the game designer in the sort of questions that you asked to make sure that you understand the game, have you ever come across where, when you ask about, you know, why is this rule here or where does it fit in? Just because you want to put it in the right spot that it's designer realizes that maybe that rule doesn't make sense or shouldn't be there. Dustin Schwartz: 11:57 Yes, that's a great question and I enjoy doing that too. Maybe that's a dark horse candidate for one of my favorite things, kind of doing accidental game development while working on the rules. Because you're right, sometimes from an editor's angle, you see, okay you see a common thread about all of these rules and then here's this edge case that doesn't as written make sense. So sometimes I'll ask the designer, hey, is this really the intended effect because it runs counter to all of the others and you know, player assumption is going to be driven by those other ones. So they're probably going to misinterpret or misunderstand this effect or this card. And oftentimes there's like a, "Oh yeah, you're right" moment from the designer. Well we can just scratch that. Or maybe, you know, sometimes they'll ask me, how would we word that in a way that better makes sense even if it involves changing the effects slightly, [Lauren: right]. To make it more in line with, you know, what player expectations are going to be based on the rest of the rules. Lauren Woolsey: 12:46 Yeah. I mean if players are going to get a rule wrong consistently, then maybe that rural shouldn't really be how it was Dustin Schwartz: 12:52 Right, exactly right. Lauren Woolsey: 12:54 For listeners who are interested in your services down the line, where can they find you on social media? Dustin Schwartz: 13:02 Sure! I tend to spend a lot of time on Twitter. I love the board game community, both designers, publishers and just consumers like myself who are on Twitter talking about games and over there I'm at Dustin be shorts. My middle initial is B for Brian, so Dustin B Schwartz at Twitter and almost tend to spend a lot of time on Facebook. My website is therulesforge.com and that's got I suppose more technical details about what I do and and rates and that sort of thing. Lauren Woolsey: 13:27 Perfect. Yeah, we'll make sure to have that information in the section on our website. [Dustin: great!] Well thank you so much for having this conversation with me. It was really enlightening. Dustin Schwartz: 13:37 No, I appreciate you having me on. I love talking about these sorts of topics and my local game group, they get an ear full all the time just cause I like to talk about it. So it's fun to talk to others who also are, you know, have interests and yeah, and passions in that direction. Like, uh, you folks over at Playability. Lauren Woolsey: 13:57 Yeah! Well thanks again and have an excellent afternoon. [Dustin: All right. Will do.] For more information about the topics that we discussed in this episode and the links that we just mentioned, we'll have those in the About this Episode section on our website at playabilitypod dot com and if our listeners have any questions or comments that you'd like to share with us, please email us at playabilitypod at gmail dot com and find us on major social media platforms as at playability pod. Thanks again for listening. Play with a new perspective.