Hello and welcome to the very 139th edition of the Shut Up and Sit Down podcast, the podcast all about board games, board games and the people that love board games. And this week,

we've got an unusual treat for you. It might be a treat. It might not. If you don't listen to it,

you don't have to. It's completely up to you. For myself and Ava Foxfords,

hello, are going to be talking a little bit about board game manuals because I have basically designed one and it was a very, very difficult process.

And I now have some new feelings about the entire concept genre, what have you.

So we're going to be chatting a bit about what it's like to try and actually make a board game manual.

What I learned about board game manuals during the process of that and just talking a bit about board

game manuals in general. Doesn't that sound like the most exciting chat you've ever heard in

your life, Ava? Honestly, I'm so up for this. Like, this is a weird collaboration between

like old sorts of geekery that I haven't actually

got to indulge it in quite a while.

I used to do a load of like content design stuff which was basically like communicating

with words and pictures and images and stuff to for technical purposes and explaining purposes rather than like creative purposes and playful

purposes. Hieroglyphics effectively. Yeah. Yeah. I've got a bit of nerdery in me for like

infographics and orders of like orders of understanding and people how people process a page or a web page or a bit of information

that they've got and how you make it so that that stuff gets right into people's heads

without them really having to try that sounds exactly like what a board game manual is yeah well

that's it the board game manuals the thing about board games is that, like, the thing that you

want to be doing isn't immediately obvious from the components that you've got in front

of you unless you've got an incredibly well-designed game.

Like, there's a set of objects.

There's a box full of objects, and it needs to be turned into a game by you learning rules, learning processes, learning what you're going to do on a step by step basis through it.

...