Living Rules : Definition

Letter from Isaac Newton to Henry Oldenburg, dated 24 October 1676. — Letter from Isaac Newton to Leibniz (via Henry Oldenburg), 1676.

The current official version of the rules to a game, generally maintained and made freely available online, in electronic form, by the publisher or the designer, and that is continually updated to include all errata and clarifications.

The term “living document”, or “dynamic document”, has become commonplace since various technologies and online collaborative platforms have allowed real-time sharing and updating of a single document. “Living rules” are merely an extension of the same concept as well as of the same term.

Although it makes sense for living card games to have living rules, board wargame publisher GMT Games is often credited for being the first to come up with the term, somewhere in the 1990’s. Several publishers, such as Wizards of the Coast, have since adopted it.

I think living rules are good. No matter how often a designer /developer works on a game and no matter how often it’s playtested, no game survives contact with the public. There will always be questions to be asked and clarifications are sometimes needed.Doug Iverson

Living rules have a brother in computer games: online patches. On one hand, the ability to patch a game is good because it’s better than having a game that crashes if a certain sequence occurs, or if a multiplayer game’s lack of balance is revealed. However, the ability to patch reduces the incentive to test before.Michael Keller

The country is governed by a set of living rules.JPotter

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That’s how Isaac Newton summarizes, in his answer to a question by his rival Leibniz, the method for calculus he was working on: by using an anagram to make it undecipherable (which did not prevent Leibniz from coming up with his own method). It may be hard to believe in our present age where knowledge is shared openly and scientific publications abound, but for centuries scientists were reluctant to share and publicize their work. And when they had to, they resorted to all kinds of coded languages to protect it from being disseminated or even claimed by third parties.

It is out of the same fear for their intellectual property that some game designers and publishers are opposed to making available online (for free or not) the rules of their games.

But it is among gamers that living rules have their most fervent detractors. That such a practice can sometimes be a cop-out for doomed projects led by incompetent people is one thing. But some gamers see living rules as nothing short of some kind of plot conceived by negligent publishers. Here’s how it goes: instead of putting in the time and effort required to test and revise the rules to a game, those unscrupulous publishers would rather sell it as is, unfinished, and abuse their loyal and paying customers by using them as playtesters. Only to update the living version of the rules afterward, as problems and errors are reported.

A few other gamers are vexed that the rules they’ve come to master could change, just like that, at any given moment. Especially since such changes can sometimes incur additional costs (for buying upgrade kits for example).

But on the whole, it is safe to say that the gaming community sees many advantages to living rules.

Beyond reviews, unboxings, playthroughs or AARs, free access to the rules are ideal to form a clear opinion of a game that we consider buying, to study a game that’s out of print, or simply to check the translation against the original text.
A unique electronic document that includes and identifies all errata and clarifications is much better than having to manage multiple concurrent paper versions of static rules, and makes much easier the life of publishers and gamers alike.
Rules that are exposed to a large number of gamers inevitably get refined over time and offer a more streamlined gameplay.

The free and open access to knowledge we’ve come to enjoy is certainly not the only aspect of our times that would bewilder 17th-century scientists. But it is a sure sign that living rules are in sync with the times and that they are here to stay.