W. Eric Martin (WEM) ran the BoardGameGeek (BGG) news section for 15 years. Earlier this year, he launched his own outlet¹ called Board Game Beat. In between his signature game release updates, he writes entertaining and insightful analyses of the broader hobby. In one of his recent articles 🗄️, he proposed the Rules Ratio. The title invites us to geek out about it, so geek out we shall! 🤓

What is the Rules Ratio?

The basic idea behind the Rules Ratio is to look at how many rules questions a game generates. It stands to reason that a game with clear concepts and well-written instructions will leave players less confused than a poorly written rulebook. BGG offers a direct proxy for number of rules questions via its forums. Every game listing has a variety of such forums attached, including one titled Rules. Depending on the game, this particular forum might be the busiest, or completely void of any traffic. WEM proposes defining the Rules Ratio² (RR) as the share of Rules threads³ among all forum threads: