INCLUDES

* PDF - Dissertation - Comprehensibility of Game Rulebooks: Perspectives from a Community of Practice, 251 pages

* PDF - Research Supplement - Comprehensibility Features of Rulebooks, 200 pages

* PDF - Performance List - Comprehensibility Features of Rulebooks, 8 pages

A practical document that presents reviewed literature recommendations on document design and lists user data collected from 50 different Boardgamegeek public forum threads dated from 2006 to 2018. The supplement was created with writers and editors of game rulebooks in mind who are interested in surveying recommendations from authors on writing procedures and reviewing authentic feedback from 541 BGG users who made approximately 2054 coded comments on what they like and dislike about rulebooks.

The intended audience of the dissertation are scholars and rulebook writers/editors who want a detailed description of the research methods used to develop the study's findings on rulebook comprehensibility. Results from the qualitative study are contextually framed within a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) consisting of members within the traditional board and card game community. The findings were developed through constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014) and Delphi survey methodology (Dalkey, 1969) in response to these two research questions: (1) As a community of practice made up of traditional game players and professionals, what are their recommendations on comprehensible rulebook features to meet readers’ needs? (2) In what ways do published rulebooks reflect these identified rulebook comprehensibility features. Approximately 50 pages of the dissertation's Chapter 5 detail evaluation results of eight published rulebooks using the performance list. Emerging findings are presented that were developed from this evaluation that include Power Features and Predicting Intended Audience Satisfaction with Rulebook Comprehensibility Score. Approximately 75 pages of Chapter 4 detail the development of the performance list and present a major finding for further exploration - Interdependence of Referencing to Support Readers’ Memory.