Writing rules- its educational!

 I have said it before and I will no doubt say it again, writing rules shows up weaknesses in my knowledge!  Even if all that I intend is to amend existing sets by adding a few house rules I find that what I thought I knew is either slightly wrong or more often really badly wrong.  To get a proper feel for a period means diving deep into the nitty gritty details of the time, place and tactics and weapon technology.  I don't use everything I learn, as to me part of the rule writing process is to decide what to leave out as much as it is to decide what to include.

Its partly about the the level the rules are pitched at.  Grand tactical level is not the place to detail all the steps of loading a musket, rather its about the overall impact of a battalia of foot shooting, while a skirmish set will be interested in how long it takes to reload but still isn't that interested in all of the steps required.  But in both cases knowing that detail can help  make the relevant rules feel right.

Another issue is deciding which command decisions you want the players to focus on.  No set of rules will ever focus on every decision because every man in the fight is making decisions of some sort at some point in the fight.  Some of these we can merge into a sort of herd mentality test, although we call it a morale or a reaction test, others are the individual decisions of key men.  When does the battalia use salvee fire rather than firing by ranks, when does it move to close combat, does it pursue afterwards.  These are the decisions of single officers.  Further up the chain of command the decisions change again to when do I withdraw a battered battalia or brigade and replace with fresh troops.  Understanding who takes these decisions helps focus a player on a specific level in the command structure.  

Ultimately a decision has to be made on which aspect of command the game is going to focus upon and which are going to be abstracted or left out entirely.  An example is that in most wars logistics are vital and take up a huge part of a General's high level decision making.  Yet this rarely features in table top rules, not just because the key decisions are made before the armies clash, but mainly because it's boring!  I have never seen any rules which consider if the troops had a decent breakfast on the morning of battle or a good slug of rum before going forward into combat.  We just assume that some one somewhere is dealing with this stuff.  It's part of the playability to accuracy to fun trade off that has to be considered.

On top of all of that there is the actual discipline, or possibly in my case lack of discipline, in writing up the rules.  How do they flow, are they in a logical order, will people be able to find the key information easily.  There is the worry that what I will actually achieve will be a good, workable set that are hidden behind poor layout and phrasing or poor explanations.  Oh and learning all the techie stuff needed to format a 'Word' document so the version on the page looks like the one in my head.

Not how I want my rules to read

 Rules creation and writing forces me to challenge what I know, to check it against reality and to change my views.  This is an additional bonus beyond getting a final set that cover the things I think are important in the game.  Like I said, it's educational.