Explaining made up card game
In my book I've made up a card game where I've already thought out the rules. Now I want some of the characters playing this game.
My questions are:
- Should the reader know the rules?
- If I want to explain these rules, where is better to do so, within the story or in some kind of Appendix at the end of the book?
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Iain M Banks "The Player Of Games" is the gold standard for me on this question. The game and its rules are the focus of the whole story, but only as much info as is needed to follow the plot is given to the reader.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/40310. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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The question largely depends on whether the game and its particular rules are important to the story or not.
Take, for example, Quidditch, from the Harry Potter series. The game constitutes a major story element in the first six books, and the key to a plot coupon in the seventh. So much story-time is devoted to it, that the readers need to understand what's going on. Since the rules need to be explained, they are explained within the story, when a character teaches the MC how to play.
A different example: 3D chess, in Star Trek, the Original Series. Spock is seen playing more than once - against, Kirk, against a computer etc. But it's not a major story element. It merely serves to illustrate that Spock is smart, and that in the age of space people play chess in 3D (which is a nice worldbuilding element - chess was made to simulate battle, and in that setting battles would be fought in space - in 3D). The exact rules of the game are unimportant. Since they're not important, they're never explained (and in fact never got invented in the first place).
Now, your card game - are the specific rules important to the story? Do elements of the story hinge on the particular rules? Then explain the rules, in-story. Is it that only some particular elements need to be understood (there's bluffing and money changes hands, for example)? Then mention only those elements - like chess in the Star Trek example. Is the particular game not important at all, it's just that you want a made-up game for your made-up world, and it's in fact Poker for all intents and purposes? Then don't mention rules at all, just say your characters are playing [InsertGameNameHere].
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