I faintly remember playing games as a kid where we encountered edge cases that had to be house-ruled, or lost the game manuals and had to make entire rules up as we went along.
I’d tell you about a recent thunkit that turned up in one of my recently published games, but I’m too embarrassed to mention it. Even if we say "pretty pretty please." We won't tell. I promise.
I'm currently writing two chapters in a rule book and dealing with playtester feedback; a lot of the comments are minor catches but a number fall squarely into the "thunkit" category or at least the "meant it" band of needing to be clearer so the meaning isn't obscured.
There's also the "reverse playtester thunkit" where the testers suggest adding something, only to find its already there and they missed it (had someone put a fair amount of text into explaing why an example was wrong, only to have to point out that if they'd read a rule in preceding paragraph the example was correct; I still added a clarrification though)
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This is why you need both editors AND playtesters. between both you catch 95% of the thunkits.
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I’d tell you about a recent thunkit that turned up in one of my recently published games, but I’m too embarrassed to mention it.
Even if we say "pretty pretty please."
We won't tell. I promise.
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There's also the "reverse playtester thunkit" where the testers suggest adding something, only to find its already there and they missed it (had someone put a fair amount of text into explaing why an example was wrong, only to have to point out that if they'd read a rule in preceding paragraph the example was correct; I still added a clarrification though)
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