Every Board Game Rulebook Is Awful [pdf]

Summary: a 150-page graduate essay on the state of board game rulebooks, from the perspective of a board game hobbyist/technical writer. (Edit: the first 100-ish pages are the paper and the final 50-ish are a prototype rulebook for Stardew Valley.)

If you're the type of person who frequently hangs out in the BoardGameGeek forums, this paper may well appeal to you. i'm currently only about 10% of the way through, but this will certainly be my reading material for the next few evenings.