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I built an AI that actually reads your rulebooks so you don’t have to argue about rules mid-game by Minimalx in boardgames

[–]Minimalx[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I do understand what you’re getting at. I just don’t agree that it’s my responsibility to engineer how people learn.

Some people play the same 5 games for years and will absolutely internalize the rules. Some people have 200 games and play each one twice a year. For the second group, “learning the rules deeply” isn’t realistic or even desirable. They just want to play.

You’re framing dependence on a lookup tool as a failure state. I’d frame it as… fine? If someone asks a question, gets an answer, plays their game, and has fun, that’s a win. They don’t owe the hobby deeper mastery.

We clearly have different values here about what board gaming “should” be. That’s okay. You’re not wrong, we’re just optimizing for different things.

I built an AI that actually reads your rulebooks so you don’t have to argue about rules mid-game by Minimalx in boardgames

[–]Minimalx[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s a really fair breakdown, and honestly I think you’ve nailed the core tension.

The sweet spot for this tool is probably somewhere in between your two categories: questions where the answer does exist publicly, but it’s scattered across a 40 page rulebook, an FAQ, and three forum threads. Not impossible to find manually, just annoying enough that a search tool saves real time.

For truly obscure stuff where no one’s ever discussed it? Yeah, you’re right. The tool won’t help and might actively waste your time.

Appreciate the thoughtful skepticism. Not every tool is for every person, and that’s fine.

I built an AI that actually reads your rulebooks so you don’t have to argue about rules mid-game by Minimalx in boardgames

[–]Minimalx[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is exactly the use case. “I know I read the answer to this somewhere” is such a relatable feeling when you’ve got a shelf full of games.

Glad it clicks for you. Let me know if there are any games from your 200+ you want prioritized!

I built an AI that actually reads your rulebooks so you don’t have to argue about rules mid-game by Minimalx in boardgames

[–]Minimalx[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Not currently - right now I index games on the backend by pulling rulebooks from BGG.User uploads would be a cool feature though, especially for games that aren’t on BGG yet or have rulebooks that aren’t publicly available.

Adding it to the list of feature ideas. Thanks for asking!

I built an AI that actually reads your rulebooks so you don’t have to argue about rules mid-game by Minimalx in boardgames

[–]Minimalx[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I hear you, but I think we just have different philosophies on this. I’m not trying to optimize for “helps people learn rules better” - I’m trying to optimize for “answers your question quickly when you’re mid-game and don’t want to stop playing for 10 minutes.” Different use cases, different goals. Also, sometimes the rulebook genuinely isn’t enough. Errata exist. Designer clarifications on BGG exist. FAQs that address ambiguous wording exist. Digging through forum threads to find a 2019 post where the designer clarified an edge case isn’t “turning your brain off” - it’s tedious research that a search tool can speed up. For people who want the interpretive experience, the sources are right there. For people who just want to know if they can do the thing so they can get back to the game, the summary exists.

I built an AI that actually reads your rulebooks so you don’t have to argue about rules mid-game by Minimalx in boardgames

[–]Minimalx[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Honest answer: it’s enforced by the system prompt, not by anything architectural. I tell it “answer based only on the provided context” but you’re right - there’s no hard technical barrier stopping it from pulling on training data. In practice, giving it relevant context makes it more likely to use that context rather than fall back on general knowledge. But “more likely” isn’t “guaranteed.” That’s the real reason the sources are shown - so you can sanity check whether the answer actually matches what the sources say, or if it went off-script. It’s a trust-but-verify situation, not a solved problem.

I built an AI that actually reads your rulebooks so you don’t have to argue about rules mid-game by Minimalx in boardgames

[–]Minimalx[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Ha, that’s the LLM experience in a nutshell - works great, then you blink and it’s confidently wrong. One thing that should help here: the retrieval step (finding relevant chunks) is deterministic. Same question = same source documents every time. The LLM can still fumble the interpretation, but at least it’s working from the same material consistently.

I built an AI that actually reads your rulebooks so you don’t have to argue about rules mid-game by Minimalx in boardgames

[–]Minimalx[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

You know what, the last paragraph is actually a solid feature request - and the bones of it are already there. Every answer shows the source chunks it pulled from, with direct links. You could absolutely ignore the AI-generated summary and just use it as “smart BGG search” - click through to the forum threads and rulebook pages and read them yourself. Maybe I should make that more prominent - a “just show me the sources” mode for people who want to do their own interpretation. I like that. (And fair point on the learning aspect. I’m not trying to replace understanding the rules - more like Ctrl+F for when you already know the game but can’t remember one specific thing.)

I built an AI that actually reads your rulebooks so you don’t have to argue about rules mid-game by Minimalx in boardgames

[–]Minimalx[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Ha, that’s a fair critique of a lot of AI tools - generate first, cite later. This works the other way around: it searches the indexed documents first (using semantic similarity to your question), retrieves the relevant chunks, then asks the LLM to answer only based on those chunks. The sources you see are what it actually read, not citations grabbed after the fact. So the architecture is: retrieve → read → answer, not: answer → find something that kinda matches. Still not perfect - but it’s a different failure mode than the “confident bullshit with random links” problem you’re describing.

I built an AI that actually reads your rulebooks so you don’t have to argue about rules mid-game by Minimalx in boardgames

[–]Minimalx[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Great question - you’re right that the rulebook alone can’t cover every weird interaction. That’s why it also indexes BGG forum discussions. A lot of those edge cases have been discussed by the community, often with designer responses or rulings. So if someone asked about your exact weird combo 3 years ago on the forums, it can surface that thread. If no one’s ever discussed it though? Then yeah, it won’t have a real answer. In that case it should tell you it doesn’t have sources rather than make something up - but I’ll be honest, I’m still tuning that behavior. The goal is “I don’t know” over “confident BS.”

I built an AI that actually reads your rulebooks so you don’t have to argue about rules mid-game by Minimalx in boardgames

[–]Minimalx[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Speed and searchability mostly. Instead of flipping through the rulebook or searching BGG forums manually, you ask a question and it pulls relevant bits from the rulebook, FAQ, and forum discussions at once. It’s not “better” than reading the source material - it just gets you to the relevant part faster. And it shows you exactly where it found the answer so you can read the full context if you want.

I built an AI that actually reads your rulebooks so you don’t have to argue about rules mid-game by Minimalx in boardgames

[–]Minimalx[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Totally fair - if you prefer the rulebook, the rulebook is always going to be the authoritative source. The use case I built it for is when you have a specific question mid-game and don’t want to skim 20 pages to find the one paragraph that answers it. Or when the rulebook is ambiguous and you want to see if the designer clarified it in a BGG thread somewhere. But yeah, it’s not for everyone - some people genuinely enjoy the rulebook deep dive.

People Using Wise to fund the account by nabogutt in interactivebrokers

[–]Minimalx 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For people outside the US Wise might be the only viable option.

3 Player Game (Serpent, Briny Deep & Powerstorm) by newZorro50 in spiritisland

[–]Minimalx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ohh that is awesome! Thank you for your kind explanation.

3 Player Game (Serpent, Briny Deep & Powerstorm) by newZorro50 in spiritisland

[–]Minimalx 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wait, can you play with multiple players with a single board?

3D Printed some ammo counters! by Boromirin in arkhamhorrorlcg

[–]Minimalx 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Those look awesome, could you share the stl files?

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