How to Explain a Competition or Game Show’s Rules in a Pitch

A pitch can survive a vague rule right up until someone tries to play it in their head.

Watch it happen. Your deck says the format has a main match and a prize match, that players earn safety or build a pot, that the tension escalates. The commissioner nods, then asks the only question that matters: what does a player actually do on a turn? If the answer needs three sentences of context and a diagram you don't have, the format isn't unclear because it's complicated. It's unclear because nobody has followed one round from its starting state to its result.

The fix is not a better glossary. It's one fully traced round. A format is a machine for changing state, and state means everything the format cares about at a given moment: whose turn it is, what each player holds, what the score is, what each person knows, and where the round sits in the larger competition. A choice changes that state. A rule says how. A round ends on a stated condition and hands the next turn to someone.

Get that on the page once, honestly, with numbers, and every later paragraph in your deck has somewhere to attach.

Start with a state, not a list of rules

Here's the demonstration I'll use throughout. It's invented, it has no connection to any real show, and nobody has played it. That's rather the point: for explaining mechanics, an invented round is cleaner than a real one, because you control every quantity and can guarantee the math works.

Trade a Clue. Two players, Mina and Jo. Each begins with two clue tokens and zero points. On a turn, a player may spend one token to buy a clue before answering, or answer without buying one. A correct answer earns one point. An incorrect answer earns none. Tokens do not replenish. Mina takes the first turn of each round.

That's five fields, and each one is doing work. Participants. Resources. Score. Objective. And the information rule, which needs its own line: players and viewers see a purchased clue at the same moment, and the response stays hidden until it locks.

Put the objective next, and give it a stopping condition. This invented episode runs three rounds, the player with more points wins, and a tie is a shared win. Notice what that says: with one point available per player per round, totals can run from zero to three, so a tie isn't a freak event. The tie rule is load-bearing, not housekeeping.

Label your numbers as hypothetical. Write "in this walkthrough" or "for this example" and mean it. A commissioner who thinks the figures came from a played game will ask how it tested, and you'll have to walk that back.

Then say what the viewers get. If the audience sees a purchased clue while the players see nothing, say so. If the audience sees a response before an opponent does, that's a different format with different tension, and the difference belongs in the rules section, not in a tone paragraph.

One more thing this opening should avoid: a glossary standing on its own. "Clue tokens: limited resources that can be exchanged for information" teaches a reader that a token exists. It cannot teach that spending one is optional, that the purchase happens before the answer, or that a wrong answer doesn't refund it. Terms land when they're spent.

Follow one choice all the way through

Now walk a single turn. Before the choice, Mina holds two tokens and zero points.

Mina spends one token to buy a clue. The purchase happens first, and it's unconditional: she holds one token now, whatever she answers. She answers correctly. The resolving rule says a correct answer earns one point, so she holds one token and one point.

Jo's turn. Jo chooses the other allowed action and answers without buying, keeping both tokens. Jo is wrong. An incorrect answer earns no points, so Jo holds two tokens and zero points.

Two details in that table are the kind of thing a recitation of rules usually hides.

The first is where the cost sits. Mina's expenditure comes from the clue, not from being wrong. Jo can be wrong for free as long as Jo doesn't buy anything. If your pitch claims the format punishes mistakes, that claim needs a rule underneath it, and Trade a Clue doesn't have one.

The second is the response. Jo answers second, which means Jo's turn is a response to Mina's, whether or not it feels like one. So the pitch has to say what Jo knew when answering. In this walkthrough, the response stays hidden until it locks, and nothing in the described rules says whether the correct answer is revealed afterward. That matters enormously here, because if the answer becomes public at the lock, the second player in every round is working with extra information. If it doesn't, they aren't. Either choice can work. Silence is what breaks the pitch.

Follow one ordinary case before you follow an exception. A rule that only appears when something dramatic happens reads as a rule that only exists then.

Close the round and name the next actor

Both players have now taken one turn. That's the stopping condition: the round ends when each player has answered once. State it plainly, because "the round ends when the tension peaks" is not a rule anyone can administer.

Final state of round one: Mina, one token and one point. Jo, two tokens and zero points. Mina opens round two.

Now resist the urge to write "Mina has a major advantage." Show the numbers and let the reader do the arithmetic, which here is short. Mina leads by a point. Jo holds one more token, tokens never replenish, and each player has two turns left; Mina can therefore buy at most one more clue, Jo at most two. That's a real difference in capability, expressed in units the reader can verify.

Alternatives belong here too, described in context rather than listed in the abstract.

• If Jo had answered correctly without buying: Jo finishes the round with two tokens and one point. The round ends level at one point each, with Jo holding the only spare token.
• If Mina had answered correctly without buying: Mina finishes with two tokens and one point. Same round score as the walkthrough, one extra token carried into round two.
• If Mina had bought a clue and answered incorrectly: Mina finishes with one token and zero points, having paid for information she couldn't use.

That middle alternative is worth dwelling on, because it separates the two things a reader is tracking. The round score and the resources entering the next round are different quantities, and a choice can leave one identical and the other changed. A pitch that only ever shows the score will produce a commissioner who thinks the tokens don't matter.

What you should not do is tell the reader which choice a real player would make. The walkthrough establishes what each choice costs and yields. Whether a clue is worth a token depends on how hard the questions are, which is a design decision your pitch has to own, not something the walkthrough can settle by narration. A round walkthrough is not a playtest, and it doesn't become one because you describe it confidently.

Keep the round, the episode and the season in separate boxes

Competition formats stack layers, and pitches blur them constantly. The layers, roughly: a turn score, a round result, an episode win, an elimination, a shared prize, and a season. Not every format has all of them, and the fastest way to prove you know which ones yours has is to name the ones it doesn't.

Trade a Clue has three layers. A turn can earn a point. A round ends when both players have answered. An episode is three rounds, won on points, with ties shared. It has no elimination, no shared prize, no season, and nothing carries between episodes, because there's only one episode in the walkthrough. Saying that out loud is not a weakness. It's the sentence that tells a reader where the format stops.

Formats with more layers are where the confusion lives, and Netflix's promotional explainer for the first season of The Devil's Plan is a bounded example worth citing carefully. In the version I'm working from — the Tudum page for the show, which I last checked on 3 June 2026 — the description distinguishes matches played for individual survival from matches that build a shared prize, and notes that game resources bear on whether a player keeps participating.

That is not a rulebook, and I'd treat it as what it is: promotional copy about a Korean format's first season, useful for showing that a single show can run at least two different match functions at once. It cannot establish complete rules, actual behavior, or anything about rights and welfare. A reader who tried to reconstruct a round from it would come up short, which is exactly the argument for the walkthrough you're writing.

The method should outlast quiz formats, so test it on one with no questions in it. Two teams, four claim markers each, a wall of shelves, four rounds. A turn is to place one or more of your markers on an unclaimed shelf, or pass. When a round closes, each shelf goes to whichever team holds the majority on it; markers never come back. That's a sketch, not a second walkthrough, but the same four fields describe it: state (four markers each, nothing claimed), choice (Team B spends two markers on one shelf), rule (majorities resolve at the close), new state (Team B holds two markers and a contested shelf). The material is different — objects in space instead of numbers in a ledger — and the state has to include the clock, because a majority rule means nothing without a closing moment. The grammar holds.

Let the reader rebuild it

End the rules section by handing the round over. Ask the reader to reproduce the final state from the choices you described: one token and one point for Mina, two tokens and zero for Jo, Mina opening round two.

If they get something else, the problem is your document, not their attention. A disagreement is a precise diagnostic, and it usually points at one of a short list. Whether the correct answer is revealed at the lock. Whether token counts are public to both players. Whether a player may pass entirely, which this walkthrough never permits and a reader might assume anyway. Each of those is a rule you either wrote and they missed, or didn't write at all — and the second possibility is the one to check first.

Then close the box on what the walkthrough is for. It shows that your format has knowable behavior: that choices cost something specific, that rules resolve turns, that rounds end and the next actor is named. It doesn't clear rights in a format, administer a prize, predict what contestants will do, or get a show made. Those are separate conversations with separate people, and a clear round walkthrough makes all of them easier to have without pretending to be any of them.

Once a reader can follow your rules, the next question is what those rules reward — and that one is worth its own page.

Frequently asked questions

Why start a competition pitch with a traced round instead of a glossary?

A glossary can teach that a term exists but not how it is spent: whether buying a clue is optional, when the purchase happens, or whether a wrong answer refunds it. One round followed from starting state to result shows what a player actually does on a turn and gives later paragraphs something to attach to.

What belongs in a format's state description?

At minimum: participants, resources, score, objective, and the information rule. In the invented Trade a Clue walkthrough, two players begin with two clue tokens and zero points; a turn may spend one token before answering or not; a correct answer earns one point; an incorrect answer earns none; tokens do not replenish; Mina takes the first turn of each round.

How should stopping conditions and tie rules be handled?

State them plainly. A round ends when each player has answered once; the episode is three rounds, won on points, with a tie shared. With one point available per player per round, totals can run from zero to three, so the tie rule is load-bearing rather than housekeeping.

What does the walkthrough not settle?

It does not tell which choice a real player would make. Whether a clue is worth a token depends on how hard the questions are, which is a design decision the pitch must own. A round walkthrough is not a playtest, and it does not clear rights, administer a prize, predict contestants, or get a show made.

How should promotional material like The Devil's Plan explainer be used?

Carefully and narrowly. In the version described, the Tudum page distinguishes matches played for individual survival from matches that build a shared prize and notes that game resources bear on continued participation. It is promotional copy about a Korean format's first season, not a rulebook, and cannot establish complete rules, actual behavior, or rights and welfare.

Further reading

• Run a Small Tabletop Trial of a TV Format Before Filming a Pilot — Before filming, this turns the walkthrough into something observable: one uncertainty the table can settle, with the reset written down first.
• Make the TV Format’s Scoreboard Explain the Game — When the walkthrough's numbers must reach an audience, this separates earned points, spendable tokens and pending states so the display explains the state of play.