by Midaga
Fluxx wrote:
Do you think anyone could learn the game by the overview?
Nope, not my point. I merely responded to Adrian's previous comment, because I'm afraid that despite something is printed in the rulebook, it does not mean it's "in plain sight".
I do think that anyone should be able to learn the game from the rulebook, but unfortunately it's not an easy task in this case. Important infos are scattered all over, sometimes somewhere completely unrelated. The explanation of gameflow is disjunct, and interrupted constantly by introducing core rule fragments or special cases, sometimes unnecessarily in advance. All of which is really maddening, because after you have played, the game itself is really fluid and intuitive.
What the rulebook sorely misses is a concise turn summary right after the setup, followed by the detailed explanations of the phases with examples, a detailed turn summary, all the extra rules and exceptions, icon descriptions, and finally an index.
All this being said, I didn't intend to bash the rulebook, I know how Portal is understaffed, and Ignacy admitted on his blog, that writing rulebooks isn't his strong suit. Again, my comparison chart is just an over-gesticulated response to Adrian's remark, it does not state that a single page summary should replace the rulebook, but emphasize, that the rulebook could use a more logical and more organized structure.