The rulebook that told me to ignore the rulebook

Last Tuesday I opened a used copy of a 1998 wargame and the previous owner had scribbled in the margin, 'house rule this or it's broke.' Played it as written anyway for 2 hours, got wrecked by a dumb line-of-sight loophole. Anybody else listen to stranger's notes in old games or do you stick to the printed text?

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hall.quinn6d ago

Wait, is that the same wargame where the designer later admitted in an interview that the line-of-sight rules were a total accident and the playtesters just never found the exploit? I remember reading a forum post about that a few years back, and the guy basically said "yeah, just flip a coin if it gets dumb." Honestly, I'm a printed-text purist for the first play, but after that, a stranger's margin note is basically free playtesting from someone who actually sat with the damn thing. Like, I once found a sticky note in a used copy of a card game that said "ignore the rarity symbol, it lies" and that single line saved me a whole frustrating night. The ink in those margins has more play hours behind it than most designers get.