My memory is inconsistent in odd ways. I'm extremely good at details, but have a tendency to forget entire things if I haven't used them recently. As you can imagine this makes board games, something you need to be capable of teaching in order to play, occasionally tricky. As I turn from my desk and scan my shelf I could teach most of what I own with little to no rulebook use, but that "little" poses a unique problem.
Rulebooks often work worse as a reference or reminder than they do as a teaching tool from scratch. When you have no preconceptions you're more receptive to their ideas. Looking back through the swiss cheese lens of past plays from a couple years ago makes interpreting the text much harder. You start to doubt what you read, subconsciously and eventually very consciously crosschecking it with what you played prior. "Is this bit I can't remember cleared up later? Wait, did I play this wrong back when? Did we ever even play this? Ah shit."
More indexes please. I just want to look up a keyword, not have an existential crisis.
