If there’s one thing that I think is basically unforgiveable, in this day and age, it is this: a rulebook without an index. I mean, there’s lots of things worse, obviously. I’d settle for us resolving worldwide economic inequality, the entrenched racism in our society and the violent degradation of our ecosystem (that as a print journalist covering mostly physical goods produced in China and shipped worldwide, I’m aware I’m partly culpable for). But, if we move away from real, actual problems and myopically stare into the void of my soul and what really annoys me about board games? Indexes are top of the list.
Look, I don’t ask for much in my rulebooks. I’ll accept typos, pixelated images and a counterintuitive flow of content that makes little to no sense. I can bear that, with a grimace. Rulebooks are an Achilles heel, and as variable in quality as games themselves. There’s more than one brilliant title that moves from a ‘Must-Play’ to a ‘Maybe’ on the grounds of badly laid out rules. But still, even then, when I turn to the back pages, hoping, desperately, to find that elusive guide to our cognitive co-ordination? Finding nothing tears at my heart.
An index is fundamental to presenting complex information in printed form, and it’s frankly unacceptable to omit one. Our earliest historical reference to indexes (or ‘indices’) was back in 1575, and yet – in 2022 – less than half the games we review have one. Why?
Is it laziness? Is it too much effort to go through the booklet once and think ‘I suspect players will want to know how turn order works, let’s put a clear list at the back, and add ‘turn order’ to it?’. Yet our hobby is one of love. People don’t enter the board games industry to get rich, they follow their love for gaming, for playing with friends, and they try to create something exciting, accessible and entertaining to share with the world. They will labour for years on game mechanics, on artwork, on curating a delicious gaming experience to delight and surprise anyone who dares to play. They just don’t seem to want to write an index to go with it.