Wait. What?!?!
How to confuse new players:
Step 1. Choose completely unrelated symbols/ to represent a concept.
Step 2. Use inconsistent typography amongst those symbols. Upper and lower case in this case so that they're harder to recognize visually.
W. T. F. ?
For bonus points the core mechanic is completely unusable by the blind, & potentially unusable by colorblind folks. 🤦♀️
also note that "tokens" "complication" and "success" are supposed to be visually significant, and distinguished by a different color and different font, except it's a very similar color and the font isn't radically different looking either.
arrgh.
a) this isn't rocket science
b) essentially everyone's eyes start failing eventually. Do you not want to be able to read your own crap as you age? Do people who need glasses not matter?
omg it got worse.
Next page was the glossary. Cool. a glossary up front.
Oh look. It uses 3 new visual symbols THAT ARE NOT DEFINED!!!
note that the last thing said it used "TWO different colors" and now we've got 3 different icons which i can only guess are supposed to be the TWO colors. Why are there THREE?!?!
Why does it say i draw cross-hatched circles from the bag in "Test" and then in "Success" it says i drew empty circles from the bag?!
WHY DO THE AUTHORS HATE PEOPLE?!
the next page goes into detail about "tests". This paragraph relies highly on the 3 symbols, which still haven't been defined, aren't defined here, and result in a description of the core mechanic which is totally effing useless. I add a number of filled in circles that correspond to my hero's traits.... BUT WHAT ARE FILLED IN CIRCLES?!? and then i draw a number of.... of what? wtf are cross hatched circles and how do i draw just those?!
I THINK (knowing a little bit about layout and font creation)... that one of those is actually filled circle and one is empty circle and this book just has TERRIBLE EDITING.
Of course, that doesn't help because _i don't know which is which_, and I really don't want to have to keep reading this until i can eventually derive the meaning like a linguist studying ancient languages without a translation.
I no longer care if this game is good. It can !@$# off for all i care.
Logically i think i can derive now that cross hatched means ...tokens that might be filled in circle or empty circle, but i still don't know what either of those is, and i really shouldn't have to derive the meaning of the core symbology of the game.
note that "Z" and "b" which were claimed to denote success and complications HAVE NOT BEEN USED SINCE MENTIONING!!!