Couldn’t agree more with this comment and the thread in general, it’s a relief to see. I get so frustrated as so many of my colleagues seem to cling to this very old concept of the testing pyramid and associated definitions. It’s completely meaningless in a modern setting. We should mock as little and as far back as possible, yet others seem to delight in locking huge chunks of functionally out of the test base just ‘because’.

I’d say fairly easily for me, of course depending on the game. Last few bigger games I’ve picked up I’ve been able to read through the rules once through close to when getting it, then skipping through somewhere in the week before I’m actually going to play it with others. Then I’ll just be the one frantically going through the rules while playing checking edge cases. I’m weird like a lot of us here and enjoy rules systems and seeing how different mechanics fit together, so it comes fairly naturally to me.

I personally would just call it a legacy game, but I do get what you mean as I always describe it to other people a ‘legacy game, but…’.