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?
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.