How much of this is just "most board games are awful"?
Awful in the sense of overly complicated and fiddly. There are plenty of games with deep strategic depth that have been around for hundreds of years and are simple enough that the rules fit on an index card and children routinely learn them from other children in the course of playing.
If you end up with a 20-page rulebook, perhaps the problem is not how best to organize that rulebook, but that you have 18 pages too many rules in the first place.
Awful in the sense of overly complicated and fiddly. There are plenty of games with deep strategic depth that have been around for hundreds of years and are simple enough that the rules fit on an index card and children routinely learn them from other children in the course of playing.
If you end up with a 20-page rulebook, perhaps the problem is not how best to organize that rulebook, but that you have 18 pages too many rules in the first place.