Learning board/card/role playing games

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Does anyone else struggle with learning games? My friend circle is very much into this, and I struggle with it a lot. I consider myself fairly intelligent in some areas (have a degree in Physics) but I feel (and probably come off as) totally stupid when it comes to learning how to play games. I think it comes down to being a good teacher to myself but not learning well from others. As so-and-so is explaining the rules, my eyes glaze over. I can't seem to make myself learn them. My friends are pretty much game hoarders - they have piles and piles of obscure games and we play a different game every time we hang out, so by the time I've mostly figured out how to play a game, we've moved onto the next one.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

Have you tried asking in advance what the game is going to be, so you can read the rules ahead of time? You can find most board game rules as PDFs online these days. I love playing (and learning) games but I can struggle to follow the way that some people explain. Not all the written rules are better, but many are, and at least you can take your time that way!

Rach

That is a good idea (and I like PDFs since they are usually searchable!) Only problem is that most of the game decisions are spur-of-the-moment rather than planned in advance. I think part of the problem (the reason why my eyes glaze over) is because I'm not that interested in the games. But I'm trying to force myself to be interested for the sake of being more social. I was thinking another approach may be to learn a handful of games very well, so that I can make comparisons to new games. After all, a lot of the games are similar to each other.

Incidentally, there's another person who comes to game nights that is the same way as me. We both rejoice when attention is turned to simpler games like cards against humanity.