I don't like the Free Parking rule in Monopoly, not because it prolongs the game, but because it's too swingy. Whoever wins it first is almost certain to win the game, because they get a huge disproportionate wad of money early on.
GamesEvening veterans from before my time tend to play Settlers without the robber. I'm a bit dubious about this too: the robber is good for providing extra leverage in trades ("if you give me a brick, I'll give you a corn *and* a promise not to rob you"). They also have a rule where you get a token if you don't produce anything, and you can exchange max(4, #VP) tokens for a good. That's quite nice (although I can see that it might annoy very serious players).
If you play with the same group of people all the time, it's easy to forget what house rules you have, because you're so used to them. Someone new to GamesEvening asked if we have any house rules for Puerto Rico, and we said no. Halfway through the game we remembered that we do: the University applies to itself and comes into play manned, otherwise it's too underpowered for its price.
I can't remember what other house rules we have in other games, but generally I think they're there to improve balance.
There are also "house rules" which are actually just emergent consequences of the real rules, which you can spot if you're a pedant, but it's polite to explain them to newcomers. Like in Barbarossa, you're trying to guess the identity of an object, and you can ask for one letter of its name, privately; or any number of yes/no questions until you get a no, publicly. Therefore you can ask for a letter publicly (Is the first letter between A and Y? Is it between A and X? ...)
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Date: 2008-09-08 04:33 pm (UTC)I don't like the Free Parking rule in Monopoly, not because it prolongs the game, but because it's too swingy. Whoever wins it first is almost certain to win the game, because they get a huge disproportionate wad of money early on.
GamesEvening veterans from before my time tend to play Settlers without the robber. I'm a bit dubious about this too: the robber is good for providing extra leverage in trades ("if you give me a brick, I'll give you a corn *and* a promise not to rob you"). They also have a rule where you get a token if you don't produce anything, and you can exchange max(4, #VP) tokens for a good. That's quite nice (although I can see that it might annoy very serious players).
If you play with the same group of people all the time, it's easy to forget what house rules you have, because you're so used to them. Someone new to GamesEvening asked if we have any house rules for Puerto Rico, and we said no. Halfway through the game we remembered that we do: the University applies to itself and comes into play manned, otherwise it's too underpowered for its price.
I can't remember what other house rules we have in other games, but generally I think they're there to improve balance.
There are also "house rules" which are actually just emergent consequences of the real rules, which you can spot if you're a pedant, but it's polite to explain them to newcomers. Like in Barbarossa, you're trying to guess the identity of an object, and you can ask for one letter of its name, privately; or any number of yes/no questions until you get a no, publicly. Therefore you can ask for a letter publicly (Is the first letter between A and Y? Is it between A and X? ...)