Default hosue rules
Sep. 8th, 2008 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI was recently in a position to wonder what other people's default house rules for a couple of common games were. Most of these don't make a big difference so I'd suggest adopting the host's rules rather than worrying about it, but I was curious what people thought worked best.
Robo-Rally
* Do you use life tokens? I was used to ignoring them (by inclination I much prefer Lucasarts adventures to sierra). But playing a board that isn't overly complicated showed they did have several pros I hadn't thought of: (a) if you die three times, you often don't really want to continue (the other players could let it slide if you're having bad luck and want to play anyway); (b) you can try to win by ramming too (c) it gives an extra reward to being careful.
* Do you award option cards for people 2nd, 3rd etc to a checkpoint? This seems uncontroversial, the affect is non-trivial, yet fairly obvious. It means you get to play with option cards and you can catch up more often.
Indeed, maybe you should get an option card as soon as the first (or third) player reaches a checkpoint even if you're marooned and haven't got to the first yet.
* The rules say that when you program your robot, you can choose to power down at the end of the turn. Should you be able to power down at the start of a turn? That feels fair to me, but it wouldn't allow people to be too reckless, would it?[1]
Footnote [1]
Some house rules are so obviously good they just have to be included. Some are added well-meaningly to give people a break, but render the game unloseable.
Eg. in D&D, insofar as combat is balanced, it's balanced between "chance to hit" and "damage on each hit". +20 to instant-kill with a hit to a vital spot sounds fair, but means it's not balanced at all and combatants can kill opponents at will.
Eg. in monopoly, getting a money-bonus on free parking, and having an unlimited supply of houses and hotels, and a few other rules are universally known. But I've read people say they're what can make Monopoly interminable. (I don't know of my own experience, I only played a couple of times when young.)
Munchkin
* Do you let people trade cards in hand, or trade during combat? I think these are not allowed, and that probably should be left alone, but they sound obvious. What do you think? (Munchkin has great rules resolving, it says if you disagree, just pick something and get on with it :))
* Do you have to run away from a losing combat? It never occurred to me this was an issue. The rules say "If you can't win, you have two options, ask for help, or run away" but I assumed taking that literally was just extreme pedantry and you could obviously just lose if you preferred, that would just be rare. But people disagreed. (I admit regularly dying for tactical is probably against the spirit of the game.)
* The rules say "You may ask one player to help you. If they decline, you may ask another. You will probably have to bribe them." I was taught "Hold a bidding war; You choose which bid to accept," was part of the fun :) I think that makes sense -- wars are over quickly, and I don't see any advantage to the other. Also, they're actually equivalent[2]. But can anyone see any drawback to not using the rules-as-written?
Footnote [2]
As a pedantic geek, I have a lot of buy in to "do something that's equivalent". If I wanted to resolve hacking-through-something according to D&D rules, I'd just say "it takes between X hundred and Y hundred turns, and in that time you meet 1-2 monsters", rather than roll for each blow.
On the other hand, sometimes making people play it out is a useful check-and-balance. For instance, before computers, you could easily break copyright on books, but it was impractical to do so on a large scale.
In Munchkin, I'd assume the obvious end case of "ask players in turn" was "players make offers in advance, you decide which offer, and then officially ask that player to help", which is almost exactly the same as "hold a bidding war". But I haven't been led astray by my love of optimization, have I?
Relatedly
I always assume instantaneous trades are binding, but long-term trades are not (and should normally be followed, but can be broken at key moments). This is another example of the "equivalence" philosophy. It's possible to make instantaneous trades binding by use of a trusted third party, or with a "lay them in the open and run from one to the other" strategy.
Thus if you played them non-binding, you can either (a) take the time to make them binding every time or (b) hand a small advantage to any player willing to prolong the most boring bookkeeping parts of the game. I think both of those are non-fun, so you might as well pretend everyone always took the effort to use a third party, and rule that they're binding.
On the other hand, sometimes I think of part of a game as superfluous, when someone else thinks it's an integral part of the fun. I don't think that's the case here, but I need to watch out for it. (Especially when conflicting assumptions come up at a crucial point in the game :))
Robo-Rally
* Do you use life tokens? I was used to ignoring them (by inclination I much prefer Lucasarts adventures to sierra). But playing a board that isn't overly complicated showed they did have several pros I hadn't thought of: (a) if you die three times, you often don't really want to continue (the other players could let it slide if you're having bad luck and want to play anyway); (b) you can try to win by ramming too (c) it gives an extra reward to being careful.
* Do you award option cards for people 2nd, 3rd etc to a checkpoint? This seems uncontroversial, the affect is non-trivial, yet fairly obvious. It means you get to play with option cards and you can catch up more often.
Indeed, maybe you should get an option card as soon as the first (or third) player reaches a checkpoint even if you're marooned and haven't got to the first yet.
* The rules say that when you program your robot, you can choose to power down at the end of the turn. Should you be able to power down at the start of a turn? That feels fair to me, but it wouldn't allow people to be too reckless, would it?[1]
Footnote [1]
Some house rules are so obviously good they just have to be included. Some are added well-meaningly to give people a break, but render the game unloseable.
Eg. in D&D, insofar as combat is balanced, it's balanced between "chance to hit" and "damage on each hit". +20 to instant-kill with a hit to a vital spot sounds fair, but means it's not balanced at all and combatants can kill opponents at will.
Eg. in monopoly, getting a money-bonus on free parking, and having an unlimited supply of houses and hotels, and a few other rules are universally known. But I've read people say they're what can make Monopoly interminable. (I don't know of my own experience, I only played a couple of times when young.)
Munchkin
* Do you let people trade cards in hand, or trade during combat? I think these are not allowed, and that probably should be left alone, but they sound obvious. What do you think? (Munchkin has great rules resolving, it says if you disagree, just pick something and get on with it :))
* Do you have to run away from a losing combat? It never occurred to me this was an issue. The rules say "If you can't win, you have two options, ask for help, or run away" but I assumed taking that literally was just extreme pedantry and you could obviously just lose if you preferred, that would just be rare. But people disagreed. (I admit regularly dying for tactical is probably against the spirit of the game.)
* The rules say "You may ask one player to help you. If they decline, you may ask another. You will probably have to bribe them." I was taught "Hold a bidding war; You choose which bid to accept," was part of the fun :) I think that makes sense -- wars are over quickly, and I don't see any advantage to the other. Also, they're actually equivalent[2]. But can anyone see any drawback to not using the rules-as-written?
Footnote [2]
As a pedantic geek, I have a lot of buy in to "do something that's equivalent". If I wanted to resolve hacking-through-something according to D&D rules, I'd just say "it takes between X hundred and Y hundred turns, and in that time you meet 1-2 monsters", rather than roll for each blow.
On the other hand, sometimes making people play it out is a useful check-and-balance. For instance, before computers, you could easily break copyright on books, but it was impractical to do so on a large scale.
In Munchkin, I'd assume the obvious end case of "ask players in turn" was "players make offers in advance, you decide which offer, and then officially ask that player to help", which is almost exactly the same as "hold a bidding war". But I haven't been led astray by my love of optimization, have I?
Relatedly
I always assume instantaneous trades are binding, but long-term trades are not (and should normally be followed, but can be broken at key moments). This is another example of the "equivalence" philosophy. It's possible to make instantaneous trades binding by use of a trusted third party, or with a "lay them in the open and run from one to the other" strategy.
Thus if you played them non-binding, you can either (a) take the time to make them binding every time or (b) hand a small advantage to any player willing to prolong the most boring bookkeeping parts of the game. I think both of those are non-fun, so you might as well pretend everyone always took the effort to use a third party, and rule that they're binding.
On the other hand, sometimes I think of part of a game as superfluous, when someone else thinks it's an integral part of the fun. I don't think that's the case here, but I need to watch out for it. (Especially when conflicting assumptions come up at a crucial point in the game :))
no subject
Date: 2008-09-08 04:41 pm (UTC)That sounds familiar! We do that too, and we also swap round the prices of the Factory and University. Even with both of those changes, almost nobody ever builds the University (except, like any other building, as a last-minute way to exchange surplus money for VPs).
no subject
Date: 2008-09-08 05:06 pm (UTC)That is a good idea. Certainly the University is still underpowered, even when houseruled to apply to itself; and the Factory is probably overpowered.
And you say even then no one builds it. That kind of thing makes me wonder whether they just made a big mistake with it, or whether we're all missing the subtlety of its intended use (like the Gate in Caylus, which looks underpowered at first but actually isn't).
I think the intended use is to get your big building manned when no one else does, but that requires that you have the cash to buy the university as well as a big building (and it not be worth buying a further big building instead), and you're confident no one's going to snaffle your favourite big building in between you buying the university and the big building, and you're reasonably sure another mayor phase isn't going to happen - which is an almost prohibitively rare combination of circumstances.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-08 05:15 pm (UTC)