jack

I don't pine like I did when I hadn't played Mao for years, but I have a saturday night I don't know of anything going on and feel like some gaming.

As always, the plan is to come on Saturday about 8, or about 7 if you would like to have dinner and maybe a conversation with me first :)

Please let me know if you think you might come -- I only will if many people do. Directions on request.

Mao was quite fun. We weren't sure if anyone was going to turn up, but we had people, and Ian arrived to take over when Adam was getting bored.

It went a bit slowly perhaps, and had too many saying things rules, but we had some interesting interactions, and it was overall fun. At the end we had one or two card affecting rules, and many many things to say; it was not unusual to have to say seven different phrases playing your penultimate card, which was fun to remember, but getting very silly in terms of getting anywhere, the number of times people nearly went out was noticable :)

Angoal claimed dinner and crashspace, and is a very pleasant houseguest.

We were discussing rules that it *might* be sensible to get into some games asap, or even in the initial setup:

* A phrase or bell denoting a clear end of turn. It's occasionally problematic, but I think helps people, including beginners, keep an idea of whose turn it is, and gives a limit on when you can stop doing things, and if you can do multiple things stops the next player cutting in except by penalising you for taking too long.

* Rules that allow you to shed multiple cards at once, and stop people languishing with stupidly many cards, or with one. Ian had a good example (I think a standard rule), that compromised between letting you play anything you could normally play (which is too powerful) and letting you play multiple of the same number (which is a bit wimpy) and only had a few painful edgecases.

* Throwing socks at people who come up with painful rules. My specific incarnation was that you can temporarily nullify someone's rule by throwing a clean sock (provided) at them, which (a) vented any annoyance with a rule (b) was funny (c) was occasionally strategic, when you know the rule but could play if it wasn't there and (d) could be used as an occasional out if you got fed up of saying "Snakes on a PLAAAAAANE". However, I wouldn't bring that back again because (a) when you know everything, it's too powerful to be able to play cards in several different modes (b) it actually fuzzes the understanding because you don't learn what's forbidden if you nullify the rule gratuitously and (c) sorry to people who undeservedly got pelted!