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[Jack Rudd]

So I know it's not strictly a boardgame, but has anyone else here played Nomic, the game where changing the rules is a move?

[mail-mi]

Love how in the Wikipedia page for Nomic, "Calvinball" is in under "See also."

[mail-mi]

btw /in

[WalrusMcFishSr]

My friends and I used to play a dumbass card game called Mao. It was sort of like Uno, except you're not allowed to explain most of the rules. So it's quite the trip as a first time player.

Furthermore, after each round, the winner would add a new rule to the game without telling anybody. So you had to figure it out and adapt on the fly.

Very silly but we had a good time with it

[Twistedarcher]

Mao is silly. I don't get the point of a game where the only point is trolling people who haven't played it as much as you have.

[blueblimp]

Mao is silly. I don't get the point of a game where the only point is trolling people who haven't played it as much as you have.

The one time I played Mao, I (unintentionally) trolled the people who had played it more than I had, by trying every way I could think of cheating to find out what the punishments for cheating were...

[sudgy]

Mao is silly. I don't get the point of a game where the only point is trolling people who haven't played it as much as you have.

There are two different kinds of Mao, with the same rules:

1. Trolling people who haven't played before.
2. Actually having an interesting game where the winner makes a rule and everybody tries to just figure out that rule.

[WalrusMcFishSr]

Mao is silly. I don't get the point of a game where the only point is trolling people who haven't played it as much as you have.

That's not the only point! But it is definitely part of the appeal lol.

Play for a couple hours with friends though and pretty soon the game is a baroque spiderweb of intricacy and nonsense. Honestly the most fun part of the game for me is trying to come up with good rules--fun, unique, not too simple, but not so complex that nobody figures them out. We played on a bus ride once all the way to Canada, and by the end there was a whole Russian Revolution theme that had emerged.

Plus it couples well with drinking.

[sudgy]

Mao is silly. I don't get the point of a game where the only point is trolling people who haven't played it as much as you have.

That's not the only point! But it is definitely part of the appeal lol.

Play for a couple hours with friends though and pretty soon the game is a baroque spiderweb of intricacy and nonsense. Honestly the most fun part of the game for me is trying to come up with good rules--fun, unique, not too simple, but not so complex that nobody figures them out. We played on a bus ride once all the way to Canada, and by the end there was a whole Russian Revolution theme that had emerged.

Plus it couples well with drinking.

I like extremely simple rules that take forever to make.  One of my favorites is one that changes when a point of order is called (okay, that's not simple, that's probably one of the most complex ones).

[eHalcyon]

+1 card to all of you for discussing the rules.



For real though, Mao is excellent.  I don't get to play it often, but it's usually fun when I do.  I learned it from friends who were really mean about it though.  They would look at me until I played and then penalize me for playing out of order.  They would look pointedly at someone else and then penalize me for playing too slow.  During POOs they would get me to say the M-word.  And it took me way to long to figure out the base rules because I largely thought that they were making it all up.  But once we all learned... man, it gets intense.

Although trolling new players is fun, I've found that most are not stubborn enough to learn the hard way, so I tend to be very nice and helpful rather than deceitful.  I find it far more interesting to play with people who know how it works.

I've developed one permanent house rule though -- new rules must be reactive rather than proactive.  What I mean by that is that you can't make rules that simply allow you to do things, like play special card combos.  I think this is necessary after one game when a friend created a rule based on some mathematical formula.  He would play like three seemingly random cards at once, made legal by his new rules, and it let him win every round after that because we just didn't know how to slough cards so quickly.

I think the best rule I ever made (in terms of simplicity and difficulty for others to learn) was "Shovel".  You must say "Shovel" whenever you play a card on top of a Spade.  It's subtle to shift the focus onto something other than the card actually being played.  I've also made rules with shifting triggers based on the starting card of the round.  That can really confuse people because they think they know the rule, but then it suddenly changes on them.

[heron]

I think mao would be better if instead of having base rules, each player made up 1-2 rules at the start of the game. That way you don't have the newbie trolling phase.

[blueblimp]

The incompatibility of Mao with my personality is the unspoken assumption that you'll try to figure out what the rules are and then follow them. For me, being penalized for breaking a rule I didn't know just encourages me to continue breaking it, out of stubbornness.

[Twistedarcher]

I guess mao depends a lot on whether you want to focus on trolling newbs, or getting to the point where everyone knows what they're doing. To me, the latter seems a lot more fun, yet every time I've played, the focus has been on the former.

[sudgy]

+1 card to all of you for discussing the rules.



For real though, Mao is excellent.  I don't get to play it often, but it's usually fun when I do.  I learned it from friends who were really mean about it though.  They would look at me until I played and then penalize me for playing out of order.  They would look pointedly at someone else and then penalize me for playing too slow.  During POOs they would get me to say the M-word.  And it took me way to long to figure out the base rules because I largely thought that they were making it all up.  But once we all learned... man, it gets intense.

Although trolling new players is fun, I've found that most are not stubborn enough to learn the hard way, so I tend to be very nice and helpful rather than deceitful.  I find it far more interesting to play with people who know how it works.

I've developed one permanent house rule though -- new rules must be reactive rather than proactive.  What I mean by that is that you can't make rules that simply allow you to do things, like play special card combos.  I think this is necessary after one game when a friend created a rule based on some mathematical formula.  He would play like three seemingly random cards at once, made legal by his new rules, and it let him win every round after that because we just didn't know how to slough cards so quickly.

I think the best rule I ever made (in terms of simplicity and difficulty for others to learn) was "Shovel".  You must say "Shovel" whenever you play a card on top of a Spade.  It's subtle to shift the focus onto something other than the card actually being played.  I've also made rules with shifting triggers based on the starting card of the round.  That can really confuse people because they think they know the rule, but then it suddenly changes on them.

Forcing newbies to break rules like you explained is dirty, and me and my friends don't do that (we still penalize them for breaking rules, obviously).

[Thisisnotasmile]

I guess mao depends a lot on whether you want to focus on trolling newbs, or getting to the point where everyone knows what they're doing. To me, the latter seems a lot more fun, yet every time I've played, the focus has been on the former.

To me, the game would be acceptable if the rules were:

"The game plays clockwise. On your turn you must play one card from your hand into the central stack. You must either follow suit or value, if you cannot you must draw a card. If you break a rule you must draw a card. The first person to void their hand is declared the "winner" of the round, and can make a new rule (in secret) for future rounds."*

But instead they are:

"Let's play. If you break a rule I will penalize you. I'm not telling you what any of the rules are."

And therefore the game is designed for trolling newbies.

*I have no idea if these are the rules or not since I've never played the game and never intend to.

[WalrusMcFishSr]

Hahaha I had a blast the first time I played! Who doesn't enjoy a good troll now and again. It really does depend on the attitude of the players I guess. To me it felt like a rather pure and exciting manifestation of human intelligence--"Here's a crazy situation, now figure out what's going on!"

I was told when I started that it was sort of like Uno, and that I was trying to get rid of all my cards. At least that way I knew the goal, and the fact that getting all these penalty cards is definitely a bad thing.

[Ratsia]

Somewhat related to the topic (of Mao, not Nomic), one can build this kind of a "learn the rules while you play" event on top of Sticheln.

Sticheln is a trick-taking game where you are always allowed to play any card. Hence you can never break the rules and the explanation "We play a trick-taking game where the winner of the trick always leads the next trick and the goal is to collect points, and before the game you place one (or two, depending on the variant) card in front of you" is sufficient for valid play. The guessing game is then in learning how tricks are won and how scoring works (at least one player naturally has to know these to moderate the game), and an observant gamer should be able to learn both after a few rounds.

The actual rules are simple but somewhat unusual for trick-taking games:
1) The trick is won by the highest non-zero value in any suit other than the lead suit (first one winning the ties), or the highest number of the lead suit if everyone followed. That is, all cards not matching the lead suit are trumps.
2) Every card won is plus one point, except for the cards matching the suit of the card placed in front of the player that score minus their number.

The 2nd rule is naturally very easy to learn if you announce points after every trick, so for a harder task they could be announced only at the end of the round.


The game itself is quite fun, and everyone who likes card games should own it since the deck comes with exceptionally large range of suits and card values, making it perfect for playing several other games that require numbered cards in several suits.

[Kirian]

If I want to play a game about guessing rules, I'll play Zendo, and I get the impression Mimic has something in common with it.

If I want to troll newbies, I'll have a friend slap me for wanting to be a jerk.

[Twistedarcher]

So, what's Nomic?

[Grujah]

I read nomic rules, would play.

[qmech]

So, what's Nomic?

3 yak penalty for asking a question.

EDIT: That's how we play it anyway.

[sudgy]

I guess mao depends a lot on whether you want to focus on trolling newbs, or getting to the point where everyone knows what they're doing. To me, the latter seems a lot more fun, yet every time I've played, the focus has been on the former.

To me, the game would be acceptable if the rules were:

"The game plays clockwise. On your turn you must play one card from your hand into the central stack. You must either follow suit or value, if you cannot you must draw a card. If you break a rule you must draw a card. The first person to void their hand is declared the "winner" of the round, and can make a new rule (in secret) for future rounds."*

But instead they are:

"Let's play. If you break a rule I will penalize you. I'm not telling you what any of the rules are."

And therefore the game is designed for trolling newbies.

*I have no idea if these are the rules or not since I've never played the game and never intend to.

I always say there are three rules:

1. It's played like crazy eights.
2. When someone wins, they make a new rule.
3. You can't talk about any other rule.


Also, about Nomic, I've played it before, and the first rule we always get rid of is the rule saying you can't talk about future rule changes you have in mind.  Then we fix up the rules to our liking (saying that you can change immutable rules if there is a unanimous vote instead of changing to mutable first, making us keep the rules at the end of the game, we also once made it so we could have multiple rule changes (or game changes, that were one time things) at once if they were all related).

[Grujah]

There's this?
http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=56551

[Kirian]

So having read more about this, I'm totally in if someone plans to run.

[Jimmmmm]

So having read more about this, I'm totally in if someone plans to run.

Me too!