I was going to talk about defining games today. However, the comments on my last post went off on a fun tangent that I’d like to continue here.

When you get a game, can you, should you, must you, pick and choose the rules you like or add your own house rules? Or, are you only allowed to play it as written?

On the face of it, the obvious answer is that you can do what you like. The Games Police are very lax these days and you can probably get away with anything as long as you keep the curtains drawn. 

Seriously though, there’s a bit to unpack here.

More than once, I’ve been asked at conventions whether it was OK if someone played a game I wrote with house rules. My answer has always been that it’s their game now and they don’t need to ask permission. Whilst my spies areeverywhere, I no longer pay my subscription to orbitaldeathraysareus.com, so there’s not a lot I can do about your transgressions from the One True Way. I am, in fact, more curious about what changes you’ve made and why. I may have missed something important. I may want to adopt the change myself. You never know.

Also at conventions, I’ve been told to my face that I not only didn’t understand what a rule (that I wrote) meant, but that I didn’t understand the intent behind it. A bit hard to know how to deal with that sort of earnest nonsense, but at the end of the day you do you. 

That said, there are two flavours of this situation. Once the game is in your hands you can do what you like with it. Absolutely. However, if a game is played in tournaments, then this won’t work. Everyone can’t bring their own version. There has to be an agreed correct way to play to keep the field level. And this is where the real arguments happen. That’s the context for someone telling me that I didn’t know why I wrote a rule or what it meant. Folk get very invested in tournaments. Now, having noted the existence of tournaments, let’s put them aside for today. 

In your normal gaming group, you should feel free to modify a game as you choose. But there’s a but. Just a little one. I think of it like this. 

Whoever designed the game has played it many, many more times than I have, so I start by assuming that they’ve done something interesting with it. At least, they’ve tried to. Often, especially with more complex games, not everything will be obvious on the first play through, or with that player count, or using that strategy, or in that scenario, or with that faction, or, or, or. So, I’ll wait until I’ve got a firm grasp of what the game as printed was trying to do before I consider changing stuff. Not because the written rules are sacred, but because I may well be doing myself out of something really cool if I change things before I fully understand what I had in the first place. And, importantly, the most interesting designs are sometimes the least obvious precisely because they’re wandering off the beaten path. In other words, I’m interested in uncovering the hidden depths of entertainment that I may miss if I’m too hasty. 

On the other hand, it’s your game now. You bought it, and you’re playing with your friends. If you want to change something to make it fit better with your collective zeitgeist, then go for it. You may not care about missing the intended experience. You don’t have to. 

Personally, I rarely feel moved to change a published game if I don’t think it works as written. I’ve got so many other games I could play instead that something would have to be fixable with very little change, and otherwise compelling. In practice, this is a tiny group (currently containing 1 game, I think). Normally, if it doesn’t work for me, it’ll get traded away. I’d rather be writing my own games than fixing other folk’s stuff.