I used to be a 'no house rules' purist but now I toss them in left and right

For years I swore by playing every board game exactly as written, even if a rule felt clunky or slowed things down. I thought changing anything was cheating or disrespecting the designer. Then about six months ago, my group played Terraforming Mars for the third time and the drafting phase was taking forever, making a 3 hour game drag to 5. One guy suggested we just skip the drafting cards and deal everyone extra starting cash instead. I almost said no, but I was tired and hungry so I agreed. Turns out the game played faster and we had more fun without that one rule bogging us down. Now I house rule almost everything: I nerf runaway leader mechanics, speed up boring setup steps, and even let people steal from the bank in Monopoly. Has anyone else had a moment where breaking a rule made a game better for your group?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_cameron14d ago

Got to disagree with you here. I've seen too many board games get completely broken by house rules that seemed smart at the time. My buddy's group decided to let people build roads anywhere in Catan and the whole game turned into a mess where nobody could block anyone and it just became whoever rolled the most numbers won. House rules usually just fix one problem but create three new ones you didn't see coming. The designers spent way more time thinking about balance and edge cases than we ever will in a single night of playing. I'll stick with the clunky rules and learn to play better instead of making my own broken version.

nancyramirez14d ago

Oh totally agree with your point about "fix one problem but create three new ones." I've seen it happen in Risk games where someone thought adding more armies would speed things up and it just made the game drag on for HOURS with nobody able to make progress. Designers really DO test those edge cases we never think about until our house rule blows up in our faces.