Hot answers tagged house-rules
29
Significantly. The thing about 2d6 is that you've got a range of numbers that have a certain probability of them showing up.
When you're rolling 2d6, your available numbers are 2-12. You're dropping off the number 1. Also, you have an escelating scale of percentage probability. 2's and 12's will happen 2.77% of the time (each). 3's and 11's will happen ...
11
First thing is, that it would make the numbers more or less unimportant, since they all have the same probability now (that of 4 or 10 before). This means good building spots are nothing you have to fight for anymore. Settlements will be more spread out from the beginning, because a starting settlement with a 2 or 12 is no problem anymore. So there will be ...
9
I think the house rule will be harmless, and also that after playing a few games, no one will take advantage of partial renovation - because it's a terrible idea. It also introduces unnecessary complexity.
Balance: The only balance consequence I see is that the Renovation action can be taken much more often than in standard Agricola. In principle, you ...
8
Mathematically the Pie rule can be generalized. This is actually a well known problem.
One of the solution is to let one person prepare a share by adding what she wants from the common lot until one person calls that he wants this share. For example, in the 40 thieves problem, the goal is to share the bounty in 40 shares, which seems difficult, since there ...
7
We use Better Settlers.
The Better Settlers Board Generator is for use with the offline board
game Settlers of Catan. Not only does it allow for faster game setup,
it generates a fair and engaging game.
We love playing Settlers. We've noticed that sometimes the game seems
to be over in the first fifteen minutes--and no matter how fairly we
...
7
In my house, we only ever play with a d12. We combine it with a number of different house rules. I don't like sleeping on the couch, so my house doesn't use the robber. Instead on a 7, you simply grab any one card from the bank. You can use it for a robber if you want to though, for sure. But once we started with the d12, we never went back to 2d6.
On a 1, ...
7
The games you are talking about are ones that possess a positive feedback loop for players who are in the lead, causing them to continue to be in the lead in an exponential way. This is generally considered bad game design for the exact reason you are implying. As such, you have two simple options:
Stop playing these games, due to their flaw.
Create ...
7
When playing games that are supposed to eliminate some of the players and then speed up, you can always play as teams.
In my group games with that kind of mechanic do not work, we are simply either too competitive or too strategic to come to an entertaining experience for everyone.
This lead us to play in teams so that if one 'player' loses there are ...
6
Take a look at my YouTube video for a great 2 Player Settlers of Catan version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcK5WhjRWio
“Settlers of Catan” is designed for 3 or 4 players. When played by 2 players, the game has issues that affect play if standard rules are used. Here are some of the concerns:
• There is less competition for territory because there is ...
6
Aces are low in cribbage. Their point value is one in pegging and in adding up to 15 during pegging, in the hand, or in the crib. The American Cribbage Congress' Rules of Cribbage define a straight as "a sequence of three or more consecutive cards", and the card order is shown with King as the highest descending normally through Ace as the lowest.
I've ...
5
In my experience, the most effective way to reduce luck at the beginning is to give players a choice of two start worlds. A world you know will be on the table the whole game is a much bigger deal than four cards, of which you'll likely only play one or two, and sometimes none. The implementation of Race for the Galaxy at keldon.net does this. (Side note: ...
5
Be careful. Usually tinkering with houserules, if you overlook something, you can make it up on the spot. If there is real money at stake, suddenly the game becomes much more serious and the ability to quickly tweak something which might be in one player's favor or another is gone.
From your initial idea, I see several dramatic flaws. First is that Risk is ...
4
When we only have time for a short game, we will eliminate the robber and allow each play to take a resource of their choice on roll of 7. It cuts the time a lot, and eliminates a lot of frustration when playing with people who are inexperienced with the game.
(I like the using a city for the second settlement idea, and the gold if no resources. I want to ...
4
For simplicity, I will focus on the base game (Sid Meier's Civilization the Board Game, as published in 2010) without any expansions because this is what I assume you are currently playing.
Tech victories are common while learning the game rules. This is because the Research phase acts as a sort of timer; if everyone acquires approximately 1 technology per ...
4
This is a good question, and I'm afraid I don't have a great answer. I think the creators addressed this question a bit with the creation of the Benelux board. When you play with that board you always remove the lowest power plant. That speeds things up a lot.
4
I've found a few suggestions on how to speed up this game, both from the living rules and from users on Board Game Geek. I've also found a number of people who believe it is impossible to actually speed up a game of High Frontier. I'll explore each option below, ending with reasons that none of the suggestions may work. If you don't want to wade through the ...
3
There aren't any rules for it. If you're getting tired of the same person being the traitor, then make a house rule based loosely on the rules for skipping haunts, and you can go back to having fun again.
Or you can just keep playing; it's only been three games so far. What are the odds that the same person is the traitor again?
Edit: Yes, I realize the ...
3
We recently played the Civilization Board Game with 3 players and had a similar experience. In our case one of the players was the Soviets (who have the ability to "steal" tech by marching units into other players cities), and also managed to get a wonder allowing them to steal a technology once per turn. This speeded up the tech victory win, however in ...
3
Unfortunately they are completely different rulesets. While they have a few similar mechanics(rolling to hit/wound or making characteristic tests), the structure of the games do not synch up. Turn structure is different. Ranged weapons, saves, movement, and combat are all different. Applying some fairly common rules in one system to the other can have ...
3
This is an excellent question!
For a board game I love but never play now since me and my friends, all working, can never get the 50 hours needed to finish it :) (ok, it's more like 8 hours no kiddin') if we don't simplify the rules and/or shorten the terms.
We have successfully used gentlemen's agreeements, as follows:
Shortened victory conditions ...
3
I think this thing of skill in games tends to be a little of too much pride and taking the game a bit more serious than it should.
In general I think it's best just to take a high risk once in a while if you think that 'luck' is not going your way; if you loose laugh about it and enjoy the game :)
Onto the house rules to modify results:
Die result for ...
3
I've experimented a bit with different numbers of kingdom cards. For small variations (say 8-12 piles) the game seems mostly unchanged. That said, 10 usually feels like a good number. This depends largely on how you select those cards. With straight-up random selection, with fewer cards you decrease the number of combinations. This can often result in games ...
3
When I see a Catan game drag for lack of resources, it's usually because the stone is in short supply. Two factors can cause this: the stone having poor numbers, of course, and most of the stone being next to poor tiles (the desert, the coast, lousy ports like the stone port, other poor numbers). This means that cities don't get built for a while, which ...
3
I've played many of games of Settlers, and I think it's most fun to follow the normal rule of random placement (with pre-determined numbering).
The preset number arrangement keeps sixes and eights from being side-by-side, and depending on where the desert lands, there's usually also strong 5-9-10 points. And, that variable desert keeps it from being ...
3
This combines a little bit of @gbianchi's and @Konerak's: we've always played that if you can exactly match the card on top of the pile (both color and value), you can play out of turn, and play continues as if it had been your turn. If you have two identical cards in your hand, you can play them both at once.
When penalty cards are played this way, they ...
3
In my circle we have played that game numerous times.
Some things that worked for us to adjust the 'strategy' of the game are:
EXP and LVL: if you have a lot of D6 lying around ( I buy them 18 at a time from our local dollar store) you can use them to track level on your pokemon. Then each time a pokemon wins more battles than they currently are in level ...
3
There are a couple of approaches that I can think of if it happens:
Don't worry about it - Shuffle up and play again. Random victories are part of the Munchkin experience. Or, if you'd rather play a deeper less swingy game, try out another game. Munchkin's fun, but maybe it's not perfect for you and your group. (I added this as a comment on the question, ...
2
The key to the game is using your card and actions as efficiently as possible. Find what strengths you have in terms of feeding your family and build off that. I find that I always win due to the fact that at the end of the game I have 5 stone huts and 5 children scoring 25 points in itself. Just use your cards at the right time and make sure your getting ...
2
If you want to speed up auctions, have everyone submit one sealed bid (this is known as a first-price sealed-bid auction). The property is sold to the highest bidder for the price he bid.
Note - I haven't actually played this rule in Monopoly, but I did buy a real property in this kind of auction as it is the way property is usually sold in Scotland.
2
My group tend to ignore the specified instructions for picking a starting player* and tend to pick based on who's played before. If there are new players and there's no real penalty for going last, new players going last gives them an opportunity to pick up the game.
Conversely, if there is a huge advantage to going first and the rules are straightforward ...
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