Comments on: Your House, Your Rules

By: Halling Family

Halling Family — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:11:00 +0000

I plan on getting the game Big Pay Day soon, so after reading all the reviews I could find on Pay Day and Big Pay Day, I combined the rules from both versions. A lot of people complained about the savings being dropped and that you make lots of money to easily. I added Savings w/ 10% interest back into the game (changed $50 fee to $500 fee) and changed the interest for loans from 10% to 20%. We will start the game and get payed $3,500 instead of $5,000. We don’t agree with gambling either, so I will be changing Jackpot to Side Work and we will cover all the Lottery spaces with other tiles (the great thing about Big Pay Day).

Side Work = Whenever any player rolls a six he or she did side work to earn all the money that’s been placed on the Side Work space. If there’s no money or you don’t collect within your turn, then you didn’t do any side work and earned no money.

By: Colleen McCarthy-Evans

Colleen McCarthy-Evans — Fri, 28 May 2010 17:25:17 +0000

Hey Erik – Yes, Big IS good!

By: Cliff Etters

Cliff Etters — Wed, 26 May 2010 23:03:43 +0000

Usually, I play straight up rule as written (RAW) but I’ll cop to playing with the “Free Parking” rule in Monopoly.

That being said, as a miniature wargamer (mostly Warhammer 40,000), I love it when someone takes a game and makes it their own. Too often in miniature wargames, the “game” part gets lost in the “rules” part, and what started off as a friendly game devolves to rules lawyering. Never a fun time.

So in the spirit of the article, I encourage everyone to have fun, and if that involves changing the rules a bit?

Well, I’ll never tell…

By: Kim Vandenbroucke

Kim Vandenbroucke — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:59:38 +0000

@GeekInsight Something funny about your comment – a couple years ago I designed a game and the manufacturer made an error in the directions and thousands of copies were sold with some confusing directions. Funny thing was after reading a couple different blog posts, people created their “house rules” to correct the error and while some of them got pretty close to what the directions SHOULD have said, others found very unique ways to play around the confusing rule. So in the end a lot of them played it as I intended – but through creating their own “house rule.”

By: Erik Mantsch

Erik Mantsch — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:48:39 +0000

In the game “In a Pickle” by a one Mrs. McCarthy-Evans we don’t allow word cards to be “tucked under” previously played cards. You have to always go BIG!

By: Erik Mantsch

Erik Mantsch — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:43:23 +0000

I like to remove the “Creeper” cards from games of Fluxx when playing with younger audiences, it’s fun and faster!

By: Erik Mantsch

Erik Mantsch — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:40:57 +0000

I’ve also played games of Pandemic with and increase of infected cities by drawing more cards during the setup phase.

By: Erik Mantsch

Erik Mantsch — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:39:25 +0000

We play Maori sometimes where the boat can move in either direction. We thought it was always this way until we reread the rules

By: GeekInsight

GeekInsight — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:36:05 +0000

I’m against most house rules. I like to play games as the designer intended, unless the balance is clearly broken – or I need to change it to accommodate a new or young player. However, if it works for you, go for it! I recently posted about this very topic on my own blog: http://geekinsight.blogspot.com/2010/05/variant-evil-house-rule.html

By: Colleen McCarthy-Evans

Colleen McCarthy-Evans — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:06:47 +0000

In Gamewright’s Funny Business, by Jack Degnan, we play that the playes cannot vote for their own answer. (I think Jack prefers it this way, too!) And if there is a tie, both players who tied score.