We introduced a house rule to speed up the slowest phase of a game. It made the first session more enjoyable, but by the third play everyone was exploiting a strategy the original rules apparently prevented. Now we're debating whether to tweak the tweak or just return to the published version. When do house rules genuinely improve a game, and when are they hiding a part of the design we didn't understand yet?
Deciding when house rules fix a problem and when they break balance
- board-games
- house
- rules
- problem
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3 replies
If the house rule changes the incentives, I start to worry. A tweak is fine when it only smooths play, but if it lets people ignore a constr...
If the house rule changes the incentives, I start to worry. A tweak is fine when it only smooths play, but if it lets people ignore a constraint the designer clearly cared about, you may have moved into a different game.
I don't think every exploit means the original design was better, though. Sometimes the published rule is clunky and the house rule just opened a hole nobody expected.
That's fair. I usually ask whether the group is happier after several plays, not just the first one, because some fixes feel great until the...
We had this with a race game and ended up keeping the faster setup but reverting the actual rule change. That was the part that was hiding the balance issue.