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House Rules · Pick Up and Deliver

• 0:04
  Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast where you pick up my audio recorder
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  as I leave the library and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
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  I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good afternoon, listen. It's a lovely
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  day here in suburban Chicago. I'm glad to have you joining me on my
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  walk home. It is April eighth, both the Eclipse Day and also Rex
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  Manning Day. If you're not familiar with the teenage comedy Empire Records, today
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  is the day to try it out. It is a late nineties goof fest.
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  It's kind of silly, but it's also a little utopian. But a
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  bunch of no good nicks who work at a record store and they're living their
• 0:52
  best lives. But the record store is in financial trouble. The question is
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  can they maintain their wacky spirit in the face of corporate degradation. It's a
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  good movie. It's got lots of people who went on to become big stars
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  and worth checking out if you get a chance. Empire Records. I like
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  it in the movie. The movie centers around something that happens all in one
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  day, including a visit by a sort of has been celebrity called Rex Manning,
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  so they call it Rex Manning Day. Somebody figured out that the movie
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  takes place on April eighth, and so April eighth is Rex Manning Day.
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  There it is. Well, on my walk home today, I thought I
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  would talk with you a little bit about a podcast from a year or from
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  nine months ago, reflecting the timeliness of the pick up and deliver recording schedule.
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  No, actually, what it does that reflects the way that us in
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  a podcast, which is I have some podcasts that I put on the beginning
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  of my podcast feed, and then I have a bunch that I put on
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  the end of my podcast feed. The idea is the ones that are on
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  the beginning I encounter pretty quickly, and then the ones that are not as
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  timely or important to me I put on the end of the feed. But
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  then I'm encountering them in chronological order. So whenever I start listening to podcasts,
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  I'll listen to two or three that are contemporary that just came out,
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  and then I'll listen to two or three that are pretty old on. Occasionally
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  I have to go and clear a bunch out because the podcast feed I have
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  limited at two hundred in the queue, and whenever I stop and listen to
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  an audiobook that gets backed up. But anyway, I recently listened to Cardboard
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  Philosophy episode ten Our house Rules Good featuring Austin Harrison from IV Studios. So
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  I enjoyed that episode and I thought that I would crib their topic for this
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  episode of the podcast. Basically, what I'd like to do is talk a
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  little bit about house rules that I enjoy when I think it is worthwhile or
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  not worthwhile to house rule a game and just generally talk house rules. So
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  my first instinct is you should not house rule games. The default should be
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  don't house rule, because designers spend a lot of time play testing their games,
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  and most of the time when you house rule something, you're actually creating
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  a problem that they've already thought about. Now, I would say the biggest
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  caveat to that is that sometimes the problem that you're trying to fix is a
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  feature, not a bug, right, that this is a thing that they
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  want the game to do, and so you trying to house rule to fix
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  it is actually undoing what the game is supposed to do. Now, the
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  caveat part would be that maybe as a player you actually want the game to
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  do something different than the game has actually designed to do. An example here
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  might be a perfect example would be Arkanova. Ark Nova is mostly a tableau
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  builder that is heads down working on your own stuff, and sometimes there are
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  cards that inner fear with other players. Now, this apparently was divisive enough
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  that they came up with an official variant for the negative cards because they on
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  the negative cards, they have a little power at the bottom that gives you
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  an alternate power to use as a positive for yourself rather than a negative to
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  other people. If you're playing the solo mode, and there is a variance
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  in the rule book that says, if you prefer not to play a game
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  where the players are attacking each other, you can just use the blue variant,
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  the blue power anytime that you play one of these cards. So that's
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  kind of a house rule, but of course it's a variant approved by the
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  designer, so it's not really a house rule per se. But that's fixing
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  a problem that the designer obviously did not think was a problem, the conflict
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  part, but playtesters or players made enough stink about it that they said,
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  yeah, you could do it this way. So all is that is to
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  say, and when you house rule something, you are addressing an issue that
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  might be an issue for you. But the designers probably thought of that and
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  saw it. I will say, all right, So I thought i'd talk
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  a little bit about some of the house rules we use and why we use
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  them. The first one is the house rule for poison in gloom Haven.
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  Now the community in gloom Haven came up with this. I heard it from
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  somebody else who heard it from a forum. But basically, in gloom Haven,
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  if your character is poisoned, the next heel that you get, the
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  poison takes the entire heel. So it demands a kind of management of your
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  healing so that you're using a one or two heel to get rid of your
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  poison and not wasting a good three or four heel when all it does is
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  get rid of your poison. Now this is true for the enemies as well,
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  that if the enemy is poisoned and then they heal, they don't get
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  the benefit of the whole heel. They just the heel gets eaten up by
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  the poison. So there's a mix. You know, it's good for you,
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  it's bad for you, but it's also bad for the enemies, But
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  our experience was generally that heels were hard to get and hard to come by,
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  and having to waste them all to get rid of one poison felt bad.
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  It was a feel bad and we didn't enjoy it. So we house
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  ruled it, and we said that when you do a heel, the first
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  point of the heel gets rid of the poison, then the rest of it
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  works to heal you. But the enemies also get that same benefit. For
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  me, that is a sort of quality of life issue. That's fine,
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  especially in a cooperative game. Cooperative games, I find house rules much less
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  likely to be bad because it's just about how easy or hard do you make
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  the game for your own group. Right, You're not advantaging one player over
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  another, although I suppose arguably one player might advance better. There might be
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  some roles that benefit from this healing rule better than other roles, but we
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  don't particularly care about that. Now. Other kinds of house ruling I find
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  less acceptable without careful thought. You know, the classic is Monopoly, where
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  a lot of families put extra money on. I think the cardboard philosophy folks
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  brought that example up. Families felt bad about kids running out of money so
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  quickly, so they started adding extra money to the table that you could get
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  by landing on free parking, and the result is that the game just takes
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  longer, because the whole point of monopoly is you're supposed to run out of
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  money. So if you introduce more money and it just takes the game longer
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  to get to its inevitable end, which is running out of money. For
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  competitive games, generally, the only house rules that I've used are ones that
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  take away some of the unfairness of different elements of the game. A couple
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  examples would be I prefer drafting variants for things like terraforming Mars over just the
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  draw cards variant, because often if somebody gets a bunch of cards that work
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  for them and others someone else's gets doesn't get any cards that work for them,
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  then the person who got the good card draw does better. Now.
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  Arguably, drafting is actually the same problem. If you draw a hand of
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  cards that don't work for you, then the one card you take now,
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  then the next set of cards you get have one fewer card, and presumably
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  the other person took the best card. The big difference would be that in
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  terraforming Mars, different cards work best for different people. So presumably you would
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  have some access to good cards, but it is a potential problem. But
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  that isn't really a house rule that is in the rule book. I believe
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  the drafting cards element. I'm trying to think of other house rules that we
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  use. When we play Arkham Horror, we usually put an extra plus one
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  in the bag because we like the game to be a little easier. While
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  we're playing two player, we take four actions eats instead of three, and
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  we find in three player three actions is just fine. I mean, it's
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  difficult, but four actions makes it too easy that three player. The one
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  competitive house rule I can think of is last time I played Shipyard, I
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  watched the heavy Cardboard teaching video. They talk about the one house rule that
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  they use for Shipyard is instead of dealing everybody a couple private goals, they
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  put out all of the goals that are dealt onto the public stage, and
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  as a player, you get to pick one from each group that you want
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  to score at the end of the game. Again, this is responding to
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  a perception in the community that some of those goals are better than others.
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  The reality is when we played some players found it confusing to have all these
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  goals available and ultimately didn't work toward any of them, whereas they might have
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  worked toward them had they had a goal that they got dealt. So it
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  probably was a wash in terms of the choice to go with that house rule.
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  I will say I agree with the cardboard philosophy folks, that I don't
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  like it. I don't usually use variants. Sometimes the designers will offer you
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  a bunch of different variants to tweak the game to the group's desire, and
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  I understand that, and I appreciate when designers articulate why or which variants are
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  sort of approved, But I really do want the designer to tell me how
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  the game should be played first. You can have the variants in the back,
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  maybe, but I want to know here is the preferred design, here's
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  the preferred way this game is gonna work. That just makes more sense to
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  me. An example of this would be Obsession, which has a bunch of
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  different variants for how the market works or how different things happen, and as
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  a player, you have to decide which one you're gonna do. I think
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  it could be better about foregrounding, which goes where, but that might be
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  a problem with the rulebook more than the game. Well, this is a
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  relatively short episode, but I don't have a ton more to stay about house
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  rules, so I'm gonna pass it over to you, dear listeners. In
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  the forum, one suggested name for it for us listen for you listeners as
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  the pud Pals PUD being pick up and Deliver. Another option would be pick
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  up Pals. I'm happy with either of those, So, friends, listeners,
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  pud pals, what are some of the house rules you use? Head
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  over to board game gig Guild three two sixty nine and share your thoughts there.
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  I'll look forward to hearing how you tweak games when you play them so
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  that I can tweak my games when I play them. If you want to
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  reach out to me, you can email me Brendan at Rattlebox Games or send
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  me a direct message on fourteen peek Wombat nine two nine is my user name
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  there. Thanks for joining me. I'm a walk today. I hope your
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  next walk is as pleasant as mine was. By bye, Brought to you
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  by rattle Box