Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2012-12-15 04:15 am
azurelunatic) wrote2012-12-15 04:15 am
#CAH: house rules for low player count mitigation
The Cards Against Humanity crew tonight was me, Mr. Zune, and The Intern. Three players is not particularly many (and it's a game that tends to increase in fun with more players, at least up to a certain point), so we sort of added some house rules.
Previously, when Mr. Zune and I played in the inaugural round, we were trying it two-player style, and we tried playing two sets of cards each and coming to a gentleman's agreement on the winner, with a random black card runoff in case of a tie.
With three players, we were able to have one judge who did not play, but we continued the practice where if only two players are contributing white cards, then each player submits two.
For added randomness and hilarity, after a while we introduced a "random player" -- a card (or two cards, in case of pick two) drawn at random (face-down, unexamined, and usually placed by the judge) -- and in case of the random player winning the hand, the black card was forfeit.
This meant that instead of having to pick between two cards, the judge was looking at five cards. This was found to play well.
TSA Rules were put to use for the first time this time, but because of a hand that had become basically unplayable because of ineffective/not very funny/not very horrible cards, rather than horribly unplayable cards. I'd tried to write the rules to make it so people wouldn't exploit it as a loophole for that, but it turned out that the "hand screening" was a good combination of benefit (ditch half of a weak hand) with drawback (expose your entire hand while picking which cards to discard) with fun/hilarious (everyone gets to see your hand and have opinions).
Having seen the TSA Rules hand-screening in action, I may re-word it to accommodate wholly bad hands of any sort a little better.
Another, non-play-related standard: write-in cards are now encouraged to be either five or seven syllables, to encourage better haiku possibilities.
Previously, when Mr. Zune and I played in the inaugural round, we were trying it two-player style, and we tried playing two sets of cards each and coming to a gentleman's agreement on the winner, with a random black card runoff in case of a tie.
With three players, we were able to have one judge who did not play, but we continued the practice where if only two players are contributing white cards, then each player submits two.
For added randomness and hilarity, after a while we introduced a "random player" -- a card (or two cards, in case of pick two) drawn at random (face-down, unexamined, and usually placed by the judge) -- and in case of the random player winning the hand, the black card was forfeit.
This meant that instead of having to pick between two cards, the judge was looking at five cards. This was found to play well.
TSA Rules were put to use for the first time this time, but because of a hand that had become basically unplayable because of ineffective/not very funny/not very horrible cards, rather than horribly unplayable cards. I'd tried to write the rules to make it so people wouldn't exploit it as a loophole for that, but it turned out that the "hand screening" was a good combination of benefit (ditch half of a weak hand) with drawback (expose your entire hand while picking which cards to discard) with fun/hilarious (everyone gets to see your hand and have opinions).
Having seen the TSA Rules hand-screening in action, I may re-word it to accommodate wholly bad hands of any sort a little better.
Another, non-play-related standard: write-in cards are now encouraged to be either five or seven syllables, to encourage better haiku possibilities.
no subject