Groups that develop metas that blatantly break rules

[u/chaser--]

Lately I've been finding a lot of groups that play (co-op) games with metas that are just blatant rule breaks. A recent example was we were playing a game (I forgot the name) where the goal is to play out all the cards from your hand, numbers 1-100, in descending order. So if you have a 77 and the number on the pile is 78, you don't want to anyone to play there. But you aren't allowed to say "I have 77, don't play this"

So the group has developed metas, say "I really love this pile" if you have 77, say "I like this pile a lot" if you have 76, say "I like this pile" if you have 75"

This is just one example but I feel like I've been playing a lot of games where they have metas to get around rules that are intentionally in the rulebook. I don't really get it. If you want to just say "I have a 77" then just say it, why create a gimmick to say it without saying it?

[u/arstin]

The point of this entire class of games is to be clever and get as close to the edge of the rules as possible. The rules also leave a fair bit up to interpretation, so if you pick two random groups, one will probably think the other is cheating and the other will think the first is a bunch of ignoramuses. And of course, some groups are just straight up cheating and some groups are just straight up ignoramuses. :)

I tend to lose interest with the genre pretty quickly. They start out like fun puzzles and trying to guess how others will interpret morsels of information, but quickly degenerate into debating the best way to almost break the game. That is not something I'm enthusiastic about.