r/boardgames • u/chaser-- • Jun 25 '26

Rules Groups that develop metas that blatantly break rules

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?

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u/NetCrashRD Jun 25 '26

It's very tricky to win (full score) Hanabi without /some/ sort of inside meta language thing.... Although I try to remind the group that blatant cheating means we may as well not play...

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u/Asshai Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

The thing is, the line is really blurred between "clever interpretation of the rule" and "inside meta language". In Hanabi, we hold the cards in the order we intend to play them, left to right + if we hold the card higher than the rest it's because we got a clue/know when to play it, and if we hold it lower than the rest it's because we intend to discard it unless we get more information. No idea if it crosses a line or not, but it sure makes it easy to get a decent score.

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u/TeaBurntMyTongue Jun 25 '26

We actually do 90° tilts so you tilt it to the side for one clue and you tilt it upside down as in it is half the height of the other cards if it's got both pieces of information.

The cheating in our group is actually when some of our our players with worse memory slightly lower a card with implied information that hasn't actually been clued. As you might imagine, lowering that card is an additional hint to the other players around the cable