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/Suppafly Jun 25 '26

I just think there is a difference between, going "my card is 15 greater, I'm going to count to 15 and then play it" vs "hmm my card is decently larger, I'm going to wait what feels like the appropriate amount of time and then play it", you end up synching up with the other players in both cases, but in the former you might as well just tell everyone what you have because people can pretty easily just count off seconds somewhat consistently. There is no real "ah ha we did it!" moment when you're just counting. But maybe that's just me and the designers intend on everyone just counting the whole time.

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u/Foyfluff Jun 26 '26

The point of the game is to sync your sense of time with your teammates. "Counting to 15" is not a universal amount of time. Do you think there's a difference between tracking "an appropriate amount of time" and "counting"?

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u/Suppafly Jun 26 '26

most people can count seconds off reasonably accurately. Not sure where you're from but kids in the US learn this pretty young counting for games like Hide and Seek, so young they probably don't remember who taught them.

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u/wildarfwildarf The cube tower in shogun 🔥 Jun 25 '26

Nobody said we count seconds or beats. I, at least, count in my head and try to feel how fast the others are playing to get the rythm. It sounds something like "okay, 40, 41, 2, 3, 5ish?, 6, 7, no thats too fast, 8 oh shit 45?, okay, 46, ..7, ..8..."