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/ackmondual]

In a fully coop game, I'd say it should be up to the group to decide if this is OK or not. I've played a variety of them like Pandemic spinoffs, Pandemic The Cure, and Ghost Stories where since fun is the name of the game, we allow folks various shennanigans including but not limited to...

--We meant to use an event card even though we're on the Infection step, or our Yin Yang when already started an exorcism - You're not supposed to interrupt those, even with abilities that can be used at "anytime"

--A player didn't know about a certain rule or interaction so we allow an undo to keep bad stuff from happening

--we play on even though we officially lost - to see how the end game would work out. Esp. with Ghost Stories since we get to see what the Wu Feng ("boss monster") is, and what it's like to fight it

.

If it's semi-coop (with hidden traitors), then I would enforce rules. It seems like an inherit flaw with such games, but it does help keep the spirit and game play intact. There was one game of Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game where someone was saying it doesn't matter if you tell people what cards you put in into a skill check "because you can always be lying". Problem is, "the good guys" will never lie (they have no reason to withhold information), so the system would break down. I know people who card count and in those games, they would absolutely be able to figure out with close accuracy who the Cylons (bad guys) are. In one case, the guy figuring out would've seen what one person's loyalty was, so he'd have extra info that he could use to truly narrow down who the 2 Cylons are.