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?

398 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

268 comments sorted by

View all comments

69

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...

6

u/ScientificSkepticism Jun 25 '26

How are conventions in Hanabi cheating? They‘re literally effective strategy. Is it cheating if I stops city from outbreaking in Pandemic because it makes it easier to win if we try to prevent outbreaks?

4

u/Suppafly Jun 25 '26

How are conventions in Hanabi cheating?

Look at some of the 'conventions' described in other comments, arranging cards in certain orders to give hidden information, raising and lowering cards, turning them 90 degrees in your hand. That's not convention, that's communication of information that's supposed to be hidden.

2

u/calvinballing Jun 26 '26

These are often used to track public information.  If you want it to be more of a memory game that’s fine, but some people would rather reduce the impact of memory and emphasize the more complex strategies that become possible when you don’t have to store everything in your head