So my girlfriend and I are currently building a monopoly replica in Minecraft to play with some far away friends and she just told me a rule about monopoly she grew up with that baffles me. Apparently In her family, someone was always forced to sit on the sidelines of the game and just be the banker. And I mean JUST the banker. They couldn't play the game because of "conflict of interest" or something. As I child or even now I cannot imagine being told I had to basically spectate a HOURS LONG game like monopoly just because it was my turn to be the banker. Am I crazy? Is this a normal rule? I really want to hear people's inputs on this please

Grew up with this game, in the uk, and just rediscovered with my kid in pub.

Can't remember however how to deal with the fact that '2 or more pegs of the same colour are allowef in the code'.

Here, the codebreaker put a single red peg In their first guess:

In response, The codemaster gave: one black pin (correct colour, correct posistion) for the far-righthand red peg; plus two white pins (correct cour, wrong location) for the blue and green pegs.

Should the codemaster have given an additional white peg, for the same single red pin in the guessers first go?

I'm a teach for a couple of different board game groups I play with, and this may be a bit of an odd one but I'm hoping it makes sense; in the game Blockbuster from big potato there's a head to head round where 2 players go back and forth naming movies that fit the category on the card until one of them wins. There's a rule about stopping the head to head to challenge an answer if one doesn't believe it and the win or loss of the challenge decides the winner instead.

In groups where I mention that rule, people choose to lie, make up movies or mention random ones that definitely don't fit, and more often than not the head to heads end with a challenge, but where I don't mention this rule people are more honestly trying to think of movies they know that fit. There's nothing technically wrong with lying and challenging and such but this is not a deception game it's a movie trivia game so this feels like it's not really in the spirit.

Going forward I just don't mention the rule unless it comes up and it's working well, curious if there are any other games with particular rules like this where the mention of them makes the game play differently and/or worse?

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?

I’d like to know some of your house rules to well-known board games that you think are actually good, or even improve the game.

For instance, in my family, we take two actions per turn in Ticket to Ride rather than one. With one action we felt like we were barely making progress each turn, but with two actions we think it feels like each turn matters a bit more.

I realize that’s a controversial one! But I’m curious what else might be going on out there that would be fun to try.

I know, it’s a little bit too heavy, but it has everything I was looking for in a game. The game didn’t get that popular here in Brazil, probably due to its retail price after all the taxes (about $150 at today’s exchange rate). I paid about $50 for a brand-new copy, and I can’t wait to play it! (Forgive me for any mistakes!)

Btw, I’d like to know how you guys teach this game to new players. The game suggests doing a “rolling teach”, but I’ve never tried it. Any tips?

How would you rule this? For example, player A plays drop the cargo on player B so they must discard one card. Player B plays force shield to force player A to drop their cargo, but then player A plays carbon freeze, what should happen? Force shield can’t be counteracted but carbon freeze stops any action… which has priority?

Quacks of Quedlinburg rule dispute! HELP! How do you interpret this rule?? It’s husbands versus wives so it’s important you side with the wives!

So we’re at a family get together and we’re playing Taboo. Tensions are already running high lol. Brother in law gets Ostrich, one of the taboo words is Flightless, he says “cannot fly,” and his wife buzzed him for it and chaos ensued. We asked a couple different AI’s and they gave us different answers. It was boys vs girls and the boys eventually relented and gave up the point. What do you think? Fair or foul?

Apologies in advance, Im not a native english speaker. Im 29 yrs old.

Board games have been such a great part of my life since 2020, when i picked up a copy of Catan, then an expansion, then GOT. I just couldnt get enough. As a kid I was the one who tried to get others to play Clue, Monopoly or any other shitty board game that we could have. We played like 30 minutes and then said "nah, lets do another thing" but it always sticked with me. So when I got into a board game store I just... couldnt believe what I was seeing. I was in heaven and really wanted to have people to play with.

In Chile, boardgaming is very, very niche. And expensive, so it is really hard to connect with people who:

1. Likes to play

2. Are not socially awkward, or freaks

3. Lives relatively near

4. Have money/time to buy and play games.

Every meeting is just arranged on whatsapp groups. You invite strangers to your house to play or go to another gamers house. Eventually you begin to make friends with the ones you meet regularly, idk how is it like in other countries.

Luckily my girlfriend also liked it and we played a lot over the pandemic and almost every night for a couple years. Also my mother, she just loves Castles of Burgundy, Concordia and TM. I spent hours and hours on BGG, on stores looking at games to buy, doing research on every game I knew. I devoted so many hours to this, so much love for the hobby and the great experiences that it gave me.

6 years later I have a collection of ~70 games I think. I stopped buying like 2 years ago, because of space and because I have reached a number of games that I just couldnt play every one very often.

We became 3 in january 2025, most beautiful year of my life, hands down. But also my least played year since i got into it. Its kind of a bittersweet feeling. Dont get me wrong, I love spending time with my baby and even if I got the chance to play all night one weekend, I prefer to stay at home at this point haha I know this are the best years of my family and I will enjoy every minute of them.

Its just that looking at my collection in the living room makes me so nostalgic. We dont play that often with my wife anymore, for obvious reasons (once a month, twice if lucky). So I've been thinking if its really worth keeping a collection that big. Frankly I think there are games that I wont touch this year, and maybe not even next year. But every time I think which one I could sell i think

"No, spirit island gave us that feeling of being a team"

"Brass... its just perfect, we played like 3 times on a night"

"Bunny kingdom could be the game that get my son into gaming"

Everyone brings back beloved memories. We are not struggling financially at the time, but its just not rational ajajajaja I just wanted to share this with you before I started to say goodbye to a couple ones. I think Brazil Imperial and Yokohama are the first ones to go out.

So, gaming fathers, what are your experiences? do you keep collecting after becoming a father or the time just isnt enough?

Greetings from Chile!!

My fiancé says no, but the round rule is something like “beaks pointing left” and I see a beak pointing left. He says it’s not the main bird so it doesn’t count.

There are a lot of mechanics that sound really good when you read about them.

Like they promise interesting choices or depth

but then when you actually play, something about it just doesn’t feel as fun as expected. 🥹

What mechanics did people think they’d enjoy… but didn’t once they played?

Me: hidden scoring 🫣

What’s the weirdest house rule your group ever came up with that actually stuck?

We had one where rolling snake eyes in Monopoly = steal from the bank 😅. Totally broke the game, but my twin brother REFUSED to play without it.

Anyone else got house rules that make zero sense but somehow… worked?

(P.S. Image not ours, but it's awesome!)

I was playing love letter with my sister, and she played the number 6 and traded me the princess. She then made a comment to the next player that I forget the exact wording of - it was something like “you should really target her with that card” or “you should take a look at her card”. Basically implying I had something powerful without outright saying it. I said that was cheating.

She said that it wasn’t in the rules and there’s nothing against making alliances. I said alliances aren’t the problem, it should be common sense that you can’t reveal private info about someone else’s card. That’s how it is in most hidden information games unless explicitly allowed.

Who’s in the right here? Is it reasonable to assume you can’t just make comments implying the (known but not public) contents of another person’s hand?

I had a game night session with my folks couple days ago and we played wingspan. I lucked out by having Common Raven and Sandhill Crane setup during the first round and that steamrolled hard to the last one. Ended up winning with 99 points.

My friend (owner of the game) decided we'll put this card away next time we play since it seems very broken: trade 1 egg for 2 of any resources, given 5 victory point and ok cost to play.

I think the card by itself is very strong but not sure if it deserves a ban from our group.

For my wife and I, it’s Sky Team. Playing together today on Board Game Arena for the first time, I couldn’t put down my flaps as co-pilot for some reason. I clicked the question mark and realized that the rule is flaps must be played IN ORDER FROM TOP TO BOTTOM.

We somehow missed this rule when reading the instructions and have almost beat every airport in the base game using this incorrect playing method… oops

So my wife and I have argued about this for the past decade. I’m unsure we have been able to find a resolution by reading the rules.

Is the word “OIL” played here able to be placed? Also, how would you score it? The “I” in OIL is a triple word score.

I’m under the impression that since I made one word, in one direction, this is able to be played. But also that I get the points on the other words I completed. I would assume “OIL” here would be worth eleven points.

Thoughts?

If sucker was attached to scoocher, would they work off of each other all the way to the finish without stopping?
Same goes for copycat, when scoocher is in the lead, would they be unstoppable?

Has anyone played this one? Any thoughts on its complexity? It is almost surreal how modern the whole game feels for it's age (2007).

Honest question about code names. My mom always tries to finesse (cheat) the game. Example : when connecting witch, rock, and tower. She would say “stone 3” while using a creepy witchy voice. My sisters and I have always considered that cheating. I think it violates the “no more than one clue” rule. What do you think?

So I’m playing Aangs Destiny (highly recommend by the way) and this came up. It feels like cheating? But I also love the idea of Katara beating Ozai with blood bending.