Web rules appear to be a lot more standardized now, and the wikipedia’s and pagats mold games into a format familiar for their audience. On the deal, at least, a search for “how do people deal cards in China” turns up relevant entries. But unless you find a localized version of the rules that’s sticklery enough to proscribe how to deal, most rules are either standardized to pagat norms or don’t specify local customs.
I’d forgotten this, but in China play typically goes counter-clockwise as well.
Regarding the “menu” of penalties for points, I couldn’t find them now either. Back in 2019 or so, a bit before SUSD undertook it, I did my own research to find the best games with a standard deck. I was also curious about the heritage of Tichu. Many of the games, like Tien Len, Zhang Fen, Guandan, etc. didn’t have enries in the major outlets so the search would lead you to some helpful local who wanted to write up their game for the world. I can’t find those now, just wikipedia, pagat, and clones.
The structure I remember was something like “at the end of the round, score points as follows. Additionally, if someone tries to play an extra card during the round, -5. If they are found with a duplicate card, -50. If someone tries to reveal their cards to their partner, -10 per card revealed.” That sort of thing.
And, in all fairness, I think I found two games with instructions like that, so more than an anomaly but it supports more of a hypothesis than a conclusion.
I’ve encountered more on this end. I may fudge the setup to handicap myself, or give myself secret goals (like in Istanbul, requiring myself to get all four upgrades and a full wheelbarrow before I can buy any rubies from the main spaces) but I’m very careful about overtly skipping opportunities or fudging the outcome.
This is more or less what I think Reiner Knizia meant by that quote which I suspect suffers in translation. (Usually given as something like “When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning.”)
Part of the social contract for me as a game demo guy is that I will play my best game against you, whoever you are. But also as a game demo guy I may narrate my thought process or play open handed so that you can learn more about the game.
As for cheating/lying in general I am sufficiently stereotypical that I like to have rigid and formal constraints about what is allowed. A minor niggle: cooperative games with limited communication, that say something like “you can hint at what cards you have but you can’t state it explicitly”. How much can I hint? My mini rulebook for Shamans borrows a BGG post by the designer in which he stated explicitly his idea of allowable statements.
Yes, I have adjusted die rolls to make sure I lose to my kids. This was important early on.
Yes, they have cheated. I embraced it as another stage. It showed me they knew what they were trying to do and how to do it and it was a really good layer of problem solving - how do I plug this hole between where I am and where I want to be? It was good as a temporary thing.
Later on we had a little talk about how the game got boring if the unicorn always hit every rainbow. We agreed it was fun when you didn’t know what would happen. I wasn’t sure about the transition out of it, but we got there to where they are ok letting the game play out the way it does and enjoying the ups and downs of fortune.
All that is pretty clandestine. I remember as a kid playing with others who hadn’t made that journey and seemed to make a LOT of change while banking in monopoly, that sort of thing. Glad that phase of life is behind.
I was definitely scarred by Diplomacy. Yes, it was communicated as a part of the game. But it may have been my first blunt experience of sugar to the face and a knife in the back. Probably a good learning experience but it was rough on me (and a few relationships) at the time.
Ever since then I’ve preferred games with a little more structure around the bluffing / lying / betrayal. As I think about it, I also prefer games where lying leads to someone racing ahead, as opposed to lying leading to someone getting scuttled. That’s a pretty common theme, Coup, Sheriff, One Night Ultimate Werewolf - you are on the whole trying to execute a deception to make a heist on the game, as it were. In Diplomacy you are running a deception to take someone’s land or ruin their attack, etc. The first is a lot more fun.
I don’t know where Spyfall falls. No doubt that game is stressful, but I’ve only had a good time with it. The stakes are low, the roles are assigned randomly, and everyone gets a turn.
I do like the lying games. A bit of background in theater, a lot of rock paper scissors in my pre-phone past. I enjoy trying to engineer the lie, polishing the execution. I love the psychological game of when to call someone out. I think I was a good liar as a kid and, at some point, decided I didn’t want to be. It became very important to not lie. Maybe there’s a bit of games letting a person flex that muscle without reaching out into the real world and real lives.
And what is it about Diplomacy that is a game but there are so many stories of it transcending the game table and soiling people’s lives? Is it just that we all played it when we were younger, or is it something about the game itself? I’ve heard Game of Thrones can end up similarly.
Skyfall: this is a literal nightmare for me. A social situation where everyone else knows the rules and I don’t. Dead Last too.
Coup, Sheriff of Nottingham: one strategy that can work is never to lie. I applaud having this option available. I have several times won Coup using it.
One I played a little but didn’t love: Secret Moon, designed as “a social deduction game for people who are bad at lying”. Yeah, but I’m not sure there’s much game left.
I’ll happily cheat in solo games from time to time. If it’s ‘significant’ cheating, then generally I don’t count the result as a win if the cheating allowed me to ‘win’. It’s just that I’ve decided I’ll get more satisfaction from continuing the game than I would from ending the game. ‘Insignificant’ cheating is usually me changing what I’ve just played before anything else has happened in the game, because I’ve realised that I should have done something different. It’s a case-by-case thing, though – often I’ll just accept the mistake and press on.
It’s pretty rare for me to “try to lose”. My general mindset is based on my own enjoyment of playing and learning games, which means (a) I expect to lose games against more experienced players, and am not bothered by that eventuality; (b) losing by a large margin frequently demonstrates that skill plays a significant role in the game, which is usually a good thing in my books. If I don’t want to play a game again, it’s not going to be because I lost (unless I cannot envisage the possibility of ever doing any better at that game). Rightly or wrongly, I tend to assume others will approach games in much the same way as myself, and so I’m usually trying to win. At the same time I might be explaining to new players why I’m making certain moves, and helping them to make good decisions.
A case in point was my recent introduction to Endeavor: Deep Sea. The owner and teacher was actually apologetic about thumping us all in the final scoring, feeling that he’d been a bad teacher for winning the game by a significant margin, whereas the rest of us were like “we didn’t expect this to go any other way; it’s totally fine!”
I have tried to lose games on occasion, mind; but mostly only with my partner who doesn’t enjoy games the way I do. If she’s on form then I won’t be holding back (and she wins plenty of those contests); but if she’s making lots of mistakes then I’ll sometimes try to adapt. Otherwise I’m typically playing with enthusiasts, and I assume they’re as happy to lose as myself.
I’ve found an excellent way of determining whether skill plays a significant role in a game is to try and lose the game to your child. If it’s as hard to lose on purpose as it is to win, I reckon it ain’t a game decided by skill!
(But now I think about it - if my ineptness at many of the games I love playing solo is anything to go by, it might just be that I’m useless at the game, whether trying to win or lose…)