Re: [spoon-discuss] Re: -2

[Daniel Lepage <dpl33@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jul 1, 2004, at 10.46 PM, Craig wrote:

> > The best is when you play with players who have no idea what the game 
> > is,
> > and when they ask any questions, you hit them with a two-card penalty
> > for talking about the rules.
>
> What? Only two cards? Rules questions are worth three under many
> circumstances...

You must play a very different version of Mao than the one I learned... 
the Mao I was taught has very simple rules, which are as follows:
1) At the beginning of each round, each player is dealt 5 cards; the 
top card of the draw pile is flipped, and the player to the dealer's 
left begins playing by playing a card if e can and drawing otherwise. 
Play continues in that direction.
2) A play is legal if and only if ____
3) If a player breaks a rule, e receives any cards e played to break it 
back, plus one penalty card.
4) The round ends when one player runs out of cards; that player wins 
the round. E then becomes the dealer for the next round, and gets to 
create a single rule that will be in effect for all subsequent rounds. 
E doesn't tell any of the other players what the new rule is, so they 
must figure it out for themselves.

Rule two can change depending on who you play with; I've often seen a 
vaguely Uno-like setup, but in fact there need not be a rule at all (as 
in mini-mao).

Some people also include a rule 5, which states either that questions 
cannot be asked, or that speaking at all is prohibited.

Any other game called 'Mao' is usually a snapshot of a game that had 
run for a while; some poor clueless sap joined a game late in and 
wasn't told how it worked, so e figured out what rules e could and 
assumed they were constant rules of the game, never realizing that the 
game was evolving under eir nose.

A game that I think is more interesting is "mini-mao", which is the 
same thing except without the Uno-like starting rule. In this case, the 
player to the dealer's left will always win the first round, so it is 
customary to omit that round and let whoever deals make a rule for the 
first round.

This is especially interesting because the initial rules don't mention 
ranks or suits; the game can be played with any sort of card you want - 
business cards, magic cards, Fluxx cards...

I'm not sure I'd really call Mao a variant on Eleusis, though... 
Eleusis has but one secret rule, and a lot of complicated yet known 
rules used to deduce the secret rule.

--
Wonko

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