Unpopular opinion: house rules ruin most board games

Been playing with a group in Denver for 6 months and every time someone adds a house rule the game gets unbalanced. Last week we tried Catan with "no trading on first turn" and it dragged the whole game out an extra hour. Am I the only one who thinks the original rules are fine?

2 comments

2 Comments

victor_carr253d agoMost Upvoted

The bit about Catan dragging on an hour hit home. My group tried a "no trading until round three" rule once and we sat there for 20 minutes watching everyone roll and pass. We learned the hard way that house rules usually just fix a problem nobody had. Now we stick to the book and only add a rule if we've played the base game at least ten times. Quick tip: try the original rules for five games in a row before changing anything.

uma_webb2813h ago

Your five games rule is actually smart tbh. That gives everyone time to actually understand the flow and balance before messing with it. Most groups I see try one game on base rules, lose badly, and immediately start inventing new rules to fix their own bad luck or bad strategy. Then the whole game just becomes whatever the loudest person at the table wants it to be. The Catan trading thing is perfect example - people think they're making the game more "fair" but they're really just killing the early game momentum that makes Catan work. Would go even further and say you shouldn't even consider a house rule until everyone at the table has a solid grasp on what makes each move valuable. By then you usually realize the base game designers actually knew what they were doing lol.