Appreciation post: a guy at my Tuesday game night changed how I think about house rules
I used to be the guy who would not play with any house rules, ever, because I thought they ruined the game as the designer meant it. Then two weeks ago at our Tuesday night meetup in the back room of a cafe on 5th street, a guy named Ray pulled out Catan and said he plays with a rule where you can trade any resource 1 for 1 if you also give up a card from your hand. I argued with him for a good ten minutes before we just tried it, and honestly the game got way more tense and fun because nobody could hoard wheat all night. Now I am actually hunting for more house rules instead of acting like the rulebook is holy. What house rules do you all use that actually made a game better?
Ray basically invented the "pay a card to skip the line" toll booth and now nobody can hoard wheat, which is either genius or a crime depending on who you ask. Meanwhile I'm still out here using house rules from 2009 that nobody remembers agreeing to.