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My friends and I used to occasionally play a card game called Mao. The winner of each round (the first to get rid of the cards in their hand) could make up a ne

My friends and I used to occasionally play a card game called Mao. The winner of each round (the first to get rid of the cards in their hand) could make up a new rule governing game play for following rounds. But they didn't announce their rule, instead punishing players who broke it by giving them an extra card. By watching the punishments, you had to try to work out their rule so you could avoid breaking it. With the right group, it was quite fun, if rather tiring. You need to not take winning too seriously, because it's quite easy to make up a complex rule no-one will ever get - one of my friends had 'you may not play a prime number card on another prime number card'.

StavrosK 14y ago
Can you do "You get a card at random"?
jsnell 14y ago
Mao belongs to a class of games called inductive reasoning games. They're mostly crap, but there are a few gems. IMO the best one of the bunch is Zendo where one player makes up a rule that determines whether a grouping of playing pieces is valid or not (usually played with Treehouse pieces, but e.g. a limited selection of lego pieces can also work). The other players then basically need to use an experimentation / induction loop to determine the rule. This can be really fun in a hackerly group. And once the players get experience, it's surprising how complicated rules are solveable. The story of the Zendo design process is a great read: http://www.koryheath.com/games/zendo/design-history/ http://www.koryheath.com/games/zendo/design-history/
- tjic 14y ago
  Zendo is great - I played it again with my nine year old godson last weekend when he was here having a sleep over. Tangentially: this kid is an awesome proto-nerd, and I fully expect that he'll be posting at HN in another 6 to 8 years - for the last two years he's wanted to program a computer game, and I told him that he and I would learn HTML5 and JS together when he turns 10. We've already got the domain name picked out. If you haven't engaged with an intellectually precocious kid, you can't imagine how fun and rewarding it is.
Evbn 14y ago
I thought the point of playing Mao was to torture the new player, like a hazing ritual.
- takluyver 14y ago
  You can play it like that, but to be honest, it's more fun when everybody has at least some concept of what's going on.

StavrosK 14y ago

Can you do "You get a card at random"?

jsnell 14y ago

Mao belongs to a class of games called inductive reasoning games. They're mostly crap, but there are a few gems. IMO the best one of the bunch is Zendo where one player makes up a rule that determines whether a grouping of playing pieces is valid or not (usually played with Treehouse pieces, but e.g. a limited selection of lego pieces can also work). The other players then basically need to use an experimentation / induction loop to determine the rule. This can be really fun in a hackerly group. And once the players get experience, it's surprising how complicated rules are solveable. The story of the Zendo design process is a great read: http://www.koryheath.com/games/zendo/design-history/ http://www.koryheath.com/games/zendo/design-history/

tjic 14y ago
Zendo is great - I played it again with my nine year old godson last weekend when he was here having a sleep over. Tangentially: this kid is an awesome proto-nerd, and I fully expect that he'll be posting at HN in another 6 to 8 years - for the last two years he's wanted to program a computer game, and I told him that he and I would learn HTML5 and JS together when he turns 10. We've already got the domain name picked out. If you haven't engaged with an intellectually precocious kid, you can't imagine how fun and rewarding it is.

Evbn 14y ago

I thought the point of playing Mao was to torture the new player, like a hazing ritual.

takluyver 14y ago
You can play it like that, but to be honest, it's more fun when everybody has at least some concept of what's going on.