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> I still love it, but can't play it any more since people rarely have attention to detuct the hidden rules.

I have a theory you can only induct a new player 'properly' (i.e. without them getting out their phone and consulting wikipedia) when you've got at least 3-4 experienced players.

Fewer than that and the new player won't see enough plays to figure out what the pattern is before they're buried in penalty cards. I've found this to be true even if the new player is a veteran board game player, used to paying attention to long games with complicated rules.

Interesting theory. I haven't had change to try that kind a situation. The biggest game by people was like 6 people and 2 experts.

I can see that thou. I often had to give example rules for people, thou I feel like it robs part of the fun.

With more experts it could make things better, if they go easy on start. If they go full on with super hard rules, the half attention newbies would be lost.

Thou if the newbie really wants then they could learn in that big expert play too.

I introduced this to so many people as the only one who knew how to play. Key is start the game with 3 cards and win the round quickly + be super diligent about the rules so no conflicting information. Win the round quickly, add an obvious rule and by the third round it's fair play.

I had a friend who started the game saying, "The game of Mao is like the game of life. You come into it not knowing the rules but you get penalized for them anyway." I always liked that opening, more than "The only rule you may be told is this one."

Dutch Mao (mentioned briefly in the wiki) is a variant where everyone comes up with a hidden rule before the game begins, and is one of my favorite games of all time.

Followed closely by Eleusis the master of inductive reasoning card games, a brilliant zendo like experience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusis_(card_game)

Once we got really exploratory with my brother. We eliminated all the rules, expect empty hand wins.

Cards had no meaning, there was no turn nothing.

But that is bit too lose base.

From our exploration we saw that rules that say you must do something are waaay more fun ad clearer, than rules like you can or can choose not to do. The choise rules made it basically impossible to detuct and even with in the context felt like the other is possibly cheating.

We also saw that people were quite concervative and really really hesitant to alter the base game rules.

Thou if we played couple of games and then chatted about everyones rules, and then reseted the game, people would open up bit. But the base rules (of basically uno) were quite sacred to break for people.

On a ski trip with friends we spontaneously turned a game of Uno into a Mao drinking game.

The rules were: •• Picture cards worth 10pts, black cards 50pts, number cards = n points •• At game end, 2 players with most points drink •• +4 can stack on +2, and vice-versa if color is right •• Uno Uno doesn't win unless no cards can be stacked anymore •• No deck shuffling

This resulted in the most fun and long Uno games, as people would keep the risky + cards till the end to stack on the Uno Uno player and keep him in the game. The no-deck-shuffling added an element of card-counting to the game as the discarded cards would be added to the bottom of the deck when no cards were left to draw.

Love this game. It was especially popular during boy scout camping trips for me. I don't know if anyone would have the patience for it anymore, unless the internet went down for a week or something.

Mao took over my summer camp like wildfire in 2005. Fellow councilors and I would often consolidate the rules between camp sessions and we kept running clearing out playing cards from the Kenora grocery store to play on our island. Fond memories. It's definitely one of those games that suites camp life, with the culture of play and hidden rules.

Interesting, that kind of reminds me of Things In Rings [1]. I haven’t played it yet but it looks pretty good.

[1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/408547/things-in-rings

One of the other comments talked about pizza box where they throw big coin/disc and on landing site you draw rule circle.

Your link seems bit like mix of Mao and it.

And it does seem to have "the commercial" version of Mao.

I should look into it more.

Do you have examples for good made up rules? I want to try it next time being with friends.

Playing the 2 of clubs was a "total failure" and you would be handed the entire draw pile.

I used to play this a ton (often as a drinking game). The wiki does a good job of explaining the basics and I'd always do the no talking + point of order variants (+ a few others). My favorite type are:

1) rules requiring awareness of card order. "Have a nice day" is standard on 7, double 7's is "very nice" etc. Stack rules like that when combinations and/or cards of a suit are played and people have to remember 5 things they have to say or do after a card. Get's difficult over many rounds.

2) ice-breaking rules (if you're playing with new people). Friendly ones like "you must compliment _ when a _ is played." Great way to build/open someone up

3) rules changing play order. Aces reverse, add rules that e.g. skip a player and you'll have everyone waiting in suspense to see if the person who's turn it is actually knows its their turn. If not, "delay of game".

Play it with friends you'll be surprised with what people come up with!

Some newbies seem to go for rules like: It is illegal to take even number as punishment. Or You can only play sevens in pairs. Or King skips next one.

Games between my brothers and me, rules such as: Specific card plays from next player. Or You are allowed to play +- 1 instead of exact same.

Nasty ones like: Third red is illegal. You are not allowed to put card, that would make sum of last three to be more than 15.

Those are quite fun. But probably my all time favorite is: "Eights live backwards"

I could live it at that, but the deeper explanation is that it is illegal to keep eights in had same way to other cards and it must be played up-side down.

This rule is the one my brother broke when he was shuffling the deck and got thought about "fixing" the eights.

Since some rules can be really rare and some really common, we started to do in expert games that the rule maker can set the card penalty. Multiple times per play? Basic 2 card punishment. ~once per game? 3-4

Rarer than that? +5, go wild as is the name of the game.

With newbies, standard 2 card punishment keeps things simple.

When each person have 2-4 rules from them and to keep all the other hidden rules in mind, the fun is chaos and chaos is fun.

It is also cool to debrief after and discuss with people if anyone managed to guess the others rules.

Instantly thought about Mao too, we'd play it with friends in-between classes in college. Good times. Making players say "thanks" after receiving a penalty (or keep receiving penalties) never got old.

Heh, since for us it was time with our dad, we needed to be able to chat. So before first test play we decided not make rules around speaking.

After that many people find it really hard to grasp the rules and possibilities. "How can the rules change without anybody knowing?" "How can they be enforced?" And so on.

To me the ideal would be no rules explained but as the embasidor, I do not get such possibility.

To others I explain some rules and example rules, such that we often want to sosialice so while you can make speaking rules they may be bit meh.

No one but one person made voice rules. My god I got burned in that game. I was constanly speaking as the explainer and keeping turn order up. I did not figure it why I got so many penalties from them, I had small feeling but could not figure the exact thing.

Turns out he was bit annoyed by me and the rule was: "you are not allowed to speak on your turn"

Obv I was not mad, I was amused when I got interesting game. Good times.