Who doesn't love a good board game, right? That's why when u/salbaf recently asked Reddit, "what is an extra rule your family added to a popular board or card game?", lots of people came through with some pretty imaginative ideas! Here are some of the best responses:
1. "In Scrabble, the person who can make the longest word goes first, highest points breaks a tie."
"This makes the game more fun by ensuring there are lots of places to play your letters."
2. "The mugging rule in Monopoly."
"If I land on a space that you are currently occupying, I can choose to mug you. We take turns rolling the dice, if I roll higher, I steal $100, if you roll higher I go to jail."
3. "In Trivial Pursuit, we have a rule – if the player being asked doesn't know the answer, they can ask the room."
"The room doesn't actually answer, they just say whether they know the answer or not. If nobody knows it, the card is considered an invalid question, and another card gets drawn instead. If someone in the room does know, but the player being asked doesn't, then it's just a plain old pass."
4. "If you say sorry while playing Uno, you pick up 2 cards! Slap that +4 down with authority!"
5. "Nukes in Risk."
"If you roll three sixes when attacking, you defeat every army on the territory you're attacking into. If you roll three ones, you nuke yourself and lose every army in the territory you're attacking from."
– u/Len-K
6. "I really like running Monopoly with two d20s instead of the default 6s."
"Makes it a lot more chaotic."
7. "At the end of Scrabble, we make up a story with all the words on the board."
"We never looked at the tiles for scores, we just played to get the best words on the board."
8. "We do something similar with Cards Against Humanity. Pick up a card, start the story, go around the table."
"Got some really weird stories."
9. "In Monopoly, we allow the utilities to collect 5% of any player to player transaction over $200."
"It helps keep the utilities relevant and desirable."
10. "In Risk, we added a path from Madagascar to Western Australia because we thought, since every other continent has more than 1 border to defend, it was a bit unfair for Australia to only have 1 point of entry."
11. "In every cooperative board game – Pandemic, Castle Panic, whatever – there is usually someone who tries to tell everyone what to do. I am often accidentally this person. So, I implemented the 'right hand man' rule."
"If the person whose turn it is wants advice, they can only get it from the person on their right. Nobody else can say anything. Makes things way more enjoyable."
12. "Guess Who, but no questions about appearance."
"Instead, we ask questions like, 'has your person ever pooped on a train?' or 'does your person have strong opinions about fonts?'
13. "In Cards Against Humanity, you can bet one (or more) of your black cards to play another white card."
14. "Our main edit to the Monopoly rules was that whoever picked the shoe automatically got out of jail free the first time."
"I don't remember why it started, but still almost nobody picked the shoe."
15. "In Catan, when you roll a seven or play a knight, you have to move the robber, but you can move it back to the desert and claim any resource you want from the 'bank.'"
16. "In Clue, once the killer has been discovered and it's one of the pieces in play, the game becomes a chase."
"The remaining player's turns are rolls to get out of the mansion by leaving the hall through the doors. Entering the hall is one move, leaving the hall is another. The killer tries to catch the remaining pieces and kill them – they do this by landing on the same space as them in between rooms, or by rolling a higher number than them in the same room.
If there are two players in a room with the killer, the killer must announce who they’re going after. After one attack, killer’s turn is over. Secret passages only work if you roll even numbers in that room. The killer rolls twice per turn and cannot use secret passages."
17. "Stacking +4's in Uno is VALID and I do not care what Hasbro has to say about it."
18. "In the Game of Life, we would put the white car on top of the middle building of the three white buildings together."
"The first person who got there, got to take the white car and it was worth $1,000,000 at the end of the game."
19. "In Uno, we draw cards until we can throw one down. No limits."
"We have had to buy a second deck because of this. We also possibly lost friendships over it too."
20. "If you yell at all in monopoly, you give half your money to the bank for yelling tax."
21. "One rule used for many board games – if someone takes too long with his/her move, anyone can fetch the three-minute hourglass from the shelf and set it on the table."
"Once the time runs out, the move is over regardless."
22. "Unfortunately, with the wife and son, we only ever have three players. Four players makes a game even more fun, so we often include a fourth player called Bob."
"Bob gets the last turn in the cycle. Someone rolls for Bob, and then the three of us agree on what Bob's best move is. It's especially fun when you have to agree that Bob's best move is to take out one of your own pieces."
23. "Winner gets to flip the board. Loser has to clean up."
Note: Some entries were edited for length and/or clarity.