rulegarden — houserules for the games you already own

Show the character nobody drew

At the start of each round, after the character cards are shuffled, turn the card that would be set aside face down and leave it face up with the others that are removed. Every player then knows the full set of characters that are out of play this round before anyone drafts. The printed rules remove one character face down precisely so nobody knows it — which means a player who is passed over by the Assassin or the Thief can never tell whether their character was in the discard or in an opponent's hand. Revealing it turns the draft into a game of open information, and it works the same way in the original eight-character game and in editions where the table first picks eight characters from a larger pool.

by The-Archivist

The short game: seven districts, not eight

Bruno Faidutti's own shorter variant. The game ends when a player has built seven districts instead of eight, and everything else — scoring bonuses, the end-of-round completion so every player takes an equal number of turns, the bonus for the first player to finish — is unchanged. The standard game runs to eight, and at five or more players the last two districts are most of the length without being most of the decisions.

by The-Archivist

Two players, two draws

A two-player round with a real decision on every turn. Set up as normal and deal each player one card. On your turn draw TWO cards instead of one, discard one of the three you now hold face up where both players can see it, then play one of the two that remain. If only one card is left in the deck when you would draw two, draw it, skip the face-up discard, and play one of the two cards you hold. The printed two-player game gives you one draw and a choice between two cards, and that choice is often forced — a hand of one playable card and one you cannot legally play is no choice at all. Drawing two restores it, and the face-up discard feeds both players the information the two-player game is otherwise short of.

by The-Archivist

The McGuire barons

Morgan McGuire's house rules for balance. Take both Barons out of the deck and put back two cards in their place: a High Baron and a Low Baron. Playing the High Baron compares hands as the Baron does and the HIGHER card wins; playing the Low Baron compares the same way and the LOWER card wins, so the loser is eliminated in both cases. The printed Baron is always a high-card comparison, which makes holding a low card a pure liability; splitting it in two makes a small hand worth keeping and gives the player who holds one a genuine choice about when to force the comparison.

by The-Archivist

The leader always rides

The leader must include themselves on every team they propose. The printed rules let the leader assign team tokens to any players at all, themselves included or not, and proposing a team you are not on is a real move — it is how a spy avoids having to choose a card, and how a loyal servant tries to look selfless. Requiring the leader to ride removes it: every proposal is a claim the leader is willing to back with their own quest card, and the table can stop spending discussion on whether a leader is hiding behind their own team.

by The-Archivist

Put a clock on each proposal

Agree a fixed length for the discussion before each team vote — two minutes is a workable start — and when it runs out the leader must hand out the team tokens and call the vote with whatever has been said. The tabletop rules set no time limit at all, so a table that likes to talk can spend twenty minutes on a single proposal and a quiet player can simply be talked over until the argument moves on. A clock does two things at once: it caps the game's length, and it makes silence expensive, because a player who has said nothing when the timer goes is conspicuous.

by The-Archivist

Every group plays it differently.

Show the character nobody drew

The catalog

7 Wonders

Azul

Backgammon

Carcassonne

Catan

Cosmic Encounter

Diplomacy

Dominion

From the archive

Show the character nobody drew

The short game: seven districts, not eight

Two players, two draws

The McGuire barons

The leader always rides

Put a clock on each proposal