New blog post on house rules for tabletop games, which is not-so-secretly a post about friendship and trust: https://push.cx/2018/house-rules
@pushcx this is a good post in general, but I don't know if I agree with your choice of example for Public Stays Public. trick tacking cardgames are a genre with a long history behind it, and a huge part of their challenge and appeal is the mental map you have to build of what cards people are likely have in their hands and stuff.
"memory games" are bad when they distract from the point of the game, or when they get tedious. in trick taking games, memory *is* the point of the game.
@nightpool Then I guess our group has a really different set of preferences from the folks who design and play those games. Maybe the rule is an adaptation to "fix" a genre we'dotherwise enjoy significantly less.
@pushcx That's fair! for what it's worth I **completely** agree with no take-backsies (although I would never do it in a game where correct actions under pressure are part of the design, like speed games like Lightspeed)
and ofc different trick taking games rely on memory to a different extent—games in which you're taking/setting a bid, like Spades, are going to rely on more memory then games in which you're just trying to get rid of cards as fast as possible, like President/Scum
@pushcx so i'm not trying to say you're "playing wrong" or anything, but it may be interesting to try to approach memory as a specific challenge when playing some trick-taking games. it's a really fun form of mastery to experience.
@nightpool Yeah, and I'm actually one of the three people who've studied mnemonics, use method of loci, anki, etc. It's a useful set of skills outside of games, too.