Comments on: The Game of Mao

The Game of Mao

Ironwolf — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 01:21:38 -0800

The only rule I can tell you is this one. In the vein of self-modifying games such as Nomic, 1000 Blank White Cards, Fluxx, and Cosmic Encounter, comes Mao: the game where the only way to learn the rules is by banging your head against them. Repeatedly.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 01:59:44 -0800

I am 99% sure this is a repost, but I can't find it.

By: Banky_Edwards

Banky_Edwards — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 01:59:52 -0800

Damnit! The Game! I was winning until I read this post.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 02:00:16 -0800

Oh, wait, I guess not. But I just lost The Game.

By: BackwardsHatClub

BackwardsHatClub — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 02:00:47 -0800

I used to play this game quite a bit when I was younger at camps and that type of thing, but I can't remember the rules anymore.

By: painquale

painquale — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 02:26:47 -0800

This is great. I'm gonna try to get my friends to play this with me at a poker night. Cards UP during Point of Order!

By: weston

weston — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 02:36:10 -0800

"I was younger at camps and that type of thing, but I can't remember the rules anymore." Failure to say "whoa baby" -- two more cards for you.

By: cali

cali — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 02:54:38 -0800

Spadesies, painquale. Draw one.

By: DaShiv

DaShiv — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 03:49:42 -0800

Shit, thanks for reminding me cali, I'm still in the dark. Who wants some reciprocal generosity? *deals own hand to everyone around the table* This is the official game of SF MeFi meetups.

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 04:52:02 -0800

The person administering the penalty must declare what the culprit incorrectly did or failed to do, but not what the player was supposed to do. Meh. Too much like my day job.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 04:54:32 -0800

Ah, Mao...Good memories. I should probably feel like a big jerk for it, but my best memory of Mao is from uni, when this socially horrid guy insisted he be dealt into our game. We played the game purely according to the rules, but he couldn't and wouldn't believe that it wasn't just an extremely involved way of picking on him.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 05:32:44 -0800

I've been in a number of card-playing situations, where someone suggested Mao and we were about to play (and thus, I was about to learn), but something interrupted us. I've wanted to figure this game out the old fashioned way, but I no longer know anyone who knows the game.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 06:03:54 -0800

The rules have been posted all over MetaFilter (and AskMe, if memory serves). I still prefer Egyptian Ratscrew.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 06:39:00 -0800

What a strange game. It seems the only way to win is not to play.

By: Captaintripps

Captaintripps — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 06:44:11 -0800

Mao is the greatest card game ever invented.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 06:54:24 -0800

Eideteker : " What a strange game. It seems the only way to win is not to play." Wouldn't you rather play a nice game of chess?

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 06:54:36 -0800

Mao! Ahh, the memories from junior high youth group trips come flooding back. We would play that game for hours.

By: ubersturm

ubersturm — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 08:40:43 -0800

Ah, high school... so many free periods spent on Unofficial Non-Standard Cambridge Five-Card Mao. What a great game. Sort of like a particularly sadistic interactive logic puzzle.

By: joelf

joelf — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 08:44:54 -0800

Thanks for that! I still have my first edition flux set. I'm always looking for cool new games like this. I'd recommend Democrazy for anyone into flux.

By: NickDouglas

NickDouglas — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 10:32:32 -0800

Reminds me of Snaps. "The name of the game is Snaps..."

By: PinkStainlessTail

PinkStainlessTail — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 10:59:05 -0800

By: The Great Big Mulp

The Great Big Mulp — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 11:10:36 -0800

Good heavens, Mao brings back memories. Very drunken, fragmented memories.

By: The White Hat

The White Hat — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 12:24:32 -0800

Favorite Rule: "Failure to rub."

By: Ironwolf

Ironwolf — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 12:27:30 -0800

If you're going to teach Mao to a group of newbies (and especially if you're a newbie yourself,) there are two things to remember: 1) Make damn sure you know the rules well before you begin playing because if you make a mistake in enforcement, you can't directly correct your mistake-- people may end up trying to figure out the rules from contradictory clues. Not fun. 2) You will learn which of your friends are "out of the box thinkers" and which are not. People either approach Mao with an unselfconscious sense of discovery or a feeling of paranoid persecution. Try to make the game fun for everyone by bringing people along with liberal use of points-of-order, without breaking the spirit of the game.

By: Ironwolf

Ironwolf — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 12:31:19 -0800

Ah, high school... so many free periods spent on Unofficial Non-Standard Cambridge Five-Card Mao. What a great game. Turns out that's the variant I first learned as well!

By: Miko

Miko — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 15:29:38 -0800

Heh, Ironwolf-- I learned it at camp as "Five-card Untraditional Mao." The dealer had to say that at the start: "This is five-card untraditional Mao. Play begins to the dealer's left. Play begins NOW." Hard to forget the experience of playing for the first time.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 17:37:21 -0800

Reading the sample game on the site makes it perfectly clear: this is a game in which jerks tend to win. I like a non-linear rules-variable Calvinballesque game as much as the next frood, but don't they get, paradoxically, old rather fast?

By: jazon

jazon — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 21:54:57 -0800

second vote for Ratscrew

By: Ironwolf

Ironwolf — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 00:00:03 -0800

JHarris, I have to disagree. Anyone playing any game can act like a jerk. "Winning" is not the real point of Mao-- the point is that everyone have fun.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 02:31:14 -0800

It seems the only way to win is not to play. Wisdom, there.

By: kenko

kenko — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 07:32:01 -0800

Egyptian Ratscrew is the best.

By: hincandenza

hincandenza — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:24:41 -0800

Umpteenths for Ratscrew- my personal favorite, and one I'm effectively unbeaten in since I learned to play. The rules are simple, and it's pure adrenaline. Mao sounds like a fantastically stupid game; it only works if the rules are actually fantastically clear and spelled out somewhere; otherwise, particularly mischievous newcomers who figured out what was going on could essentially destroy the game, and introduce rules like "Ace of spades. Tear a card." followed by "failure to tear a card, tear a card". You could quite quickly demolish the deck. Now that would be fun, watching the Mao "expert" beat at their own game.

By: Ironwolf

Ironwolf — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 20:16:44 -0800

Now that would be fun, watching the Mao "expert" beat at their own game. But you're forgetting two things: 1) A sense of sportsmanship. 2) A sense of fun. You may only like games where these two things don't fundamentally matter-- like Poker. In Poker, you play fair (or at least don't get caught) or you get shot-- giving people a "sporting chance" doesn't factor in. In Poker, fun takes a distant second to winning-- winning is virtually the definition of fun. In Mao, both of these values are the opposite of Poker. Which is why one of the tags for this post is "fun" and not "winning." ;)