While in most games rules are more or less fixed, in some games, making or altering the rules is part of the game. In many (but not all) of such games, manipulating the rules to one's advantage is the best strategy to win. Persuasion becomes a key technique, and rules lawyering is often encouraged.
While it is not impossible for such games to be drinking games, they should not be confused with "rule-making" drinking games, such as Kings, where the "rules" do not affect gameplay.
Games with mutable rules include:
- 21: Certain players are given the opportunity to change the rules in order to avoid saying "21" and forced to take a drink (or alternately, to engineer the rules such that they will do so).
- 1000 Blank White Cards: Similar to Dvorak, this game starts with the titular 1000 blank white cards, and the rules are created in-game by the creation of cards.
- Bartok: A game similar to Mao and Uno, where new players are not told the rules. In addition, new rules may be introduced.
- Calvinball: A game invented by Bill Watterson for Calvin and Hobbes in which new rules are invented on the spot without democratic vote, and the only permanent rule is that the game is never played the same way twice.
- Dvorak: A game in which the cards being played can be invented during the game, as can the rules.
- Fluxx: A card game with both limitations and winning conditions that are set by specific cards in the deck.
- Mao: A card game where only one person knows all the rules, and a winner can generate one additional rule.
- Nomic: A game which consists primarily of changing the rules by vote.
- Proteus: A board game where each move can change the rules about how to move and how to win.
See also
edit- List of games with concealed rules
- Mornington Crescent A parody of games with complex rules
- Finite and Infinite Games A philosophical book that posits two types of games, the second of which is in part defined by having mutable rules
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