Break the Game not the Players

Half the fun of breaking a system or concept over your knee is watching everyone scratch there brow or stop halfway through voicing a protest before realizing you are well within the defined confines of the game. Either having the audacity to break current procedure or the discovery of a glitch in the restraints is always more fun if you have a venue to share your discovery, and the easiest audience, not to mention the venue most likely to be interested, will be players sharing in the game experience with you.

This does however mean that your breaking and bending, poking and prodding does have an impact on their experience as well, which is important because their experience is theirs and they are nice enough to share it with you. Ruining a system and ruining a game are two different things, and while it might be fun to show off how awesome how many times you can cycle through your turn while staying within the confines of the game, if that takes 15 minutes of everybody's when they don't particularly care, the quality of the game overall goes down. 

So consider your audience, which is only something I can prompt you to consider instead of telling you exactly what it means, because everyone plays with different people. Some play only with friends, and some play with strangers at random venues, and other play exclusively with family. I usually play with friends, and as such I have various "Bullshit Meters" attached to them. 

The Bullshit Meter has no standard unit of measurement, and fluctuates depending on game and known mood, and really it's just a stupid way of saying "How much will this person enjoy putting up with?"

Note the word ENJOY. The Bullshit Meter is not a "How much can I get away with?" measurement, but instead a measurement of "How hard can I push without ruining how much fun the table is having?"

Ruining the actual game is not as huge a problem as is ruining the perception and enjoyment of the game. I don't mind completely derailing the objectives, or instantly dropping way too much damage and ending it all as long as everybody is at least somewhat amused and not overly invested in things running exactly as they were planned.

A big portion of the context of breaking systems and the social acceptability comes from the length of a game as well as who is playing it. A three hour long epic being derailed into certain failure is ruining a substantial investment of time on everyone's part, forcing you to ask yourself if exposing faulty balance is worth 3 hours of time multiplied by the number of players. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but the question has to at least be on your mind.

This train of thought ramble is veering dangerously close to the topic of Playing out of Spite which I think is a post for another time, so I'll try to bump it back on track.

If you know your playing with someone who doesn't appreciate shenanagins, don't let them hold you hostage, but also don't take it as a challenge. Find a middle ground, push a little when it's fun for you and not too hard on them, then go back to play as normal. 

It is equally not fair for you to torpedo their enjoyment as it is unfair for them to tell you not to play wrong, and since in theory you are proposing an outlier strategy or play, it is good manners to err on the side of placating instead of provoking.

Sometimes games are about provoking, and destroying, and ruining plans, but not everyone likes it! Not even most people like it I would say, but some people DO. Save your wildcards and your mega-bombs and your whatever you have for the ones that appreciate your inanity, hone your serious game with serious business players. Playing inside constraints on a regular basis can provide more time for innovation to ferment anyways.

That's it I suppose, adjust your play for who your playing with, simple concept but perhaps not simple execution.