For SettlersOfCatan, my family plays with a few subtle modifications--that is, the trading of Development Cards is allowed, and real-life objects/favors can be traded for resources (e.g. "Hey, I'll give you two wheat if you go get me another Coke").

I still wonder if the rule my sister told me about checkers where if you get your king back to your side, then to the opponents side again, you can now capture pieces by moving forward two spaces and taking any pieces that were to the side of space you went over was an actual rule or just a house rule.

My sister and I made a couple of house rules in checkers, like if you make it to your opponent's side and back, you become a 'queen' and can move 2 spaces instead of just one, and in any direction. You also don't have to jump over a piece if you don't want too.

This troper, when he used to DM a campaign for D&D 3rd edition, had a rule called "being in the hot seat" to help speed up the combat. Basically, when your turn comes up in combat, you have (measured by stopwatch) five seconds, plus two seconds per point of Intelligence modifier, to announce your action. If you pass that time limit, the player has the choice of either having his action for that round not count, or still taking the action and having an experience point penalty on what the party earns at the end of the battle.

This troper's family treats {{Munchkin}} Go Up A Level cards as "+3 to either side of a combat" except in specific dungeons, because it slows down the game. However, this originally derived from a legitimate misunderstanding of the rules as being "+1 in combat" rather than "+1 level until something takes it away".

This troper created a way to combine the games Risk and Stratego. It involves the amount of pieces on has on the Risk board corresponding to the number of pieces one can use on the Stratego board. It's awesome.

Further detail, please.

This troper is not that troper. However, one would presume that the Risk board was the overall world map, with troop movements, reinforcements and the like. Bigger picture stuff, ya know? And when you invade a specific country, with your dudes against the enemy's dudes, then one would "zoom in" to the battlefield, er, Stratego board. There, one thinks that the differences in army strength would be represented in a good way. The type of army dude could also be represented better, since with Stratego the cannon or horsie has a greater strategical advantage than "just" representing five or ten dudes.

This troper once played Trivial Pursuit against her sister and their cousin, who insisted on implementing some house rules to make it fairer -- the two of them versus the troper. When the troper reached the center space for the final question, they demanded the right to go through the questions until they found one they were sure she wouldn't get. (She did, and won anyway.)

This troper's house rule for spell selection in D&D 3.5 is that all casters may choose the contents of their spell slots at casting time. The reasoning is thus: since every single bloody character in the tie-in fiction obviously either gets this privilege or an advance copy of the screenplay, given that ''they'' always have just what they need in the spell loadout at any given time, then why shouldn't ''you''? (As for making sorcerers useless, it definitely makes them more of an NPC class, but they still have the advantages of a) not needing to study with or trade with anyone else to learn new spells b) increased casts per day, as well as c) character concept, for those who are into that.)

The DM for this troper's group has what I believe to be a house rule of his concerning the Sorcerer's spell list. Instead of the extremely limited number of known spells over any of the schools, he told me to pick five schools, counting Universal as a school. It is my understanding that every school not picked by this troper is completely off limits to his character. Conversely, the character in question gains ''every'' spell in the selected schools, no ifs, ands, or buts. This may end up biting said DM in the ass. This troper happens to be known for being highly resourceful, albeit with only a few chances to display said resourcefulness. (Placing a spell who's area of effect would cause friendly fire off the described map to avoid said penalties, anyone?)

I often play a card game when bored at break. Normally we'd have to waste precious seconds removing the jokers from the deck, so instead we just encorporated them into the game. Someone made a joke recently by keeping the "Rule card" in the deck as the master pick-up-the-deck card.

Back in the days of Melee, I had a house rule of "Bob-ombs, Any Character, Final Destination." SHFGs and competitive players can either adapt or go whine/gripe on the ''other'' side of the front door. This turned out to be a '''great''' idea, since it balanced the game so well that tourney players, casuals, and first timers were able to play ''together'' at my house gatherings for years and have a blast.

This troper's favored House Rules were "Giant Melee,Bowser or Donkey Kong only, Giant Mushrooms only, Final Destination."

Some friends and I all enjoy Mayfair Games' rail games, but aren't so fond of the way Mayfair tweaks the fastplay rules in every single game. So, we compiled a set of Master Fastplay Rules from all the different rulebooks and use that instead.

This troper only uses house rules when playing D&D. She only keeps the monsters and races. She's been known to run campaigns using only a d6 and some pens, and once she run a game without a die. It was entirely improvised *and* it made sense. Her players love her.

Is her name Dee-Dee?

A rule that this troper and his close circle of friends have, is that if you piss of the DM, they hand their mantle to someone else, and join the game with the character sheet he put together for the occasion, and the person who pissed them off gets another. The DM gets the 32nd Level Dragonborn Death Knight with electricity as their breath weapon, and the other person gets a Level 1 Gnome Warrior with every debuff imaginable.

In the game "Apples to Apples", HouseRules in my family state that if you play the "Helen Keller" card, you win the round automatically.

It's not really a "rule", but when I play, the auto-win card is "AIDS". Yes, my sister, brother-in-law, and friends have a dark sense of humor.

The blank cards are "Your Mom" which is an automatic win.

In one group ThisTroper played in, the blank cards were "Chewbaaca". He won every time.

In this troper's group of friends, "Rosie O'Donnell" is the autowin card.

I can't be the only person who puts $500 plus the money paid through getting out of jail and landing on Luxury Tax or Income Tax on Free Parking in Monopoly, right?

When this troper plays Monopoly, we tend to play $50+bail+taxes+Chance/Community Chest payments on Free Parking, no auctions, "amnesty trades" allowed ("I'll give you Pacific to complete your monopoly in exchange for Tennessee and Oriental Avenues plus one free landing on the green spaces"), and no building shortages (if the same number of houses are on each property, we place the houses just inside the boardway and centered along the monopoly).

When I was playing Monopoly more frequently, favorites included getting $500 for landing exactly on Go (vs. $200 for passing through), no auctions (if someone lands on an unowned space and doesn't buy it, it remains unowned until someone lands there and buys it) and Chance/Community Chest/Get Out of Jail money going to Free Parking (to be collected when someone lands on that space, of course).

This troper's preteen sister always serves as the non-playing banker/GM/dictator of family Monopoly games, and she gives us new rules every time. Some are pretty ordinary (Free Parking, $400 for landing on Go), others are a bit insane; many of the latter seem geared toward inflating the Free Parking pot, including fines for rudeness or "raucous laughter" and even selling (real, edible) snacks for Monopoly money.

This troper once played Meteos with three friends (who weren't really the puzzle-game types) who initially said "No thanks, you'll just beat us over and over." So we came up with a House Rule that said the three of them would initially target only this troper to gang up on him until he was defeated, after which they would go after one another if more than one of them were left. This troper still managed to win most of the matches.

Me and a bunch of my friends have houserules for Halo 3 strangely enough. One is that if anyone looks at another player's screen deliberately in order to spy on them, we get to spy on them in return. Another is that if two players are locked in a sword duel, neither can be killed by outside forces until the fight is over. Oh and it's not so much a rule as a guideline, but we avoid using vehicles in our "speedy zombies" infection mode, because the humans are supposed to outgun the zombies, not outrun them.

We also have more conventional house rules. Such as- In Cluedo, you cannot make a suggestion in the same room two turns in a row. You have to step outside of the room, turn around, and go back inside, or use a shortcut if there's one in the room.

More recently we have the "Chainsaw midgets" rule for Gears of War, where wretches can only be killed by chainsaw, and the "back from the brink" rule in chess, where a player gets a free pawn if he can get his king to the opposite side of the board and back.

Conventional house rule for Risk in this troper's family is that you get 50 troops on any one territory you get to blow up a continent in exchange for those troops. This prevents turtling and has lead to Asia being blown up every game. Seriously

This Troper and his boy scout troop used to play with a unique piece called a "big Johnson horse." It was a cavalry piece with an artillery piece between its legs, and was completely invulnerable, so therefore won every battle. Only another BJH could beat a BJH in a regular contest of rolling. The culmination of this house rule was when we convinced one guy to put all his pieces on South Africa, then obliterating him with a BJH.

So what you're saying is that You gave your horse a...

I once played risk with a group of people who insisted on nerfing the rules for sets, to prevent the massive build up of armies. This resulted in a defensive game with a massive build up of armies, due to Mutually Assured Destruction. I didn't play with them again.

This troper has created rules for MagicTheGathering vs YuGiOh!. The basics are as follows (if I've forgotten anything, I'll edit this again.):

Life Points are set to 10,000. All damage, power, and toughness amounts on [=MtG=] cards are multiplied by five hundred. Hands are seven cards for both players, [=MtG=] players remove land cards from their deck. Any activated abilities that require mana are activated by tapping cards of that colour, each card worth one mana.

Colours/Attributes are related as follows: Red/Fire, Blue/Water, White/Light, Black/Darkness, Green/Earth, and Colourless/Wind.

Like in Yu-Gi-Oh! there is a five creature limit. Token creatures do not count towards this limit, but only five monsters can attack per turn including tokens. All monsters can attack on the turn they are summoned except for the first turn of the game.

Attacking is done in [=MtG=] standard: Player attacks opponent with monster by "tapping" (turning card sideways) them, opponent may block with untapped monster unless monster is unblockable. Creatures are untapped at the start of their player's turn. If a monster's ATK/power is greater than the opponent's DEF/toughness, that monster is destroyed and the controlling player takes the difference in damage.

If a card says it targets creatures in attack position, it instead targets untapped creatures, and if it targets creatures in defense position, it targets tapped creatures. If a card prevents a monster from changing position, it instead keeps that monster from untapping.

Sorceries and Instants are analogous to Spells and Traps, and follow Yu-Gi-Oh!'s rules. Enchantments are Continuous Spells or Equip Spells, unless the card says they may be played any time, then they are considered traps. There can only be up to six active Spells/Traps at any given time (for example: with six continuous spells going, you cannot activate a trap, because then you would have seven active). Face-down cards are not included. There is no cost for playing these cards from your hand.

Face-down monsters are 1000/1000 Colourless/Wind creatures with three stars until flipped face up. The morph cost, rather than the normal cost, is required for [=MtG=] creatures played this way. These creatures may be flipped face up during the controlling player's Main Phase.

[=MtG=] monsters' converted mana cost is equivalent to Yu-Gi-Oh!'s star level. Sacrifices are required as per Yu-Gi-Oh!'s rules.

I have made rules for Yu-Gi-Oh! as well. The major differences from the rulebook are:

You can put as many face-down monster cards as you want until the slots are filled. But you can only summon one monster in attack mode.

The normal rules say that if you have so many cards in your hand, you have to put some in the graveyard. I reversed this. If your hand runs out of cards, you get to draw five more. But you can't use them until your next turn.

You get two preparation phases. One before the battle phase, and one after. Magic/Trap cards played in the first phase take up a spot until the next phase. Unless otherwise effected by the card's effect or type (such as continuous cards).

You cannot attack after using Dark Hole.

You can "waste" a magic card by playing it even if the effect would do nothing.

When this troper was a kid, he had one house rule when playing a game of hide & seek with the other neighborhood kids; you have to find a new hiding spot if we decided to play another round after successfully finishing one round (Even if you weren't found at the spot you chose, you had to find another spot. This was to keep things fresh and unpredictable for both the players hiding and the person who's "it").

One of this troper's friends has kludged together a Monopoly variant using polyhedral dice (which rotate among the players, so you may be rolling two 30-sided dice one turn and two four-sided dice the next), special powers for each of the different pieces, a random chart for utility company fees (deliberately skewed toward the high end), a special deck of cards like the Chance deck that you draw from if you land directly on "Go", and probably more stuff that no one but him can keep track of

One of my best friends and I have come up with a bunch of rules for the Pokemon TCG;

Deck building is accomplished by taking a huge group of cards and choosing which ones to add to the pile. Once we decide the pile is big enough, we shuffle it and split it into two decks of approximately the same size.

Evolved Pokemon may be played at any time. If you currently have that Pokemon's base form in play, you must evolve it just like the normal rules would have you do. Otherwise, you can just put it on your bench.

If one player is losing badly, she can ask her opponent for an advantage. This can include restrictions on what cards the other player can use, requiring the other player to supply vague hints, reduction of energy costs, or something else entirely. The player who is being asked to give an advantage can grant it, not grant it, or offer to make a compromise. This rule was made because I'm pretty good at the game, but my friend isn't.

Any rules, whether official or made up by us, can be discarded or altered at any time if it will make the game more fun.

Unwritten rule: by the end of our play session, the game must have descended into an exchange of insults and throwing the cards at each other. Mutating the game into a battle between Pokemon figurines is entirely optional.

This troper and his brother have created house rules for {{Heroscape}} including changing the stats of almost all of the cards in order to make it, in our opinion, more balanced, or, in some cases, more fitting (for example, cooler characters get better stats so that we have an excuse to use them) or changing point values. For some, we even add or tweak abilities. Or remove them. We don't usually change the rules of the game itself, but changing the standards set by the game probably counts too.

I'm studying to become a history teacher, but my class haven't yet come to the part in our education where we study our future subjects. My friends have decided that once I have studied history, I will no longer be allowed to answer Trivial Pursuit's history questions.

Monopoly has become close to Calvinball. Especially when you get out all four ''StarTrek'' sets.

This Troper and his friends are working out the kinks in "Zombie Risk." The green team is able to "convert" any enemy soldiers it kills, though this effect ends when the "mother zombie" is killed (bear with me, it's a balance thing). Completely imbalanced in the zombies' favor, but hey, it's a work in progress.

Waaaaay back in the days of PokemonRed and Blue, we played the card game with the GameBoy rules (so Normal takes double damage from Fighting-types but not Rock, an evolved pokemon can use the attacks of the cards under it, confusion eventually clears up...)

My favorite D&D 3.5 house rule is called the "Dying {{Badass}} Law", and is designed specifically to make my games more troperific. When a character hits -10 hp (the point at which you die), instead of dying they can live on for one more round, and be awesome. For that one round, all d20 rolls are treated as 20s, all weapon damage rolls are maximized, and spellcasters get a free slot of their highest spell level. However, nothing that occurs during this round can save your life; you are dead, you just haven't stopped moving yet. Basically, the character goes out with a big bang, causing as much damage as possible. The catch is that if you choose to do this, your character can never be ressurected. His soul is At Peace, having heroically sacrificed himself in a blaze of glory. This is great for players who want to retire their characters, without simply having them PutOnABus, or dying without making a difference. It can also help avoid a TotalPartyKill, as if the encounter proves overwhelming, having just one of the characters die can often turn the tide of the battle. Makes for great stories as well.

This Troper and her brothers regard all made-for-Wii video games as full-contact sports. Getting in between your opponents and the screen, hip checks, and climbing around on the furniture are all highly encouraged.

This troper is particularly fond of coming up with new ways to play his favorite games as a way to exercise his game-designing skills. Among them, Parallel Dimensions Monopoly (play using two boards, switching between them when passing or landing on Go, and properties are specific to board, so you can own Boardwalk on one board and not own it on the other; got the idea from a story of "International Monopoly"), Link Jousting in Melee, and Damage Down, Duel Monsters Chess, and ''Solitaire'' for Yu-Gi-Oh.