this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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TBF, base UNO is (imo) pretty bland and feels like a very generic card game. It's not surprising house rules have gotten as popular as they have for it.
This comment smells like rotten fish and cabbage breath.
Its actually by design but UNO did not understand this when they copied it, which is why they have expressed to be against house rules. It (no joke) threatens there existence.
If you look up the history of UNO you find it is derived from a cardgame called crazy eights which itself is derived from a german card game called Mau-Mau.
The wikipage for mau-mau even mentiones uno as a proprietary variant.
The killer detail is that almost every nation had its own variant, house rules where a part of games culture.
Its also related to the game Mao which does not have a defined set of rules.
All this to say Uno is not at all a unique game and having variants is part of the natural evolution of this game. The only thing UNO really did was change out the common playing cards to their own graphics and pretended it was a distinct and patentable game.
Oh that's really interesting! Thanks for sharing
I'm fine with house rules.
I'm not fine with unstated house rules that pop up randomly, nor with seemingly everyone not even knowing that they are using a house rule.
So many games of Uno I've been in involve everyone discovering they are used to playing by different house rules, 10 or 20 minutes into a game, and then everyone discussing or arguing about which house rule is better.
... If you aren't actually playing by the stated rules, and you're randomly invoking new rules and then arguing over them... you're playing calvin ball.
All of this can be avoided if people actually state the house rules before a game, but in my experience, almost no one does.
In the same way with any other light / party game, you're lucky if even one person at the table has ever read the actual rulebook. Given that, it's not surprising everybody thinks they're playing UNO the 'right' way.
Also: Calvinball is amazing.
Unsurprising, but mildly infuriating to my autistic ass.
I consider penny poker, or blackjack/21, to be light party games.
Been playing those games with friends and family since I was a kid.
Texas Hold'em rules for poker, declared at the start.
Either very low or no stakes, you either literally play with pennies, or just everyone gets say 50 completely worthless plastic chips, or just nothing.
If most people were in such a texas holdem or blackjack game and then started inventing or arguing over rules... this would generally be very obviously viewed as bullshit, unnaceptable, not normalized.
But... with Uno... this is not the case.