New Rules for Classic Games [Paperback]

R. Wayne Schmittberger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1992

"An essential book for anyone interested in gameplay." —Games magazine If rules are made to be broken, then dust off those old games lying dormant in your closet, because your game playing just got a lot more exciting! New Rules for Classic Games, by games expert R. Wayne Schmittberger, is a complete guide to hundreds of new twists and variations guaranteed to expand and enliven your game repertoire. How about: Wraparound Scrabble: Worlds can run off an edge of the board and be continued on the other side. Another variation allows words to be spelled backwards! Extinction Chess: Think of every type of piece as a species; your goal is to prevent extinction of any of these species. Trivial Tic-Tac-Toe: An entertaining and challenging cross between Trivial Pursuit and tic-tac-toe. Auction Monopoly: Every property, no matter who lands on it, is sold to the highest bidder. You’ll find these and other exciting new challenges for card and dice games, chess, checkers, party games, and popular board games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, Risk, Parcheesi, Boggle, Othello, and Trivial Pursuit. And to make sure your game playing never gets stale, New Rules for Classic Games gives you rules for little-known games that can be played with equipment you already have and tips for doing your own rule writing!

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The shelf life of your favorite board games just got longer. R. Wayne Schmittberger--game inventor and frequent contributor to Games magazine--has canonized the house rules and variations of a plethora of games in this fascinating book. Imagine playing Toric Scrabble, where words can go off the right side of the board and "wraparound" to the left. Or how about a round of Tactical Nuclear Risk, where each player is given a couple of bombs to lob at enemy territory?

And if changing the rules isn't enough for you, you can change the object of the game, as in Extinction Chess, which is played exactly like normal chess except you lose if your opponent captures all of your pieces of a single type. Losing your king will still cost you the game, but so will losing your queen, your two rooks, or even all eight pawns!

Schmittberger has long been considered an expert of games, and he lives up to his title in this engrossing volume. New Rules for Classic Games contains not only clever twists on popular board games but also the rules for dozens of pastimes playable with common equipment, and even a section devoted to games that can be played with nothing more than a pencil and paper. This book is great in its own right, and it will give those board games that you have lurking in the closet a new lease on life. --Matthew Baldwin

From Library Journal

Purists will cringe at the author's contention that game rules need not always be followed. Others may hail his (and others') ingenuity, however, because he offers hundreds of new ways to make old games more challenging, fairer, and sometimes, well, just different. Players who have grown tired of playing the same games over and over may find new appeal when they vary Scrabble by allowing words to run off one side of the board and finish on the opposite side. Others may like to race their kings across a chessboard. Many versions of checkers and card, dice, and word games are also suggested for modification, as well as popular board games such as Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit. Highly recommended for public libraries.
- Will Hepfer, SUNY at Buffalo Libs.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (May 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471536210
• ISBN-13: 978-0471536215
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #437,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A textbook on bringing new thinking to old games, November 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: New Rules for Classic Games (Paperback)

Wayne Schmittberger is a longtime associate of Games Magazine. It's a lot of fun to tinker with games to see how they change. The growth in Chess Variants is just one aspect of this. He explains those well, along with variants on Go, Risk, Monopoly, and many other games. He introduces many games you probably haven't seen before. All of them are great games, too! If you are considering designing a game of your own, or if you just have a collection of games, you need this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Make the games you have fairer and more fun., December 28, 2010

By 

B. KAY (Major East Coast City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: New Rules for Classic Games (Paperback)

A great book. If you've struggled with classic games that are too slow, unbalanced, and otherwise flawed and less fun than you've like, this book is for you. A few hours of reading the lucid explanations of play variants and reviewing the clear diagrams of examples of play and you'll find those old games improved significantly.

The discussion of effective handicap design alone is worth the cover price. The text is also useful to get ideas on what new games in which you should consider investing. I'm mostly a German-style board game player but this book has me taking another look at classic board games. I highly recommend this out of print classic.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'll have mine with a twist!, October 24, 2000

By 

Graham Wills (Naperville, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: New Rules for Classic Games (Paperback)

In this book we see games we have played many times, and have (maybe) become bored with, revitalized with clever ideas, enhancements and suggestions from the author. As an example, consider the section on balancing non-symmetric games (such as Chess and Go which have an inbuilt first person advantage). Bidding, simultaneous playing of two games and the ingeneous "I'll make a move and then you decide whether to play black or white" idea where one player makes a move that the other player has to decide is bad or good are suggestions that are useful not just in the context given, but in the design and evaluation of all games. Recommended for anyone who enjoys, studies, reviews or designs games -- especially strategy games.