Don’t forget that there are lots of versions of Risk, and although they are official versions, in principle they are just house ruled versions of Risk. What difference does it make whether we house rule a game or the company designing the game house rules it?

You may want to walk back that statement just a tad.

Chess is, hands down, the most modded game… Ever. It has so many variants that even it’s variants have variants. Checkers, probably the most successful variant on Chess, started out as a simplified version of Chess for women and IT has numerous variants.

Every board game designer who has been serious about creating board games for more then a moment has taken a stab at “fixing” chess. Board game companies laugh the piss out of themselves when someone tries to sell them a chess variant.

Perhaps the only other game close to having the number of variants of Chess is Go. Same deal – Everyone thinks that they can “fix” or “improve” Go. Because Go’s concepts are so simple, though, it’s not terrifically difficult to tweak a rule or two and have a game that doesn’t break the moment you begin to play it. This ease of modification actually makes things worse, though, because then EVERYONE thinks that they’re a game designer and you’re FLOODED with Go variants.

You don’t house-rule Chess, right? What about Risk? Then WHY would you house-rule this game?

I know that RPG players have a long tradition of broken rules that only function to move story forward if they are ignored or heavily altered, but Zombie Cinema and other Story Games do not come from that tradition. I’d recommend players try not to bring their gaming baggage to the table when they play this game.