Rules
Info
Player Count: 3-8 players
Items:
- Slap Cards
-
Rule Cards
- Positive (Green) Cards
- Negative (Red) Cards
- Forbidden (Black) Cards
Setup
Shuffle the decks of the Slap Cards, Positive, Negative, and Forbidden Cards. Separate the Slap Cards evenly amongst all players who are playing.
How to play
Upon starting a new game, start by drawing a Forbidden Card and face it upwards for everyone to read. This drawn card should be facing up for the entire game.
Each player playing will be responsible for their own stacks when revealing Slap Cards, where they will be revealing their cards onto.
To start a new round, reveal 2 Positive Cards and 1 Negative Card and have them face up for everyone to read.
After everyone has read the Rule Cards, all players take a Slap Card from their deck but do not reveal it. Hold the cards at the center such that everyone could slap. Countdown by saying "3... 2... 1... GO!" where upon shouting "GO!" all players reveal their cards facing up onto their stack. Once everyone revealed their cards, players can slap any of the cards that was revealed.
If the first player slaps any of the cards, they should be rewarded/punished by referring to the Slap Rules table below. If there is a tie, whoever has their hand covering most of the card gets rewarded/punished.
| Either Positive Cards Satisfied | Either Negative/Forbidden Cards Satisfied | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Yes | Yes | Lose 2 Cards |
| Yes | No | Win the Card you slapped, and discard the entire stack from the stack you slapped. |
| No | Yes | Lose 2 Cards |
| No | No | Lose 1 Card |
Once everyone gets rewarded/punished or no one has slapped, continue revealing cards if your stack is not discarded. If all stacks have been discarded, this means that the round has ended. Discard both Positive Cards and the Negative Card and repeat the round, drawing 2 new Positive and 1 Negative Cards from the draw pile and repeating as before.
Win Condition
If someone has a total of 10 cards they have won, they win. If there's a tie, then proceed the game as normal until one of the tied players wins their next card.
Obedience is Everything
Rules, Rules, Rules is a rules-based party card game where you must follow the rules or get punished!
About
The game was created as a project for Game Design during my junior year in my time in Loyola Marymount University. My professor, Katie Lucas, who is also the owner and founder of Thoughtful Bread, assigned us students to create a game for the semester, with one of the first assignments was ideating 3 different game ideas. While thinking, I jotted down some inspirations. One was a strategy game about gerrymandering, another was an insect-infestation card duel game, but another which involved reading the rules and slapping. I was super happy with the last idea, being inspired by other rule based party game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes and the slap game Slapjack. I love chaotic games and hearing my friends yelling at each other (it's banter of course, not lashing). Additionally, making prototypes were not that hard compared to my other two ideas. I pitched my idea to the professor, she gave me the thumbs up.
Prototypes
My initial prototypes were bad of course. Initially, I went with a material-less approach: what if the rule cards are the cards you must slap. Immediately, I knew that readability was the biggest problem, since depending on your perspective, you may need to turn your head to read the rules, but the advantage was it was easy so prototype, or so I thought.
My first prototype had my cards be black and white with a sentence in each word. Each card had 3 colors (black, gray, and white) and 2 fonts (handwriting and print), and they are made using Microsoft Word. I printed my cards and hand-cut all cards, which is a habit a later regret.
