"Family" Rules in Games/Board games - Search and Destroy

We have a no auctions family rule in Monopoly.

The other thing we always played was getting double for landing on GO. I was shocked to find this wasn't in the rules.

I resented my family allowing us to look up Scrabble words in the dictionary because WHERE DOES IT END? There was a vague 'checking but no browsing' rule but how can that be enforced?

How do all these 'family rules' get so widespread? Everyone knows the Free Parking bonaza rule.

There is also a whole raft of weird Scrabble house rules that only my mother really adheres to or understands.

swiss bank accounts = secret stashes of money hidden from other player, so that my brother's best laid plans to drive me to bankrupcy would be foiled by me suddenly pulling £300 from underneath the persian carpet. one time i forgot i had squirreled the money away, and the next time wee played monopoly, i found £500 or something. a-ha! trust fund!

trust funds were outlawed when my brother, the rotten scoundrel, started squirreling away not just money, but property to be handed down to the next game. "you liar! you didn't buy mayfair in *this* game!" etc.

we always had our patterns. he bought utilities, i bought stations. mwah hah hah, i always ended up owning all four and hiking out outrageous tube fair increases, cause i could. pity those that landed on kings cross when *I* owned it!

That moronic free parking rule makes it even more random and therefore even more stupid, boring.

I am really looking forward to stuffing my Dad at Honeybears over christmas.

We don't play board games in my family very often.

Most of the special rules above I don't like. A big exception is N's pre-game auction, which sounds great. A game in itself.

At school we had special rules for Subbuteo, or rather we didn't know about the rule for blocking flicks. I think someone got a set with a simplified version of the rules, it was just a leaflet. No blocking flicks in the school. Years later I take someone on from a different school, promising to thrash him. Instead, he starts flicking even when he doesn't have the ball. I say, "What are you doing, you knob?" He produces a 20 page rule book written up like it's a proper sport - rules with numbers like 3.2(a) - and I am the knob.

it ends when
a) someone has a lot of money and the other people get bored and go make sandwiches
b) some one flips the board saying "fuck this shit"

whichever comes first

At least, that's the way Reverend Perkins always played.

My strategy was always to buy the magenta properties first, then all the ones people would land on when trying to avoid Boardwalk. And always had to be the shoe/boot or the big car.

We have one family rule in Scrabble which inertia has ensured remains in use - we thought it was a real rule when we first played. It is that if you exchange letters instead of putting down a word, you have to exchange all your letters and you can only do this once in a game.

Does anyone else play Scrabble with the rule that everytime you use a blank tile you must remove an article of clothing???

no and where's the fun in that? There are only two blank tiles in the game - so that's your socks gone (or shoes if you wear them indoors). Big deal! Now if you played that rule for the letter E....

I have yet to meet a family that DIDN'T have that rule.

it's always hers when she asks, natch.