TIL my group's house rule of letting everyone reroll ones actually made our games way worse
So about 8 months ago my Thursday group of 5 decided to try a house rule where you can reroll any 1 you roll once per turn, thinking it would cut down on feel bad moments and keep things moving. We played Catan, Ticket to Ride, and a few rounds of Everdell with it and the first couple nights felt great, everybody was happy. Then around week 6 I noticed something weird, games were ending way faster and the same two people were winning almost every time. I started writing down results in a little notebook and out of 14 game nights one guy won 9 of them, which never happened before. Turns out cutting out the low rolls just means whoever already has the best engine snowballs harder, since bad luck was the only thing slowing the leader down. My friend Dana put it best when she said it felt like playing with training wheels that only helped the person in front. We scrapped the rule last week and the very first game back came down to the last turn, which was honestly more fun. Has anyone else tried a house rule that seemed friendly and ended up making the table more lopsided?
We tried something like that with roll and write games, letting people change one die per round, and the same two folks started winning everything! Once we dropped it the scores got way closer and nobody felt like they were just watching someone run away with it.