Crazy Eights is one of those card games that almost begs you to come up with new rules. It's so simple to play that a five-year-old can learn it in a few minutes. And its principle so elegant (match either color or number, be the first to get rid of all your cards), that it can support a near infinite amount of rule additions and changes. (The Card Games Website has an excellent page on Crazy Eights and its variations.)

This makes it a perfect tool for nurturing the development of family fun. Since it's so easy to invent and explore new rules, the game can be made to match almost any mood or combination of skill levels the players wish to explore. Since it's a quiet, table game, it is especially powerful as a tool for bringing the healing power of fun to the whole community.

However, change for the sake of change is only one part of the dynamic of a Fun Community. The art, and learning, and healing, and deep, shared fun comes in only when the purpose of the change is to make the game more fun, for everyone.

Crazy Eights is the kind of game where sooner or later somebody does something not very nice, or not very helpful, to someone else. Sometimes the thing they do could even be interpreted as "mean" - except for several very important things:

Two, sometimes when you do that "mean" thing, you don't really mean to be mean, if you know what I mean. You have no choice. The only card you can play is an eight. And when you play it, the player next to you isn't going to be happy. Even though it's your sacred parent or cherished spouse or valued sibling or delightful child who falls victim to your unavoidable discard, what else can you do? It's not your intention or your fault. You have to play.

And finally, the fact is, and everybody knows it, no matter how strategic you try to be, how cunning or caring or kind, winning or losing are really more a result of luck than skill. That's why Crazy Eights becomes such a perfect community fame. It's fun. It's easy to learn. But especially because it gives people a chance to play with behaviors which, under normal circumstances, would be considered "not nice."

No matter how wonderful a community is, no matter how loving or supportive or caring or compassionate, there are times when people do things to each other that really aren't very nice. Times when people are just too busy, or something happens that really has nothing to do with anyone in the community, but still makes people angry or impatient or inconsiderate. And for a community that tries to be kind and caring and compassionate all the time, these relatively minor upsets can throw everybody off balance. For a community to become truly healthy, people need to develop the understanding and strength to deal with each other when things aren't so nice - when passions and tempers, discomforts and fears get the better of the best of us.

So as long as Crazy Eights is fun for everyone, then those aspects of the game that we might consider to become negative, actually become a source of healing - of extending the repertoire of behaviors and emotions that can be safely expressed. There are many things that people can do in a game of Crazy Eights to try outdo or undo each other. When you use a wild card, you have the opportunity to change to a color that the next player might not have, and consequently force that player to draw another card. And, as other people get close to winning, these opportunities become necessities.

There are a couple of key ideas that make all these hard things fun.

One is that we are playing the game for fun, because we want everyone to be having fun.

The other is, we are all only playing, and even though we're playing with behaviors that really aren't very helpful or "nice," because we're playing with it, and because we are all having fun with each other, we can be of great help to each other in learning how to deal with these behaviors in "real life."

Ultimately, if we're really going to play with these unhelpful behaviors, we're going to want to go beyond the rules of the game. Because playing with a behavior means that we have to try different things. We have to toy with it. We have to learn what happens when we change this aspect of the game, this rule or consequence. We have to let the game become a laboratory that allows us to experiment, observe, draw conclusions.

At the same time, we have to keep it fun, because only as long as it's fun for everyone can the game be a healing, joyful experience. As soon as it stops being fun, the negative aspects become just too negative to play with. One of the most remarkable assets of Crazy Eights is not the rules, but how many ways there are to change them. There are so many things you can do to make the game meaner or sillier, faster or funnier, easier or gentler. Ultimately, the more ways you play Crazy Eights, the more positive the experience becomes.

It becomes a better game, not because of the particular rules that you're playing it by, but because you've played it so many different ways that Crazy Eights time becomes a celebration of a growing bond between each and all members of the community. As the community becomes more proficient in changing rules and devising new rules, the community members also develop what might be called a kind of "Social Literacy." Understanding how a new rule could affect the game and the relationships and the experience of each player is a very complex and sophisticated social skill. It is a skill that is essential to leadership, effective parenting, facilitation, teaching, to developing and maintaining healthy relationships, to personal and social empowerment.

And because Crazy Eights is such a flexible game, so easy to change and explore, Crazy Eights time becomes a perfect opportunity for both personal and social development. An opportunity to learn together. An opportunity to grow together. All for the sake of play. All in the name of fun.

Below is a sample of rule changes that impact three different aspects of the social experience: competition, cooperation and engagement.

• Continue playing until everyone wins Once a player wins the round, that player shares hands with the person with the fewest cards. This continues until everyone is sharing one hand. The score is how many cards it takes before "everyone" wins.
• Winning player starts the next round with one more card. If that player wins again, he takes a two-card handicap. etc.
• New dealer gets to make a new rule for the next game
• New dealer is person who has most cards when the game is over
• If you are playing the variation where a certain card requires you to draw more cards, you draw, not from the deck, but from other players' hands - starting with the player who has the most cards

• Every time an eight is thrown, all the players agree on what color it should be
• Players declare who they think will win at the beginning of the game. You win if the person you picked wins.

• Whenever a certain color is played, everyone has to keep quiet until the color is changed - or sing, or play with only one hand
• If there is a reverse rule, when a reverse card is played everyone has to exchange hands with the next player (in the direction of the reverse)
• Whenever the color is changed, the first person to say the color of the first card played as many times as the number of the card gets to play next
• Increase or decrease the number of wild cards
• Start the game with fewer cards for each player
• Increase the number of draw and discard piles
• Anyone can play if he or she has a match - going out of turn

This little piece on Crazy Eights just got bigger. I found myself needing to add "whys" to it. And in some ways, it and got a little wiser in the process. I was focusing on what I like to call the Social Literacy aspect of playing with rules. (Social Literacy is a great term, used, naturally, to mean different things than I intended it to mean, but all somehow wonderfully complimentary - see for example the Social Literacy Curriculum The PeaceZone Program)

So, after much musing and mousing, the following is what got added:

Crazy Eights is the kind of game where sooner or later somebody does something not very nice, or not very helpful, to someone else. Sometimes the thing they do could even be interpreted as "mean" - except for several very important things:

One, Crazy Eights is just a game, and no matter what people do to each other, it's all for fun, and whether you win or lose has really nothing to do with how good or loved or valued you are as a person.

Two, sometimes when you do that "mean" thing, you don't really mean to be mean, if you know what I mean. You have no choice. The only card you can play is an eight. And when you play it, the player next to you isn't going to be happy. Even though it's your sacred parent or cherished spouse or valued sibling or delightful child who falls victim to your unavoidable discard, what else can you do? It's not your intention or your fault. You have to play.

And finally, the fact is, and everybody knows it, no matter how strategic you try to be, how cunning or caring or kind, winning or losing are really more a result of luck than skill. That's why Crazy Eights becomes such a perfect community fame. It's fun. It's easy to learn. But especially because it gives people a chance to play with behaviors which, under normal circumstances, would be considered "not nice."

No matter how wonderful a community is, no matter how loving or supportive or caring or compassionate, there are times when people do things to each other that really aren't very nice. Times when people are just too busy, or something happens that really has nothing to do with anyone in the community, but still makes people angry or impatient or inconsiderate. And for a community that tries to be kind and caring and compassionate all the time, these relatively minor upsets can throw everybody off balance. For a community to become truly healthy, people need to develop the understanding and strength to deal with each other when things aren't so nice - when passions and tempers, discomforts and fears get the better of the best of us.

So as long as Crazy Eights is fun for everyone, then those aspects of the game that we might consider to become negative, actually become a source of healing - of extending the repertoire of behaviors and emotions that can be safely expressed. There are many things that people can do in a game of Crazy Eights to try outdo or undo each other. When you use a wild card, you have the opportunity to change to a color that the next player might not have, and consequently force that player to draw another card. And, as other people get close to winning, these opportunities become necessities.

There are a couple of key ideas that make all these hard things fun.

One is that we are playing the game for fun, because we want everyone to be having fun.

The other is, we are all only playing, and even though we're playing with behaviors that really aren't very helpful or "nice," because we're playing with it, and because we are all having fun with each other, we can be of great help to each other in learning how to deal with these behaviors in "real life."

Ultimately, if we're really going to play with these unhelpful behaviors, we're going to want to go beyond the rules of the game. Because playing with a behavior means that we have to try different things. We have to toy with it. We have to learn what happens when we change this aspect of the game, this rule or consequence. We have to let the game become a laboratory that allows us to experiment, observe, draw conclusions.

At the same time, we have to keep it fun, because only as long as it's fun for everyone can the game be a healing, joyful experience. As soon as it stops being fun, the negative aspects become just too negative to play with. One of the most remarkable assets of Crazy Eights is not the rules, but how many ways there are to change them. There are so many things you can do to make the game meaner or sillier, faster or funnier, easier or gentler. Ultimately, the more ways you play Crazy Eights, the more positive the experience becomes.

It becomes a better game, not because of the particular rules that you're playing it by, but because you've played it so many different ways that Crazy Eights time becomes a celebration of a growing bond between each and all members of the community. As the community becomes more proficient in changing rules and devising new rules, the community members also develop what might be called a kind of "Social Literacy." Understanding how a new rule could affect the game and the relationships and the experience of each player is a very complex and sophisticated social skill. It is a skill that is essential to leadership, effective parenting, facilitation, teaching, to developing and maintaining healthy relationships, to personal and social empowerment.

And because Crazy Eights is such a flexible game, so easy to change and explore, Crazy Eights time becomes a perfect opportunity for both personal and social development. An opportunity to learn together. An opportunity to grow together. All for the sake of play. All in the name of fun.

Snorta is even simpler than the rules make it out to be. And more fun. There's a deck of 100 animal cards. The deck is divided equally between 4-8 players. Players take turns exposing the top card in their pile. When cards match, the first player to make the sound of the other player's animal wins.

Other player's animal? Well, see, there's a bag full of plastic animals. Really nicely sculpted and painted cartoonishly funny-looking animals that live in a cloth drawstring bag.

Each player picks, and that becomes the player's animal. And that animal gets hidden in a similarly nicely sculpted barn-like, doghouse-looking thing. So you have to remember everybody's animal. Which isn't so easy - especially when you're looking at cards with other animals printed on them. If you lose, you have to pick up all the cards that the other player has already turned over.

Depending on how long it's been since a match has been drawn, that pile can get punishingly large. So the tension builds. And the excitement mounts. And the laughter frequently turns into something approximating hysteria. And then there's these occasional "swap" cards hidden in the animal card deck, which let you draw a different animal from the animal sack. Just in case people actually get too good at remembering the animal you used to be.

The mechanics of the game are subtle enough to make you want to play again and again. Even though a match can only involve two players at a time, all players are engaged. If you're not one of the players involved in a match, your pile just grows one card larger - making the possibility of success next round even that much more enticing. If you have a match fight with someone with a large pile, and you lose, it makes the loss that much more punishing.

Combine the visual and memory challenge with the sheer silliness of people making animal noises at each other, and you get Snorta - a Major FUN Award-winning party game that's competitive enough to take seriously, and silly enough not to care. Snorta is an ideal family game - one that adults can enjoy (our Tasting group ranged in age from 7-63, including a couple of advanced teens) as much as their kids.

Easy Come, Easy Go is a dice game that starts out as fun, and keeps on being fun until the very end. It's easy to understand, easy to play, and takes maybe an easy 5-10 minutes for a round. And it's easily one of the best dice games on the market. It'll remind you of Yahtzee, but you'll be wrong.

There are 4 dice, and yes, you try to roll them so that they get to a certain total or so they're two of a kind or all of a kind, in a most Yahtzee-like manner. Except that there are only 4 dice. And the dice are numbered from 0 to 5 instead of 1-6. And once you choose not to re-roll a die, you can't roll it again on the next turn.

But that's not really what makes this little dice game so much fun. It's the "prizes" (9 of them, printed on thick card stock). Each prize describes a different dice combination (like "7 exactly" or "3 of a kind, all dice odd".) Your goal is to get three of those prizes, and keep them until it is your turn again. Of course, all prizes remain in play, even though you've staked your claim to one or several.

And therein lies the Easy Go, and the deliciously painful fun of watching someone else take one of your cards. So you really never know who wins until the very last moment. And because it's so easy to understand, it's Major FUN, especially for families. Nice dice cup, too.

A to Z Jr. is pretty much the same game as the Major FUN Award-winning A to Z. The only significant difference is the category cards. Which turns out to be significant enough to make it Major FUN Award-worthy in its own right.

Though A to Z Jr. uses easier categories, the game is just challenging enough to keep adults interested. Which makes it just about the prefect family game. You take turns rolling a die. The die determines what question you have to answer. The object is to fill your board, from A to Z, with responses to questions like "Things you can buy in a Supermarket." Every correct answer allows you to cover the corresponding letter with a red, transparent chip. As your board gets filled up, the game gets more and more difficult, because there are fewer correct choices. The delicious "vengeance is mine" rule that allows you to remove chips from your opponent's board keeps the game in balance, and adds greatly to the fun and anguish of it all.

Of course, depending on your children's resilience, it might be necessary to adjust the challenge here and there. The fact that it's so easy to make the game easier (or more challenging) is key to its success as a family game. If your child feels that she doesn't know the names of baseball teams or different seafood, she can roll again or choose a different card (perhaps while the timer's still running).

Both games (Junior and non-Junior) have been updated and repackaged. A new electronic timer (2 AAA batteries, not included - tiny Phillips screwdriver needed) graces both games. The 30 second timer ticks away with increasing speed as the time elapses, and a satisfyingly unthreatening male voice lets you know when time's up.

Bright Idea Games are designed for kids. They're maybe not complex enough for us grownups. But if the kids are having fun, well, then, they're fun enough. Way more than Chutes and Ladders, let me tell you. Maya (7) and I (63) have played two of these games - Gopher It and Catch the Match - enough times for them to become a cherished part of our personal play stash. Both games are made of cards that are thick enough to withstand bouts of childlike glee. Both are different enough to be suitable for different moods. Gopher It is a game of luck and risk. Catch the Match a game of visual perception.

Of these two, the technology of Catch the Match is maybe the more impressive. There are 15 large, thick cards. On each card, there are 15 images. Given any pair of cards, there are exactly two images that match. Neat, huh. Exactly two. The idea of the game, be the first to spot the match. Easy to understand. Simple enough for a 7-year-old. And me, too. Maya and I have tied twice. What else can I say?

Gopher It reminded me a little of Sid Sackson's Can't Stop. You mish up all the satisfyingly thick cards, face down. There are three suits: carrots, nuts and apples. You can pick up to three cards, but if you pick two of the same kind of card in a row, you lose your turn. So you can't be too greedy. But you can't be too conservative either. As a result, there's just enough tension to keep everyone in play, without taking winning too seriously.

The preceding articles are courtesy of Bernie DeKoven. - Copyright © 2002 Major Fun
Bernie DeKoven is the author of The Well-Played Game: A Playful Path to Wholeness. and Junkyard Sports. Games should be a way for bringing more fun to your life. The Well-Played Game is a guide for making games into experiences that bring joy and health to you and everyone you play with.

Bernie DeKoven has developed and implemented collaborative events involving the cooperation of groups of all ages and sizes, from couples and families to schools and communities. Bernie worked with Mattel Media as "Dr. Fun / Staff Designer." He helped create the team and the products that led Mattel to $200 mil-lion earnings in the first year. He originated new game concepts, facilitated creative brainstorming meetings, and worked with the entire staff to bring more fun to work.

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