Games and rules.

Why are games without rules no fun and basically no game at all.? Are there any games without rules? I could not find one.Even with a game like Patience,(no top fun)you get bored when you change the rules during the game and cheat on yourself.

You can run , jump , dance, swim in a playful way;call it 'play'; it's no game.

I once saw a bullterrier (not a pitbull), do this little game by himself. He ran the slanting sandstrip alongside the surf. On the highest crest of the strip he let go of his tennisball that slowly rolled down to the water and just before the water would touch it, he was there to pick it up. He did this over and over again.(Maybe he did not want get his nose wet, but still there was a basic game rule.)

I saw two sea otters in the tank of the Monterey aquarium.
A very slow current took the two, floating on their back, from one side to the other. When their feet touched the tankside they pushed themselves back against the weak current and reapeated the act.(over and over) If for some reason they did not arrive at the other side synchrone, the first one waited for the second and they synchronized their push-off. They had a rule.

Don't know about dolphins, but I suspect they have rules.

I think a game is only a game if you make agreements on how to proceed. You can change or bend the rules only if all players agree.There are many games that can be played in various ways, but when each player plays his own variation the game is down.
You can change rules all the time, but only on a consensus basis. Are there games without rules?

There is a game with millions of rules, many conflicting and many others having no apparent purpose so that some of us see it as a game with no rules at all. It is called Life

he who "bends" the rules of a game (entertaining himself) will maintain he is still playing the game. I suppose, in a perverted way, he is, since he has to know the rules in the first instance.

-joe (roolz R us) friday

There's always Calvinball. It has rules but they're constantly changing. It appears to be a lot of fun.

The mask wouldn't be a problem, but to find the tiger suit would be hard.

Hobbes was Calvin's stuffed tiger. A toy. He only came alive when no one else was in the frame.

HOW I miss that comic strip! Best one I ever read. "For Better or for Worse" is good, too, but it's coming to an end also...

Way I understand it, it's not so much coming to an end as the characters are no longer going to age.

But, Faldage, behind the mask of being without rules, Calvinball
has, twisting and turning, rules like any other game.

But they can change with or without notice. It amounts to the same thing as no rules.

But they can change with or without notice. It amounts to the same thing as no rules - I beg to disagree. Quite on the contrary, changeable rules expose you to increased risk of transgressing them.
Recently, I read an article about adaptable/evolving fundamental laws and fundamental "constants" in physics. While this leaves me somwhat uneasy, it is not the same as anomy.

> anomy

ooh, good word.

Yet, "nobody can question the mask"? Hmmm.

I'd imagine: once the rule is made that changes the initial rule that says anyone can make up new rules and or overturn current rules the game ends... or at the very least, it gets really quiet.

There is a difference b/w a rule and a purpose. You can't have a game without a purpose, but you can have a game without rules. For example, in high school my friends and I played a game where the goal was to get the ball into a net, but you could do anything to get it there. It was a lot of fun.

A Hearty welcome i8beets. That sounds like fun... was there offence and defense in this game?

I like 'em pickled myself. Beets that is.

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So the only defining characteristic of "game" is its "end"? Shirley anything else is just a subset.

Ooo, I don't know about that game really having no rules i8beets.

If you played it in high-school, I'm sure the one unwritten-unspoken rule you all had to live with was, "don't do anything that'll get Mum mad" so no tearing of clothes, no gouging of eyes...

Don't do anything that'll get Mum mad, seems to be a pretty common rule for everything.

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Oh, and aye, beets are terrific when pickled.

And all games within this human sphere are tempered by human law and morality. You couldn't and wouldn't knife your buddies to get the ball into the net, for example.

Ah--now we are in the realm of written vs. unwritten rules; or in beets' case perhaps, stated vs. unstated. I would venture to say that one of their unstated rules was that you don't kill your opponents so you can score!

Do consequences count as rules, though? Consider an example: Fierce, all-out mêlée. Suppose someone suddenly becomes a hippie right in the middle of the battle. Of course, his head will be chopped off, but is that really a rule? His torso could be stabbed, for instance, also, or he could be unharmed because the fighting was so intense. Is a consequence without specific punishment really a rule?

This discussion reminds me of a movie I saw, "Murderball", in which the players were all quadriplegics, who played a version of wheelchair rugby, with the goal of trying to get the ball into the net. The moves and consequences were shocking to a naive audience, and the players went literally all-out.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0436613/

But Beets, your game must have had some rules.
1)A goal is when the ball goes in the net.
2)A game starts when someone says go and ends when the bell rings.
3)When a goal is scored the ball goes back to the starting position.
4)Don't score against your own team.

admittedly there aren't many and I'm guessing at a couple of them but...

Isn't a quadriplegic completely paralyzed? Those people look like they have hands, at least.

Many people think quadriplegics have no control over their four limbs, like Christopher Reeve, but most of them retain some degree of movement. Their level of disability is rated on a scale from 0.5 to 3.5, and a team can have a total of eight points on the court at once. This leads to an ironic paradox: The athletes spend their lives overcoming and diminishing their disabilities, and then hope for higher handicaps. Roger Ebert, Murderball review

-joe ("I'm a guy in a chair") friday