Horse has been waiting for today for a long time. Okay, fine. She has been waiting for today for a week now, since it has been that long since we scheduled today's playdate. Okay, fine. We're not calling it a playdate because her friend is a boy and she is a girl and the last thing nine-year-olds want is to claim they are on a date of any kind. Okay, fine. The last thing Horse's father wants is to claim his nine-year-old daughter is on a date of any kind. We wound up stating Horse's friend was invited over to take place in an epic card game involving a collectible card game both kidlets play.
The first thing we did was to set up some ground rules for this epic battle. The living room was to be their turf. Call me overprotective, paranoid, or whatever you want, but my little girl was not going to be left alone in her bedroom with a friend who possesses both X and Y chromosomes. Therefore, all of her collectible cards were brought out to the living room before we left to go pick up her friend. That actually worked quite well, since the two of them wound up having a difference of opinion as to the rules of the game, and a moderator (in the form of Pig, who is Horse's normal opponent) could step in to help clear the air.
When Pig taught Horse the rules for the game, he tried to do so honestly. In other words, he followed the rules and expected her to do the same. Sometimes he won and sometimes she did, but Pig worked hard to teach our daughter both the rules and strategies that she could employ to try and kick her opponent's patootie.
Horse's friend Lee apparently did not learn how to play "correctly." The translation here is that he made up rules as he went along, and generally only informed Horse of his rules when he wanted to do something that was not typically allowed. Now most of the time, we have no problem with using house rules for a particular game. Just let us know what the rules are before starting, and we'll all play the same way and be on equal footing, even if the rules themselves make the game easier or harder than they were intended. Lee almost always forgot something he was supposed to do, did it when he remembered (instead of losing the ability to play that part of his turn, which is the standard rule), and made up rules that allowed him to play only his biggest, baddest cards. Horse was still trying to follow the rules and play correctly, so she lost all three games they played. How can someone compete when the cards are (literally) stacked against them?
At one point, Lee was telling Horse about how he had "Level X" cards, which were supposedly the highest level possible. There's no such thing in that game. Typically, in card games like that, if a card's level, hit points, damage amount, or any other number is given as an "X", it means you can pay a certain amount to make it whatever level, etc. that you can afford. When a self-imposed rule is that you don't have to pay anything to put a card into play, yes, that can seem as if you have an incredibly high level card. The thing is, none of the cards Lee was claiming were "Level X" even had that capability. Their numbers were givens, not variables. He was taking random base cards and adding his own details on his whim of the moment in order to make his cards seem more impressive.
Naturally, Horse was getting more than slightly flustered. Pig, too, was getting frustrated. I was trying desperately not to laugh at how ludicrous the whole situation was. The only one who seemed perfectly content with how the games were playing out was Lee.
If nothing else, today's epic card game battle taught Horse a little something about what type of player she wishes to invite over for a game. Does she want to follow the rules or have house rules? Is she willing to overlook spontaneously generated rules that are only imposed to help their creator win? Does she wish to allow people to complete tasks they forgot, especially when the forgotten task was to attack and destroy one of her monsters? Is she able to deal with just clowning around and throwing random attack monsters at each other and letting the best cards win regardless of what the rules stipulate? Does she want to follow the letter of the law and insist that the game must be played as intended? What actually makes Horse feel as if she is enjoying the game? This sort of thing is much easier to determine when someone tries to do something that makes you angry. Lee ticking off my daughter was actually a good thing for helping her figure out her preferred gameplay.
It will be interesting to see if she agrees to go play a follow-up game at Lee's house this upcoming week. She was invited, and we've told her that it's all up to her whether she goes or not.
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