Found out my favorite game had a misprint rule for 15 years

I was digging through some old forums last week about the board game Dune, the 1979 version. Turns out there's this whole thing about how the movement phase was printed wrong in the original rulebook. For 15 years, people were playing where you could move troops across the whole map in one turn, but the designer later clarified it's supposed to be limited to just the territory next to where your troops already are. I checked my own copy and sure enough, the rulebook I've been using since college has that exact mistake. It blew my mind because my group has been playing with that wrong movement rule for like 8 years! Has anyone else found a rule in a classic game that was totally off from the designer's intent?

2 comments

2 Comments

simon_chen8d ago

Used to think these misprint stories were just nerds getting way too into tiny details. Figured if the rule was in the box you played it that way and that was the end of it. Then my group found out we had been playing Cosmic Encounter with a wrong power for years and it completely changed how we saw the game. Now I actually get why designers get mad when people play with broken rules cause the intended version is usually tighter and more balanced. You start questioning everything you thought you knew about the game and its kind of a trip.

verac498d ago

Different strokes I guess @simon_chen. Some games are balanced so tight a misprint does wreck it, but other times the wrong rule ends up being just as fun or even better than the intended one. We played a misprinted version of a deckbuilder where one card cost less than it should have and it made for some crazy combos. Realized later it was wrong, tried the official version, and it was actually more boring. Sometimes a happy accident makes the game more interesting, not less.