: Re: Explaining made up card game In my book I've made up a card game where I've already thought out the rules. Now I want some of the characters playing this game. My questions are: Should the

@Shakeerah107

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I agree with all of the other answers: you should only explain rules if it helps telling the story.

But I would like to add a suggestion: if you ever happen to explain the rules in-story, you could explain them in un unreliable manner, from your characters' POV. Some examples include:

a young boy, who is struggling to survive in a tough world, learns the rules by himself as he goes, and loses a lot of money in the beginning because he never got how the "ace wins all" rule works, then he learns the right way and starts winning;
an experienced player may know of a tricky strategy, and explains it (and only that) to another character;
a crook introduces his victim to the game, but doesn't tell about a specific rule that allows him to win;
a stranger plays with a group of locals, and an argument arises between them because in the stranger's land certain rules differs from those the locals are used to;
you might even have your character always win because he "knows how to handle the red women", which is a mysterious sentence to describe some strategy that revolves around the queens of hearts and diamonds, but he never explains what that actually is. It may even be nothing but a bluff, something like "the secret weapon is believing in yourself".

You may not even have to explain the other rules, only enough to show a peculiarity of one or more characters.

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