Active and Complete Rulesets
This section contains rulesets that are active or fully complete and playable.
Active Rulesets
These are rulesets where the rule's creators are committed to responding to clarification questions. They may be complete or under active development. If nobody replies to questions after a reasonable period of time, remove the page from this list.
Complete Rulesets
These are rulesets that are comprehensive and complete. They are ready to play with little clarification.
Play Online
These rulesets are available to play online:
Pieces
Rule Similarities
Variations
By Method
For Teaching
Played in Spaces
Played on Points
- Wiki Pai Sho - Basic game outlined on this site.
- Harmony Pai Sho - In this Pai Sho game you aim to get "harmony", (the concept of getting exactly 0 points) rather than winning the game with points.
- Elemental Pai Sho - A Pai Sho variation based on the Elements.
- Ancient Pai Sho - A variant where the goal is to be the player that causes the board to get to a target number of harmonies. has different rules for some of the special tiles and for tile placement
- Frank's pai sho rules - a variant based of of the original with some tweaks. winning can be achieved by capturing all flower and special tiles or obtaining a certain pre-set number of points.
- Modern Pai Sho - An elemental tile set, the goal is to move the white lotus to the center of the board.
- 3 Piece Pai Sho - played like chess, by trapping the opponents Iris Tile
- Lotus Pai Sho - Based on Buddhist lotus symbolism
- Pai Chi - Harmonic Game
- Skud Pai Sho - Comprehensive set of rules to make the game fun, competitive, and strategic
Either
- Kutai Pai Sho - The flower not only determines a harmony, but it's season as well
Incomplete
By Tile Set
"Standard"
- Tei Setsu Pai Sho (also Kaze No Pai Sho) - Possible variation played by air temple monks.
- Balance Pai Sho - A variant inspired by Nine Men's Morris and chess, though with very simple rules.
- Ippan Pai Sho - Played on a smaller 8x8 board
- Wiki Pai Sho - Basic game outlined on this site.
- Harmony Pai Sho - In this Pai Sho game you aim to get "harmony", (the concept of getting exactly 0 points) rather than winning the game with points.
- Ancient Pai Sho - A variant where the goal is to be the player that causes the board to get to a target number of harmonies. has different rules for some of the special tiles and for tile placement
- Frank's pai sho rules - a variant based of of the original with some tweaks. winning can be achieved by capturing all flower and special tiles or obtaining a certain pre-set number of points.
- 3 Piece Pai Sho - played like chess, by trapping the opponents Iris Tile(While this one uses different amounts of pieces from this set, It adds none)
- Pai Chi - Harmonic Game(Different names, that's all)
- Skud Pai Sho - Comprehensive set of rules to make the game fun, competitive, and strategic
Elemental
- Elemental Pai Sho - A Pai Sho variation based on the Elements.
- Modern Pai Sho - An elemental tile set, the goal is to move the white lotus to the center of the board. There is a relance under the name of PaiJo.
- Wielpaisho - A rank increasing version of Elemental.
Seasonal
- Kutai Pai Sho - The flower not only determines a harmony, but it's season as well
Other/Mix
Comments (7)
Yi Chen said
at 4:41 pm on Feb 6, 2010
Why did you chose Japanese words to name the Air temple variation?
What do you propose the name Pai Sho to mean?
Joshua said
at 1:41 am on Apr 21, 2010
Pai sho should mean Life's Balance?
PS-Prog said
at 12:02 am on Sep 2, 2012
If anyone needs a good Windows Pai Sho game with modifyable rules, i can make it!
Ofek Nagar said
at 10:16 am on Aug 19, 2015
Hi,
So listen... I know I'm something like 3 years late, BUT Pai Sho is really important to me. I've tried to improve the Wiki Pai Sho rules set by myself - but I couldn't do it alone.
I'm sure that by now you all probably have more important things to worry about, but if you have time PLEASE add a comment and let's build an appropriate rule set.
As I said - I REALLY want to make Pai Sho an appropriate game - and further - it should really be "more than just a game".
Since no one has visited this site for like 2 years, I will write this in several places so there will be a better chance for ANYONE to see that. Please, if you see this comment and you want to help me and write back - write in the front page (I wrote it there too) so I won't have to look for it everywhere.
PLEASE WRITE ME BACK IN THE FFRONT PAGE!!!
Java said
at 11:04 am on Nov 9, 2015
Hello, I just got an account on this site and I'm working on finding the set of rules the I think Iroh most likely used, it's difficult because A:LOK says "every culture had it's own set of rules and variants, some considered it to be a fast game of chance, and others a slow well thought out game of strategy" Everyone here has good rules, I'm just trying to combine them into the best set I can
Java said
at 10:19 pm on Nov 9, 2015
I'm going to rearrange this page to have the variants better organised
Skud said
at 6:36 pm on Apr 15, 2016
I think maintaining a list of active rulesets (rules that we can expect official answers to questions about) and comprehensive/complete rulesets is a good idea. It will make it easy for people to find the best way to start playing. Do you agree? What sets of rules should be considered Complete (comprehensive and playable)?
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