Recently I heard of an interesting game called Nomic. You don't need any equipment -- just some creative and indulgent friends. Today I got together with my creative brother-in-law and my creative oldest son to play Nomic Candyland.

You start with the regulation Candyland rules, but add that at the beginning of every turn the player may propose a new rule to the game. If the rule passes by majority vote it takes effect at the beginning of the next turn.

We ended up with a pretty fun game:

1. Every player gets 10 hitpoints; if you lose all your hitpoints you're out of the game.
2. Players would hold a hand of three cards and would select cards to play from the hand.
3. All the special candy cards (lollipop, ice cream cone, etc.)  are weapons that can hit players up to three tiles away. As the game proceeded some weapons acquired special abilities, for example, eating the gingerbread man to gain hitpoints; the candy cane being a machine gun with higher range; the peanut being a hand grenade with a range of four inches in any direction on the game board. Landing on another player dealt one hitpoint of damage.
4. If you reach the castle at the end of the map, you don't win; you "level up" and return to the start of the map. Eventually it was added that leveling up allowed you to move faster and deal more damage.
5. At the end of the Candyland board game is "Gloppy." In order to pass him you have to defeat him in battle. The rules of battle assigned relative value to different colored cards. "Uh-oh, Gloppy drew a green card, that's not looking good for me."
6. Additional special passageways were invented.
7. A robber was added that wandered the board according to certain rules, hitting players and stealing their cards.

We had fun. The final turn went something like, "I'll play a red card; since I'm at level two I'll make it a double-red. That jumps me over the robber so he can't hurt me, and I land on the red player, damaging them down from three hitpoints to two. Finally I'll shooting the red player with my candy cane, finishing him off to win the game."