Taiwanese Mahjong (the very non official casual way for people who don't know Mandarin)

"Blue & White Porcelain" - by Jay Chou

Rules based off official Taiwanese Mahjong and slightly simplified by me for non-Mandarin speakers

Things you need:

Step One: Become familiar with the tiles!

There are three suits of tiles and each suit has tiles that stand for 1 - 9. There are also nonsuit tiles that have a singular Chinese character on them. There is also a card that has a rectangle on it.

Then there are flower tiles.

Each unique tile, with the exception of the flower tiles, has four identical tiles.

Step Two: Set up the game!

Flip over all the tiles so all of them are facing down. Mix them up to shuffle the tiles. Then line 16 of them up along your mahjong sticks, then another layer of 18 right on top of the first row. Then push your row to the middle so it creates something like a photo cropping symbol in the middle.

Then some person will be decided as the East wind (There is supposed to be a complicated way to decide who but this is my way and I just choose randomly) The East wind will roll 3 dice (provided in the mahjong set), and they will count the result from the right down the row of tiles in front of them.

After counting, they take four tiles at once and place it in front of them. The person to the right will take the next four, and so on, until each person has 16 tiles. Then line up the 16 tiles in front of your mahjong stick. If you have any flower tiles, take them out and refill your tiles from the opposite side of the tiles you took from when setting up the game. (The flower tiles are used for gambling and since I do not want to gamble with friends I do not use them)

You should have 16 tiles by the end of setting up.

Step Three: How to Win

To win the game, you must have 5 groups of three tiles, and one pair.
A group of three tiles must either be 3 consecutive tiles from one of the suits, or 3 identical tiles of any tile. The pair must be 2 identical tiles
Since you start with 16 tiles, and to complete your set you need 17, so the last extra tile is when you pick up your winning tile during the game.

Step Four: Play the game!

The East wind starts by taking a singular tile from the end of where the tiles were taken from when setting up. They can either decide to keep it or throw it out to the middle of the table. If they keep it, they must throw another tile out.

When a tile is thrown out:

The person on the right of who threw it can take it if they can complete a consecutive group of three, OR, ANY player can take it if they can complete an identical group of three. If anyone takes it, they must reveal the group of three and throw a tile out.

EXCEPTION: if someone throws out your winning tile that completes your set (of 5 groups of three and one pair), you have greatest priority and can take the tile no matter what (literally no matter what, even if it's not your turn, looking at you Hamin)

The person on the right who threw out the most recent tile makes the next move. On your move, you can either take the most recent tile thrown out if the above conditions are met, OR you can take a singular tile from where the East wind started and see if you would like to keep the tile or not. If you do keep it, you must throw out a tile.

This will continue until someone wins :D

“Taiwanese Mahjong Rules.” Mahjong Time - Taiwanese Mahjong Rules, 2022, https://www.mahjongtime.com/mahjong-taiwanese-rules.html .