Mahjong
resources made or found for mahjong
I’ve been playing a bunch of mahjong, mostly riichi (Japanese), after learning how to play American a couple years ago. I think it’s great fun, social and tactile and challenging, and it gets me out of the house to play.
Riichi mahjong can be, uh, demanding to learn because not only do you need to learn how to play, but the culture around riichi demands that you also learn the Japanese terms and numbers. No easy translations here. Scoring is particularly complex (I barely understand it) and there are several game states or hands (yaku) that don’t exist in other forms of mahjong. But all these reasons are part of it’s appeal. It’s exciting in ways other forms don’t reach.
I made a little riichi mahjong flashcard webpage to help learn the terminology and hand names, maybe you’ll enjoy it. (Disclosure: It started as a quick vibe code to see how good Claude was and then I kept adding to it.)
Y’all! I did it! I found the perfect case for riichi mahjong tiles! Well, at least for my set (Yellow Mountain Imports – Chinese ‘small’ 30mm). It isn’t even a mahjong case, it is a computer keyboard case but check it out — everything fits inside: two layers of tiles, compass, scoring sticks, wind indicator, spare tiles.
If you’ve got 30mm tiles, get your own here from Amazon:
Ever since I starting playing mahjong, I’ve pondered about other ways to play a game with the tiles (besides the million versions of mahjong solitaire – the pyramid tile-matching game). I finally hit upon an idea for a solo journaling / roleplaying game using the tiles as prompts, but keeping a bit of actual mahjong flavor in the game.
IN PRODUCTION – FEB 2026