>>5067454Basically, there's 3 suits of tiles, all going from 1 to 9: the circles, the bamboo sticks, and the 1000's, plus 4 wind direction tiles (north, south, east and west) and 3 dragon tiles (blue/white, green, and red). there's 4 of each type of tile in play, but a chunk of them is taken out of play each round
each player gets a hand, then in their turn adds a tile to their hand and then discards a tile out of their hand. then it's the next player's turn, who also adds a tile then discards a tile. you can discard the one you got, it's actually the only thing you can do under certain conditions.
in japanese mahjong, also known as Riichi mahjong, to win, you need to reach a main goal in your hand, called a Yaku. to win a round you need at least one of them. there's also sidegoals called Han which amplify the amount you get to win if you do win; all yaku have at least one han with them. one of the most simple yaku is Riichi, done by declaring it when your hand is one tile away from being feature-complete(three 3-tile combinations and one pair combination, called a Tenpai) AND when your hand was closed for the entire duration of the round/you havent used other player's discards to merge into your side-hand
there's a /jp/ thread on the game and i think they have some links to tutorials and shit, go check it out
