Chez Cthulhu - Playing a card to no effect

[StormyWaters]

Hello again! We played several SJ games last night and had some questions. As far as Chez Cthulhu:

Can you play cards that would otherwise do nothing? For example playing "Discard the Live-In S.O." when there is no Live-In S.O. in play, or playing "Re-Animation" when there is no Person or Animal in the discard pile.

In case you had a card that said "When you play an X card, do something". So could you play those cards even if the cards themselves do nothing?

Thanks!

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by StormyWaters

Can you play cards that would otherwise do nothing? For example playing "Discard the Live-In S.O." when there is no Live-In S.O. in play, or playing "Re-Animation" when there is no Person or Animal in the discard pile.

As a general guideline, if you could play the card normally, but it would have no effect, you can still play it. This is rarely useful, since one can discard.