It involves a fishbowl, car keys, and rhymes with “pwinging”
I love it when we drive to our friends’ homes, look at the aquarium and start singing!
Were on the internet and no ideas for computer games on the list? :eek:
The “You Don’t Know Jack” Series of computer games are a lot of fun. It’s trivia with a lot of satire and general adult fun. The game can have up to three people or teams playing.
We used to play Trivia Pursuit for $5/slice of pie. Winner take all. I love that game.
I have one. I forget what we called it… Empire, maybe.
One person (like a moderator; can’t play) has a notebook with everyone’s name on it (just to keep things straight in case someone forgets). One by one, players come tell the person a celebrity’s name, and the list maker adds a fake 2 or three just for fun, but tells nobody which ones are fake. Then, everyone sits around and the list of celebrities is read once. Players go one at a time asking a participant if he/she is X celebrity.
If the asker guessed correctly, then the person he asked is “in his empire” and can help him with guessing who submitted what celebrity. The guesser guesses until he gets it wrong, then the person whom he asked may ask people if they are X celebrity.
If someone with people in his empire is figured out, he and his empire belongs to the guesser.
For when times get slow, the list can be read again.
Another fun store-bought game is Monkey Business - great for dinner parties. It’s a deck of cards. On each card is printed an instruction - something like “Quack like a duck when someone touches their elbow”
As people arrive they’re given a card. They must follow the instruction on the card. Everyone gets a card, of course, and everyone tries to figure out what’s on everyone else’s card. The “quack like a duck” part is usually obvious. It’s the “when someone touches their elbow part” that’s challenging. When you guess someone else’s card, you get their card and they pick another from the deck. This goes on for as long as it stays interesting - we did 5 hours one time. The winner (as if that was the point 
) is the one who earned the most cards.
There are other decks besides “Monkey Business.” I like this one because the cards often trigger each other: “Touch your forehead when someone quacks like a duck.” It wouldn’t be too much work, though, to create one’s own set.
And, of course, it doesn’t have to be a dinner party. The nice thing about this game is you don’t have to all sit around playing. The game is not the exclusive focus of the evening - just an amusing background to the gathering (but often popping up and consuming everyone’s attention in waves).
This one’s an icebreaker, but it’s loads of fun. You go around with a roll of toilet paper, and ask people to take as many squares as they’d like. Then tell them to write on one side a chore they hate to do, then on the other side write in detail why they hate it (e.g. “it hurts my back and I hate getting down on my hands and knees while getting dirty”).
Tell them to put the worst chores in front of them (one or two). Then go around the room reading off the descriptions of the chores that you hate, but you have to begin with:
“I hate sex because…”.
And everyone is supposed to guess the chore.
Have fun! 
My two favorite party games are homemade pictionary and Chain Reaction, as described in this post. (Neither requires purchasing anything).
(Oh, and Cranium sucks eggs. Its popularity is inexplicable.)
A fun non-competitive game is Telephone Pictionary. Everyone takes a sheet of paper, and you sit in a circle. Everyone writes something down at the top of the sheet, then passes it to the left. Everyone then draws a picture of what’s written, folds the paper over so that just the picture (not the writing) is visible, and passes to the left. Everyone then writes down what they think the picture they see is, and folds it over, etc. Repeat until you get your piece of paper back, and then unfold the whole thing and see how it progressed.
A similar game is “Oracle”. Everyone takes a piece of paper and writes a question on it. Pass it to the left, and everyone writes an answer to the question, folds it over so that only the answer is visible. Pass it to the left, and everyone writes a question whose answer is the answer they see there, fold it so just the question is visible, and so forth.
Anyone looking for Apples to Apples, it’s been popping up at most major toy stores (Toys R Us, etc.) and can most likely be found at any Friendly Local Game Store. If you can’t find it near you, you can get it at www.funagain.com, www.bouldergames.com, or www.thoughthammer.com, all very good sites that I have bought from multiple times.
One fun game for a reasonably small group of people (between about 5 and 15 players) is The Railway Game - you can play it with airports, or just cities, if you’re not familiar with a large railway system with distinctively-named stations. The gameplay is simple:
- The object of the game is to find out the rules.
- The first player names a station.
- The second player names another station.
- All the players who know what the rules are say whether or not you can travel from the first station to the second. Note that there may only be one player who knows the rules at the beginning, so they’ll have to make all the calls for the first few moves.
- This goes on, with each player naming a station and the “enlightened” players saying whether it’s a valid journey from the one before it, until everyone knows what the rules are.
- Nobody reveals what the rules are until everyone knows them.
And - the rules are:
- A move is valid if the player says “Err” or “Um” or a similar hesitation noise before naming the station.
- That’s it. The preceding station has nothing to do with it.
- Putting in some padding so the spoiler box
- Is reasonably big.
This is very similar to “Mornington Crescent”, except that the stations must all be on the London Underground, each move may trigger assorted consequences (e.g. enabling Suburban Bidding or putting a station or subsection of line in Nip or Mopsy) that affect subsequent moves, there are “tokens” the positions of which are generally held in the head unless you can afford a bona fide set (Ebay is, sadly, very seldom helpful), and the rule in the above spoiler box doesn’t apply. Oh, and the object is to reach Mornington Crescent.
The game is easier to illustrate with a sample game than to explain, and if anyone really wants, we can start a separate thread. I know that a number of other Dopers know how to play.
I love party games! I will third or whatever number we are up to now that Mafia is so much more fun to play that one would think. It helps, though, if at least one person is familiar enough to act as the coordinator because it’s the kind of game where it doesn’t work well if players are confused about what they’re supposed to be doing.
I’m almost sure this has an official name, but I don’t know it. Hopefully someone else will, and inform me! We always call it the Name Game.
Everyone writes down the name of a famous person on a small slip of paper. We usually play “Famous name, real or fictional, alive or dead” but you could limit it in whatever way you want. So people could write things like George Washington, Meg Ryan, Harry Potter, etc.
You pass the name to the person next to you. When you get your slip of paper, without reading the name, you lick the back of it and stick it to your forehead. (Yes, we are dorks so part of the fun is making someone sit around labelled “Les Nessman”) Everyone else should be able to read your name, but you do not know what it is.
Players then ask yes/no questions to figure out who they are. We play that every turn, you can ask one questions, and then you can make a guess. So your first question might be “Am I a man?” If you are Les Nessman, the answer is yes. Then you can guess “Am I Hugh Hefner?” No. Next person.
I have played where the slips are shuffled and passed out at random, but I don’t like this as much. I think it’s better to know who you are picking a name for – it’s pointless and not very fun if you pick an obscure baseball player for someone who genuinely has never followed baseball. This also helps if you have a small child who is playing, so you can pick a name at the appropriate challenge level.
I love charades, but that is the Luddite in me.
To make it more interesting, I like to throw in famous quotes from books and movies. ( I get to play alot. )
Another great card game is Spoons, which I cannot remember for the life of me how to play other than you try to grab the spoons ( one less than the # of people at the table before someone else does or if you don’t get one, you are out. )
Cards and table spoons needed.
I’ve got three fer ya along the lines of Tevildo’s “guess the rules” type of game:
[ol]
[li]Camping Trip. This can be started even if only one person knows the rule: Go around the room asking this question: “We’re going on a camping trip. What will you bring?” The only correct answer is something that begins with the letter of the person’s name. I can bring “Nuts, neanderthals, and Nair” but I cannot bring “Tent, sleeping bag, marshmellows” When someone answers correctly, those in the know say “You can come” otherwise, “Nope, you can’t come”[/li]
[li]Find the Book. This requires two people in the know, a pointer and a guesser. Lay out nine books in a 3x3 pattern (or other uniformly rectangular objects) The guesser leaves the room. The gang selects a book and the guesser returns. The pointer points at books at random and asks “Is this it?” to which the guesser says “No” unless it’s the book selected. Repeat this a few times to let people guess the signal. When someone thinks they’ve got it, let him be the guesser.[/li]
The secret is in how you point at the books. The pointer imagines a 3x3 grid on each book, and touches each book in the cell that represents where the position of the selected book.
It’s fun to mix things up, for example changing the phrase “Is this it?” to “Is that the one?” or “How 'bout this one?” as if that were the clue. Or at least one the guesser getting tired of the endless false points says in mock frustration, “No, it’s this one, sheesh!” because the guesser knows which it is on the very first point.
[li]The Spirit Moves. This is a spooky one similar to “Find the Book.” The guesser leaves the room. Everyone left switches seats, shuffling up the room. [/li]
The guesser does NOT return. The pointers holds his hand above player after player at random, each time shouting, “The spirit is moving” The guesser yells back from the other room, “Move on.” Repeat this a few times, then with hand over a player the pointer gravely says, “The spirit rests.” The guesser shouts out the name of the player. Pause. The guesser returns and asks “Was I right?” and of course she is.
Lather, rinse, repeat. Again, when someone thinks they’ve got it, they get a shot at being the guesser.
The secret: The very first time the person to be selected is decided between the pointer and guesser. Easy then for the guesser to be correct, of course. But when the guesser returns and asks “Was I right?” she makes a note of whomever is seated to the left. That’s who’s next, and that’s why shuffling seats is important.
When I, as a player, was trying to figger this out, one time the seat to the left was empty (not knowing the secret yet, I didn’t notice). After a few times with “the spirit is moving” the pointer very slowly and dramatically moved his hand to the centre of the room. The guesser, playing confusion very well, said, “There’s no one there!” A palpable chill grazed everyone’s spine; a few even gasped.
[/ol]
Not meaning to wander odd topic, but are any of you familiar with the drinking game “Cardinal Puff”? It’s a good one to welcome a new member to the family/crowd/gang/whatever. My relatives would play that on new family members and it was like a rite of passage. But I can’t remember any other family or group who even knew about it.
I can give the “rules” if anyone cares, but I’m mostly just curious if anybody else has heard of it.
Here’s how we play Spoons:
Players sit around a small table, with spoons in the middle. The pile of spoons in the middle should contain one less spoon than the number of players (if six players, then five spoons). Everyone gets dealt four cards. The object is to get four of a kind.
Play begins with the dealer grabbing a card from the deck, quickly deciding whether to keep or discard it, and laying down his discard to the player on his right. Each successive player picks up the discards one at a time and does likewise (picking up more than one card at a time is cheating, and no more than four cards in a hand at one time). Game play should be very very fast.
Cards continue to be passed around and around until someone has four of a kind. That player then grabs a spoon. This is the signal for the other players to also grab for spoons. This can get pretty violent, so the initial player may want to make his grab quietly. The player who ends up without a spoon loses. That player is eliminated, one spoon is removed, and play begins anew.
A friend of mine has a great party game (purchased) called “ImaginIFF”. The basics are something like this: you write the names of the players around the outside of the board. The inner part of the board is divided into squares, start to finish. To play, you roll a die and move a special marker on the outer part of the board to a player’s name. The roller reads a question from a card and inserts the name of the person landed upon. The questions are all something like, “Imagine if {player} were a crime, which would s/he be?”, with a list of six options. Players each have a deck of cards numbered one to six. They pick the card for the answer they think is best, then simultaneously all players show their cards. Whatever number is picked most “wins”, and players who agreed on that most popular number get to move their piece toward the finish line. Then, the die is rolled again. It’s a neat game, because you get a kind of glimpse at what other people think about you, and the questions and answers are so goofy that no one gets their feelings hurt. Of course, if you don’t have enough players to fill the outside parts of the board, you can fill them with the names of friends everyone present knows, or with famous people.
We play exactly the same game, but without the spoons. We call it “pig”. When you’ve got 4-of-a-kind, (or see someone else doing it) you touch your nose. More chance for subtlety, I’d image, and less for injury. Otherwise identical.
To Zeldar, most UK dopers of A Certain Age will be familiar with “Cardinal Puff” from an episode of Dad’s Army in which Captain Mainwaring plays it, with suitably amusing consequences.
Another easy “guess the rules” game has the question is “Can I wear this to your next party?” The answer is “Yes” if the garment/item of jewellery/etc is currently being worn by the person to the player’s left.
Get everyone to take their clothes off.
Have half the people stand on one side of the room, and half the people stand on the other side.
Everyone runs towards each other, and the neatest correct entry wins.
Many thanks! I suppose it’s possible that this amusement might date from WWII days since I first encountered it as a child in the late 40’s or early 50’s.